South Korea document photos online

For decades a South Korean passport meant a green cover, but in December 2021 Seoul tore up the rulebook. The new navy-blue book is built around a polycarbonate data page that is laser-engraved rather than printed on paper, making it among the hardest documents in the world to forge. Tucked between its pages are illustrations of national treasures, and in a quiet privacy revolution the bearer's lifelong resident registration number was deliberately stripped from the ID page. The result ranks today among the planet's most secure passports and one of its most powerful, opening more borders than almost any other on Earth.

• Passport power In the October 2025 Henley Passport Index the South Korean passport ranked 2nd in the world with visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to 190 destinations, trailing only Singapore.
• Passport design The 2021 redesign swapped the traditional green cover for navy blue and replaced the paper photo page with tamper-resistant polycarbonate that is laser-engraved instead of printed.
• Privacy Korea deliberately removed the bearer's 13-digit resident registration number from the new passport's ID page to reduce identity-theft risk, a rare privacy-first move among national documents.
• Document security Korean e-passports are ranked among the world's most secure, in the same top tier as Germany, Switzerland and the Nordic states, and carry the chip symbol on both cover and data page.
• Citizenship South Korean nationality runs by bloodline, not birthplace: a child born to a Korean parent anywhere on Earth is Korean from birth, while citizenship is normally lost the instant a foreign nationality is acquired.
• Currency The won descends from the hanja 圓 meaning 'round'; it is officially divided into 100 jeon, but jeon coins haven't circulated for everyday use in decades and survive only in exchange rates.
• Currency history Today's won was reborn in 1962 after the short-lived hwan it replaced, which itself had supplanted an earlier won that was retired back in 1953.
• World record The Jikji, printed in Cheongju in 1377, is recognized by UNESCO as the world's oldest surviving book made with movable metal type, predating Gutenberg's Bible by 78 years.
• Demographics Foreign residents reached a record 2.04 million in the 2024 census, with Chinese nationals the single largest group at roughly 34 percent.