HereKorea

Voice rooms, a feed and group chats for foreign residents of Korea.

HereKorea is a community for foreign residents of Korea.

Everyone is verified. Signing up takes a Korean mobile number and a photo of your residence card — an Alien Registration Card or a Permanent Residence Card — read by a person before your account goes live. That means whoever answers your question about renewing a visa is someone who has renewed one.

Voice rooms
Talk out loud instead of typing. Open a room, put a topic on it, and up to five people take the stage while fifty listen. Ask the host for a place and they decide who speaks — nobody gets a microphone by pushing their way in. Practise Korean, answer somebody's paperwork question in your own language, or just have Friday night on in the background. Nothing said in a room is recorded.

Your visa date, remembered for you
Tell HereKorea when your stay ends and it will say something while there is still time to do something about it — four months out, which is when an extension can first be applied for, then at two months, one month and a week. The card shows how far through that period you are, the day applying opens, and roughly where and how it is done. Nobody else ever sees it.

Feed
Post what you're dealing with and read what everyone else is. Immigration office queues, deposits that went up without warning, which hospital does English intake forms. Tag by topic and by neighbourhood.

Group chats
Rooms by nationality and by interest, so you can talk in your own language with people going through the same paperwork. Plus rooms for flat hunting, running and study groups.

Find a roommate
A board split into two: people with a lease and a spare room, and people looking for someone to sign one with. Deposit, monthly rent, move-in date, neighbourhood and lifestyle up front, so you know before you message.

Messages
Direct messages and group rooms. New conversations arrive as requests, so nobody can fill your inbox uninvited.

Events and benefits
What's on in Seoul this month. Plus a guide to what you're entitled to as a foreign resident — health cover, subsidies, and discounts most people never find out about.

Privacy
Your residence card photograph is used to verify you and nothing else. Your nationality only appears on your profile after a reviewer has approved it; an unverified claim never leaves our database. Nothing said in a voice room is recorded or stored. Your visa dates are yours alone. You can delete your account, and everything in it, from Settings.

HereKorea is for adults. You have to be 18 or over to sign up.