How South Africans Can Apply For A Japanese Visa As Residents In Korea (or as a South African resident) 🇯🇵 🇿🇦
Over the summer holidays I spent 4 days in Japan with my fiancé and learnt a lot about the visa application process. I feel it is now my duty to share it all with anyone who may need it.
I live and work in Korea which meant my application process was different to my fiancé’s who lives in South Africa. I’ll start with the details of my application process but if you want click here to jump to the South African Resident’s process.
Finding a Certified Agency
You cannot apply for your visa directly through the embassies so finding a certified agency is entirely necessary.
There are 3 Japanese embassies in Korea; Seoul, Busan and Jeju Island. Depending on your place of residence you would apply to the embassy nearest you. I originally contacted Soho Travel (visa@sohotravel.kr) but they only deal with the embassy in Seoul and couldn’t process my application.
I ended up choosing from a list of certified agencies on the Japanese Embassy in Busan website (New Tour Leaders kim83077@nate.com) — there are different websites for each location. Which ever agency you choose just be sure to confirm with them what documents you need to acquire.
Foreign Resident Certificate
You can download the foreign resident certificate using the Gov24 website where (with the help of Google’s auto translate) you can apply, pay ₩2 000 and receive the certificate immediately.
I couldn’t find the certificate using the English version of the site so I recommend sticking with the Korean version and translating where necessary. You could also get the certificate from your local community centre instead.
Bank Balance Certificate
For the bank balance certificate I applied through my 1Q Hana Bank app. Login and click the search icon. Copy and past ‘잔액증명서 발급신청’ into the search bar and click the first option. From there you’ll select which account you want the certificate for, opt for it to be emailed to you and done. It may take a couple of hours before you receive the email.
From what I’ve heard most people are concerned about the minimum amount of money needed in your account for the visa to be approved. Based on my research I found that as long as you have ₩1 million for each day that you’re planning to stay in Japan you’ll be fine (i.e. 3 days in Japan means a minimum of ₩3 million). I’ve heard that you could use the balance certificate of your South African account provided your name is clearly visible, but I didn’t do that so I’m not sure of those details.
Perhaps timing your application with the day you receive your salary could help to show a larger amount in your account. Remember, you’re not submitting a Bank Statement but a Balance Certificate. So when the money came in isn’t important, so long as you have a large enough balance at the time of applying.
Sending Your Documents and Recieving Your eVISA
The remaining documents should be simple enough to prepare; itinerary (this is where you’ll include the details of your hotels), photo (selfie against a white background), flight confirmation, scanned info page of passport, scanned front and back of ARC and completed application.
All that’s left is to email everything to an agency along with payment. They’ll only being processing your application once they receive your payment. I paid ₩77 000, which interestingly enough was cheaper than the embassy in Seoul where they needed ₩100 000 🤔.
Once your visa’s been approved the agency will email your JAPAN eVISA— for me this took 8 days to receive— and that’s it. You’ll scan the QR on the eVISA when you arrive in Japan and be prompted on where to go. For some reason our QR codes didn’t scan on arrival but we had already completed arrival cards on the plane so we waited in a short line for an attendant to process our details and done😁. We were in Japan!
South African Resident’s Application process
This application process is a lot simpler and you won’t need as many documents. Everything will be submited online via the JAPAN e VISA website.
You’ll need:
- Accomodation Confirmation
– if you’re skeptical about spending money and possibly not getting your visa approved, booking refundable hotels is a good option
- 3 Months Bank Statment
– you want to aim to have R10 000 for each day that you’ll be in Japan (i.e. 3 days in Japan, R30 000 in your account)
- Itinerary
– my fiancé and I submitted the same itineraries but with our respective names so the format was the same and we specified that we would be traveling together
- Flight Itinerary
– you don’t need to book your flights for this application, you only need to have the flight numbers of the flights you plan to take from your departue in SA until your return including any connecting flights
- Completed Application Form
- Scanned Copy of Passport
- Passport Style Photo
The online application portal can be a little confusing but don’t worry. If you upload something incorrectly or forget to provide neccessary documents the embassy will email you asking for whatever it is they still need. You’ll also recieve an email about how and where to process your payment which is about R335.
