Hire a Japanese Chef in South Korea: The E-7 Cook Visa

South Korea is now the third largest market for Japanese restaurants in the world, and it added 1,590 of them between 2023 and 2025. The immigration route for a chef from Japan is the E-7 "specially designated activities" visa. It is workable, but it tests the restaurant as much as the chef: floor area, tax paid and the number of Korean employees all feed into how many foreign cooks you may hire. This guide explains the structure and where to find the current numbers.

1. Why Korea matters

• MAFF counted 19,800 Japanese restaurants in South Korea in 2025, up 1,590 on 2023. Only China and the United States have more.
• Asia as a whole fell about 10% over the same period, mainly because of China. Korea went the other way.
• MOFA recorded 44,471 Japanese nationals in South Korea on 1 October 2025. Seoul had an estimated 14,496, up 5.0% in a year and the 15th largest Japanese community of any city worldwide.
• Of those 44,471, 17,229 are permanent residents (38.7%), according to MOFA.

A market that adds around 800 Japanese restaurants a year is a market where good Japanese chefs are in demand. Expect competition for the candidates already in Korea, and build a realistic timeline if you need to bring someone in.

2. The E-7 route for cooks

E-7 is the Korean status for foreign nationals in occupations specifically designated by the Minister of Justice. The occupations, and the conditions for each, are set out in the Ministry of Justice's visa and residence manuals, published on the HiKorea portal.

The manual includes an occupation for chefs and cooks (주방장 및 조리사, code 441): people who plan cooking and supervise cooks in hotels and restaurants, and people who prepare and cook food directly. In the version of the manual text we were able to review, the examples of eligible jobs were Western, Chinese, Japanese and other national cuisine chefs and cooks. Korean cuisine cooks and snack, coffee and traditional tea cooks were excluded.

In other words, a Japanese cuisine chef fits the category. What decides the application is everything around it.

3. Employer tests: size, tax and Korean staff

The manual text we reviewed described the cook category as subject to a separate "protection of Korean employment" review, and limited eligible employers to:

• tourist hotels and tourist restaurants;
• restaurants specialising in foreign tourists;
• airline in-flight catering divisions;
• foreign cuisine restaurants without a tourism designation that meet all of three minimums: business floor area, annual VAT paid, and number of Korean employees.

The number of foreign cooks allowed is then calculated from those same three factors, and cannot exceed the allowance produced by your Korean headcount. Korean employees only count if they have been on the employment insurance register for at least three months and are paid at least the legal minimum wage. Businesses where foreign workers have gone missing or changed status after unpaid wages face deductions from their allowance for a year.

We are not printing the specific square metre, VAT and headcount thresholds here, because the text we could verify dates from a 2020 revision of the manual and the ministry has revised the manuals since. The structure is what matters for planning:

4. What the chef has to show

For the cook category, the manual text we reviewed said the qualifications are set according to the length of domestic or overseas training, competition awards and the level of certificates held. In practice, gather:

• employment certificates from every kitchen, with dates and positions;
• any cooking school diploma and transcript;
• certificates, such as Japan's national cook licence (調理師免許) or MAFF's overseas Japanese cooking skill certification (see our guide to the MAFF certification);
• evidence of competition results, if any.

Have documents translated, and check the current manual for any certification it requires. Start collecting while you are still interviewing; getting certificates from former employers in Japan can take weeks.

5. Where the current rules live

HiKorea publishes an integrated manual by residence status. At the time of writing the notice page carried a visa manual dated 1 September 2026 and a residence manual and revision history dated 18 September 2026. The files are in Hangul word processor format. Before you commit to a hire, have someone read the current section for occupation 441 and check three things: the employer minimums, the formula for the number of foreign cooks allowed, and any salary requirement that applies.

If you use an administrative agent (행정사) to file, ask them to confirm those three points in writing from the current manual. It is the cheapest way to avoid an application that fails on employer eligibility after the chef has resigned from their job in Japan.

6. Hiring someone already in Korea

With more than 44,000 Japanese nationals in Korea, over 17,000 of them permanent residents, some Japanese cooks may already hold a residence status that permits them to work, or be on an E-7 with another restaurant. For each candidate, check with immigration what their current status allows and what moving to your restaurant involves. It may well be faster than a new visa from Japan, and the salary expectations of someone already living in Seoul will tell you what the market pays.

For comparison with a nearby market that names chefs in its rules, see our Taiwan guide. For preparing the interview, see sushi chef interview questions and running a remote skills test.

7. Step by step

1. Get the current HiKorea manual section for occupation 441 read by someone who can check the employer minimums and the allowance formula.
2. Check your restaurant against them: floor area, VAT paid, Korean staff on the insurance register for three months or more.
3. Search locally first among Japanese cooks already in Korea.
4. If sponsoring from Japan, collect the chef's employment, training and certificate evidence early.
5. Interview with a practical test.
6. File the E-7 application, directly or through an administrative agent.
7. Plan the arrival: registration, housing and a Korean-speaking colleague in the kitchen.

General information gathered in September 2026, not legal or immigration advice. The E-7 occupation conditions are set in Ministry of Justice manuals that change several times a year; details in this guide from the manual text are from an earlier revision and must be checked against the current HiKorea manual before acting.