Can I enter as a tourist while waiting for the D-4?

Do not do this. It is the one piece of advice in this whole process we give without qualification.

Why it goes wrong: a D-4 issued after you are already inside Korea on a tourist entry generally cannot be activated from within the country. The visa is issued by a consulate abroad, and to use it you have to enter Korea on it. So the sequence becomes: enter as a tourist, visa is approved, then leave Korea, then re-enter on the D-4. That is an unplanned international flight, and it is the good outcome.

The worse outcomes:

1. Immigration at the border can and does refuse entry to people who appear to be arriving to live rather than visit, particularly with a one-way ticket, a lot of luggage, or an obvious study plan. A refused entry is recorded and it complicates the visa application that is still in progress.

2. If your consulate requires you to be resident in their jurisdiction when the visa is issued — many do — being in Korea can invalidate the application entirely and you start over.

3. Some consulates ask you to collect the visa in person. You cannot do that from Seoul.

4. Your school may need to reissue documents with new dates, which costs weeks.

What to do instead, since the underlying problem is real:

- Housing does not require you to be present. Goshiwons and share houses take bookings remotely, and for the first month you want something short-term and cancellable anyway. Do not sign a long lease from abroad, but a month in a goshiwon is a phone call.
- If the visa is genuinely going to miss the term start, ask the school about deferring to the next intake. Arriving three weeks late to a ten-week term is a bad start and schools do this routinely.
- Ask the school to chase the CCVI. Delays are often at that step, and the school can push where you cannot.

The rule: enter Korea on the visa you intend to hold. Every shortcut around that costs more than waiting.