What Franchise Business Should a Foreigner Open in Korea? Industries, Brands & the Disclosure Document (2026)

The industry most applicants first consider when pursuing Business Immigration to Korea is mainstream F&B — Korean, Chinese, or Korean street-food (bunsik) restaurants. It is familiar, they often have prior experience at home, and the market is large. As of the end of 2025, Korea had roughly 180,000 F&B franchise stores, accounting for about 48% of the entire franchise sector. Korean food and coffee are among the fastest-growing segments, and Vietnamese pho has gone mainstream, with several brands now operating nationwide store networks.

In practice, however, many applicants change direction as the pre-consultation and main consultation proceed. The reasons are usually similar: Korean-language ability and prior residency in Korea.

The single most important factor we use in advising Business Immigration clients on their project is not the size of their capital or their nationality. It is whether they have lived in Korea before. That one condition changes the direction of industry selection significantly.

For applicants without prior residency in Korea, we first recommend industries with limited service interaction. Unmanned businesses and distribution businesses such as convenience stores fit this profile. Starting an F&B business without prior residency in Korea tends to create difficulties not in opening the store but in operating it afterward.

For former international students or applicants with prior residency experience, the situation is different. Those who attended school in Korea or previously held E-7 or D-10 status are already familiar not only with the Korean language but also with local practices and business culture. Such applicants can realistically manage industries with high customer interaction. Home-country cuisine restaurants, cafés, general F&B — they can choose the direction they prefer. The D-9-5 visa is designed for this profile; Episode 1 covered the D-9-5 structure and the path of changing status while already residing in Korea.

Industries with limited service interaction fall broadly into two categories: unmanned businesses and distribution businesses.

Unmanned businesses operate through kiosks, CCTV, and automated systems. Examples include unmanned ice cream discount stores, self-service photo studios, unmanned cafés, unmanned meal-kit shops, and unmanned ramen shops. The owner visits the store once or twice a day to restock, clean, and check the CCTV. Staff hiring is generally unnecessary, and direct customer conversation is rare. This is the option with the lowest Korean-language burden and also the smallest initial investment among the three choices. However, market saturation is advancing rapidly, so location analysis is decisive.

Among distribution businesses, convenience stores occupy a distinctive position. They do involve face-to-face customer service, but that interaction is highly standardized. Payment, tobacco sales, parcel pickup, utility bill payment, and most other tasks follow manuals built into the POS system, while the headquarters provides continuous operational support through supervisors. Even with elementary or intermediate Korean, the POS system and manuals make operation feasible — and there are in fact already foreign-owned stores in operation. Four headquarters — GS25, CU, 7-Eleven, and Emart24 — hold 97.2% of the Korean convenience store market, each with a different revenue-sharing model.

Take, for example, an applicant with home-country restaurant experience and 300 million KRW ready, but no prior residency in Korea and only elementary Korean. In this case, we would first examine opening two unmanned stores in sequence. Running two stores together naturally satisfies the 300 million KRW investment threshold for D-9-4, and allows the applicant to settle in without a language burden. The home-country restaurant experience is not immediately utilized, but becomes the foundation for a later transition into another industry once the applicant is settled.

Conversely, consider an applicant who completed studies in Korea and then worked at a Korean company for two to three years. Their Korean is at intermediate or higher level, and they are familiar with Korean commercial practices — so they can start directly in high-interaction industries such as a home-country cuisine specialty restaurant or a café. For applicants who meet its eligibility — a Korean master's degree or higher, or a bachelor's degree plus 30+ OASIS points — D-9-5 has a substantially lower barrier than D-9-4, requiring only a 100 million KRW investment (covered in Episode 1).

In starting a business in Korea, business registration (for tax purposes) and industry-specific licensing are handled by different authorities. Business registration is processed at the district tax office, while industry-specific licensing is handled by the authority competent for each business type. The business visa review can proceed only after both are complete.

Consider opening a Korean restaurant, for example. First, the commercial lease must be signed. Next, business registration is filed at the competent tax office. Since food service is involved, a business operation filing (영업 신고) must then be submitted to the district or city office, and before that filing, mandatory food-hygiene training must be completed at the public health center. Verification that the kitchen equipment meets Food Sanitation Act standards, fire safety equipment filing, and confirmation that the building's use classification is compatible with a food service business all proceed in parallel. Only after all of this is completed can the visa application stage begin.

The number and types of authorities involved depend on the industry. A convenience store requires a separate tobacco retailer designation at the district office; an unmanned photo studio may require a mail-order retail filing; a coffee shop is classified as a refreshment establishment within the food service category. Across industries, the district office, public health center, fire department, small-business support center, and tax office each play their respective roles.

Once D-9-4 or D-9-5 is on the table and the idea of relocating to Korea as a sole proprietor becomes concrete, the next question is naturally: "What business, and how?"

From the perspective of someone moving to Korea, the Korean market is unfamiliar territory. The dynamics of commercial districts, consumer behavior, raw-material supply chains, distribution practices, licensing procedures, and labor management conventions all differ from those at home. The Korean-language information environment compounds the difficulty. Selecting an industry, picking a location, securing suppliers, arranging interior construction, hiring staff, and designing marketing — doing all of this from abroad, the same way one might in a familiar home market, is simply not feasible. What makes it more demanding still: all of these decisions must be made before relocating, because the visa cannot be issued without a registered business and a signed commercial lease.

Given these constraints, the realistic option for a foreign applicant is to enter a business model that is already structured. One where operational playbooks are standardized, supply chains and ordering systems are centralized at the headquarters level, and location selection and interior design follow an established template. A business, in short, that fits the profile of a franchise.

Among the major markets worldwide, the Korean franchise sector is one of the most highly standardized in terms of business structure.

The Korean franchise market is not just voluntarily standardized. Korean law requires franchise headquarters to disclose the actual state of their business to prospective franchisees. The governing statute is the Fair Transactions in Franchise Business Act, and the central mechanism is the Franchise Disclosure Document (정보공개서).

The disclosure document is filed with and published on the Korea Fair Trade Commission's official portal, and the headquarters is legally obligated to provide it to a prospective franchisee at least 14 days before contract signing.

The content of the disclosure document is of a different character from marketing brochures. It breaks down costs by category — licensing, training, interior construction — and discloses the headquarters' financial status, any legal violations by its executives, average revenue per franchise store, opening rates, closure rates, and the number of dispute-mediation cases between headquarters and franchisees. It is a legally mandated disclosure — meaning even unfavorable figures must be published.

This framework effectively closes the information asymmetry between a franchise headquarters and a prospective franchisee by law. For a foreign applicant, the mechanism is especially valuable: marketing brochures alone make it hard to assess a headquarters' true condition, but the standardized disclosure fields allow multiple headquarters to be compared on a like-for-like basis. In our project design phase, we apply an internal screening model to exclude headquarters with unstable financials or abnormally high closure rates, and we analyze the disclosure document with the client together.

This installment covered the practical questions of starting a business under the D-9-4 or D-9-5 visa: which industries suit applicants without prior residency in Korea, why low-interaction businesses such as convenience stores and unmanned shops often work better than F&B as a first business, and why Korean franchises — disclosed in detail under the Fair Transactions in Franchise Business Act — are the most predictable framework available to a foreign newcomer.

With the visa system from Episode 1 and the industry-and-franchise structure from this episode, the picture of "what to do" is largely complete. The next two episodes address "how it actually unfolds" and "what comes after."

Lawyeon Visa & Immigration Center brings together experienced attorneys from Law Firm Lawyeon, interpreter-coordinators, and startup immigration specialists to support foreign sole-proprietor Business Immigration via D-9-4 and D-9-5. Initial consultations are free of charge, and applicants can submit inquiries directly from their home country through our consultation thread.