South Korea

Feeny is tracking about 1,371 open tech roles in South Korea, from roughly 154 companies hiring. Each one comes from a company's own careers page, so a listing means a role that's live rather than a repost. Almost all of it runs through Seoul, the country's single tech center. Filter by discipline to narrow the set.

Seoul dominates. The overwhelming majority of the country's tech roles sit in the capital, and for most job seekers Seoul is effectively the entire market. Other cities host some engineering work, but nothing close to Seoul's concentration. Across the 1 we index, this is a one-hub country in practice.

The scene is built on super-apps that run daily life for 50 million people: Coupang in commerce, Toss in finance, and Kakao in nearly everything else. Gaming is the other pillar, with Krafton and Nexon among the largest studios in the world. So the biggest employers are consumer platforms and game companies operating at national scale. Feeny lists roles from about 154 companies, so the current openings are worth a direct look.

Consumer app engineering leads, driven by the super-apps that touch commerce, payments, and messaging for most of the country. Fintech is a major slice thanks to Toss and the broader push into digital finance. Gaming pulls in a large share of engineering talent, from game clients to the backends that run massive multiplayer worlds. Backend and platform work sits underneath all of it, keeping high-traffic services running.

Seoul is a dense, fast-moving city where the biggest tech products are woven into everyday life, which makes the work feel high-stakes and visible. Korean-language expectation is real outside of global-facing teams, and it shapes both work and daily living. The pace and hours can be demanding at the larger firms. The honest trade is that this is a tougher relocation market for non-Korean speakers than Japan is.

The main route for foreign professionals is the E-7 special-ability visa, which is tied to a specific employer and job. Korean-language ability is often expected once you're outside global-facing teams, which is a genuine hurdle for many applicants. Compared to Japan, relocating here as a non-Korean speaker is harder, and the pool of English-first roles is smaller. Be honest about the language reality before planning a move.