The corporate seal and its certificate: what needs one

Korean paperwork uses more than one kind of seal, and two different offices issue the certificates behind them. A foreign founder who confuses the two ends up at the wrong counter.

Where the seal appears in InvestKOREA's steps

InvestKOREA''s incorporation page places registration of incorporation at the court registry. It lists the required documents against the Registry of Supreme Court''s own application-form list. InvestKOREA''s steps do not say at which point the seal itself is filed; a certificate of corporate seal impression appears under the later bank-account step.

InvestKOREA''s page states this registration step takes two to three days. It sits third in the seven-step sequence, before business registration and before the corporate bank account.

The registry itself has no visible English interface

This post fetched iros.go.kr directly on 2026-09-24. The page rendered in a non-UTF-8 encoding, with corrupted navigation text throughout. Only the page footer, a copyright line, was legible in English.

No English-language toggle or section was visible in that fetch. A foreign founder planning to file court registration alone should expect a Korean-only interface, not assume an English option exists.

A personal seal certificate is a separate system

Jung-gu, a district office in Seoul, publishes its own English page for "Issuance and Reporting of Seal Certificate." The page describes a personal seal service. An individual registers a seal, or reports one already registered, at the district or neighborhood office.

For a foreigner applying in person, Jung-gu''s page lists three forms of identification: an Alien Registration Card, a Certificate of Residence, or a passport. The applicant also brings the registered seal itself. A proxy needs a notarized power of attorney with an apostille.

What neither published page states

Neither page fetched for this post names a fee for corporate seal registration. Neither lists a document checklist specific to a foreign representative''s corporate seal filing. Jung-gu''s page does say its own personal-seal service is instant, but that describes the district office, not the court.

A founder should confirm the corporate seal''s document list with the court registry or a filing agent. Do not apply Jung-gu''s personal-seal requirements to a company filing.

For the registration step a corporate seal belongs to, see the guide to registering a business in Korea as a foreigner. For help filing either seal correctly, see our services.