Jeju, South Korea's southern island province, will halve the salary requirement for its workation visa and triple the permitted length of stay, in a bid to attract more digital nomads.

The changes target the remote-work programme that allows foreign employees and freelancers to live on the island while working for employers or clients abroad. Under the current rules, applicants must meet a minimum income threshold, measured in annual salary, to qualify. Jeju now plans to cut that requirement by half, opening the programme to a far larger pool of remote workers whose earnings fall below the previous bar.

The stay limit will grow more dramatically. The island intends to triple the maximum period a workation participant may remain, replacing the shorter residence window now available with an extended stay designed to let digital nomads settle in for the medium term rather than treat Jeju as a brief stopover.

Who is affected

The relaxed rules apply to foreign remote workers who draw their income from outside Korea: employees of overseas companies, independent contractors and, in some configurations of the programme, their accompanying family members. They do not grant access to the Korean labour market — participants continue to work exclusively for foreign employers or clients while residing on Jeju.

The island's government is betting that a lower income threshold combined with a longer permitted stay will make Jeju competitive with established digital nomad destinations across Asia and Europe, which have spent the past several years lowering their own barriers in a race for location-independent professionals.

What changes in practice

For prospective applicants, the application sequence itself stays the same. What changes are the two numbers that decide eligibility:

• Income requirement: cut by 50 percent, so applicants need to show roughly half the annual salary previously required to qualify.
• Duration of stay: extended to three times the current limit, allowing participants to remain on the island far beyond the original residence window.

Applicants who were previously priced out of the programme by the salary floor become eligible once the reduction takes effect. Current and prospective participants gain the option of a substantially longer stay, which in practice matters more for families and mid-term relocators than for short-term visitors.

Why Jeju is moving

Jeju has positioned itself as Korea's test bed for relaxed entry and residence rules, having long operated administrative arrangements distinct from those on the mainland. The workation programme is part of that broader effort to convert the island's appeal as a destination into longer-term economic activity — remote workers spend locally on housing, food and services without competing for domestic jobs.

Halving the income threshold is the single most consequential change for eligibility. Salary minimums are the main filter in digital nomad schemes worldwide, and they determine who can qualify more than any other criterion. By cutting that bar, Jeju effectively widens its applicant pool to mid-income remote professionals, not only high earners.

Tripling the stay period addresses the second most common complaint about nomad visas: short validity that forces repeated renewals or relocations.

What to watch

The provincial announcement sets the direction, but implementation details — including the exact salary figure, the precise new stay duration, the effective date and the documents applicants must submit — will be confirmed through the official channels administering the programme. Prospective applicants should verify the final numerical thresholds and application procedures against the official Jeju provincial government announcement and Korea's immigration authorities before filing, since the operational rules may be refined as the changes move from announcement to enforcement.

Once the new figures take effect, Jeju will offer one of the more accessible workation arrangements in the region: a halved income bar and a stay limit three times longer than before, on an island already known for its lower cost of living compared with Seoul.