Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Babayaga]

How do you go about getting it? Is a letter of invitation also required?

[RachaelRoo]

I would also like to find out about this - I've done some research on the internet but I didn't find too much. I would love to see what's left of my grandparent's village one day - has anyone been there? Any trip details you could share? I hear it's super cheap to travel around the U but it's not exactly a popular travel destination. I'd be concerned about saftey too.
Babayaga, I didn't know you were U-Canadian too! Are you planning to do some family research there? When did your family come over to Canada?

[Babayaga]

[RachaelRoo]

My family was from Kolymyya in the west - where is Chernihyvtsi ? I am really interested in family research, but I don't speak Ukrainian and I'm not sure how to go about it. I bet I could hire someone in the Ukraine to help me though for a pretty good price - I just don't know where to start. It would mean a lot to me and members of my family if I could uncover more information about their lives - there are many details we just can't find out from Canada. Would church records be a possibility, or would those have likely been destroyed during the insane turmoil the Ukraine has suffered since the revolution (two world wars, a famine with a higher death toll than the holocaust, and then Stalin)...?
My grandfather left during the revolution when he was 10 years old. He was from a wealthy factory owning family until the revolution happened. He didn't talk about it much when he was alive because it was a traumatic experience for him - the Bolsheviks executed his uncle and almost got his father too, but as the second son, my great grandfather was an officer in the military and managed to use his position to discover that he was next on the hit list. He escaped to Canada and four years later the Red Cross smuggled my grandfather, his mother, and his sisters out of the country as well. I haven't been able to peice together much factual info - I have some photos, priceless valuables which were smuggled out, the name and location of the town, some old report cards in POLISH, and oral history - that's about it.
It would mean a lot to me if anyone could assist me with some info or tips on how a family research project could be conducted - and how I could even enter the country.

[Babayaga]

[ilovebdt]

http://www.ukremb.com/consular/visas.html

[funplanet]

Americans no longer need a visa to the Ukraine...

[ddeubel]

Rachel,

You'd find much, church records and govt records......village records, anecdotal stuff, museums.....History runs deep deep deep there.....in all parts of the world where suffering is/has been immense. Seems a universal thing, how pain stays in the memory. Remember Dante's phrase that there is no greater happiness than remembering one's happy days in hell......

I lived there for a year in 2000 and then in 2003. Went for a few weeks and stayed a year...Writing about a killed journalist , the corrupt Prez. Lovely city Kyiv, like a beat up but still spry call girl........Paris of the east. Dniepr runs long and deep like the Han through its hills.....

Anyways, no problem with visas but just all the regular mumbo jumbo left over from communism...Paperwork and bribes.....(to speed things up). Read the article below -- exaggerated yes, but true in spirit. So just bring lots of low denomination bills.... But go ! Tymoshenko, the recently ousted PM gets my Nobel prize monination ....she was once a pure apparachnik but after a year in prison, came out to live like a drunk from a cold bath.....Yushenko as Prez....he gets my raspberry, a flunkie, banker, sell out, corrupt like all the rest but just not man enough to be seen as such.....Anyways, enough of the politics....As Shevchenko, their great poet said,......' silence speaks what only the heart can utter."

DD

PS. I do have a few email addresses, contacts. if needed. Also have to look up the website of a very cool woman...she made the most amazing website , travelogue of the Ukraine...will post it..
Meanwhile: Driving the scenic route to EU membership

By Nicholas Kulish The New York Times
MONDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2005

NEW YORK Traveling through Turkey last year, I heard a consistent message from government officials and human rights groups: Keep the European Union talks going. What surprised me was that many said the process was more important than membership. The talks need to keep going or reforms will grind to a halt, the argument went, so let's worry about the details later. The message sounded Machiavellian. But I grasped its meaning a few months later as I sat at a Ukrainian border station in a beat-up Volkswagen Golf, trying to cross into Moldova.

"Present? Present?" the border guard asked, holding up my CD player. I smiled and told the guard I didn't understand. He smiled back, gave the player a whack with his billy club. Then we were inexplicably told we couldn't leave the country. In retrospect, I might as well have given it to him. It could have saved me 30 hours of desperate searching for a station where the border police would let us pass without stealing our car or demanding a bribe higher than we were willing to pay. The asking price at the next stop was $200, a lot more than I paid for the CD player.

The travel and foreign affairs writer Robert Kaplan writes that if you want to get to know a place you have to move on the ground. Fly into the capital and look around for a couple days before flying out again and you learn nothing. After logging several thousand miles in that trusty Golf in Eastern Europe last year, I'm inclined to agree. A stopover in Kiev and a visit to Warsaw wouldn't be so different. Both are scarred by war and Stalinism, beautiful in places and hideous in others. Truck stops at dusk in the boonies are another story. In Ukraine I feared each trip to a roadside bathroom might be my last.

Entering Ukraine was as challenging as leaving. After a four-hour wait in a line of cars that hadn't moved, my companion and I finally realized that we had to bribe drivers camped out ahead to get to the border station. There the agents tried to impound our car, or generously suggested that we sell it to a friend who materialized, in Mephistophelian fashion, seemingly out of nowhere.

I had both my worst and best times in places like Sevastopol and Odessa. But the open, daily corruption was difficult to take. A form of paranoia sets in when a shakedown for a bribe is an hourly occurrence on the highway. A gray uniform and a black-and-white traffic baton become the most frightening sight. I was glad to hear in July that President Viktor Yushchenko disbanded the traffic police force, but recent turmoil in the government tempers optimism about the country's future.

We cheered out loud as we re-entered civilization, crossing the border into Romania. Romania, another former Communist dictatorship is my idea of civilization? The answer is absolutely, because of that tiny little blue flag with yellow stars - the banner of the European Union - at the crossing point. Let me be clear: Romania is not yet a member, and still the contrast with a country like Ukraine was night and day. What had been an hourly ritual of bribes, doling out the three C's - cash, Coke and cigarettes - abruptly ended.

We drove the length of Romania and the breadth of its European Union-accession comrade Bulgaria without once being solicited for a bribe. Romania and Bulgaria have their own problems, but it's doubtful that either would trade places with Ukraine. The difference throughout the drive was clear: Countries on the EU invite list seemed more stable than those outside the velvet rope. Debate always centers on joining the union, but the greater improvement seems to come from the invitation. It's like a stamp of approval for nervous investors and political cover for reformers. "We don't want to allow Kurdish-language radio and television broadcasts, but the European Union is making us," Turkish officials have told hardliners.

Through its guest-worker program, Germany has bound its fortunes to Turkey's. But all of Europe needs a stable neighbor to the southeast. The alternative could be flare-ups with Greece and Cyprus, lost leverage over human rights concerns and an even bigger mess in the vicinity of Iraq.

EU members remained deadlocked over the weekend on holding membership talks with Turkey. A last-minute deal could get the process moving, but every step seems harder than the last. To understand what Turkey would look like without even a distant promise of membership, perhaps European officials could take a spin through Ukraine. My advice: Bring Marlboros and money in small denominations. You don't get change from corrupt cops.

(Nicholas Kulish writes for the New York Times editorial board.)