The devil is in the details.
After going through this whole visa crisis I have become an expert on short-term employment visa issues for Korean-Americans in Korea. Last weekend I was able to meet with my uncle, a lawyer in Korea, who had taken some of his time to find out what the exact legal situation is, for which I am very appreciative. It is all pretty convoluted and at times just plain ridiculous.
As it turns out there is a visa (F-4) made especially for foreign-born Koreans (교포). My uncle calls it the visa of all visas because it would allow me to work wherever I wanted without any obstacles. Unfortunately, I am unable to apply for this visa because I hold a dual citizenship -- I was born in the US, but my grandparents also registered me as a Korean citizen when I was born. Since I also hold a Korean citizenship, there is no reason for the government to give me a visa made for foreign Koreans; after all, why should they. The story makes sense up to here and that's as far as it goes.
I've mentioned before the problem with working for a company as a Korean citizen is that the military offices will be alerted of my situation and they will whisk me away to my mandatory military service. The funny thing is, I can't even renounce my Korean citizenship on my own initiative. The government basically tells dual citizens "you can give up the Korean citizenship but only if you serve your two years in the military first." Utterly ridiculous; if I serve there is no point in having to give up the citizenship any more. Fortunately, I can get a military service exemption (which would enable me to drop my citizenship) by fulfilling a strict list of requirements, including but not limited to: being born outside of Korea and raised there, parents who are permanent residents or are citizens of that country, and less than three years residence in Korea.
My uncle went to the immigration office to find out exactly what these requirements are, but they wouldn't tell him unless I am present and divulge my personal information. The trap is if I go, give them my personal information, and it turns out I don't meet one requirement, I may not be let out of the country. I have this image of the immigration officers inputting my information into the computer, seeing that I don't meet the requirements, and then pressing a button under the desk to alert the military service men hiding in a closet nearby to drag me away to the nearest army base. It must be government policy to be really shady about military service related citizenship cases. In all, it's too risky to attempt anything like this here but I can try getting this issue out of the way once I go back to the US. "Besides," my uncle said, "your mother would kill me if I let you take a risk like that and you ended up having to serve in the army and not see her for two years."
This is why the only other option is either finding an unpaid internship or a short-term employment visa. The problem with the latter is that it's a hassle for the company to sponsor me because then HR has to go through the process of drafting several documents, and no one really wants to do all that extra work for an intern. This is probably what happened with the company I was supposed to work for -- I have basically given up on them.
-Emoinacloset
