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Introduction “To extend my visa, they asked me for a document proving that the money shown in my bank balance certificate came from my family. But I had actually borrowed that money from acquaintances here in Korea and put together a one-day balance. How am I supposed to prove anything now?” — this is one of the problems that keeps coming up again and again with D-2 visa extensions. In this article we will talk about prevention rather than cure. In other words, how you can start preparing now so that you never end up in the situation above. How do you avoid leaving open questions about your bank balance or your sponsor? Why is a one-day balance not a solution in itself? What can you do so that nobody asks you for a bank balance certificate in the first place? By the end of this post you will have answers to all of these questions. If you are on a D-2 visa and have no legal income to cover your expenses, this advice is for you. ...

Introduction Picture this. You are quietly at home watching a film you like when suddenly an unknown number calls and says, “This is the police calling. A complaint has been filed against you for fraud.” And you have no idea what you did or when. Why did this happen? Another example: you need a bank balance statement to renew your visa. Naturally you borrow money from an acquaintance for a short while. The money lands in your bank account, and a little later a message arrives from the bank to say your account has been blocked. Why did this happen? ...

Introduction Does an officer’s mood affect the outcome of your application? Yes and no. No -> Immigration officers are all professionals with genuinely deep knowledge. They will not reject documents you have prepared properly just because they are tired or out of sorts. Yes -> If you do not prepare your documents thoroughly and leave everything to the officer’s discretion, then it certainly has an effect. There were less than 30 minutes left before closing time. You could see at a glance that the officer was worn out from a day spent on very troublesome paperwork. While waiting my turn I had watched the last three applicants take a very long time and go back and forth filling in missing documents. Perhaps that is why our conversation did not start well and my requests were turned down, and yet we said goodbye in a very good mood. That day I was glad to have had a positive effect on the officer’s mood, and I took an important lesson away for myself. In this article I will tell that story in detail. I hope this slice of real experience helps others when they prepare their own visa documents. ...

Introduction I first came to Korea in 2017, in the fourth year of my bachelor’s degree, on a “3+1 exchange program”. I’ll be honest: on that first visit I did not like the country. A different people, different values, and street after street of restaurants we could not walk into. Then the program ended, I went home, and it slowly dawned on me that going back to Korea was the right decision. In the autumn of 2018 I returned on a D-2-3 visa to study for a master’s. From that day on I spent eight years making trip after trip to the immigration office, and at the end of those eight years I finally got the F-5 visa, the one that grants permanent residency. In this article I have written in detail about every visa I held, the problems I ran into, what went wrong when extending a visa or switching from one to another, and how I solved each of those things. I hope my experience makes for an interesting read and proves useful when you plan your own visa path. ...