西洋오랑캐

A meer two days after failing my written test for my driver’s liscense, I found myself once again face to face with the irrational beast that is Korean beauacracy. The day started off innocently enough, I found myself sitting in a cafe with my Korean teacher, explaining about my failed attempt at becoming a liscensed driver in Korea.

Before I departed from my homestead that morning, my wife informed me that after my class we would be going to the local immigration office to apply for my F-2 (family member) visa. Now this visa is a visa most awesome! As an English teacher in Korea, I have very little control over my own destiny, mainly due to the fact that the school I work at controls my visa. I quit, they cancel my visa, I’m in Korea illegally. The school decides to randomly close…again my visa ceases to exist and I’m in a world of hurt legally. The F-2 visa would allow me to taste the sweet freedom of being able to quit a job without any sort of reprecussion should I so desire. The F-2 visa would allow me the freedom to not work should I chose to go study something…or randomly ride my bicycle about. In sort the F-2 visa is awesome!

But like all things totally awesome: Nintendo circa 1986, Kirby Puckett rookie cards, or cases of beer at age 19 (in America); the F-2 visa is a little bit hard to come by. First you have to find a Korean person willing to marry you. Ok, I accomplished that. The next part is where beaucracy first reers it’s ugly head. Like those seemingly pointless quests in any role playing video game (”Collect for me 3 troll heads, Moon Powder, and a complete set of 1988 Topps Baseball cards and I will award you with a weapon of unstoppable fury!”) my wife and I…well really just my wife, had to collect all manners of random papers. Marriage liscense, id cards, family registry, my passport and id card…and proof of employment stating that my wife was able to take care of my sorry ass.

It was this proof of employment, like the three troll heads, that was impossible to come by, since my wife was not employed at the time. The Korean government was willing to cut us some slack though…if we couldn’t get that proof of employment, a bank statement declaring that she had 30,000,000원 (approx. $30,000 US) would be good enough. Between the two of us, we had a little under that ammount, so we also needed to present the deed to the apartment we were living in.

After a morning of jackassing about collecting papers, we headed off to the immigration office. Since I technically no longer live in Seoul, I had to travel to a different immigration office than the one I normally visit. I had to visit one of the immigration offices out in the provinces, and man were there a lot of South East Asians in the house!

Normally a trip to immigration in Seoul will result in at least one, possibly two conversations with Canadians while waiting for my number to be called. At this place, I was the only white person out of the more than 50 or so people waiting around for numbers to be called. So we filled out the papers we needed to fill out, purchased some stamps to affix to our documents, and than sat down and studied some Korean while we waited, and waited…and waited to be called up.

While waiting I located a box with slips of papers for Kindness Reports and Unkindness Reports that could be filled out evaluating the service of the immigration gestapo that attended to us. I took both, a placed them in my pocket for future use. Shortly there after our number rang and we walked over to the window.

Some jerk with a Yao Ming-esque crew cut addressed us shortly, “Give me your papers, passport, and identification card.”

Now I can imagine the stress that dealing with an endless stream of immigrants must cause this man, but right away I began to feel the urge to crumple up the Kindness Report resting in my coat pocket. We handed over the papers to the gentleman as requested and he proceeded to ask us some questions.

My wife then alerted him to the fact that my job would be ending soon (or had already ended), which prompted the gentleman to go on and on about a two month investigation that would have to be conducted since we were getting married. He claimed that people would come to my home, and that phone calls would be made to my place of employment, and that the whole thing would take 2 months.

“Two months?!” my wife and I bellowed in unison.

Nathan (of Seoul Hero), as well as one of our other friends were both recently married and both applied for F-2 visas which were issued within 2 weeks time. Perhaps the man made a mistake.

“Ah…you must mean two weeks,” my wife proclaimed.

“No. I said two months,” the man continued, “A lot of Chinese and South East Asians fake marriages to stay in the country so we have to check everyone.”

Now, I may not have the whitest skin, but that was the first time I had ever been confused with someone from Vietnam. Clearly my wife thought the same thing.

“But as you can see, he is not from China…”

“Everyone!”

I’m going to give the immigration office credit for at least being fair in this regard. I’m not thinking I should get special treatment due to my nationality. But I still had a question regarding the fairness of the system, “Why is it only two weeks in Seoul?”

We got no answer. The man took our papers and told us that someone would appear to check in on us when we least expected it. We then brought up the point that my current visa would expire while this two month background check went down. The man insisted that this wouldn’t be a problem so long as I didn’t attempt to get work…basically he was saying, “Well buddy, for the next two months, sit on your ass and watch rock videos and cartoons at youtube.com,” which was not what I really wanted to hear.

Once out of the immigration office, my wife began jamming on the phone, calling friends, family, and other immigration offices across the country, and in the process learned that the office we went to had the longest turn around time from application to issuing of the visa.

So I wait, and I wait…and I wait…and wait…