The South Korean government is discussing the Korea-Japan version of the Schengen Treaty with Japan. Even if you don't have a passport, as long as you have an ID card or driver's license, you can enter Japan as if you were going to Jeju Island from Seoul, and you can use the Korean-only window instead of the foreigner-only window at the airport.
On the 26th, a high-ranking official of the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, "Japan also agrees that the entry and exit procedures between South Korea and Japan should be simplified as much as possible, and that exchanges should be carried out without passports or at the same standards as their own nationals," and "next year will be the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between South Korea and Japan, and an epoch-making cooperation plan is being formulated."
This is the so-called "Korea-Japan version of the Schengen Treaty", and the Schengen Treaty, signed in 1995, abolished border checks between treaty member states in Europe and enabled nationals of treaty members to travel as if they were their own nationals.
"It takes two hours to get to Haneda Airport and one hour to leave the airport, and Gimpo Airport is about the same," the South Korean authorities said, adding that there are frequent discussions between people from both countries about simplifying the immigration process to the same standards as nationals.
At a press conference held at the Foreign Ministry building in Jongno-gu, Seoul, South Korean Ambassador to Japan Yoon Deok-min stressed that "it is necessary to upgrade to a cooperative relationship in which the people of the two countries can feel the benefits" and that "it is time to gather ideas and not let the normalized [Korea-Japan] relationship go backwards and become a consolidated cooperative relationship." Ambassador Yoon, a political scientist who served as president of the National Foreign Affairs Service and was appointed as the first ambassador to Japan in July 2022, returned to Japan for the first time in one year in order to participate in a five-day meeting of directors of foreign missions that began on the 22nd.
Ambassador Yoon said, "The number of people exchanges between Korea and Japan has increased dramatically, and the era of 12 million and 13 million people is headed," and "10 million Korean nationals are expected to visit Japan and 2.3 million Japanese are expected to visit Korea this year." This is a rare reference to the simplified entry and exit procedures between the two countries in an atmosphere of recent improvement in relations and lively people-to-people exchanges.
However, the South Korean Foreign Ministry said that "there have been no concrete discussions between the two countries," meaning that it has not yet reached the stage of expanding the interpretation.