Keep your Korean phone number active while abroad
Keep your Korean number active abroad: suspension keeps the number, runs to 180 days a year, costs a monthly fee, and someone in Korea can request it.
Checked against official pages on September 28, 2026. Rules move; when this one does, it goes on the changelog.
| Carrier | Accounts | If you do nothing | Cheapest hold | Roaming for codes | Twelve months |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| U+ u mobile | both | Suspension is the mechanism, available twice a year within a 180-day total on this carrier's published article | A suspension at 4,400 won a month including VAT, pro-rated in the month it starts or ends | Unverified | Suspension is capped at 180 days a year, so a full year cannot be covered by one suspension |
To keep a Korean number active abroad the instrument is a suspension you ask for rather than a top-up or a retention fee: the subscription stays open, the number stays yours, and the service is switched off. The shape of that arrangement, and the cap and fee the one readable carrier prints, is what this page is about.
Suspension, capped and priced
The clearest published version we could read is U+유모바일's help center, an MVNO that sells on the LG U+ network, and the carrier whose card on this site carries the quotes in full. Its suspension article gives the limit and the price in consecutive lines: "일시정지는 1년에 2회, 총 180일 한도 내에서 이용 가능합니다." Twice a year, within a total of 180 days.
The fee is stated on the same article: "기본요금 월 4,400원 (부가세 포함) 이 청구되며, 정지/해제 당월은 일할 계산됩니다." A base charge of 4,400 won a month, including VAT, pro-rated in the month the suspension starts or ends. Suspension is a cheaper subscription rather than a free one, which is the opposite of the arrangement in Nigeria, where the rules let a subscriber park a line at no stated fee, and the same shape as China, where suspend-and-hold is bought. Both are on the Nigeria page and the China page.
What still arrives while the line is suspended
The first thirty days are not silent, and U+유모바일 states the exception as a feature of the suspension itself: "최초 30일은 받는 통화와 음성사서함 서비스만 이용 가능합니다." Incoming calls and voicemail work for the first month; after that the article describes nothing incoming. For a number waiting on a verification code this is a thirty-day window rather than the 180-day incoming window at Smart in the Philippines.
Someone in Korea can make the request for you
The article answers the question this site exists to ask, and it is the plainest published answer we have read on any carrier page: "명의자 본인이 해외에 계실 경우, 한국에 계신 가족/지인분께서 고객센터로 전화 주시면 상담을 통해 처리가 가능합니다." If the account holder is abroad, a family member or acquaintance in Korea can call the customer center and the suspension is processed through that call.
That is a materially different problem from the other countries here. In Nigeria the rules let you ask for parking and stop short of describing how; in China the service is bought; in Korea the published answer is that the account holder can be abroad, provided someone in Korea makes the call.
Two things to finish before you fly
Suspension is only useful if the line already exists, and the same help center closes that door to anyone who leaves first. Asked whether a USIM can be activated online from abroad, the answer is: "온라인을 통한 유심 개통 신청은 국내에서만 가능하며 해외에서는 신청이 불가합니다. 따라서 출국 계획이 있으실 경우, 출국 전 국내에서 개통 신청을 완료하여 주시기 바랍니다." Online activation happens inside Korea only, so the application has to be completed before departure.
The same pattern applies to changing an eSIM. Asked whether an eSIM already in use can be changed, the help center lists a block for an applicant whose residence or stay is abroad, and marks that case as possible "국내에서만". A Korean line is easiest to arrange while you are still standing in Korea.
What we could not read
The three network carriers publish their subscriber terms as PDF documents, and the Korean text layer in the copies we downloaded does not survive extraction: the Hangul renders as blanks, so nothing on this page is quoted from SK Telecom, KT or LG U+ terms, and the 180-day figure above belongs to the MVNO whose article we could read rather than to the industry. Whether the network carriers set the same cap, and what they do for a subscriber whose absence has a documented reason, are questions our clients could not answer from the documents they could open.
The military-service article on the same help center shows that a documented absence is a recognized category of suspension with its own paperwork. It does not say whether a long stay abroad falls into it, and we are not going to infer that it does.
Before you fly
- Suspend rather than let the line lapse: a suspended subscription keeps the number, a canceled one does not.
- Count the cap: twice a year and 180 days in total, on the carrier whose published terms we could read.
- Expect incoming calls and voicemail for the first thirty days of a suspension, and treat anything after that as unanswered.
- Line up the person in Korea who will make the call, and finish the activation before you leave: the customer-center call has to be placed in Korea, and online activation does too.