South Korea eSIM: the Korean Number It Does Not Give You
A Korea travel eSIM carries data and no Korean number, and Korea leans on that number harder than most places. What the law asks at 91 days, checked 4 Sep 2026.
12 plans for South Korea, from 1 GB at $3.99 to 20 GB at $26.99, plus 6 unlimited-data tiers. 5 GB for 30 days costs $10.99 — 11th cheapest of 29 in Asia, against a $10.99 median. Our retail prices from the operator catalogue, checked 28 September 2026.
Get the eSIM
By data
Unlimited data — you pick the days
Data only: the profile carries no phone number, your own stays as it is. Not sure of the size? Work it out from your trip. Terms and refunds.
Payment and guarantees
What travellers say
What it costs per day
Cheapest per day: 3 GB for 30 days at 27¢ a day. The dearest per day is Unlimited for 5 days at $4.00. Short plans always cost more per day: validity is rounded up, and unused days are paid for anyway.
How much data to buy
Four ways people use a phone abroad, sized against this country’s own plans. The gigabytes are an estimate built from published per-hour rates — nobody measured your phone.
The hours behind each row are our assumption, not yours — put your own in and the same rates do the arithmetic.
Where a row shows a range, the cell is sized on the lower number, which assumes the evening runs on hotel Wi-Fi. On mobile data around the clock, read the upper number and take the next size up. The per-hour rates and the 15% added for background traffic are listed with their sources in the calculator.
What applies in South Korea
Operator facts from the Airalo catalogue, read 28 September 2026. Rules and networks change — check the date before you rely on a line here.
Does this apply to you? (the 91-day line, and the number problem underneath it)
A South Korea eSIM sold as a travel profile carries mobile data and no Korean phone number. For a trip that is usually fine, and for Korea it is the one thing worth knowing before you buy, because a Korean number does more work here than it does in most countries.
Nothing in Korea’s immigration rules touches a roaming data profile on a short trip. The registration duty starts at long-term stay, and Korea draws that line at 91 days: on its own immigration portal the government tells foreigners on a long stay to “register as a foreigner or file Domestic Residency Report within 90 days of arrival” (hikorea.go.kr, General Affairs, read 4 September 2026). Under that threshold there is no registration, no card, and nothing to file.
So the rule is not your problem. The number might be.
What you actually get
The Korean profile in this catalogue runs on SK Telecom, on 5G, sold under the operator name '짱 Jjang. It is data-only. The operator says so itself in the product record, in one sentence: “This eSIM doesn’t come with a number.”
That sentence appears against exactly three countries in a catalogue of 204. It is not boilerplate; it is a warning someone chose to write.
Twelve capped plans run from 1 GB at $3.99 to 20 GB at $26.99, alongside six unlimited-data tiers from 3 days at $11.99 to 30 days at $68.99. No document is asked for at purchase. The plan’s days start at first connection in Korea, not at purchase, and you have 365 days from buying to install the profile — so buying before you fly costs nothing.
The Android trap: type the APN or there is no data
On Android the access point name is not filled in for you. Open the mobile network settings, add an APN, and type globaldata in the APN field. Leave every other field empty. Without that line the profile installs, shows a signal, and carries nothing.
On iPhone it fills itself in. Korea is one of 66 countries in this catalogue where that split exists, and the full list is on our APN table.
Why the missing number matters more in Korea than elsewhere
In most countries a data profile is enough for a trip: maps, messaging, calls over WhatsApp or FaceTime, email, tickets. That is true in Korea too, and none of it needs a Korean number.
What needs one is the layer underneath Korean online services. Korean sites and apps verify who you are through a mobile identity check tied to a phone line — the service travellers meet under the name PASS. Bank apps, some ticketing sites and a good deal of Korean e-commerce sit behind it.
What we could confirm: the check is tied to a line registered to an identity document, and the document that unlocks it for a foreigner is the Alien Registration Card, which itself only exists past the 91-day threshold above. Korean mobile resellers describe a passport-only prepaid line as a temporary number that does not carry the verification, while a line registered against a registration card does (seromobile.com and ntellk.com, read 4 September 2026; LG U+'s own English help article on the subject exists but refused our request).
What we could not confirm: we did not obtain a primary statement from a carrier or from the body that designates identity-verification providers. Everything above about PASS comes from sellers of Korean SIM cards — parties with an interest in the answer. Treat it as the consistent account of people who sell these lines daily, not as a rule we read.
What follows either way, and this part needs no source: our profile carries no number at all, so no version of this question ends well for it. If a Korean service asks you to verify by phone, this eSIM cannot do it, and neither can any other data-only travel profile.
What to do about it
Keep your home SIM in the phone alongside the eSIM. Bank codes, two-factor messages and anything tied to your own number keep arriving on it, and the Korean data runs on the travel profile. That is the ordinary dual-SIM setup and it solves the common case.
If your trip genuinely depends on a Korean number — a long stay, a local bank account, a Korean marketplace — a travel eSIM is the wrong product and no amount of shopping around fixes it. That is a local line from a Korean carrier, and past 91 days it is a registration card first.
FAQ
Do I need to register an eSIM in Korea?
Does a Korea travel eSIM give me a Korean phone number?
Will WhatsApp and KakaoTalk work?
Should I buy the Korea eSIM before I fly?
Why does my Korean eSIM show signal but no internet on Android?
Sources and freshness
Immigration threshold: Korea’s official immigration portal HiKorea, General Affairs page, read 4 September 2026.
Product facts — operator, network, generation, price, activation clock, install window and the no-number warning: the Airalo partner catalogue as read on the date shown on this page, the same record the plan cards above are built from.
Identity verification (PASS): not verified at a primary source. The account here is drawn from Korean mobile resellers seromobile.com and ntellk.com, read 4 September 2026, which agree with each other and with English-language sellers. We publish it as their consistent account and mark it as unverified rather than leave the question out, because it is the question travellers actually ask.