I’m not sure what they expected, not everyone runs and gets a new ARC just because of that immediately.
By chance I got a new ARC about a month ago and I got one which supports the mobile ID, but when I started looking into it how to set it up I couldn’t find a straight forward description, especially not in English. This is why I still don’t have it even though I was low key excited about that possibility.
Oh and in the article it says Sweden offers it too, and while I have a Swedish passport I didn’t even know I could put my ID into my phone either.
I rarely use my ARC as it is and it’s not exactly inconvenient for me to carry it. I guess I could go 100% phone and carry no cards, but maybe I’m just old fashioned.
I do that already. Actually my wife told me just to take a picture of my ARC front and back and show that instead of the real thing, and that worked for every place but the immigration office for the last 4 years.
Ah, I have pics as well. Never occurred to me to just hand over my phone at the doctor’s office. 🤦
This basically just means that Korea issued about 4,500 new visas in the past two months.
I did it now following this: https://mykuddy.com/2025/01/22/how-to-set-up-a-korean-mobile-id/
I changed my visa in January, so I ended up with the new card, and I installed the app and set it up. It was relatively easy… by Korean app standards. However, at the immigration office, they had signs up saying that the old cards were still valid until their expiration dates, so there was no reason to get a new card if you were only there for a standard visa renewal. The new cards also cost 35,000 won instead of 30,000 for the old cards, so of course people aren’t going to be rushing to the least pleasant place in the country just to wait in line and pay extra for a new card they don’t need!
