Korean Job Discussion Forums

[crang]

My Korean wife (Korean passport holder) and I (New Zealand passport holder) live in London, UK and we are planning to return to Korea in a couple of months. Hence I have had to apply for a spouse visa at the Korean Embassy here in London.

When I went in today to collect my passport, I was surprised to find that I had been given an F-3 instead of the F-2 visa that I was expecting. I had never heard of the visa before so I briefly quizzed the lady behind the window about it and she unconvincingly told me that I was allowed to work on this visa. I quickly realised that the internet would be a far better source of knowledge than her, so have just come home now and trawled through the forums to research this visa. From what I can see this visa is supposed to be given to spouses of foreigners working in korea. i.e. would be appropriate if my wife wasn't actually Korean!

Am I right in saying this? Has the embassy here screwed it up? F-3 visa basically looks like an eloganted tourist visa and appears to offers none of the cushy benefits of the modern day F-2 visa either sadly.

So before I go and make a fool of myself ranting at the embassy staff tomorrow can somebody please offer me some words of wisdom.

Oh... seems like the chances of them screwing up my visa have just increased dramatically - I have just noticed that my birth date of 12 June 1979, appears as 1979/07/12 on my visa!!

Looks like I will definitely be doing some ranting tomorrow morning....

[ttompatz]

[stakay]

[BigBuds]

This is from immigrations website:

Foreign Language Teaching
(E-2) A certificate for recognition of visa issuance, if applicable
An employment contract ,or a certificate of graduation Documents related to the set-up of the foreign language teaching institution
Reference
A certificate of Performance
(as sealed by the graduated university

Residency
(F-2) A certificate for recognition of visa issuance, if applicable
A certificate verifying family relations
ex) A certificate of marriage, family registry, or birth
Proof of financial capacity
Reference from a spouse in Korea

Family Dependency
(F-3) A certificate for recognition of visa issuance, if applicable
A certificate verifying family relations
ex) A certificate of marriage, family registry, or birth
A certificate of incumbency of an invitor
A certificate of tax payments of an invitor

[tardisrider]

[crang]

Thanks everybody for the information.

Now that I know what an F-3 visa actually is, I can only but guess that they rigidly enforced the financial criteria and I failed - the proof of funds I showed them was a little less than the US$30,000 that I have seen mentioned on other posts here. I guess it would have been nice of them to mention this when they returned my passport and a second-class F-3 visa.

Anyway, I'm still determined to try and get them to change it to an F-2 - they will at least have to reissue it anyway because of my incorrect date of birth (Tardis - your smarter than the average bear!).

So it seems like on an F-3 I would still need to apply for an additional visa once I got a job. Hence would this limit my job prospects to full-time E-2 visa teaching positions? I don't particularly want to teach and actually had an interview lined up working in International PR for a large Korean company. My understanding was that on a F-2 visa, employment with them would have been fine where as now they would need to sponsor me, which I'm not sure is entirely possible.

Will keep you updated on my return visit to the embassy.

[tzechuk]

[crang]

I went to the Korean Embassy here yesterday with my wife to unleash a torrent of abuse on them and try and sort this situation out.

In the end we just skipped the torrent of abuse and the conversation went a little something like this:

My wife: "Hi. I just want to know why you gave my a husband an F-3 visa and not an F2 visa?"

Them: "Huh, Oh.... I remember he applied for an F-2 visa, why did we give him an F-3 visa? That's the visa for the foreign spouse of an E-2 visa holder. That's wierd. Oh... we must have made a mistake. Just a minute, let me check."

My wife: "Yeah, and his date of birth is wrong on the visa too."

"Them: " Oh, wow, gees. Sorry. Seems like we really messed up. Wait a minute."

2 mins later:

Them: "Sorry, yes, we made some mistakes. I will change visa for you right now."

And with a simple swipe of a pen and a couple of official stamps of approval, my petty F-3 visa turned magically into an F-2 and my faith in all things Korean was restored.

Ancient Korean proverb: " All the visa information in the world counts for nothing if the person handing out the visas is hungover to hell."

[Paddycakes]