Korean Job Discussion Forums

burnt_out_in_seoul · Joined: 19 Sep 2012

My fiancee and I will marry soon. I'd like to find out about the F6 visa before we get married. I can't find any information on it and don't want to show up at immigration asking questions. My fiancee seems to think we can just get married and they will stamp me an F6 visa. Then I can work freely and live continuously in Korea. Maybe it is more complicated than that. Please shed some light on the process and what advantages the F6 visa has.
Thanks.

timhorton · Joined: 07 Dec 2005

You control your destiny vs your school/contract

burnt_out_in_seoul · Joined: 19 Sep 2012

What is required for the visa?

faeriehazel · Joined: 04 Mar 2008

It's a lot more complicated than what your fiancee thinks. Before you get the visa you have to register your marriage in Korea, and before you do that you have to go to your own embassy and get a document that proves you are allowed to get married (as in, you are not currently married to someone else).

timhorton · Joined: 07 Dec 2005

http://forums.eslcafe.com/korea/viewtopic.php?t=4842&start=45&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=

fezmond · Joined: 27 Oct 2008

Which country are you from?

If it's the UK I can give advice, don't know about the others

burnt_out_in_seoul · Joined: 19 Sep 2012

joeteacher · Joined: 11 Jul 2007

http://seoul.usembassy.gov/acs_getting_married.html

I think everything you need will be here. I can't give you any info really because it's been a while since I went through the process and don't know if I have my facts straight. It isn't too difficult. I think the biggest pain was the wait at the US embassy (a few hours). Dealing with the Korean side was quite painless.

giraffe · Joined: 07 Apr 2009

It's also apparently harder to apply for an F6 visa in country...

I applied for my F2-1 ( now F6) in Canada at the Korean Embassy. It was pretty easy. Bring in all the required paperwork pay the money and 10 days later i went back to the embassy with the visa in my passport. The visa had an expiry date of 3 months from the day i picked it up. Month later wife and I moved to KOrea and i applied for my ARC card and the Arc card had a 1 year expiry day.

If you apply for it in country they for some reason make it alot more difficult. I've heard of people waiting over a month and many seem to have issues meeting the financial criteria. Which is something i didnt have to prove when i applied out of country...

fezmond · Joined: 27 Oct 2008

Otus · Joined: 09 Feb 2006

Can save a lot of frustration and grief if you can get a marriage certificate from your home country and that means getting married in your home country.

Not sure if the embassies worked out a solution to the problem created a couple of years ago, or not. At that time, even when the embassies in Korea would issue the documentation to recognize a marriage in Korea, Korean immigration started refusing to accept it and wanted a marriage certificate from outside of Korea.

Embassies then stopped issuing that documentation and in some cases were looking for some kind of alternative.

There have been some previous threads on that if you can dig them up. It was a legal headspin and once you were married in Korea, you could not do it again outside Korea in many cases ...

PatrickGHBusan · Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2012 4:57 am Post subject:

The visa changes your status from sponsored foreign worker to resident with all the implications this has.

It does allow you more employment freedom (in terms of choice) but you still need to be qualified to get a job (degree for teaching, qualifications specific to another work field for a job there...).

You can also teach private lessons but must register for them and pay income taxes on the revenue they generate.