Requirements and Documents for F-1-5 Visit and Cohabitation Visa for Parents of Marriage Immigrants — Can I bring my mother from my hometown before childbirth?

3-Line Summary

If a marriage immigrant is pregnant, has given birth, or is raising a young child, they can invite their parents from their home country under the Visit and Cohabitation (F-1-5) status. The purpose of the invitation is for childbirth and childcare support, and the circumstances must be proven with a pregnancy confirmation or child’s birth documents.

The most common reason for supplementary requests is proof of family relationship. If the spelling of the name on the birth certificate from the home country, the parents’ passports, or the documents submitted in Korea differs, supporting materials must be attached to prove they are the same person.

If staying for more than 90 days after entry, one must register as a foreign resident within 90 days, and one cannot work for pay under the Visit and Cohabitation status. Extensions of the period of stay are managed alongside the marriage immigrant’s own residency status.

Table of Contents

Ultrasound photos received first via email
Visa application returned from the embassy counter
Who is the F-1-5 Visit and Cohabitation status for, and why?
Mother’s name written in three different ways
How we prepared for the embassy re-application in Korea
90 days after entry: Alien registration and things you must not do
Administrative agent (administrative scrivener) office work details and checklist

1. Ultrasound Photos Received via Email First

I am an administrative agent (administrative scrivener) who primarily handles immigration matters in Songdo, Incheon. I would like to introduce an experience I had while working with multicultural families.

Two days before the consultation appointment, I received an email first. There were three attachments: ultrasound photos of twins, a photo of a list of documents returned from the Cambodian Embassy counter, and a short text that was a direct transcription of a mobile phone memo. The first line of the memo read: “The expected due date is December 20th. The mother must arrive before then.”

The sender was a marriage immigrant from Cambodia. In her fourth year of marriage, her husband worked three shifts at a logistics center behind Incheon Port. Before her pregnancy, she worked on a packaging line at a food factory in Songdo and sent a portion of her monthly salary to her mother, who runs a small grocery store near Phnom Penh. After learning she was expecting twins, the hospital mentioned the possibility of premature birth, and she took a leave of absence from her company. Based on her husband’s shift schedule, there were more than three days a week when she had to look after the two children alone at night.

There was no viable alternative other than bringing her mother over. However, her mother’s visa application had already been returned once.

On the day I received the email, I decided on what to verify before the consultation. It was why it had been returned, how much time was left until the childbirth date, and what needed to be changed when resubmitting.

2. Visa Application Returned from the Embassy Counter

On a Tuesday afternoon by appointment, a married couple visited. The husband’s face looked as if he had only slept three or four hours after finishing a night shift.

Three weeks ago, the mother had personally applied for a visa at the Korean Embassy in Phnom Penh. The documents she brought were a photo of her Alien Registration Card sent by her daughter via KakaoTalk, a copy of her husband’s ID, and a photo of a hospital consultation screen. At the counter, she was told to supplement documents proving the family relationship and documents explaining the reason for the invitation, and her documents were returned to her.

The reasons for the return were narrowed down to two:

Documents from the inviting party were missing. For a visit/cohabitation invitation, the family in Korea must clarify through documentation that “they are calling this person for this specific reason.” The invitation letter, letter of guarantee, the marriage immigrant’s own residence documents, and the husband’s family relationship documents were missing.
The connection proving the mother and daughter are family was weak. On the daughter’s Cambodian birth certificate, the mother’s name was written in Khmer, and there was no material to cross-reference it with the English spelling in the mother’s passport.

The couple initially thought, “We can just submit more documents.” The husband had already brought over ten documents he could obtain from his company. There were certificates of employment, withholding tax receipts for earned income, health insurance eligibility confirmation, and even a copy of an award for being an outstanding employee of the year. I politely returned the award certificate. The entire task was about filling the two missing links rather than the quantity of documents.

3. Who is the F-1-5 Visit/Cohabitation visa for, and why?

When people hear the term “multicultural family support system,” many first think of Korean language education, interpretation/translation services, or home-visit education provided by Family Centers. There are also mechanisms within the immigration system for multicultural families. One of them is the “visit-stay” status for inviting the parents of marriage immigrants, commonly referred to as the F-1-5 visa status.

There are three requirements.

The inviter must be a marriage immigrant. The most representative case is a marriage immigrant staying as a spouse of a Korean national. Since there are cases where this applies even after acquiring nationality, one must first verify their current status.
The purpose of invitation must be support for pregnancy, childbirth, or childcare. If pregnant, a hospital’s pregnancy confirmation certificate is required; if there is already a child, the child’s birth documents and age serve as the criteria. Since there are specific standards and upper limits for the child’s age and stay duration that are subject to change, one must check the guidance available at the time of application.
The invitees must be family members, such as parents. In principle, this refers to the parents of the spouse. Siblings or nephews/nieces who wish to come along are not eligible under this qualification.

In the case of this couple, there were no issues with items 1 and 2. The wife was staying under the status of a spouse of a Korean national, and we were able to immediately obtain a pregnancy confirmation certificate for the 26th week of pregnancy.

During the consultation, one more question arose. It was whether the mother could bring her fifteen-year-old youngest son along, as she could not leave him alone. I explained that the younger brother could not be invited together under this qualification. The schedule was finally organized only after confirming that there was an aunt in the local area who could look after the youngest child. If we had recklessly included a companion, there was a high possibility that the mother’s application would have been returned.

4. The mother’s name written in three ways

When I laid out the documents to organize the family relationships, I found that my mother’s name was written in three different ways:

The English name in my mother’s passport
The English name written in my daughter’s birth certificate translation (transferred by a translation agency during the marriage process in the past)
The name my daughter wrote for her mother when submitting marriage documents in Korea

Because there are various ways to transliterate Khmer into Roman characters, the spelling differed by one or two letters. While it is the same name to one person, to the person reviewing the documents, it could appear as three different people. This was precisely why the embassy requested supplementary evidence to prove the family relationship.

I prepared the documents in the following order:

I requested new supporting documents from the home country. I sent a list so that my mother could obtain family records from the administrative agency having jurisdiction over her residence and receive documents confirming that she is the same person. I also wrote down the sequence to ensure that originals, having undergone the necessary verification procedures locally, would arrive.
I entrusted the translation to a single agency all at once. I gave both the newly obtained documents and the old birth certificate to the same translation agency to unify the name spelling with the spelling in my mother’s passport. The translated versions were submitted as attached documents, and the translation itself was handled by the translation agency.
I attached a one-page name comparison table. I gathered how my mother’s name was written in each document into a single table and used arrows to indicate how each document connects. This was to reduce the labor of the reviewer having to cross-reference multiple documents.

It took 10 days for my mother to receive the local documents. During that time, my daughter checked the progress every day via video call, and one evening, my mother sent a video of herself showing each document one by one through the screen. Although the screen was shaking so much that not a single word could be read, the bags of pepper on a grocery store shelf were captured clearly in the final scene. During the next consultation, the couple brought a bag of that very pepper.

5. How we prepared for the embassy re-application in Korea

There was only one place to resubmit the documents: the Embassy. Based on the current visa manual (HiKorea, revised October 19, 2026), the F-1-5 visa is not subject to the issuance of a Visa Issuance Confirmation; rather, it is a visa issued at the discretion of the head of the diplomatic mission abroad. There is no process for the inviter in Korea to apply in advance to the local Immigration Office, nor is there a guided path to enter under a different status and then change to F-1-5 within Korea. Therefore, we focused on having my mother reapply for the visa at the Embassy in Phnom Penh while ensuring all necessary documents from the Korean side were sent without omission.

There were three ways we prepared.

We first gathered all the Korean documents to prevent further requests for supplementation. My husband’s documents, hospital documents, and my wife’s residence documents were all in Korea. If the mother received a request for supplementation locally, she would have to contact her daughter again, and the daughter would have to issue the documents and send them via international mail, creating a back-and-forth process; therefore, we sent them all together as one bundle from the start.
The family in Korea wrote the invitation reason directly. It is more natural for the family in Korea to directly explain reasons for invitation, such as the expected due date, the husband’s shift work, and the possibility of premature birth.
We reduced the tasks the mother had to do locally. The mother only had to issue documents in her home country and handle the embassy application and visa collection. Consequently, the number of days she had to close her general store was also reduced.

We planned the schedule backward from the expected due date. After hearing from the hospital that twins are often born earlier than the expected date, we set the target entry date to 5 weeks before the due date. There was no basis to request an expedited processing period. Instead, we spent our time on creating documents that would be approved all at once.

The invitation reason statement was written on one page. We truthfully stated the pregnancy weeks, the fact that it is twins, the possibility of premature birth as advised by the hospital, the husband’s three-shift work schedule, and the circumstances that there are no family members nearby to provide help. We did not include sentences like “If my mother-in-law does not come, my wife and children will be in danger,” which the husband wanted to include. If you write the facts in order, the reader will judge the meaning. We organized the identity guarantee form in the husband’s name, employment and income documents, documents showing the wife’s alien registration status and period of stay, the pregnancy confirmation, and family relationship connection materials and name comparison tables into one bundle and sent them to the mother, who then resubmitted them to the embassy.

This time, there were no requests for supplementation. About 3 weeks after resubmission, the mother received the visa from the embassy in Phnom Penh. The entry date was 6 weeks before the expected due date.

6. 90 Days After Entry: Alien Registration and Things You Must Not Do

The work did not end just because the mother arrived in the country. On the day after her arrival, I provided the couple with three pieces of guidance again.

① Alien Registration. According to Article 31 of the 「Immigration Act」, foreigners who intend to stay for more than 90 days from the date of entry must complete alien registration within 90 days of their arrival. I scheduled an appointment for the third week after her entry to ensure it did not overlap with the expected due date. This is because it would be difficult for the daughter to take her mother to the Immigration Office during the postpartum recovery period.

② You cannot work under the “Visiting and Cohabitation” status. About two weeks after the mother’s arrival, an acquaintance of the daughter, who runs a Vietnamese restaurant in the same neighborhood, suggested, “If you can help in the kitchen for a few hours during the day, I will pay you a daily wage.” Article 18 of the 「Immigration Act」 specifies particular statuses of residence that allow for employment activities, and “Visiting and Cohabitation” does not fall under this category. I explained that even working for a few hours a day for money could cause issues for the mother’s stay, her next extension, and the acquaintance’s restaurant. The offer was rejected immediately that same evening.

③ Extensions are managed alongside the daughter’s stay. The mother’s stay is predicated on the daughter staying as a marriage immigrant and continuing her circumstances regarding childbirth and childcare. The daughter’s period of stay was set to expire two months after the childbirth. Since applying for an extension of stay under Article 25 of the 「Immigration Act」 immediately after childbirth would overlap with the postpartum recovery period, we decided to prepare the daughter’s extension documents in advance and file them as soon as the birth registration is completed. Since the children have Korean fathers, they will be registered in the Family Relationship Register through birth registration at the community center, and those birth documents will serve as the supporting documents for the mother’s next extension.

I also provided guidance regarding the Family Center connection at this time. If they receive home-visit education and interpretation/translation support before and after childbirth, it becomes much easier for the mother and daughter to understand hospital treatments or vaccination guidance together. Immigration procedures are applied for separately at the Immigration Office, while home-visit education and interpretation/translation are applied for at the Family Center.

The twins were born 16 days earlier than the expected date. It was four weeks after the mother’s arrival.

7. Administrative Agent (administrative scrivener) Office Work Details and Checklist

Inviting the parents of marriage immigrants may seem simple if you only look at the list of required documents. In reality, you must align the contents of the documents from their home country with those from Korea, determine the application sequence based on the expected date of childbirth, and prepare for the extension of their period of stay after they enter the country. Since a previously rejected application will be scrutinized more closely during the next application, it is better to complete all the necessary connections when submitting the first time.

Check these situations if they apply to you.

Are you a marriage immigrant who is pregnant or raising young children? First, check your own visa status and your child’s age to see if you can invite your parents for visit/cohabitation (F-1-5).
Do the spelling of the names on your home country documents and your parents’ passports match? If they are different, prepare documents that link them as the same person along with a comparison table.
Have you planned your schedule backward from the expected due date? You must allow plenty of time for issuing home country documents, visa examination/collection at the overseas diplomatic mission, and flight arrangements.
Have you decided on a date to register as a foreigner within 90 days of entry? Make an appointment in advance so that it does not overlap with the childbirth and postpartum recovery period.
Have you received any job offers from those around you? You cannot engage in paid work under the visit/cohabitation status.

Hwang Yunsang administrative agent (administrative scrivener) office provides document preparation services for invitation letters, letters of reason for invitation, and identity guarantee documents required for applying for a visa at the overseas diplomatic mission for inviting parents of marriage immigrants (F-1-5). We organize a list of comparative materials by matching names and dates of birth between home country documents and Korean documents, and we also manage the schedule for alien registration and extension of stay after entry. Requirements and processing periods vary depending on the case, so individual verification is required.

A daughter who came for an extension consultation three months later brought two children in a stroller. The person pushing the stroller was the mother.

This is a story constructed to aid understanding.

This is an administrative agent office located in Songdo, Incheon (POSCO Tower Songdo). We handle administrative appeals, licensing/permit/reporting agency services, foreigner immigration (visa/stay), and regular administrative management. For immigration documents linked to childbirth and childcare schedules, such as inviting parents of marriage immigrant families and extending stays, we prepare them by calculating the dates together. If you are curious about similar situations in Incheon or Songdo, please feel free to leave an inquiry.

Address: #2697, POSCO Tower Songdo, 165 Convensia-daero, Yeonsu-gu, Incheon
Phone: 010-3374-2687
Website: www.hwangadmin.com