To export a dog from South Korea isn’t the easiest of tasks. I wrote a full blog post on my personal experience here. On this page I’ll focus on the basics on how to export a dog from South Korea. The basic information needed can be found on the QIA website. You can also call the export enquiries section at Incheon airport on 032-740-2660~1. For Import related inquiries you can call 032-740-2671.
Requirements
In order to export a dog from South Korea you need the following documents;
- Health certificate from Korean vet issued within 10 days before travel
- Documents required for import country (for us this was Form RE signed by S Korea vet)
- Import permit from import country
- Rabies vaccine booklet
- Original titer test result
Upon production of these documents you are given an export certificate from the Government vet at Incheon airport. This will allow you to leave South Korea with your dog.
Health Certificate
You must find a vet that is able to provide a health certificate for export purposes. We struggled to find one initially and even the vet we found had never done it before. I therefore recommend you find one early on (it can only be done 10 days in advance of your flight though). The vet we found was The Class Animal Medical Center in Bundang. They don’t seem to have an e-mail address so we just walked in.
The health certificate required must be provided by the export quarantine section. Our vet rang them to get the required information and they sent across the form to him to fill in.
In order to get the health certificate you must do a health check of your dog so must take your dog with you to the inspection.
If you have had your rabies vaccines and/or titer test done outside of South Korea they are not allowed to put the details onto the health certificate. Therefore, the health certificate is basically a fit to fly form unless you got your jabs inside South Korea.
Check Every Piece of Information Carefully
I cannot stress enough but when the vet gives you the health certificate, check, double check, triple check and quadruple check all of the details are correct. If there is one small spelling mistake, the microchip number is 1 digit out, it will NOT be accepted and you won’t be allowed to fly out.
When we first got ours, they had spelt my name wrong. Even the second time it was still wrong. So we had to get a third version done! I’ve heard lots of stories of others not checking and there being errors on the certificate and then being refused an export certificate at the airport. So please make sure EVERYTHING is correct.
In total it cost us 40,000 KWN (US$30) for the health certificate and the Form RE required for entry to Japan. Which was way lower than other quotes we had seen.
Export Certificate
Once you’ve got your health certificate you can then get your export certificate. This is done by the quarantine section at the airport (Government vet). We flew from Incheon so went to Terminal 1.
The quarantine section for exports is only open from 9am – 6pm and has a 1 hour lunch break from 12pm – 1pm. So you have to time it well. If your flight is early morning or late at night you will be best off coming the day before. We arrived at 11am and we had a 3pm flight as we didn’t want to get caught out by the lunch break.
There’s a map on the Incheon airport website of how to find it;
We handed over all of the documents we had to the inspector;
- Health certificate from Korean vet
- Form RE signed by Korean vet
- Rabies vaccine booklet
- Original titer test result
- Import permit from Japan
There was no one else waiting so we got seen straight away. We had to pay a fee of 10,000 KWN (US$8) and this had to be paid by credit card. He took the papers and spent about 15 minutes inputting the information into the system. He then handed us an export certificate for us to check the details on. Once we confirmed everything was OK he printed off the official one and gave us an original and a copy to give to the check in agent. Then we were free to go check in. The whole process took about 30 minutes so we had plenty of time to spare before we could check in.
Conclusion
Thankfully all went smoothly and we made it back to Japan in one piece. If you want to see how to import a dog to Japan, come check out my import page here. Hopefully this page helps someone else getting frustrated by the lack of/difficulty of finding information online on how to export a dog from South Korea!
If you’ve got any experience to export a dog from South Korea let me know in the comments below. Maybe you have a good vet who can do the paperwork you can recommend?
Woof woof, Wylie x
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If any of my travel tips help, please feel free to leave a small donation which would be greatly appreciated 😊
