Monday afternoon was marked by a trip to the Uijeongbu Immigration Office with my academy director to renew my work visa for another year. After submitting my health check and apostilled, notarized criminal background check last year the only thing we needed this time around was to purchase the three stamps necessary for the paperwork. If you ignore the time we spent in the waiting lounge - about 25 minutes due to the fact that there were six people ahead of us - the whole process took about three minutes. The immigration official working that day was the same person who helped us last year and the year before that, although the odds are against her remembering us from our very brief visits.

While waiting for our turn at the counter I was reminded of a story involving the first foreign teacher at our academy and his experience with the Korean Immigration Service. Without getting into too much detail - since this takes place before my arrival at the academy and was later shared by the director - this particular teacher was a Korean-Canadian who came to teach on an F-4 Visa but encountered problems when it came time to renew his visa. The government issues F-4 Visas to ethnic Koreans who are not Korean nationals (citizens) and they contain the perk of remaining valid for two years with an unlimited number of renewals available plus a few other benefits. Compare this to my E-2 Visa, which is valid for a year at a time and contains restrictions on what kind of activities I can perform here -- making the F-4 Visa more convenient.

After leaving our school this teacher got a job working in the capital and needed to use one of the local immigration offices to renew his visa. However, the clerk there pretty much told him that he should never have been granted an F-4 Visa in the first place, so the teacher came back to our school to ask the director for help sorting everything out. Seems the problem was that his parents renounced their Korean citizenship after he was born - one week later - instead of before, which meant he was disqualified from receiving an F-4 Visa. Odds are someone spaced while processing his initial visa request, assumed the dates were okay, entered his information into the system, and nobody knew any better until he came back for the renewal.

My passport as a teen by richardmasoner

Turns out the Uijeongbu immigration office didn't want anything to do with him either, even with our director present. During his visit to one of the Seoul immigration offices - I no longer remember which branch was involved - he made a scene over the refusal to renew his visa that was subsequently logged into the KIS computer network. When it comes to information involving the status of foreign nationals residing in a country it makes sense to have everything linked for easy access and transmission via a network -- including notes on any problems related to these individuals. This is something that may be easy to forget during the heat of the moment or when dealing with a particularly obstinate immigration official, but it does apparently make a difference.

In summary: don't act like a jerk at immigration. You will be noticed and it might come back to bite you later.

One of the other academy directors in town has noted that a female employee at the Uijeongbu immigration office is a real pain to work with but I've never had any problems with service, whether alone or with my academy director. Going along with this comment from Brian Dear in a recent post by Brian in Jeollanam-do (concerning an attempted framing at Incheon International Airport), it's worth dressing nicely any time you know you'll be paying a visit to your local immigration office. It's done a good job of keeping me out of trouble in regard to international travel, immigration officials, and doing anything special at the bank. And there's also the bonus of affirming the traditional image of teachers within a Confucian perspective that could always help you (and the next guy or girl) out by presenting an upstanding image of foreign English teachers in Korea.

Immigration Office V by Jens-Olaf