This time around in Korea
has been, for lack of a better word, kind of a shit show, or a hot mess if you
aren’t a fan of profanity (though what anyone who didn’t like profanity would
be doing around me, I wouldn’t know). Either way, it’s been a mess
of problems from top to tail.
First of all, the visa
paperwork has changed slightly since the last time I was here. The big
difference is that while last time a local police background check sufficed,
now an FBI background check is required. I could still get the
fingerprinting done at the local police station, but I had to send it in to the
FBI headquarters in Virginia. It came back after a few weeks as planned,
even if the process was obnoxious. All that was left was to get it
apostilled. The only way to get an apostille for an FBI background
check is through the Department of State. If I thought the FBI was
annoying, it was only because I had NO IDEA what kind of shenanigans I was
getting myself into with the DoS. First of all, I called in to
make sure I was doing everything exactly the right way so nothing would get
messed up. Their information hotline has, no exaggeration, a
four-minute intro before you even get into a menu where you can select
options. So that’s not good. Once I finally got through I
talked to a woman who told me that I had to go to a specific website to get the
information I needed, which was for a private channeler, who would charge me
way more money than necessary to get the paperwork taken care
of. Back to the four-minute intro. This time, I made sure
to ask all the necessary questions to get my stuff taken care
of. Fill out the paperwork exactly like this. Check. Send
it tracked and include a tracked return
envelope. Check. Include a check for x amount of
money. Check.
With all that done I
thought I was in the clear and would be ready to start the visa process in the
five days it would take them to receive, apostille, and process my background
check. Instead, I didn’t hear from them. Didn’t receive
anything in the mail. I called the post office and the envelope I
had sent had been received, but the return envelope had not been used yet, even
though more than a week had passed. So, once more unto the
four-minute intro, dear friends, once more. I finally got someone on
the phone that knew what they were talking about, and they told me that
“tracked mail” didn’t mean through the USPS and tracked. It meant
through FedEx or one of the other private mail services. Anything
from USPS gets sent to another office to SIT for three weeks before it even
makes it to the main office to be processed. So I had to sit around
and wait for it even longer than anticipated. Finally, the day
arrived when my brand new shiny, perfect background checks appeared in the
mail. When they were opened they revealed… an extra piece of paper
saying that because I didn’t answer a question that wasn’t actually asked on
the form it wasn’t a real apostille and it wouldn’t work for
anything. So gee thanks DoS. And then the government shut
down. I took the FBI background checks and sent them to a channeler
in California, who told me that it doesn’t even have to go to the Department of
State. Really, it can be apostilled by the Secretary of the State of
California, so long as you get it notarized there. So I just threw
caution to the wind and did that. It took four days through
international mail.
Completely frustrated and
disillusioned with the government’s capabilities to do even the most basic
things, I was at least prepared to finally apply for my visa. Here’s
where the real fun started.
I got
rejected. Why, one might ask? Last time I was in Korea I
re-signed to stay for another year, and my visa had to be extended, which it
was. Then I decided to stay on for two extra months to make the
timing of my homecoming a little more fortuitous, and I had to extend my visa
again. My boss told me that he would do it for me, and he took my passport
and alien registration card to get it all straightened out. A week
later he gave me my stuff back and said everything was fine.
A month later I went to
help a friend get a new cell phone using my alien registration card. When
I gave it to the woman in the cell phone store, she informed me that my alien
registration card had expired 30-something days earlier. Confused, I
looked through my passport. There was my first extension, allowing
me to stay in the country until a date in the previous week. There
was no second extension. I went to my boss on Monday and he informed
me that he’d “forgotten” to get me an extension, but he’d go do it at
immigration that afternoon. I told him I wouldn’t work until I was
sure that everything had been straightened out and that I wasn’t illegal. He
took me with him to immigration that morning and we talked to the
agent. Of course, he spoke very little English, so my boss had to
translate a lot. However, the overwhelming message was, “It’s
okay. You can work. It’s fixed.” My boss told
me he had to pay a fine, and that I would then need to fill out a piece of
paperwork at the airport when I finally left the country.
I filled out the paper,
the fine was paid, and everything was copacetic. Only it wasn’t.
He never paid a
fine. He mistranslated intentionally at the immigration office to
make me think that everything was taken care of. He told me to fill
out the piece of paper that was actually a confession to overstaying my visa
and working illegally. I had been blacklisted from living or working
in Korea.
Here’s the problem with
that: I was already in Korea when I found that out. Basically, at
that point, it looked like I was going to get deported, which is a situation I
never imagined finding myself in.
In the end, my new boss
went in and talked to the head of the immigration office and got special
permission for my blacklisting to be lifted if I could get my old boss to write
a letter of recommendation that corroborated my version of the visa
debacle. Obviously, the old owner of the school who had made all the
mistakes and screwed me over wasn’t going to write that. Instead, I
went to the director of my old school, who no longer worked for the old owner
and who knew what kind of a business owner he had been. She wrote
the letter, and we sent everything in, hoping that would be it. But
this is my life and this is also the LONGEST STORY EVER, so of course it
wasn’t. Don’t worry though- it’s only going to be a tiny little two
week long investigation into my life the last time I was in
Korea. No big deal at all.
SIGH.
And yet, in the end I
won. The blacklisting was lifted and my visa request was granted,
finally, after almost two straight months of stressing about it. On
the day my boss found out he came to talk to me, and some students were
nearby. He told me what had happened, and we both fake cheered and
he said, “We are the winners!” I laughed and he went back to
work. Then one of the students asked me,
“What? What? Kelsey finish her sticker
chart?” Which is the most awesomely childish misinterpretation of
adult life I’ve ever heard. Yes, darling, I finished my sticker
chart.
So last week instead of
going to the school’s Halloween party and taking pictures of the students in
their costumes, I took an hour long flight to a town in the south of
Japan. I landed in Fukuoka at around 9:30 am, and took the subway to
the Korean consulate. After dropping off my passport, they told me
to return the next day at 1:30. I went to the hotel my director had
booked, but I wasn’t allowed to check in yet. So I grabbed a quick
bite, and spent my afternoon reading Oliver Twist in a beautiful park around
the corner from my hotel.
When it was time for me
to check in to my hotel I went. I thought I’d seen small hotel rooms
before. HA. The room was the length of the bed, with a TV
between the end of the bed and the wall. There was a desk attached
to the bed that was about one foot wide and touched the opposite wall of the
hotel room. The bathroom was a cabinet. It was actually
kind of interesting to see how they had fit all the essentials into the
smallest possible space, maximizing the utility of the space. It
wasn’t really a big deal that it wasn’t huge and comfy anyway, since it was
only for one night. I ended up grabbing some dinner and crashing
early, which was nice. The next day I got to sleep in and take my
time getting ready. I read in the park for another hour or so,
before going back to the consulate to pick up my visa. I arrived
precisely at 1:30, only to find out that (surprise, surprise) the computer
system was down and it was going to take a while to get my passport
back. I finally got out of there and went straight to the
airport.
My flight wasn’t until 9
pm, but I wanted to see if I could get bumped up to an earlier flight. I
got there are 3 pm and talked to the woman at the ticket
counter. She looked up my reservation, hit a few keys, and gave me
my passport back. “You can go check in,” she said, pointing over to
the empty line area in front of the check in counter. I went over
and gave the woman there my passport. She handed it back to me with
a ticket and said, “Your flight leaves at 3:40. It starts to board
at 3:15. Have a great trip!” Seriously. No
extra charge to book a flight 40 minutes before it left. I got on
the flight with no trouble at all, and got home several hours before I was even
supposed to leave Japan.
It’s kind of crazy how
simple a lot of things are in Asia when compared to the US. It’s
something I’ve noticed a lot of in the years I’ve lived here. Things
that take days in the States takes hours here, and things that usually take
weeks take days. It’s amazing how taking down a lot of the red tape
and streamlining processes can make day-to-day life SO much easier.
Anyway, epic story still
long, I have a visa now! I’m going to immigration to get my alien
card next week, and then I’ll be so legal I can get a cell
phone! Exciting, exciting!
