Getting A Teaching Visa, or How To Spend a Lot of Time and Money and Give Yourself a Headache

Once you get a job teaching English in Korea, the next (and probably most time consuming) task is to get your Visa. In my case, my recruited helped me with this process, though since the rules changed in December, this has often been difficult for all parties involved. We have repeatedly gotten differing information (I'm not sure the origin of this, but I'm pretty sure our recruiter is as much in the dark as I am). Here is a brief outline of what I had to do to get an E2 Visa (to teach):

Step One: Gather Documents
This is a bit more difficult that just collecting things. You will need to get a medical checkup done and this may differ depending on your school. For my checkup I had to have a few easy tests done (colour blindness and sight, blood pressure, etc.) and then some blood tests and a chest x-ray. They test for some pretty scary stuff so sometimes it takes a week to get the bloodwork back. (As a side note, I had been sick a few weeks before my test and had some issues and had to be retested before I was cleard - I am healthy though). Since BC health care won't pay for things if you aren't sick, you will need to pony up some dough (for us it was $65 for the checkup, $65 for the x-ray and the blood work was free) to get this done.

You will also need to get a criminal record check (a vulnerable sector search actually) to make sure you haven't been convicted of any crimes or that you weren't pardoned for any crimes against children (the vulnerable sector). The check alone costs $50. This then needs to be notarized ($10) and sent to a Korean consulate which will stamp it ($2.20). We were in a rush so we sent it next day mail and had to give a return addressed envelope to get them back quick.

You will also need to get passpost photos ($10), your original degree or equivalent (you can get a degree issued from most institutions before convocation if you need it for this purpose - check your records office for more info on this), a photocopy of your passport, a self medical check questionnaire, a signed copy of your resume, and official transcripts ($10).

Step Two: Sending the Documents
In our case, we had to send the documents to the school. This costs about $50 for an envelope that takes about 7 business days. When the school gets the documents they will do something to get you a visa number (I'm not too sure, I haven't gotten to this step yet). You will need this number for step three.

Step Three: Getting Your Visa
Once you get the visa number from your school, you need to fill out a visa application form and send it to the nearest consulate. Give it a few days (I'm told) and call them to make an appointment. Go for your appointment with $55 and they should give you your visa that day.

Sound easy? Well, the required documents kept changing so we had to send off two packages of documents to Korea. The second package is currently en route and hopefully will get there by Friday of this week. This has been a very difficult task (especially because we've had to bus around to do everything and I've been working when most places are open), but hopefully we will both get our visas before we need to fly out of here.

I hope this post hasn't scared anyone away from wanting to teach in Korea. I thought I would be as open about the costs as I could be because it has turned into something much bigger than I had expected. The jury is still out on whether or not it's all worth it, but stay tuned to this space and I'm sure that answer will be delivered in due time.