Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mishlert]

On my visa run to Fukuoka once, I met and hung out with a model.
She was very cool, and a lot of fun.

[Ya-ta Boy]

On my one visa trip to Osaka I met a newbie chick. She was in Asia because she'd just finished her third (I think it was) Master's and had just bought a pickup truck and couldn't make payments. Her total debt was somewhere in the neighborhood of $70,000.

We went out for galbi once we got back. She threw a tantrum because they didn't have forks. When I say 'she threw a tantrum' I mean she threw the chopsticks on the floor. The waitress ran across the street and borrowed a fork from another restaurant. The chick said it was the least she could do.

We lost contact soon after that.

[pauly]

Not to be a grammar nazi (I couldn't resist this one), but shouldn't the first choice of the poll read "no. i only like to play BY myself" and not "no. i only like to play WITH myself?" It just sounds so...

[matthewwoodford]

[Tiger Beer]

[Plume D'ella Plumeria]

The last visa run I made (Fukuoka), there was some scraggly looking guy filling out the application form at the embassy. He went to the window to submit the form and turned away looking abashed a moment later. He came over to me, a virtual stranger, and said that he didn't have any money and therefore couldn't afford the visa fee. He explained that he had used all the money he had with him at Korean immigration in Busan to pay some kind of fine. Then he asked me to lend him the money for the visa, a rather significant amount of money to be asking a stranger for, I thought. Even panhandlers and homeless folk rarely ask for the equivalent of 60,000 won (if I am remembering the fee amount correctly). I backed hastily away, claiming a cash flow problem and watched warily as he approached another visa applicant with his sob story and plea. I guess I'm a bad Samaritan, but somehow I knew that handing over money to that dubious looking character was going to mean I'd never see that money again. I figure that I just can't afford to be the philanthropist of penniless E-2 visa seekers.

[Mashimaro]

[Zenpickle]

I met some interesting folks, including a middle-aged professor from Texas who had great stories. But I met many that had me thinking, "Hmm... maybe SBS was on to something."

There was one guy, while filling out his application, was bragging that by the fifth month, he's going to call in sick from the airport on his flight out of the country. A few of us were peeking over at his application to see what school he was signing up for. He then would ask to each lunch with us, disappear, reappear, accuse us of leaving him, then disappear again.

Another girl seemed really cool until something didn't go as planned or a train was a tad late. She then fell apart and panicked and started ranting and raving at every person, calling them names.

The train ride back to the airport, the foreigners on the train started getting rowdy and disrespectful. They bitched that they had to change seats because they weren't in the seat they were assigned.

Other than the professor, I wouldn't want to hang out with most any of those people again.

[Flossie]

I guess I am like previous poster. Never had to do a visa run. Had my visa before I got here, then kept working at the same hagwon although changed branches. Just had to renew, didn't have to do a visa run.

To answer a previous question: based on my experience, you only need to do a visa run to renew an E2 if you are changing companies, or if you are working for the same company but the owner is legally different, eg: franchise. Otherwise you just have to go to immigration with papers and they fix it for you.

Does anyone know if it is only E2 visas that need visa runs? What about the other working visas? I just changed to student visa and didn't need to do one. Nice!!

[Cthulhu]

My last visa run was around 1999 but I met a number of people on them--average people, but mostly decent people. But it was on a visa run I hung out with a rather nice woman who disabused me of the preconceived notion that lesbians are unfriendly and wound far too tightly.

Plume D'ella Plumeria wrote:

[Zenpickle]

[weatherman]

Did three visa runs in total. Now on F-2-1 so don't need to anymore. I always flew, got a hotel for the night and kept to myself. Find I can get a better feel of the city if I don't have to be in attention to another's conversation or needs.

[whatthefunk]

I meet visa run people all the time at the bars in Fukuoka. 50% strange, 25% impossible to talk to, 25% pretty cool. Met a few Daves posters as well...