Today was the day to go to the immigration office and get my visa application in. It was such a hassle... I
I spent the morning being lazy, spent an hour at Ediya coffee (where I was when I blogged the last post), skyped my parents, watched some TV... Then around noon I got the call with the green light to go to immigration. For older adoptees (I'm not sure the cutoff year), our citizenship/registry still remains in the Korean system. In order to obtain a visa, we must first relinquish Korean citizenship. Its redundant, since at the time, Korean didn't allow dual citizenship so by default, since we obtained foreign citizenship, our Korean citizenship was already revoked... But we still have to do it. Anyway sounds like Holt did that process for me, but I had to wait to make sure it had been completed before venturing down to immigration. I asked my coordinator if I had all of the documents necessary for obtaining the F4 visa. She assured me that I did.
We got to immigration around 1:30pm. I got my Ho-juk or family registry from across the street. Holt had supplied me with my adoption certificate (proves I was adopted), a copy of my family registry, and directions to get to the immigration office. The family registry cost 1,000 won and I just gave him my Korean address (Holt), passport, and the copy of the family registry from Holt so he knew what I wanted. Took less than 5 minutes I would guess.
Then we went across the street to the Immigration Office. First, we went to the third floor to obtain "Revenue Stamps" for 50,000 won. I also requested photocopies of the documents I was about to hand over so that I knew what I had given them. Each photocopy was 100 won. With the documents, stamps and my passport in hand we headed down to the Residency Office. It uses a system very much like the DMV. Since we couldn't read hangul, we weren't sure what forms we needed to fill out so we just filled out the Application. Just like the DMV, we had to obtain a number and unfortunately we picked the wrong line to get the numbers from, so we had to go through the line twice. LOL. Note to self, always pick overseas Korean from the options. :D Once I got called, I went up to the officer and they looked over my application, said additionally I needed to fill out form #1, and also that I needed to do something with 10,000 won on the 2nd floor. So I took my documents back and went upstairs, was very confused for quite a while until someone rescued me and showed me how to use my passport and 10,000 won to obtain a receipt necessary for the visa. I headed down a second time to try to apply. Turns out I still needed a copy of my naturalization certificate as well as 2 extra documents (don't ask me what they are, I have no idea, they are written all in hangul). So I went back to the third floor, got my certicate copied (thank goodness I had the foresight to take it with me), went across the street and got the two remaining documents. Got in line AGAIN. This time I had obtained everything that I needed to get the Visa and so they told me I can pick up my Alien registration card on January 4, 2013. The officer was trying to tell me something about 10 days, but I'm not sure. I just hope I don't have to do anything else in ten days O_O Maybe I can see if its done early?
All in all, I wasted a bunch of time and went back and forth between departments until Immigration was satisfied that all was well. It took about 2-2.5 hours in total and cost about 65,500 won (or about $63). Argh. I definitely thought it would take an hour or less. Whoops. Anyway, its done and that's all that I care about.
Funny side note: Nicholas' trip was very much the same, only I didn't hear anything about getting his naturalization certificate copied, but he didn't bring a passport photo with him so he needed to take passport photos for the visa, and the "receipt" that he was given was written all in English. For whatever reason, the exact same form/receipt that I received was written all in hangul! O_O
