Regular Registration for Korea's Real Estate Agent Exam Closed on 7 August — Only the 1–2 October Vacancy Round Is Left

Two days are all that remain this year

The schedule published by Q-Net for the 37th examination reads as follows.

• Regular registration: 3 – 7 August 2026 (closed)
• Vacancy registration: 1 – 2 October 2026
• Examination date: Saturday 31 October 2026 — first and second stages held the same day
• Provisional answers and objection period: 31 October – 6 November
• Final answers and results: 2 December

Vacancy registration fills seats released by cancellations, on a first-come basis. There is no guarantee that a seat remains in the region you want, and the window shuts in two days. If you missed the regular period, the morning of 1 October is the only opening left this year.

Fail the first stage and the second is void

This is the most commonly misread rule. Because both stages are sat on the same day, people assume a strong second-stage score can be carried into the following year. It cannot: the Enforcement Decree of the Licensed Real Estate Agents Act declares the second-stage examination void for anyone who fails the first.

Conversely, passing the first stage exempts you from it at the next examination only. Once. From the sitting after that, you start again at stage one. Which is why, for candidates taking both stages together, stage one is effectively the gate. It explains why loading study time onto the second-stage subjects and coasting through the first is a losing plan.

The pass mark is a score, not a rank

The examination is, in principle, criterion-referenced. In both stages, each subject is marked out of 100, and a candidate passes with at least 40 in every subject and an average of at least 60 across all of them. However many people sit it, however hard the paper was, clearing that line is a pass.

There is a qualification. The Decree allows the administering authority, where it announces a planned number of successful candidates on manpower-supply grounds, to select in descending score order from among those scoring at least 40 in every subject. That clause has rarely been invoked, but a description that calls the exam "purely criterion-referenced" is not accurate.

What matters in practice is the 40. Average 60 and you still fail with a 39 in one subject. Writing off a subject removes the pass entirely.

The subjects are fixed in law

The subject list is set in the Enforcement Decree and its appended table, so it does not change from year to year.

• Stage 1 (two subjects) — Introduction to Real Estate Studies (including appraisal theory) / Civil law and civil special acts, limited to the provisions bearing on brokerage
• Stage 2 (three subjects) — Statutes on agent duties and real estate transaction reporting, plus brokerage practice / Public law on real estate, limited to brokerage-relevant provisions / Statutes on real estate registration and disclosure, plus real estate tax law

The third stage-2 subject bundles registration and spatial-information statutes together with tax law in a single paper, which makes it the heaviest in practice. It is where the 40-point floor collapses most often.

No age or education requirement, but there are bars

There is no restriction on education, age or work experience. What the statute does set out are circumstances that block you from sitting at all.

• Anyone sanctioned for exam misconduct whose five-year exclusion period has not expired
• Anyone whose licence was revoked — for obtaining it improperly, or for lending or transferring the certificate — where three years have not passed
• Anyone who already holds the licence

The third bar closes off re-sitting. Taking the exam again to improve a score is not possible.

What registered candidates should do before October

If you are registered, three things are worth doing before the exam. First, re-check the venue and entry time on your admission ticket a few days beforehand. Second, confirm which forms of ID are accepted. Third, know that provisional answers are published on the afternoon of the exam and objections can be filed until 6 November. Items do get overturned through that process every year.

On fees, the rule is that cancelling within the registration period refunds the full amount, and nothing is returned once the refund window has passed. If your circumstances change, handle it inside the window.

If this year is gone, what to start on

Miss the vacancy round too and what remains is not a year but roughly ten months; next year's regular registration will most likely open in early August again. Two preparations are realistic in that time.

One is to lay down the subjects that need repeated passes first — tax law and public law in stage 2. Stage-1 subjects recover if postponed; stage-2 subjects do not. The other is budgeting. If you want to reconsider the choice of qualification itself, how to choose a certificate worth earning is a useful starting point, and whether a course is state-subsidised has to be checked against the training list in the National Tomorrow Learning Card guidance. Support varies course by course, so judge by the HRD-Net listing rather than an academy's advertising copy.

One more thing: brokerage practice really begins after the exam. Getting a feel in advance for what actually goes wrong in a live contract — through cases like the move-in report and fixed date or the order of steps when a deposit is not returned — makes the stage-2 material stick far better.

This article summarizes the 2026 schedule for the 37th licensed real estate agent examination as published by Q-Net (Human Resources Development Service of Korea) and the subject, pass-mark and disqualification provisions of the Licensed Real Estate Agents Act and its Enforcement Decree (verified August 2026). The administering body's own notice governs detailed implementation plans, venues and refund rules, and dates are subject to change, so check the Q-Net announcement directly before registering.