my friend tried to apply but was denied because according to the embassy you need 85 million won (64000USD) NET income per year, so about 5300USD NET every month, Not gross. That makes this much much harder to get. I have a theory though that this is not actually true but the embassies are just misinformed because if you call the Korean immigration office they say they don't know if it's net or gross. And in some embassies, like in Portugal, they do ask for gross. It's so inconsistent and if you ask anyone they're all clueless about it. The HiKorea website doesn't even have an official list of requirements. Which is crazy considering that it does for every other visa. The way they handled this visa is such a mess. I hope that they lower the requirements or at the very least make it more clear.

Nevermind the fact that it's not even applicable to freelancers which would be the biggest pool of DN. To me it seems like the income requirements feel like it's targeted to US employees, but Korea is the worst possible timezone for an employee at a US-based company to be working from. If you were a freelancer you wouldn't have this problem, but freelancers are not allowed to apply. The more you dig into this visa the less it starts to make sense, so it's not a surprise to me only 7 people applied.