Alien Registration Card

Immigration Office at 3pm

Immigration Office

During orientation we were told to go the the immigration office to get our alien registration cards (ARC) done in order to stay in Korea for our study period. Plus we had to submit a photocopy of our ARC to the One Stop Service Center before 11th October (you can just take your card to the center and get them to photocopy it).

The orientation book contails all the details needed in order to apply for an ARC and where to get it done.

You are supposed to apply for one within 90 days from the date of your arrival in Korea - so if you stay longer than 90 days in Korea you definitely need one (liek your visa).

Required documents:

• Passport
• Photocopy of passport
• Application form (completed with ID photo attached with paper clip)
• Certificate of Enrollment (get it from the One Stop Center for 1,000won)
• 20,000won for the government revenue stamp to approve your application

The immigration office is in Sejongno. To get to it take the subway train to Jonggak Station on Line 1, and get out at exit 6. Walk straight ahead for a bit and you will see the immigration office.

The office was really busy when I arivved at 9.30am on Friday 30th August because there were many other foreign students in Seoul from other universities trying to get an ARC. Once you go in you take a ticket and wait for your number to be called. I got 399 and they were on the 40s, so it was definitely a long wait ahead.
Here we bumped into our newly made friend from the chicken and beer event - K, who was filling out her application right then and there.

The stream near City Hall

City Hall Area

To kill time me and Louise went to a nearby coffe shop (Pascuccui) to grab a drink. Later K conicidentally walked in with her other friends to grab a drink as well as nap a little bit.
We later decided to venture out a bit seeing at we all had to wait for hours for our numbers to be called. It turned out that we were really close to Sindang which is where the City Hall is, so we walked across a small bridge that was over a small stream part of Han River.
Along the way we spotted a food area with a special colour gate with a banner that said something along the lines of: food destination for tourists. Since we were all hungry we decided to venture in to see what it had to offer. We ended up walking for ages trying to find a suitable place to eat at and eventually found a jigae place with a decently priced menu and food that could accommodate one of the vegetarian members of our group.

After the meal, one of the people in our group headed back to see what number was being called since he had a number in the 100s. Meanwhile the rest of us with 300s ventured to the Lotte Department store to take a browse around at overpriced goods.
At that time of year they were doing special gift box sets because Chuseok was just around the corner. So it was that very day when I first laid my eyes upon an expensive spam gift box. Being a foreigner I found this to be very amusing.

Fancy spam

We went back to the immigration office around 2pm to find that it was in the 270s, so we went back to Pascucci for another drink and a nap. Went back at 3pm-ish to find it finally in the 300s and stayed there. This was where I managed get another ticket from a newly made friend that day that moved me from 399 to 345!

I think everyone of us was done by 4pm (we all ended up having similarly grouped numbers), half of us decided to go back home to rest while the remaining 4 of us craved to go shopping in Edae and Hongdae.

Loving Hut meal in Sinchon

Loving Hut

For dinner, we ate at a vegetarian specialised restaurant (Loving Hut) in Sinchon on the way from Edae to Hongdae. This is the place EatYourKimchi had done a video about on before, according to the vegetarian friend there is now 2 stores in Seoul.
I really wanted the vegetarian burger but the cashier guy said that it took too long to make since they ran out of stock on the day so I had to pick something else. In the end I picked this cutlet and rice set.
The cutlet tasted like any other vegetarian meat I had. A mixture of soy and vegetables.
The restaurant also sold vegetarian and vegan friendly ingredients, but of course are costly prices.
I wouldn't mind visiting there for food again. But then again the price was fairly more expensive that the average Korean meal - it was between 5000-10000won per dish. Arguably this is because vegetarian ingredients for stuff like vegetarian meat are quite hard to obtain, especially in Korea where almost everything containts meat.