hankyoreh

Uzbek students enrolled in Hanshin University’s Korean Language Institute are driven to Incheon International Airport on Nov. 27. (still from video provided by Hanshin University)

The Uzbek students forced to return home by Hanshin University last month were issued visas by South Korea’s Ministry of Justice even though they didn’t meet the entry requirements at the initial stage of review, the Hankyoreh has learned. In effect, the ministry’s disregard of its own regulations led to the unprecedented situation of foreign students being forcibly repatriated.

The Pyeongtaek branch of the Suwon Immigration Office, which is supervised by the Justice Ministry, granted certification to issue visas to 24 Uzbek students back in August. Then the Korean Embassy in Uzbekistan issued visas to the students in mid-September based on the ministry’s certification.

But none of the students actually met the requirements for visas. The Justice Ministry’s guidelines for issuing visas to foreign students and managing their sojourn stipulate that Uzbeks seeking a visa to study the Korean language must submit a bank statement of at least 10 million won at a local branch of a Korean bank and must have maintained that balance for at least three months at the time they submit their application.

The students didn’t meet the bank balance requirement because Hanshin University’s promotional material had incorrectly stated that students only needed to maintain their bank balance for “one day.” Hanshin University maintains that it had received that information from the Justice Ministry.

As the date of the students’ arrival approached, Hanshin University realized that its initial information had been incorrect and told the students about the three-month requirement. Most of the students had already withdrawn their money after depositing it in the bank for a day or two in July. After receiving the updated information from Hanshin University, they hurried to put the money back in the bank in September.

According to its guidelines, the Justice Ministry should not have granted certification for issuing the students’ visas because they hadn’t maintained the 10 million won balance for three months, as the guidelines stipulated. But the ministry granted certification anyway.

“The Justice Ministry incorrectly informed us that the balance had to be maintained for one day and then later changed that to three months. In recognition of its mistake, the ministry issued visas that it normally should not have issued on the condition that they only last for three months,” Hanshin University says.

Then on Nov. 6, the Justice Ministry asked the students once again for a statement of balance in their bank accounts. Ministry guidelines require foreign students to maintain the balance throughout their sojourn, and the ministry is authorized to periodically review those balances.

That said, it’s unusual for the ministry to ask students from a specific country who have entered Korea to study at a specific location to provide proof of their bank balance.

Ultimately, only two of the 24 students were able to satisfy the bank balance requirements.

Hanshin University administrators were concerned that the students’ failure to meet the requirements would lead to punitive measures, such as reducing the maximum number of foreign students the university is allowed to host. That’s why the university tricked the Uzbek students into boarding a bus and then pressured them into flying home with tickets purchased in advance.

“If the Justice Ministry had properly reviewed the visa issuance [requirements] before the students entered the country, the students could have met the bank balance requirements by the following semester and entered the country under normal conditions at that point. Instead, students who were already in Korea were asked to prove their bank balance, treated as potential criminals and ultimately forced to leave the country,” said Choi Jeong-gyu, an attorney with a law firm called Wongok.

The ministry said in a statement Tuesday that asking the students to prove their bank balance was “a commonsense measure intended to verify whether the university had followed through on its pledge to get its financial documents in order three months after the students entered the country under conditional approval.”

“We’re currently looking into how the visas came to be issued,” the ministry said in the same statement.

By Lee Jun-hee, staff reporter

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