Direct Consular Filing in South Korea

This blog started out as a poor attempt to chronicle our year in South Korea teaching English. As you can see, the last post was somewhere around our first week in Korea, and then never since haha. It's been an interesting year, and while I'll never call Korea my home, we've had a lot of fun and have extended our contract for another 6 months.


In our first year we:


-saved [a little] money
-made some awesome friends
-learned some basic Korean
-discovered that kimchi is an acquired taste
-learned we CAN live in a confined 10x10 foot apartment together and not go crazy
-ran and cycled over a thousand miles
-traveled to the Philippines [incredible!], Jeju Island [not bad], and everywhere in Korea you may ever consider going


We resigned our contract because:
-money money!
-money!
-an opportunity to simplify Jay's immigration status into the US.


Jay and I had planned to get married in the summer of 2013, and would then have to start filing for his immigration status after. It would take many years and a possible $7,000-$8,000 [immigration lawyers.. vomiting noises...]


ANYWAY, through some super awesome research by yours truly, we learned that because we were foreign residents of Korea, we could start Jay's immigration process through the US Consulate in Seoul, through Direct Consular Filing. It would only take a few MONTHS and cost about $1,000. So, we're saving the party for later, and decided to get married immediately!


We went home to NY after we finished the contract, got married [city hall style], and came on back.

Over the next few months we will be working through the immigration process in Korea. We noticed that there is very little information for people doing what we're doing, so this blog will finally serve a purpose! I will be posting our whole process as it happens, to hopefully help anyone else trying to do something as complicated as being allowed to live in the same country as the person you love.



If you have any further questions, please feel free to post me a comment and I'll address them!