EPS Korea: what it really costs to go from Nepal, and how to fund it

In a Korean-language class near Koteshwor, a student told me his family had already lined up an "agent" who would arrange the whole Korea trip for Rs 9 lakh. They were preparing to sell part of a field to fund it. The painful part is that the agent was selling them something that is free to access. EPS does not run through agents, and the real cost of going is a fraction of what they were about to borrow against their land.

This is the most expensive misunderstanding in Nepali labour migration to Korea. EPS, the Employment Permit System, is a government-to-government channel with a published, low cost. The lakhs that families hand over almost always go to a middleman selling access to a process that has no middleman.

The cost, the honest version

The headline number comes from the Department of Foreign Employment's EPS branch itself: a young person can reach Korea through EPS for around Rs 1.5 lakh, with the ticket included. The same official contrasts this with the pre-EPS era before 2007, when going through brokers cost families Rs 1.5 to 2 million. EPS was built precisely to kill that broker economy.

The legitimate pieces are individually small:

Item	Approx cost
EPS-TOPIK exam fee	USD 28 (~Rs 4,000)
Medical examination	~USD 49 (~Rs 7,000)
Pre-departure training (45 hours)	~USD 63 (~Rs 9,000)
Visa issuance	~USD 71 (~Rs 10,000)
Migrant Workers' Welfare Fund (long contract)	Rs 2,500
Air ticket	~Rs 50,000

Public EPS fee schedules put the full set of official charges at roughly USD 750, about Rs 1 lakh, before the air ticket. Add the flight and the EPS branch's own figure for the all-in lands around Rs 1.5 lakh. One report quotes a larger processing cost that cannot be cleanly reconciled with that, so rather than invent a tidy sum, anchor on the official framing: around Rs 1.5 lakh, ticket included, is the legitimate cost. Everything above that is not a fee you owe; it is overcharging. The Gulf version of this exact gap, where a job that should cost Rs 18,000 is sold for lakhs, is mapped in the going abroad for work post.

The process: nine steps, no middleman

The reason no agent is needed is that every step is a government touchpoint:

1. Register on the EPS Nepal portal (eoers.epsnepal.gov.np) during the application window.
2. Sit the EPS-TOPIK Korean-language test, now a tablet-based (UBT) exam of 40 questions in about 50 minutes.
3. Complete the skill test, medical, and document submission.
4. Enter the job roster held by Korea's HRD, the standby pool employers pick from.
5. Get selected by a Korean employer who signs a standard labour contract setting your wage, hours, and workplace.
6. Receive the visa confirmation (CCVI) once HRD applies on your behalf.
7. Do pre-departure training in Kathmandu, a few days.
8. Fly to Korea on an E-9 visa.
9. Complete short post-arrival training run by HRD in Korea.

The E-9 visa runs up to four years and ten months. Selection is biometric and computerised, which is exactly why a broker cannot move you up the queue: there is no queue a person can sell.

What you will earn in Korea

The cost only makes sense next to the wage. Korea sets a national minimum wage that applies to EPS workers, and for 2026 it rose to KRW 10,320 per hour, up 2.9 percent from KRW 10,030 in 2025:

	KRW	Approx NPR
Minimum wage per hour (2026)	10,320	~Rs 1,020
Standard month (209 hours), before deductions	~2,156,880	~Rs 2.1 lakh

Many Nepali EPS workers report KRW 2 to 3 million a month once overtime is counted, depending on sector. Because employers commonly provide housing, a large share of that income can be saved or sent home. At roughly Rs 99 to KRW 1,000 in mid-2026, even a single minimum-wage month covers the entire legitimate cost of getting there with a wide margin. That salary is not taxed in Nepal while you are a non-resident, as the foreign income and remittance post explains, and the cheapest way to get it home is in the remittance channels post.

The welfare fund and insurance

Two mandatory protections sit inside the cost, and they matter more than their size:

• Migrant Workers' Welfare Fund: Rs 1,500 for contracts up to three years and Rs 2,500 for longer contracts, which is the band Korea's roughly five-year contracts fall into.
• Foreign-employment insurance and welfare-fund compensation for death or permanent disability; the going-abroad post covers the current payout figures in detail.

These are not optional add-ons an agent "arranges" for a fee. They are part of the official channel, and a family that goes through a broker sometimes loses the paper trail that lets them later claim these benefits.

How to fund it, and the scam to avoid

Here is the financial point that the Koteshwor family missed. The legitimate cost, around Rs 1.5 lakh, is a sum most households can raise from savings, a sinking fund, or at most a small short-term loan, repaid in a month or two of Korean wages. There is no good reason to borrow Rs 9 lakh against land for a trip that costs a sixth of that.

The lakhs only appear when a broker inserts themselves. The Department of Foreign Employment has been explicit: EPS selection is fair and computerised, no private individual or organisation has a role, and paying a broker buys you nothing. The anti-fraud features, biometric exam entry, government-managed results, direct employer matching, exist so that paying someone buys you nothing. The same warning covers the fake Facebook, TikTok, and Telegram pages impersonating the official EPS channel to harvest fees.

So the funding plan is the prevention plan: keep the spend inside the official cost, pay only the official fees through the official portal, and treat any "agent fee" as the single largest avoidable loss in the whole journey. If Korea does not work out and you are weighing other routes, the study-abroad runway and the broader going-abroad cost-and-scams post cover the alternatives with the same cost-first lens. On return, claiming your Korean departure payout is covered in the returnee money checklist.

What you actually need to know

• The real cost is around Rs 1.5 lakh, ticket included. The exam, medical, welfare fund, visa, and training are individually small. Anything in the lakhs is overcharging, not a fee.
• EPS has no agent. It runs government-to-government with a computerised, biometric selection. Paying a broker buys you no advantage and is the thing the Department warns against.
• The wage dwarfs the cost. Korea's 2026 minimum wage clears the entire legitimate spend in under a month, so borrowing lakhs against land to get there is the financial mistake to avoid, not the cost of going itself.

Helping a family member weigh an EPS Korea trip, or trying to work out whether an "agent fee" you have been quoted is a scam? Email parjanya57@gmail.com and I will break down the legitimate cost against what you are being asked to pay.

This post is part of the Nepal Money Basics guide — the big-ticket and going-abroad section.