South Korea visitor visa from India

Yes. Indian passport holders need a visa before travelling to South Korea, and there is no visa-free entry. India is also not eligible for K-ETA, so the electronic travel authorisation that lets 22 other nationalities skip a visa is not open to you. Korea’s Ministry of Justice extended that temporary exemption to 31 December 2026 and India is not on the list. The only exemption India holds is for diplomatic and official passports, under a bilateral agreement, which does nothing for an ordinary traveller. Any website offering to sell you a K-ETA or a Korean e-visa on an Indian passport is selling something that does not exist.

Gujarat falls under the Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in Mumbai, and the nearest counter is the visa application centre in Ahmedabad, at Shree Balaji Agora Mall on the Sardar Patel Ring Road in Motera. You can also submit at the Consulate’s own visa counter in Worli, Mumbai, where the visa hour is 09:30 to 11:30. What you cannot do is apply in Delhi, whatever your passport says, because jurisdiction runs on where you currently live and is proved with an Aadhaar card, a rental agreement, an employment certificate or a bonafide certificate. No appointment is needed at any Korea visa centre in India.

A single entry visa for a stay of up to 90 days costs ₹3,600, under fees revised on 1 August 2026 and applied from 3 August under the Mumbai Consulate. A stay of more than 90 days is ₹5,400, a double entry ₹6,300 and a multiple entry ₹8,100. On top of that the visa application centre charges its own fee per application, ₹1,000 at Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Pune, Goa and Hyderabad, and ₹1,600 at the centres under the Delhi and Chennai missions. The Mumbai Consulate takes the visa fee in cash only, and it is not refunded if the visa is refused or you withdraw the application.

The Mumbai Consulate publishes 10 working days for a standard application, counted from the date of submission rather than from when you started preparing. Express is 3 working days but you cannot file it through the visa application centres, which leaves the Consulate’s own counter in Mumbai. The Delhi Embassy and its centres in Delhi and Kolkata have had express suspended since 22 June 2023, and the Chennai Consulate grants it case by case rather than on request. The larger constraint under the Mumbai Consulate is not speed but whether the counter will accept your file at all, because intake is currently capped by travel date.

No. India is not on Korea’s K-ETA list, so Indian nationals must obtain a visa from a Korean diplomatic mission before travelling. Korea’s Ministry of Justice extended the temporary K-ETA exemption to 31 December 2026 for the nationalities that are eligible, and India is not among them. The Consulate General in Mumbai says plainly that it is not involved in K-ETA at all and that all Indian nationals must obtain a visa. The official site is k-eta.go.kr, and the Consulate warns that numerous websites claim to issue a K-ETA and charge large sums for it.

No. Korean missions worldwide stopped issuing visa labels on 1 July 2020, so there is nothing to look for in the passport when you collect it. You still hand over the physical passport at the counter and it stays with the mission for the whole processing time, but the visa itself comes back as a Visa Grant Notice you print yourself. Go to visa.go.kr after collecting the passport, enter your passport number, name and date of birth, and print it. The visa is valid for entry for three months from the date of issue, and your period of stay is counted from the day you land rather than from the day it was issued.

The visa fee is not refunded on a refusal or a withdrawal. The Chennai Consulate publishes a rule that you may only reapply three months after the rejection date, and while the Mumbai and Delhi missions do not publish the same rule, a second attempt with nothing changed is not worth making. The decision rests entirely with the Korean mission and the visa application centre has no part in it. The most common avoidable cause is an incomplete file, which is refused at the counter rather than held, so the fix is usually in the preparation rather than in an appeal.

Only if you already travel to Korea often. Korea’s frequent visitor guidelines set the bar at more than four visits to Korea within the past two years, or more than ten visits in total with at least one of them in the past two years. Applicants who have been fined more than five million Korean won, or deported or served a departure order for something like overstaying within the past three years, are excluded regardless. Under the Mumbai Consulate you must present yourself at the visa counter so eligibility can be checked there. A first-time visitor gets a single entry visa, so plan around that.