Japan & South Korea Travel eSIM

You need an eSIM-capable, carrier-unlocked phone: an iPhone XS or newer, a Pixel 3 or newer, or a recent Samsung Galaxy S, Z or A-series flagship. Dial *#06# — if an EID number is listed alongside the IMEI, the phone has an eSIM.

See the full compatibility list.

Because the plan family that covers Japan and Korea together is largely sold as a three-country China–Korea–Japan bundle. That is how the wholesale market has organised this corner of Asia, and we would rather say so than quietly print a two-country name over a three-country product. Two plans on this page are Japan and Korea only; the rest include China. Every plan's coverage panel names exactly which.

No. Unused coverage costs you nothing and changes nothing about how the eSIM behaves in Tokyo or Seoul. It is listed here because it is on the product, not because it is a feature you are being sold.

Two, and they start higher than the bundled ones — they are the larger allowances rather than the entry sizes. Check the coverage panel on each tile: the ones listing exactly two countries are those. If price is the deciding factor, the bundled plans are cheaper for identical Japan and Korea coverage.

Only where a plan explicitly routes traffic outside mainland China, and we do not make that claim for any plan on this page. Treat any China leg as subject to the usual restrictions — that is a routing question the plan does not answer, and a page that promised otherwise would be guessing on your behalf.

Yes. The data is held once. A week in Kansai and three days around Seoul draw down the same figure, and the flight in between neither resets it nor ring-fences any part of it.

Both are among the best-covered countries on earth. Japan has near-total population coverage including the shinkansen corridors and most of the mountain resorts; Korea's is denser still, and includes the Seoul metro system end to end. This is one of the few pairings where rural coverage is not a caveat worth writing.

On the badged plans — and unusually, both countries have genuinely widespread 5G rather than the scattered urban islands you find elsewhere. Korea deployed earliest and most thoroughly of anywhere. Your phone needs the local bands, which any recent iPhone or flagship Android carries.

Along essentially all of both, with brief tunnel dropouts on the mountain sections. The Tokyo–Osaka and Seoul–Busan corridors are continuously covered.

Nothing. Japan has long restricted prepaid voice service to residents, which is why the airport counters sell visitors data-only tourist SIMs instead. Korea runs identity checks on its local prepaid. Neither rule touches a roaming profile — you are carried as a visitor rather than enrolled as anyone's customer, so no queue and no passport.

If the itinerary genuinely covers both, a single profile is simpler and the data goes where you go. Where only one country is happening, each has a strong standalone option: Japan, South Korea.

Neither is here. Both are distinct territories in coverage terms and turn up only on products that list them explicitly. Taiwan and Hong Kong each hold their own page, and a wider East Asian circuit belongs on the Asia plan.

On the plans badged for it, with shared traffic metered no differently from the phone's own. Check before buying if a laptop is coming, or if a colleague will be leaning on your connection.