After the startup visa: the routes to permanence, and the two dates that disagree

A Korean startup visa is a beginning, not a destination. The destinations have their own documents: long-term residence, permanent residence, nationality.

The sourcing picture there is thinner than the founder-visa layer. Here is what the fetched pages actually say.

Special naturalisation: the sourced route

The official call exists on K-Startup itself. It is 중소벤처기업부 공고 제2026-93호, on recommendations for special naturalisation of outstanding private-sector talent.

Its printed frame runs four ways. Applications from February 11, 2026, 18:00, through October 1, 2026, 18:00. Dual nationality instead of renunciation (복수국적).

The procedure runs requirements review, then presentation evaluation, then the screening committee. The 주관기관명 is 창업진흥원.

The Global Startup Center's page describes the programme the call feeds. The Ministry of Justice grants nationality to people with outstanding abilities across ten categories. Among them: outstanding employees, new-industry and advanced-technology employees, core-technology holders, and holders of intellectual property rights.

For a startup founder, those categories are why this post exists here. The D-8-4 route's skills and filings are, in principle, the raw material of categories six through eight.

The two dates that disagree

The GSC page prints applications closing February 11, 2027, rolling from February 11, 2026. The official 공고 prints a close of October 1, 2026, 18:00.

This post does not reconcile them. The 공고 is the ministry's own document.

The GSC page is the programme operator's. Plan around either date without checking the other and you are betting a nationality decision on a webpage.

F-2-7 and F-5: named, not traced

Both residence routes are real and routinely described. F-2-7 is a points-based long-term status, F-5 is permanent residence. Commercial agency guides print detailed point tables, income multiples and year-counts for both.

What they are not printed on, anywhere we could fetch on 2026-09-01, is an issuing-body page. HiKorea's pages sit behind an interactive portal, and the government's easylaw text arrives only as quotations inside third-party guides.

So this post prints none of those numbers. The criteria exist.

The fetchable evidence does not. That difference is the entire sourcing discipline of this site.

How and where to file

You file with immigration, not with the operator. HiKorea is the Ministry of Justice's own system, and it splits two ways.

Some applications go online through 전자민원. Its own 민원선택 list includes 등록외국인의 체류자격 변경허가 and 등록외국인의 체류기간연장허가 — change of status and extension of stay, for foreigners already registered in Korea.

Everything else needs an office. Book a slot through 방문예약, and take the right form from 민원서식.

One boundary worth knowing: issuing a visa for the first time is not a HiKorea e-application. HiKorea's own 사증신청 결과조회 link points at visa.go.kr instead.