After you arrive
Your rights, and the harms we see most
International students are protected on pay, housing and consumer matters by the same standards as Korean nationals. But if you have also broken a rule — working without a part-time permit, for instance — you will hesitate to report anything, which is why staying inside the permit from the start is the surest way to protect yourself.
What your rights cover
- Pay — being foreign is not a reason to be paid below the minimum wage. If you are not paid, you can file with the Ministry of Employment and Labor.
- Housing — tenancy protection law does not distinguish by nationality. Moving-in notification and a fixed date stamp put in place what you need to protect your deposit.
- Consumer — your rights in contracts with telecom providers, academies and agencies are the same as anyone else’s.
- Education — if a university operates differently from its published admission guidelines, or unilaterally changes scholarship conditions it announced, you can raise it with the university and it must answer.
- Safety — if you are the victim of a crime you can call 112 regardless of your residence status.
Will reporting get me in trouble?
We will be straight with you. Reporting unpaid wages is not itself a problem. But if you worked without a part-time work permit, that remains a separate breach. Many students give up on reporting for exactly this reason, and some employers withhold wages knowing it.
So we do not tell you to report without worrying. We tell you to reverse the order. Get the part-time work permit before you start working. Working inside the permit means you can raise a problem with nothing of your own to lose. The permit is not a burden — it is a shield.
If you have already been harmed while working without one, do not decide alone. Circumstances differ case by case, and doing nothing is rarely the best of them.
The harms we see most
- Fees demanded for admission or a visa. Beyond the application fee set by the university and the fee set by the mission, there is nothing further to pay for applying or for the visa itself. If someone asks for a large sum under any other heading, get in writing what it is for.
- Offers to prepare your documents for you. The moment a bank statement, transcript or language score is adjusted, it is forgery. If it is found, it leads to cancelled admission, criminal liability and deportation.
- Housing fraud. Demands to pay for a room you have not seen, pressure that it must be today, and requests for a passport copy or ID details are the classic signals.
- Lending your bank account or identity. "Just lend me the account and I will pay you" is almost always money laundering for a phone-scam operation. The person who lends the account is investigated too, for breaching electronic financial transaction law or aiding fraud.
- Referrals to unauthorised work. Anyone placing you in a job without asking about your permit is protecting their own fee, not you.
- Demands to hand over your passport or residence card. No employer, landlord or academy has the authority to hold them.
Where to ask, where to report
| Situation | Contact |
|---|---|
| Residence, visas, registration | Immigration Contact Center 1345 (multilingual) |
| Unpaid wages, unfair working conditions | Ministry of Employment and Labor 1350 |
| Crime, threats to your safety | Police 112 |
| Phone scams, account-related financial harm | Financial Supervisory Service 1332 |
| Legal advice | Korea Legal Aid Corporation 132 |
| Academic, dormitory and campus matters | Your university’s international office |
1345 offers counselling in a number of languages. If you do not know where to begin, begin there.
Common questions
- My employer will not pay me. What do I do?
- First gather anything that shows how much you worked and what was agreed: the employment contract, attendance records, payment history, message threads. Then you can file with the Ministry of Employment and Labor on 1350. If you were working without a part-time permit, that remains a separate matter, so it is safer to take advice first and decide the order in which to proceed.
- My landlord will not return my deposit.
- Start by securing the contract, the record of the deposit transfer, and your moving-in notification and fixed date stamp. If they propose deducting repair costs, ask for the basis in writing. If the amount is large or they have stopped responding, call the Korea Legal Aid Corporation on 132 to find out what procedures are open to you. If you already have a departure date, taking advice before you leave puts you in a far better position.
- Someone wants a fee for finding me a part-time job.
- Ask what the fee is for. Formal job placement may only be done by registered businesses, and the fees they may charge are capped. On top of that, students may only work within the scope of a part-time work permit — so an agency that places you without even asking about your permit is probably placing you outside it.
- I have already paid an agency a large sum. Can I get it back?
- Whether you can depends on the contract and the evidence, and we cannot settle that here. But something matters more than the money: whether anything they submitted on your behalf was altered. If forged documents are in your file, the consequences are far heavier than the money. Work out who prepared which document, and take advice on that first.
- Someone offered to pay me for the use of my bank account.
- Refuse. It is almost always used to launder the proceeds of phone scams. The person who lends the account is investigated for breaching electronic financial transaction law or aiding fraud, and if the account is frozen you lose the route your tuition and living costs arrive by. If you have already handed it over, tell your bank, the police on 112 and the Financial Supervisory Service on 1332 immediately.
Take care
Documents carry the heaviest risk. Even if an agency prepared them, you are the person they are screened against and the responsibility stays with you. Do not proceed while unsure who prepared what. KoAdmit charges students nothing under any heading, and does not promise outcomes.
Last checked
Sources 외국인종합안내센터 1345 (법무부) · 찾기쉬운 생활법령정보 — 외국인유학생 (법제처) · 하이코리아 (법무부)
This page is general information, not legal advice on your case. Rules change and the final decision rests with the authorities. If you apply through KoAdmit we confirm the current rules with you during the consultation.