How does a Korean company set up in the Netherlands?

A Korean company usually opens a Dutch BV owned by the parent in Seoul. The tax treaty between the two countries has been in force since 1981 and was updated by a protocol that took effect in 1999. KOTRA has one office in the Netherlands, in Amsterdam, and publishes a price list for the services it offers companies expanding abroad.

Korean companies arrive in Europe with more state machinery behind them than almost anyone else, and the machinery is easy to misread from the outside. This page sets out what is actually there: the treaty, the offices on both sides, the home programmes and their footprint, and what a Korean group has to build itself.

A treaty from 1978, rewritten in part twenty years later

The convention between the Netherlands and Korea was signed in Seoul on 25 October 1978 and, according to the Dutch Ministry of Finance overview of treaties on direct taxes, entered into force on 17 April 1981. A protocol amended it. The Dutch treaty gazette, the Tractatenblad, records that the protocol was signed at The Hague on 6 November 1998 and that its provisions entered into force on 2 April 1999.

One note on sources, because it matters if you are checking this yourself. The Ministry's quarterly overview prints a different signature date for that protocol than the treaty gazette does. The gazette carries the signed text and the signature clause, so that is the date used here. If a summary page and a gazette disagree, read the gazette. How the Dutch treaty network works in general is in does the Netherlands have a tax treaty with your country.

Sources:
Tractatenblad 1998, 272, Protocol amending the Netherlands-Korea Convention
Rijksoverheid, Verdragen op het gebied van directe belastingen per 1 juli 2026 (PDF, in Dutch)

What KOTRA Amsterdam is, and what it costs

KOTRA describes itself as the national organisation responsible for promoting trade and investment under Korea's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, established in 1962, operating overseas offices in more than eighty countries. Its directory lists exactly one office in the Netherlands, in Amsterdam, at the World Trade Center on Strawinskylaan, sharing an address with the Korean Chamber of Commerce in the Netherlands.

It is worth knowing how the offer is structured before the first meeting. KOTRA's free-of-charge language applies to foreign investors coming into Korea. For Korean companies going out, KOTRA publishes an annual service guidebook with prices, covering buyer discovery, market research, buyer verification and its overseas branch service, which is the one most often used by a company setting up abroad.

What is free is narrower and still useful: the open trade office, which gives a visitor to a KOTRA overseas office desk space, a meeting room, internet, market information and a basic consultation during working hours, capped at five business days. Treat it as a landing pad for a scouting trip, not as an incubator.

Sources:
KOTRA, About KOTRA
KOTRA Amsterdam and the Korean Chamber of Commerce in the Netherlands

Korea's overseas startup network has a Paris node, not a Dutch one

This is the fact that changes plans. The Ministry of SMEs and Startups and KISED run the K-Startup Center network for Korean startups expanding abroad. KISED's own page lists six hub locations, in Silicon Valley, Tokyo, Paris, Singapore, Hanoi and Seattle, plus two programme-based countries. In Europe that means Paris, and there is no K-Startup Center in the Netherlands.

That is not an obstacle so much as a planning fact. A Korean startup landing in the Netherlands is doing it without a home-government base in the country, so the Dutch-side support becomes proportionally more important. The NFIA runs a Korea desk from an office in Seoul inside the Dutch embassy, with a Korean-language site, which is often the easier first conversation: see what the NFIA does for foreign companies.

Source: KISED, K-Startup Center (in Korean)

How large is the Korean presence here?

Smaller than founders expect, which is a genuine advantage and a genuine cost. According to CBS, the Dutch statistics office, 105 companies in the Netherlands were under ultimate South Korean control in 2023, employing around three thousand people. South Korea does not appear in the CBS table of the ten largest countries of control.

The cost is that there is no deep bench of advisers who have done this exact structure a hundred times, and no large Korean corporate community to absorb a first hire. The advantage is that a Korean deep-tech company is not one of many in an investor's inbox, and the semiconductor and high-tech ecosystem around Eindhoven has a specific appetite for what Korean hardware companies build: see where to land in the Netherlands.

Source: CBS, Buitenlandse zeggenschap bedrijven in Nederland, table 85821NED

What a Korean group usually sets up, and who it can bring

A Dutch BV held by the Korean parent, because the BV can employ people, hold a lease and apply for Dutch schemes in its own name while limiting the parent's exposure.

Staff follow the ordinary routes, and the sequencing catches people out. The highly skilled migrant permit requires the Dutch company to be a recognised sponsor before it can apply, and recognition is its own application with its own decision period. Which route fits which person is compared in which visa route fits your team, and the order of the first weeks is in the first ninety days in the Netherlands.

Where this fits in a move to Europe

Korean groups often plan the European entity and the European round at the same time, and the two have different prerequisites. The entity needs a notary and a register. The round needs a story a European investor can underwrite, which is a different question and is covered in do European investors back companies from outside Europe.

How we work with companies coming from Seoul is on the Korea corridor page.

Sources

1. Tractatenblad 1998, 272, Protocol amending the Netherlands-Korea Convention, checked 22 September 2026
2. Rijksoverheid, Verdragen op het gebied van directe belastingen per 1 juli 2026 (PDF, in Dutch), checked 22 September 2026
3. KOTRA, About KOTRA, checked 22 September 2026
4. KOTRA Amsterdam, checked 22 September 2026
5. KISED, K-Startup Center (in Korean), checked 22 September 2026
6. CBS, Buitenlandse zeggenschap bedrijven in Nederland, table 85821NED (in Dutch), checked 22 September 2026

Checked on 22 September 2026. This page is general information, not legal, tax or investment advice. Rules change: check the official source, or ask an adviser, before you act on it.