In this file photo taken on April 21, 2021, health workers guide arrivals at Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, June 30 (Korea Bizwire) — Vaccinated people visiting South Korea from overseas, except those from 21 high-risk nations, will be exempt from the mandatory two-week coronavirus quarantine starting this week, as officials are easing the entry restrictions to allow more family visits amid the prolonged pandemic.
Starting Thursday, visitors flying in from over 150 countries can skip the quarantine if they have a document issued by South Korean consulates in their country of residence proving that they have been fully inoculated with COVID-19 vaccines, officials said.
Their purpose of visit must fall under the categories of either business, academic, public service or humanitarian, such as family-related affairs.
They also need to be vaccinated with either AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna, Janssen, AZ Covishield, Sinopharm or Sinovac.
They still need to take COVID-19 diagnostic tests before and after arrival in South Korea and will have to be quarantined if they test positive.
However, visitors from 21 high-risk countries, including India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines and several African and Latin American countries, will have to undergo the two-week quarantine due to the rising cases of the delta variant in those countries.
The easing of the quarantine requirement for vaccinated people is aimed at allowing more families to meet, as such gatherings have long been disrupted amid the pandemic outbreak, a foreign ministry official said.
“It’s a decision we have made after taking into account the requests from our people here and abroad who have been unable to see their families as the pandemic has persisted for more than a year, and the fact that the vaccination rate is rising,” the official said.
The South Korean consulates in Washington, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco have been swamped with thousands of applications since they opened the system this week, the official said.
“We are checking against any system overload and are doing our best to improve the electronic application capability to speed up the process so as to minimize the inconvenience for people,” the official said.
(Yonhap)
