Dear, Mister FBI

The distinguished FBI has deemed it necessary for all me-gook seram (American people) to have a background check for each and every year you chose to live on the lovely peninsula of South Korea. The beginning of the process is to have your fingerprints and FBI background check application sent to the FBI.

What they don't usually tell you when you reside in a different country you should begin this process at least 6 months before the end of your Visa to give yourself time to get everything you need together.  From Korea (as well as America), it generally takes about 3 months just to have your background check completed and returned to you.  Let's hope they are a mite quicker.

Awesome.


Today Joseph and I headed to our local police station to have our fingerprints taken.  The post office, fire station and police station are located right next to each other with the police station being in the middle.  It is safe to say that our being foreigners entering this police station did not go unnoticed.  We doubt they have ever had a foreign person in their station before.  Yes, this is usually the case.

Our police station was pleasant enough and about the size of the Dundee Post Office.  In other words, picture a very small, clean but grungy room with a clear barrier between employees and others.  We were immediately well received and had a lovely conversation with the man and woman who were there at the time.

Granted the entire conversation was in Konglish (think Spanglish).  Questions such as how long have you lived here, where do you teach (because almost every foreigner is an English teacher) and how do you like living in Korea?  This last is a favorite to ask of any Korean especially once they discover we are American.  The Korean people (in our experience) love America and want to visit if they haven't.  They don't really know Disney World (shocker?) but they do know California and New York.  They seem pleasantly surprised when we tell them we love Korea-- as if we could never enjoy or like Korea because we are American.   

The woman officer proceeded to make copies of our copies and by the time she was through we each had about 15 copies of our fingerprint forms when we actually came with everything we needed.  We just needed them to take our fingerprints.  Ha ha ha.  Nothing is a simple as it should be in Korea.  Maybe that is because we don't speak fluent Korean?

When we were finally able to communicate we simply needed our fingerprints taken we were handed an ink pad and we had to take them ourselves.  Let's hope the FBI can't distinguish between who took the prints and let's hope they are acceptable. Hopefully between the three sets of prints they can put together what they need and we won't have to do it all over again. 

Not too badly, is it? 

AGH!  Upon further reflection of our paperwork we need to go back and have them sign and fill out some information.  Luckily for us we will be remembered.  *fingers crossed* we won't have to do it all over again!  We might actually need those additional copies after all.