Volunteer At Own Risk

By Spencer McCall

If you’re an English teacher thinking of heading down to Mallipo beach to help clean up Korea’s worst ever oil spill, don’t let your goodwill get the better of you or you might just be deported. Unless you fill out the proper form and pay a certain fee, the Korean government would much rather you stay home. There are rules for foreigners volunteering, and the rules mean paying for offering a free service.

As surprising as it sounds, under the Immigration Control Act of Korea, “it is punishable that you [a foreigner] engage in the activities beyond your current visa status without permission” from the Ministry of Justice. This includes volunteering, not just at the oil spill disaster, but also for any work or event outside of the school that is sponsoring your E2 visa. The documents you require to volunteer include:

A travel document (passport)
Alien Registration Card
Application forms (downloadable from http://www.immigration.go.kr/)
Fees (60,000 won)

The government crackdown on volunteering extends far beyond the recent natural disaster relief effort, a particular event that has drawn dozens of English teachers to the beach in a genuine gesture of goodwill. For more on the extent the government has gone to pursue E2 violations check out an article by Carli Brosseau on Empas News <Click Here>