How to get cheap monthly plan SIM card in Korea updated for Daejeon 2021

Are you a foreigner and you're going to stay in South Korea for a longer time? Maybe one year or longer? And you want to get a cheap SIM card? But you have no idea how? I will try to explain the process in this article. First, you should be sure if you can actually use your phone in Korea, but there's a lot of articles about that on the Internet, so I won't be writing about that. I haven't found any article about the options if you want to get the cheap monthly plan SIM card, so that's why I'm writing this post. Because I hope it will help other foreigners 😉

I have to say that getting a SIM card in South Korea is extremely complicated if you want to have a cheaper monthly plan. For example: in the Czech republic you can literally go to a supermarket, shopping centre and buy a SIM card. You need only money. In Russia, you need to show your passport, but getting a new SIM card takes about 15 minutes. Well in South Korea you first need to have your Alien registration card. Which can take few weeks (in our case it was 2 months!!).  And it gets even more complicated.

Do you want to get a cheap SIM card in South Korea? Brace yourself!

[UPDATE FOR DAEJEON 2021]

You need to have your ARC, Korean bank account and you're good to go. Just visit this shop and they should do everything for you 😀

But in case you don't live in Daejeon, you can still follow this guide.

For the SIM card, I wanted to get I needed internet banking. But Daegu Bank asks you for a Korean number for internet banking. You see the amazing circle? So I used my friend's Korean number which she didn't use for her DB account. I suggest you do it the same way. But it's easier to use the number of somebody who lives close to you because you will need their phone for verification calls.

After that, I went to 7elven and I bought KT M Mobile SIM card for 8 800 KRW. On this site, you can choose your monthly plan. Then you need to get the security certificate from your bank which was super weird in my case. If you have a different bank than Daegu bank it can be different. In my case, I logged into my internet banking through the Korean site, because the English version didn't really work for me. I have no idea why. Even the Korean version is horrible, I have used to ID login and it told me my ID or password is not correct (it was), but I was logged in. Like what?!? There you can download the certificate and save it to USB or your disk. The name of the FILE is NPKI. During this, they will call you to verify your number so have your's friends mobile ready. You just need to write the numbers which will be shown in the Internet banking on the mobile. This was the worst - it took me like 2 hours to get it and actually Beng was helping me because she already did it before me, but some things were a little bit different when she did it. Why? We have no idea.

Then you can register yourself on the KT M Mobile website. There's also the option that they'll do it for you, but that requires speaking in Korean with the person who calls you. So thank you, but no for me. You choose the 외국인 > 신청하기(셀프개통) > 셀프개통하기 (유심 보유시). There you pick 신규가입 (new sign up) and your plan. You have to agree with some conditions. Some are mandatory (필수), some not (선택동의). Then click 다음 (next). You have to fill up Identity verification (here you'll need your ARC, passport, your friend's phone and the certificate from the bank). For 본인인증유형, I chose 범용 인증서, because that's the type of card we have from DB. In 본인인증 확인 you upload your certificate. Then you can choose from many free and paid extra services (like emergency announcements etc.) and you're almost done. I didn't take screenshots of the rest, but it wasn't so hard, so you can do it by yourself just with google translate or Papago.

Finally, you can start to use your Korean number (it usually takes few minutes until the card is activated). Now I need to just return to the bank and change there my number...