Similar Facebook posts made the same claim here<\/span><\/a>, here<\/span><\/a> and here<\/span><\/a>, and it also surfaced on South Korean forum\u00a0Humoruniv<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n In 2011, Georgian authorities appealed to other states to officially refer to their country as Georgia, rather than the Russian-favoured name Gruziya — a reminder of a Moscow-dominated past which the ex-Soviet country’s pro-Western government is trying to eradicate.<\/p>\n South Korea said it was the first country<\/a> to make the switch\u00a0(archived\u00a0link<\/a>).<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n But South Korea is not the only foreign country with visa-free access\u00a0<\/span>to Georgia.<\/span><\/p>\n “Georgia has a liberal visa policy and offers visa-free entry to citizens of many countries, not exclusively South Korea,” a spokesperson for the Georgian embassy in Seoul told AFP on January 17.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Georgia’s State Commission on Migration Issues lists<\/span><\/a> a total of 95 countries on its website “whose citizens have the right to enter and stay in Georgia without visa, for 1 full year,” which includes South Korea (archived link<\/span><\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n According to the embassy, Georgia granted visa-free entry to South Koreans in 2015,\u00a0following Seoul’s<\/span><\/span> announcement<\/span><\/a> in 2011 that it would officially call the country Georgia instead of Gruziya (archived link<\/a>). <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n However, Georgia’s visa policy for South Korean citizens was not related to Seoul’s decision to call the country by its preferred name.<\/span><\/p>\n “The Georgian government granting visa-free status to South Korean citizens is not contingent on South Korea changing its exonym for Georgia from the Russian-favoured ‘Gruziya’ to ‘Georgia,'” the embassy explained.<\/span><\/p>\n “<\/span>Visa policies are typically based on diplomatic relations and mutual agreements and are not typically influenced by the nomenclature of countries in foreign languages.”<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\nGeorgian visa policy<\/span><\/h3>\n