Milspouse in Korea: Personal Customs Clearance Code

If you’ve found this blog post it’s either because you’re stuck on how to get a customs clearance code OR you’ve just recently stumbled across my blog and you’re reading everything. Either way, hi!

What is a personal customs clearance code? AND do I actually need one?

A customs clearance code is used to protect your information when importing goods into Korea and streamlines the customs process
Need is a strong word. If you live on base, if you don’t plan on ordering things THAT ARE IMPORTED to an off base address, you really don’t NEED one.

For example: I ordered a pair of boots from H&M within Korea, didn’t need my PCCC. I order anything from TEMU, I need my PCCC.

There are two ways to obtain your PCCC, online or in-person. I’m lazy and the customs office is about an hour drive from me, so I chose the online route. The website is in Korean (a few things have an English translation next to it) and some pages were frustrating so I decided to document the process to help you along!

If you’d rather do the process in person, South of Seoul has a blog laying out all the information for you!

To begin with you need a few things:

An FRC (or ARC if you’re still calling it that) Click here for my post on how to obtain your FRC!
A Korean telephone number IN YOUR NAME
If you’re a military spouse and initially put your phone number in your soldier’s name, it’s an easy process to change. Take a copy of your orders, your spouse, FRC card, all military id’s to your phone company. In our case, they also wanted to see both of our stateside drivers licenses. The process is very easy but if you go on the weekend, note that the service that takes care of this doesn’t process on the weekend but will be processed Monday morning and you’ll receive a text message letting you know it was taken care of.
Make sure that the name your FRC matches your telephone plan. It’ll be in order “Last Name First Name Middle Name.”
Your Korean address in Hangul. This will be needed for the address portion.

Once you’ve made sure you have everything, it’s time to get started! Click here to go to the Korea Customs Service website.

On this page, we’re starting off easy with all English. Click the blue box that says “Personal customs clearance code”

You’ll want to select “new issue” however, if you select the Personal Customs Code Check, it’ll tell you that you don’t have one and send you along to start a new application anyway,

Since there are English subtitles on this page, it’s pretty straightforward. For the Name section, you’ll want to list your name exactly as it is on your FRC which is most likely LAST NAME FIRST NAME MIDDLE NAME.

Apparently the name part of anything is always the trickiest issue for foreigners. Make sure you’re copying it just like it is on your FRC. Yep, I just repeated myself in back to back sentences, but your brain is probably hardwired to write it first middle last name.

You’ll want to select “Cell Phone Authentication” and then the orange box for Confirm.

On this page, select your cell phone provider, click the box next to the bolded text (which selects “agree with all terms of service”) and then select how you want to proceed. The first option is with the PASS app and the second option is via text.

Below is the PASS app icon if you decide to go this route on your phone. I chose to do the SMS text option.

The first line is your name. Again, LAST NAME FIRST NAME MIDDLE NAME.

The second line is for your FRC card number. (If you haven’t already noticed, it’s the last two digits of your year of birth, two month digits and two day digits.) The box with a single digit always mistranslates - you need to type in the FIRST NUMBER of the second group of digits on your FRC.

The third line is your phone number, digits only, no dashes.

Click the dark gray box to submit.

On this next screen, your name and FRC card number have been autofilled.

At this point you’ll need to put in your address in Korean. I recommend this website for a Korean keyboard. I have it saved to favorites because I use it so often. As long as you know the characters you need, it’s easy to use. Otherwise, use a translation app.

Here are a few helpful words you can copy and paste:

겨기도 (Gyeonggi-do) 평택시 (Pyeongtaek-si) 동 (apartment building number) 호 (apartment number)

For both the apartment building and apartment number, you put the number before the text.

Click the magnifying icon and type in your address. It’ll populate with your basic street address. On the white line, you’ll need to add the rest of your address, like your building number and apartment number.

Retype your phone number, even though it’s also auto populated in another box and fill in your email address. Keep the (MINE) box dotted - this confirms that the phone is yours.

Make sure you scroll down and select 3 more AGREE sections. Then click REGISTER.

The highlighted blue section states that “the issuance of your personal customs clearance code has been completed successfully.” CONGRATS! But we’re not completely done. Click close….

On this page it’s asking if you want to sign up for ministry notifications. You can choose to or choose to pass. Click the button that I’ve circled to move on.

CONGRATS! Now you’e actually completed the application and on this page if your personal customs clearance code! Take a photo or write it down for future use. Once you’ve received your PCCC, you can start using it immediately! Happy shopping!

In addition to the website, you can also download the app to obtain your PCCC. I found it easiest on my computer so I could screenshot for you as I went along, but I also screenshot the first couple steps in the app. After that, the process is pretty much the same as the website.

With screenshots and translations along the way, it took me less than 40 minutes to finish the process so hopefully I was able to help someone else as well! Let me know in the comments if you came across any problems and what other blog topics would be helpful for military spouses in Korea.