Korean Job Discussion Forums

[justin moffatt]

Regretably, I never posted a thread requesting information regarding the process of getting married in Korea. I assumed that it would not be too difficult. I WAS WRONG. Now I recognize that I have the propensity for drama and bad luck more than the average Joe, however, today was ridiculos.

1. Attended to the Embassy to get my Affidivat of Eligilbity for Marriage and my Certificate of Marriage. Filled out three copies of each, paid my 80,000 won and was provided with a step by step process letter.

2. Contacted an "agent" who can process our documents without having a witness present, and who supposedly can expediate the process in 3 days. Waited 4 hours for the "agent" to return to his office. After numerous phone calls, he claimed the process could NOW take 6-7 days. Regardless, he never returned to his office.

3. Attended to the Mapo-gu government office. Absolute morons. No-one spoke a lick of English, and had any clue on how to process a marriage certificate for foreigner/Korean marriage. My partner spent over 2 hours attempting to process the documents. We were informed that my partner had to change her Permanent Address to Seoul (even though we don't live in Seoul) for her Family of Register. We were also informed that the Affidavit, and Certificate had to be translated to Korean. My partner attempted to do so with great difficulty. We provided the translated documents and were informed it had to be an "exact word for word translation".

4. Attended to the Jogno-gu government office. Was informed that only the Affidavit had to be translated. Regardless, we crossed the street and had both the Affidavit and Certificate translated. The "translator" charged us double the price for each page (20,000 won each).

5. Attended back to the Mapo-gu office. Absolute morons. No government official (including the general manager) knew how to process the documents and what documents to stamp and return to me. I contacted my Embassy which informed me to follow the step by step (missing information) guidelines. I had all documents stamped and requested 2 copies of my Certificate, one copy of my Affidavit, and a photocopy of the Korean marriage document returned to me (as per the Embassy "guidelines")

Here come the questions:

1. Are we married? In other words, are we officially registered as being married in Korea?

2. What documents will we be receiving in 3 or 4 days? This is highly confusing. My understanding is just the new Family or Regsiter with the Permanent Address change. Does this sound right?

3. How long to we have to go to my Embassy to provide them with the Affidavit, Korean marriage document, and Certificate?

4. Why did she have to change her Permanent Residence to Seoul? We clearly stated that we don't live in Seoul.

Any other advice and comments would be greatly appreciated.

[movybuf]

I got married in Korea, and had no problems. I am American, and I found the information on the US Embassy's website very helpful. I don't know if the same process applies to you, being Canadian. The whole process only took about 2 hours. The best thing to do would be to contact your embassy, and find out the process from them. Probably you need to have the documents validated by the Canadian embassy, so both countries have you registered as being married.

[the eye]

[Kimchieluver]

I am Canadian and it took me three hours to get the entire process completed (registered in both Canada and Korea). A friend of mine just got married this August and it took him a little less than 3 hours. Neither one of us had to change our residence to Seoul.

[justin moffatt]

THE EYE:

We live in interesting times. The whole nightclub incident woke me up a little on my priorities in living in Korea. (BTW: I later found out that numerous other foreigners had very similar incidents at the same nightclub, which unbeknowst to me, is run by a specialized Korean mafia).

KIMCHIELUVER:

Which government office did you attend to? The Canadian Embassy also informed me Mapo applicants had previously had little problems. Did you process yours at the Jogno-gu office (near by the American Embassy)? How long did it take (we were informed 10 days)?

[prairieboy]

Got married in May. Did the paper work in late June. An hour at the Canadian embassy. An hour at the gu office in Jongro (we don't even live in Seoul). A quick trip back to the Canadian embassy with the paperwork and we were finished just after lunch.

Go to the gu office in Jongro, it's near the US embassy and apparently they process a lot of foreigner/korean marriages so they do it quickly providing you have the proper paperwork filled out.

We had to translate nothing into Korean.

The 10 days is needed for the gu office to process everything so that you can go to immigration without any problems. This is internal processing and they will tell you to wait a week or two before going to immgration to apply for the F2.

Cheers.

[justin moffatt]

PRARIEBOY:

Strange. Why did Jogno-gu office (international marriage window) claim that we had to translate the Affidavit into Korean? Did you have to wait 10 days for some documents? I am darned confused . . .

[Kimchieluver]

[Homer]

Got married in Korea as well (I am Canadian) and it was super simple.

My wife got the necessary docs from her Gu-office, I got my papers and we went to the Canadian consulate in Busan.

Filled out the forms and it was all done in less than 30 minutes.

When we visited Canada the next summer, I bought the translated docs with me to immigration Canada and they recognized the marriage. It took about 5 minutes to do this (except for the inevitable wait of an hour at any government office in Canada..).

[inkoreaforgood]

[kotakji]

Much the same as the above, it was a fairly painless operations of about 2-3 hours (from the US though). I cant say I even remember having to do the translation stuff. I think it depends alot on luck. If you get the administrator guys in a good (or lazy) mood, things go through without a hitch, whereas if ya get the stubborn or annoyed guy it can go on and on.

[yashi]

The whole process only took me 3 hours. It sounds like you either got a complete ass to process your paperwork and he/she feels for some reason that you shouldn't marry this person, or you and your partner have some serious communication (language) barriers. No offense intended by the second reason.

[tzechuk]

Yup. Got married in Korea and it was very easy, just a bit time consiming, because we had to go firstly to the British Embassy to take a vowel (affidavit), then to the gu office that my husband was registered under, then back to the British Embassy for something again.. but we still managed to get it all done within 4 hours or so, with lunch in between.

They asked us to translate our marriage certificate from English to Korean but didn't ask us to notorise it or anything?

[TheUrbanMyth]

http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/korea/viewtopic.php?t=69702&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0


A good woman can make so much difference in one's viewpoint.

Congrats on your marriage.

[Homer]

Wow Urban...that is one heck of a reference call...