I-EUMLiving in Korea

Documents you can only get in your home country — prepare before you come

This page is machine translated from Ieumi's guide written in Korean. If the meaning is confusing, please look at the Korean original text. View original text (Korean)

Family relation, birth, and marriage certificates, degree and transcript certificates, and criminal record certificates are issued only by home-country offices. They may be used when you change your visa, bring family, send a child to school, or apply for permanent residence or naturalization.

📌 Key points

To use a foreign official document in Korea, you get an apostille or consular certification. For documents from a country in the Apostille Convention (131 countries and regions as of September 11, 2026), you only need to get an apostille from that country's government office, and Korean missions do not issue apostilles. For documents from a country that is not a member, you get consular certification from that country's foreign ministry and then from the Korean embassy in that country. Submit a Korean translation too.

📞 Contact

The issuing office in your home country · your home government (apostille), or your home foreign ministry and the Korean mission in that country (consular certification)

💻 Do it online

⚠️ Things to watch out for

Some documents have a condition like "within a number of months of the issue date." For example, the home-country criminal record certificate submitted for a naturalization application must be within 6 months of the issue date. So do not get it too early; just find out first what you will need. If you are already in Korea, first ask whether you can get or confirm it at your embassy or consulate in Korea, and whether your family at home can get it and send it for you.

See also

Basis

  • 재외동포청 「아포스티유 및 영사확인 개요」 https://www.oka.go.kr/web/content.do?menu_cd=000098 — 가입국 131개 국가 및 지역(2026.9.11. 현재) (조사원 확인 2026-10-12)
  • 주시애틀 총영사관 아포스티유 안내 2025-10-21 https://overseas.mofa.go.kr/us-seattle-ko/brd/m_4726/view.do?seq=770184 — 「한국총영사관은 아포스티유 발급기관이 아님」
  • 주네팔 대사관 영사확인 안내 2026-07-07 https://overseas.mofa.go.kr/np-ko/brd/m_1731/view.do?seq=1109091 — 본국 외교부 영사확인(1차) → 한국대사관 영사확인(2차)
  • 어사이드 「한국살이 90일」 A8 · 귀화용 본국 범죄경력증명서 발급일부터 6개월은 `doc-criminal-record` 항목(국적법 시행규칙) 그대로

This content was checked on 2026-10-12.

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