#1 flight tickets and visa
As I mentioned in my last post, the application process for gks is quite long and stressful. As you wait for the results of the first, second and third round, all you wish is to know the final results: Whether you're going or not. And you kind of expect everything will be fine once you know that all the effort and money was not in vain. In reality you only have a few days to celebrate the achievement before another stress period starts. It can be very individual depending on the country you're from and university you will attend but there are probably very few awardees who would consider the following process easy or unproblematic. (I decided to write down the whole process including dates in case it can help anyone in the future.)
After the final results were out on 30.06. it took about a week for NIIED to send us the Invitation letter (NIIED was sending out the emails in an alphabetical order so some people received it in 7 days and some later. Mine came on 10.07.). Following that the procedure depends on your uni. I know that many universities sent out CoAs (Certificate of Acceptance) very promptly and students could start their visa application process almost right away. For me, it took almost a month. But we will get to it later.
First, I received a survey asking me for details regarding my flight ticket. The school you're going to attend first is responsible for buying your ticket, so if you're attending language institute first and it's different from your uni (I think that after 2023 it's the case for only 5 universities), they will be the one to contact you. The survey came on 04.07. and there we questions such as prefered date of departure, prefered airport of departure, etc.
Important thing to note is that you have to depart from your home country, otherwise, the ticket won't be covered. There are also some other rules determined by NIIED such as that the "itinerary must be a direct flight or a flight with the shortest route to Korea (and if there is no direct flight available, the layover should be limited to 30 hours)." Except this, there is a price limit. The costs cannot exceed 1,2 million KRW. These rules can get very illogical in some cases. For example, I come from a very small country that offers no direct flights, but there are two big foreign international airports near our borders (1-2,5 hours by car from my house). No exceptions were allowed in my case, so the ticket I got is from a city that is 4,5 hours away from my home by car (but in my country) and I have to transfer 2 times to board a plane in an international airport that is just 2 hours from my home. The flight will take about 26 hours in total. That means that it will take almost 2 days for me to get to my dormitory. This is not all. I could get a flight from my country with 1 transfer but it was about 500 thousand KRW above the limit. As they refused to make any exceptions, 26 hours with 2 transfers flight was chosen over 14 hours flight with 1 transfer. Funny, right? I find it quite unfair because I know that there were people from countries from which the cheapest flight is way above 1,2 mil KRW and school got them very good tickets (great airline and good transit) ignoring the limit while I got a lowcost airline with 2 transfers. But since I decided to accept the situation rather than make a big deal about it, let's end my rant.
To tell you the truth, I'm okay with taking longer to get there but I'm worried about the transfers and since I'm also taking checked baggage it highers the chances of my baggage getting lost. Please wish me luck. ^^
I know I'm not the only one in bad situation regarding the rules. Some people have troubles with the transit visa and even take much longer than me.
To make it clear, before the university staff purchased the ticket, I got an email for confirmation and only after my failed attempt to compromise did they pay for it and sent it to me. I heard people from a few universities didn't even have a choice. Or there were cases when they asked them to purchase the ticket themselves with a promise to reimburse when they open their account in Korea.
Okay. Enough about tickets. Let's talk about visa.
Because we are a scholarship awardees, NIIED does their best to make the process simpler. We don't have to pay the usual visa application fee nor prove our financial ability to support ourselves. People doing the language programme apply for D-4 visa, exempted apply for either D-2-3 or D-2-7. Documents you need will therefore differ (and can be different also depending on the country you are applying from so check with your embassy), but you generally need the following:
Passport and passport photo (3,5x4,5cm)
NIIED invitation letter
CoA
Document indicating the final level of education (Diploma)
Visa application form
One thing to note, if you come from smaller country, chances are that the visa staff won't know about this scholarship at all. In case they ask you to pay the fee or don't cooperate, print out the Important Notice/Guidelines and show them. Fight for that fee exemption! XD Just make sure you are polite please.
The reason I couldn't apply for visa right away in July was that I didn't yet have CoA. Korea University informed us that we can only get this document after the tuition payment period (although as scholarship students, we technically don't pay, just do so called 0 won registration). After the registration, I got my CoA on 27.7. You need to keep in mind that you have to schedule your appointment for visa application at the embassy in advance. There is a website where you can register online but it wasn't open for my country and I could only schedule the appointment by calling them. I was informed by our embassy that it's okay to call them only 2-4 days in advance so I waited and called them when I received the CoA.
Fast forward, I was left speechless when they told that I should come in 2 weeks with less than 14 calendar days to my departure. That stressed me out so much. The usual period for visa issuance is 14 working days. I contacted the embassy several times to ask for explanation but they repeated that I will get my visa on time and don't have to worry. To give you some background info to understand what was going through my head, I have experience of not receiving my Korean visa on time and having to deal with consequences so this didn't quite help. My ticket was non-refundable and my arrival very tight with the beginning of semester on September 1st.
But whether it was my stubborness that made me contact them several time or they were really that sure that I can get it on time, I got my visa issued in only 3 working days. Yayy!
To not make this article very long I will continue tallking about the Course registration and Orientation in the next article.
