Japan - Travel Insurance

I am a Kiwi. My wife is Japanese. We live in Korea. Early next year we want to return to Japan for a holiday. It is easy for me to obtain travel insurance, but as my wife is returning to her home country, it seems quite impossible. Normally, she would have cover but is no longer paying into the insurance/tax scheme as she is not living there. Does anyone know what we can do so my wife can obtain travel insurance (for the travel and the duration of stay) for her home country? :confused:

Are you primarily concerned with potential travel disruption? Or potential health issues?

Why can't you purchase travel insurance for your wife? She is traveling away from home right? Home is currently Korea right?

Travel insurance means insurance covering a person OUTSIDE of the place in which you are currently residing. So if she has Korean medical then she buys travel insurance, it should cover her for her trip to Japan.

FYI - I am a Canuck, wife is Japanese. We purchase in Canada travel insurance which covers her for her trip anywhere outside of Canada including Japan and (excluding USA).

The simplest solution is to get a credit card that offers you travel insurance wherever you go.

Thank you for your help. ^ We'd like both travel disruption and health cover for my wife. The policies we can read in English from Korea all say "permanent resident", which neither of us are. As we have both been overseas for longer than three months, credit card travel insurance is meaningless too. We might just opt for purchasing travel insurance at the airport and then registering with the local Ward Office once we get back to Japan; pay the tax and just get on with it and then cancel it again at the end of the three weeks. Thanks again.

So currently in Korea, do you have travel insurance? Who covers you?

For us, as a Canadian resident, our policy wording states, as long as we are outside of Canada we are covered (excluding USA) So my wife, even though is Japanese National, is covered by a Canadian travel insurance policy while in Japan. (Since I got my Japanese residency not sure how all is going to wash)

This covers us for travel disruption, travel emergency health, luggage etc...

We once lost coverage because we were out of the country too long. At that time we ended up using www.worldnomads.com. Not cheap but reasonable. Never found out if there service was good or not but others that I know who have used them were pleased.

As I am working in Korea I pay a monthly fee so am covered for medical. My wife is on a Spouse visa and her medical comes out of my payments. Having contacted many many insurance companies, they all say the same thing that they won't cover a Japanese national returning to their home country. A colleague who was trying to head home to South Africa couldn't purchase insurance as they wouldn't accept her foreign credit card for payment. If it's possible to buy online from Korea, I think we will have to find a Korean to help us purchase with their card and just pay them cash. We still have a month to get sorted thankfully.

For insurance purpose you wife is a resident of Korea. There are many expat type travel health insurance available online (including one mentioned above). Obviously you want to talk to the insurer to make sure the residency status for insurance purpose is confirmed in writing.

I imagine this is too late to be of use to the OP, but I recently had a conversation with these guys -
http://www.worldnomads.com/

It looks like the policy covers a permanent resident of Korea when travelling to Japan, regardless of the nationality of the insured person. ("South Korea" is in the drop down list of countries ... I struggled to find it at first). Nontheless, I would check with them and get it in writing before signing up.