Moving to Korea soon and feeling overwhelmed? South of Seoul Virtual Welcome Packets may contain what you need to know to integrate into Korean residency more smoothly.
Accessibility
Would you like to listen to this blog post rather than read it? You can watch the following YouTube video if you prefer and visual and auditory experience.
Moving to South Korea
When you move to Korea, understanding Korean life and residency systems may feel overwhelming. Additionally, a great deal of ‘hidden culture’ exists which can make adapting to a new culture incredibly challenging.
As an ex-pat, you may not only deal with the hidden culture within Korea, but you also may deal with de-coding the hidden culture of your peers who come from different cultures to your own. This means that blog posts you read may not provide accurate information necessary for your lived human experience.
It’s important to read all information about the Korean immigration/ residency process and ask yourself: What is their visa type? Have they gone through immigration recently? How was this information researched? When was this information written? Is this based only on personal experience? Etc. This includes when reading South of Seoul blogs. All information regarding residency represents a moment in time and should be cross-referenced.
Hidden Culture and Establishing Residency
In the first 30 days of arriving in South Korea, hidden culture may cause many issues for you. Especially regarding the process of establishing residency. What sounds easy on paper may turn out to be much more complicated in real life. Nobody does this on purpose, it’s simply part of the complexity of moving to a new country.
In order to support new arrivals in Korea, South of Seoul provides in-depth articles that attempt to explicitly state aspects of hidden culture new arrivals may experience. We combine such articles into different lenses based on things such as 1) visa type, 2) employment type, and 3) purpose for living in South Korea.
Keep in mind, that while South of Seoul researchers and writers work extensively to provide accurate and detailed information, information changes constantly. Our perceptions of experiences also impact how we write about information (that hidden culture again). Therefore, we love it when the South of Seoul community pitches in to improve information by letting us know about inconveniences they’ve experienced based on their life lens. (Leave info in the comments!)
South of Seoul’s Three Residency Lens Frameworks
South of Seoul volunteers choose to focus on three primary Korean residency lenses to create our Virtual Welcome Packet frameworks: 1) educators, 2) US military, and 3) international students. The information included in these three categories of residency may also apply to other visa categories.
South of Seoul Virtual Welcome Packets
Visit one of the following Virtual Welcome Packets to learn more about how Korean residency works and the steps you need to take for your life in South Korea. The packets also include information about food, home, travel, and much more.
