Sending money home from Korea — the rules that apply to foreigners, not Koreans

Almost every guide to sending money out of Korea repeats the same figure: 100,000 US dollars a year. If you are a foreigner living in Korea, that number is not yours. The regulation that contains it excludes you in its own first line.

Short answer

Through a BANK, with proof of where the money came from
   → salary income: no separate cap, up to the amount you earned
   → via your DESIGNATED foreign exchange bank

Through a BANK, with no proof
   → USD 50,000 a year

Through a REMITTANCE APP (Hanpass, Cross, and others)
   → USD 5,000 per transfer, USD 50,000 a year

The 100,000 dollar figure is not about you

Article 4-3 of the Foreign Exchange Transactions Regulations sets out the simplified procedure for residents. Its opening words are:

a resident (excluding a foreign resident)

That is where the annual USD 100,000 allowance lives, and that is where you are carved out of it. Foreign residents are governed by Article 4-4 instead.

This is worth being precise about, because acting on the wrong number leads people to assume a transfer will clear when it will not.

Article 4-4 — the rule that does apply

Paragraph 1 states the principle: non-residents and foreign residents may make payments only where they submit documents proving how the funds were acquired and obtain confirmation from the head of a foreign exchange bank.

That sounds restrictive. In practice, subparagraph 3 is the route almost everyone uses:

Where payment is made within the scope of domestic remuneration acquired from employment or work in Korea, income from a liberal profession, or social insurance, security benefits or pensions received in Korea, through the designated foreign exchange bank

Read plainly: show what you earned, and you can send what you earned. There is no separate ceiling bolted on top of your salary. Payslips, a certificate of employment, or a withholding tax receipt are the documents that do this work.

If you have no proof

Paragraph 2: where none of the cases in paragraph 1 applies, you may send up to USD 50,000 a year through your designated foreign exchange bank.

Receiving money into Korea

Paragraph 4 (added 29 December 2025) lets non-residents and foreign residents receive funds without supporting documents where the amount is USD 5,000 or less per case, or where the transaction requires no declaration and the purpose is to bring foreign funds into Korea.

What "designated bank" means

A designated foreign exchange bank (지정거래외국환은행) is one bank you nominate, through which these transactions must run. The point of the mechanism is to stop the same person splitting transfers across many banks to stay under a limit. Choose the bank you actually keep your salary in.

One exception aimed squarely at E-9 workers

The proviso to subparagraph 3, amended 4 August 2020, says that receipt of the departure guarantee insurance payout under the Act on the Employment of Foreign Workers does not have to go through the designated bank. If you are an E-9 worker collecting that money on your way out, this removes a step.

Remittance apps

Apps such as Hanpass and Cross are licensed as small-sum overseas remittance businesses, and their limits are set in Article 2-31(1):

For non-residents and FOREIGN RESIDENTS
   USD 5,000 per transfer, sending or receiving
   USD 50,000 a year per person, sending or receiving

For Korean residents
   sending: the annual cumulative figure in Art. 4-3(1)1 (the 100,000)
   receiving: USD 100,000 a year per person

Paragraph 3 requires these businesses to collect funds from customers case by case.

What the app is legally required to tell you

This is the most useful thing in the whole regulation, and hardly anyone knows it.

Article 2-32(4) requires a small-sum remittance business to disclose:

"How many days does it take", "how much is the fee" and "what rate do I get" are the three questions people search for most. They are not favours you have to ask for — the operator is required by law to show all four. If a service does not put those four in front of you before you confirm, that absence is itself the answer.

Article 2-33 additionally requires operators to prepare terms and conditions and to present them to customers by electronic document, fax, post or in person.

Why there are no fee tables here

We opened the sites of the two operators whose names appear most often in searches. Neither publishes a readable fee schedule on its public pages — the charge is computed inside the app from amount, destination and timing.

We do not print figures we have not verified. A fee table would be stale in a few months anyway; the four disclosure items above will not be.

Is remittance taxed?

Within Korea, no — and we can be specific about why. The Foreign Exchange Transactions Regulations govern procedure and limits. They contain no provision imposing tax on an amount sent abroad. Income tax on Korean salary is withheld when the salary is paid and settled in the year-end tax settlement; sending what is left of it out of the country is not a second taxable event.

We have not examined the tax law of the receiving country. Whether Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines or anywhere else taxes or requires reporting of inbound remittances is a question for that country's tax authority, and we will not guess.

Frequently asked questions

Can I send more than I earn? Not under subparagraph 3, which caps you at your documented income. Other funds need their own proof of acquisition under paragraph 1, or fall under the USD 50,000 no-proof route in paragraph 2.

Bank or app — which is cheaper? That depends on amount and destination, which is why the disclosure rule exists. Compare the four required items side by side for the exact amount you are sending.

Can I use several apps to get around the annual limit? The USD 50,000 annual figure in Article 2-31(1) is per person, not per operator.

I changed jobs. Does my designated bank change? The designation is yours, not your employer's. What matters is that your proof of income matches the account the transfer runs through.

Sources

Foreign Exchange Transactions Regulations (외국환거래규정)
   MOEF Notice No. 2026-88, partially amended 2026-07-02, in force 2026-07-06
   Art. 2-31 — small-sum remittance limits
   Art. 2-32(4) — mandatory disclosure to customers
   Art. 2-33 — terms and conditions
   Art. 4-3 — resident procedure (EXCLUDES foreign residents)
   Art. 4-4 — payments by non-residents and foreign residents
   https://www.law.go.kr/행정규칙/외국환거래규정

Foreigner information centre: 1345 (multilingual)