Vietnam, Japan and South Korea are three of the most-searched destinations in Asia for both tourism and longer stays, and all three changed parts of their visa systems between 2023 and 2026. We re-verified the full inbound program set for each on 2026-06-22 against the official portals — Vietnam’s National Electronic Visa portal and labour decrees, Japan’s Immigration Services Agency and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and South Korea’s HiKorea / visa.go.kr — covering tourist, e-visa, work, student, skilled, residence and working-holiday routes. A few changes matter most if you are planning a move, and one data problem affected almost every long-stay visa online.
Vietnam: the e-visa is now 90 days, multiple entry
Since 15 August 2023 Vietnam’s electronic visa — for tourism and for business (the DN category) — is valid for up to 90 days, single or multiple entry, replacing the old 30-day single-entry e-visa. It is one of the biggest practical upgrades for visitors and short-term business travellers in the region.
- The 90-day window applies whether you take a single- or multiple-entry e-visa; the multiple-entry version lets you leave and re-enter freely until it expires.
- The 13+ visa-exempt nationalities get a separate 45-day visa-free stay — a different rule from the 90-day e-visa, which we store separately.
- Apply on the official portal at evisa.xuatnhapcanh.gov.vn — not a third-party reseller.
The verified stay and refusal reasons are on the Vietnam tourist e-visa page and the Vietnam business visa (DN) page.
Vietnam: work permits run two years, not three months
A Vietnamese work permit is issued for a maximum of 24 months (2 years) under the Labour Code 2019 / Decree 152/2020, re-confirmed by Decree 219/2025, and may be renewed once. The matching Temporary Residence Card (TRC) is tied to your category — up to 2 years for work-permit holders, and up to 10 years for major investors.
- The Vietnam Work Permit page now carries the verified 2-year term and the refusal reasons.
- The Vietnam Temporary Residence Card page explains the 2-year (work) vs up-to-10-year (investor) split.
Japan: the Specified Skilled Worker route caps at 5 years
Japan’s Specified Skilled Worker (SSW) status, central to its labour strategy, allows a total stay of up to 5 years under SSW(i) — granted in renewable 4-month, 6-month or 1-year increments — while SSW(ii) has no upper limit. The Student status, separately, is granted for periods up to 4 years 3 months, not a single semester.
- The Japan Specified Skilled Worker page now shows the 5-year SSW(i) total and the exam/Japanese-language refusal grounds.
- The Japan Student visa page carries the up-to-4-year stay and the Certificate-of-Eligibility refusal reasons.
- The longer professional routes — Engineer / Specialist in Humanities, Highly Skilled Professional and Business Manager — were re-verified and given refusal reasons.
South Korea: D-2 and E-7 are multi-year
South Korea’s D-2 student status is granted with an initial period of stay of up to 2 years, extendable through HiKorea for the length of the degree. The E-7 (skilled-worker, E-series) visa is granted in single decisions of up to 3 years, renewable while the job continues. Neither is the 90-day stay many comparison sites still display.
- The South Korea Student visa (D-2) page now shows the 2-year initial stay and the financial-capacity / genuine-student refusal grounds.
- The South Korea Work visa (E-series) page carries the 3-year maximum single grant and the E-7 occupation-list refusal reasons.
And the routes travellers search most
We also re-verified the high-traffic short stays: Japan’s Tourist / Short-Term-Stay visa and South Korea’s C-3 visit visa (up to 90 days each), and the working-holiday routes — Japan Working Holiday, South Korea Working Holiday (H-1) (up to 12 months each) — all of which now carry refusal reasons.
How we keep this honest
This post accompanies a data correction. Several Vietnam, Japan and South Korea programs on our site had been showing a 90-day maximum stay — a machine default carried over from short-stay visas — for what are in fact multi-year work, study and residence routes. We corrected each to its verified validity (Vietnam work permit 2 years, Japan SSW 5 years and Student up to 4 years, Korea D-2 2 years and E-7 3 years), set the entry and extension flags, recorded the source and date, and added the refusal reasons, on 2026-06-22, as part of a fresh verification of these three countries’ inbound visa programs against official portals. Our full method is in the Editorial & Data Standards.