Miss Park started to talk to me: she said that officers from immigration were coming to the school to question me. If they did question me I was to answer their questions as follows: I do not teach any grade-school classes, and I work there only on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday are taught by Link.
After she had left, Mrs. Park asked me what she had said. I said to her that Miss Park told me that Immigration officials would come to question me and that I should lie. She laughed in response to this, with some comment along the lines of "Oh Oomph, you're such a kidder." With that the subject was dropped. And I headed off to class.
I guess I managed to get about one third of the way through my class- teaching that damn "next to - between - across from..." lesson. I set the kids to practicing the exercises and then went out to go to the bathroom. As I stepped out of the classroom (rm.205) door, I saw three business-suited men go into the office: one of them did a multiple-take - as though trying to decide whether to talk to me or not. He went into the office, and, realizing that the immigration men had come for me, I went to the bathroom and then back to my class.
After a few minutes the secretary lady who does not speak English came and fetched me: she reinforced (with sign language) the lies I had earlier been instructed to say. So I went to meet the men. They asked questions about my employment: when I arrived, where I have worked, where I lived. They never asked the questions about which I had been instructed to lie.
They asked me about my passport. I told them that I did not have it with me. So they asked to see my alien residence card. I gave it them. They gave me a receipt for it, and a summons to appear at the immigration office at 9:30 this morning. Then they asked where I lived. I told them it was about fifteen minutes away by foot. So they let me go back to class.
I had been teaching for about ten minutes when they decided they wanted to see me again. So in came Miss Park to fetch me. Remember, she said, Link: T,Th,S; You: M,W,F. Sure enough, they asked me about my housemates: "Brown. Where is Brown?" I said I didn't know where Duke was, 'cause he left the house before me. "Marks, Link Marks. Is he at your home now?" I said I didn't think he was at home because he had left before I did.
"Where is he?" "I don't know."
Then they asked me again how long it takes to get to my house. I gave them the same answer, "Fifteen minutes, walking."
"How about driving?"
"I don't know. I always walk. I suppose 5 to 10 minutes." So they invited me to go with them to my house.
I left the room to end my class (more wasted time and yet another erosion of my precarious authority), then went upstairs to leave my books and fetch my coat. Miss Park told me at this time that Link was at home. So, while in the teachers' room I called him --, it was busy at first, but upon a second try he answered it: "Ya' Bo Seyo?"
"Link, get out of the house."
"They're here."
"They busted me too, we're coming shortly. They told me here that my story is to be that you work at this Olympiad on Tues, Thurs. and Sat ~ and none of us teach lower than middle school."
"Okay."
"I guess we'll be there soon."
"OK, then I'll see you for skiing on Sunday."
I grabbed my coat and stepped into the hallway. There, about halfway down the corridor, as though searching for me, was the leader. He saw me coming, be-coated, and turned around to lead the way outside (this man's name was Li Teok-ryong). As we went down the stairs he said to me that Link was at my house. My cool reply, "Oh, is he?" We went. Four full grown men in this little Kia Pride car, with me giving directions from the back seat. We got to my house and climbed the stairs.
When I opened the door the first thing I saw was more official-looking Koreans coming to greet the new person. All four of us went in, making it 6 Han-gook sa-ram and two honkies. Everyone was standing around the common room ~ one man was sporadically on the phone. My three agents told me to fetch my passport, so I went to my room, closing the door but not latching it behind me. I went to the drawer where I keep my important papers and began to dig out my passport. By the time I had found it, one of the men had followed me into my room, and was in fact, all the way over to my desk. He took his time going out ~ obviously looking carefully around. This pissed me off.
So we went back out to the common area. We stood around for a few moments while my passport was passed from hand to hand. During this time the same man who had followed me into my room took it upon himself to open Duke's door and look inside his room. As soon as we saw this happening, Link and I both began to say, "Excuse me - you cannot do that," to him.
As I was closest, I pushed the door shut. Now I was becoming more angry. We told them that ours was a private home and they could not go around opening doors and looking wherever they wished. The leader of my group changed the subject. He told us we needed to give them a written statement. I went back to my room and fetched this very notebook, exited, closed my door, and repaired to the kitchen.
What would you like this statement to say? When you arrived in Korea and when/where you started to work. Link and I both sat down at the kitchen table, me giving him a piece of paper. I wrote two lines: "I arrived in Korea on July 27, 1995. I began to work at Olympiad Hakwon during the second week of August."
During the time that I was writing all but one of the men were out in the common room. While I was writing I heard the door to Roy's room close (presumably it had been opened with the stealth becoming of an immigration officer), and just as I finished I heard Duke's CD drawer being opened and closed. That was enough. Like a flash I went out into the common room. There, sure enough, was the agent I affectionately have dubbed "Snoop." Snoop was standing by the TV cabinet straightening from the crouch he would have had to adopt to open the drawer.
"What are you doing?" I must have bellowed. "If you want to see the whole place I can arrange a tour. You want to snoop around some?" I went to the CD drawer, opened it, and gesturing at the CDs said "Oh my! CDs! Are you happy now?" Some of the agents tried to calm me: "No, no." But then one of the men suggested to Snoop that he tell me he had been fixing the VCR cable which was caught in the drawer. (That's not implausible, but 1) Link told me later that the cord had not been caught in the drawer, and 2) even if it had been ~ housecleaning was neither this agent's responsibility nor his interest). So that's what Snoop said. This pissed me off more. "Oh, and was the cord caught in the door too?"
"No, no," said Snoop. But I wasn't satisfied. I went to Duke's door, opened it, mimed peering inside, moved his heated blanket out of the way as though it had been blocking the door, nodded and closed the door again. Then I turned to look Snoop in the eye. All he did was repeat "Do not misunderstand." I was sure I hadn't.
Next the lead officer interfered - "Your written statement, Mr. Oomph. We have to get you back too your classes."
"I've finished that. Here," I ran to the kitchen and grabbed my paper, then returned proffering it at Snoop and the leader, "Happy now?" They read it, decided that they were happy, and got ready to take me back to school.
Aside --> Link says that during the confrontation with Snoop, someone backpedaled saying "You came in here so fast," as though apologetically. I can almost remember that, but not with any meaningful referents. <--
When we left the house Snoop and the others remained with Link's posse, and I rode with Li Teok-ryong only. He dropped me off across the street from the school and sped away. At school I went into the teachers' room for a smoke, then Miss Park came to ask me what had happened.
Aside --> in the car on the way back I asked Mr. Li why, if I could not work legally at Olympiad, he was taking me back there to finish my classes. He said that he could not make a decision until today.<--
I told her as much as I could, finished my smoke, and went to class. After a few minutes she came to fetch me from class. Duke was on the phone. The same thing had happened to him. He was calling from Coco's coffee shop and thought it would be a good idea to meet together after work. I told him basically, "No shit."
But while I was on the phone with him, Miss Park gave me the lie for him: As he had been sick, Duke did not teach at all. I told her that it was too late for that lie, so they came up with another creative lie, this one apparently the one Duke's Shil-jeong-nimh had told the Inspectors: that Duke did not teach the children - he only played with them during their free periods between classes. Pathetic. I finished work and went home.
At home Duke was entertaining Mr.Jeong (from the stand next to the Mandu Ladies'), but only for as long as it took me to make and start eating ramen. Then Dr. Kim and Mr. Im came down. Mr. Jeong left. We all sat and talked for a while about how to deal with the problem. The Koreans were very relaxed, and tried to tell us we had the right to not answer their questions, and, in fact, to not go in at the time we had been told to go. But we didn't buy it.
So, they bravadoed and briefed us for a while, and then we were left to arrange ourselves. At this point it looked like all would be resolved today (I keep allowing myself to believe in quick resolutions although such things seem not to happen in Korea). There seemed two possibilities: 1) Mr. Im said that he could appeal the decision of the immigration officials, thereby going to court for an indefinite period of time (but sounding like everyman's champion). Or 2) We (the honkeys) might have to leave the country for the amount of time that it takes to get a new visa. These were both, at the time, very vaguely formed ideas. I tried to crash - we had all agreed to get up at 7:30. I had trouble sleeping, though, my mind had been set in motion by the events of the day, and I lay in bed trying to put them to rest for hours, so that I could get some rest.
Today I got up at 7:30. It felt pretty good to be up that early ~ though by non I felt mostly like shit. I got up and went to the kitchen where Link was shivering, having just come from his shower/washing. Thinking to help him, I moved toward the heater, but he interrupted me, saying, "Gahseu eopseoyo." Shit. Actually, I wasn't yet particularly cold, so no problem. I sat and smoked a cigarette with a glass of orange juice, then went to do my own washing. I was pretty cold, but not miserable as I usually am of a morning. That done I got dressed - I saw that both Link and Duke were wearing ties and jackets - but I can't go quite so far, so I just dressed... well, Duke said I looked very scholarly. Whatever. I was warm. He offered espresso and I accepted ~ and while the pot was brewing I ran down to the cigarette machine for a pack of smokes.
Roy got up this morning to make fun of us. That was nice. It's always reassuring to make jokes in the face of an unknown danger, and Roy is certainly a good person for that. One cup of espresso and we left.
First we went upstairs, where we were to find Dr. Kim who was supposed to catch us a cab. He told us to wait a little while. How long? we asked. Maybe a half hour or more. (Mr. Im was to have gone to the Immigration office early this morning to work everything out, and then call to let us know.) We said we couldn't wait that long (Duke was due there at 9:00, I at 9:30, Link 10:00). So he finally came out and caught us a taxi - the driver didn't know where the office was, and had to ask for directions twice along the way. By 8:25 we were a-cab and going. We got there and went inside.
The people on the second floor knew who we were, and sent us to the "waiting room." Bars on the window; very reassuring. We were not there five minutes before we were fetched to another room. This one had five desks and a small plastic table in one corner with four chairs. There was a counter and a small computer table. We were sent to the plastic table. A few minutes waiting, then the man from the night before, Snoop, brought us papers and told us to write a detailed statement of our arrival in Korea and jobs, as well as to write our "working conditions." So we did.
I admit we were probably somewhat immature in our interpretation of which information "working conditions" referred to. But, dammit, the other teachers really are nice and supportive! We filled these out, and when asked to sign them did so with names other than our own. I signed Oomph Jason Cavilworthy. Our group demeanor was pretty good today: Duke joked with them, Link tried to engage them in genuine conversation, and I, well, I don't react well when confronted by authority. I pointed out logical flaws in their procedure and was generally recalcitrant. After giving these papers, we got to wait some more.
Finally, Mr. Oh Se-han came over to us with our statements and an English copy of the Immigration Law.
-->This whole fiasco is a result of our having been invited by and signed contracts with Nam Inch'on Foreign Language Institute, and actually working at Olympiad (Me and Duke) and Segyero (Link). It's stupid - they're owned by the same person: Oh Gui-ja.<--
So, we were told that we have acted in violation of Korean Immigration Law Article XVIII, sec.ii, and Article XXI, sec.i. These state basically that [we are allowed to work only for the institute for who's contract we were issued visas,] and [If we should work elsewhere, we are required to obtain the permission of the Ministry of Justice IN ADVANCE]. Well, it was my understanding that we had tried repeatedly to change the status of our Alien Registrations, with the boss cajoling official after official, but to no avail. But we did not mention this to them. We are in violation of Korean Immigration Law.
Having made that clear, he turned to the "Punitive Provisions" section of the book, and had us read Article 94 (max 3 years prison or W10 mil. fine), which applied to the boss but not to us, and Article 95 (max one year prison or W5 mil. fine) which did apply to us. It was section 5 of this article that was relevant: we had violated XVIII ii, and XXI i.
I read fast so I got to scan through the book a little: I found that if charges are to be pressed, they will be issued in writing giving us seven days to pay (art.CII, I think) and that consideration will be given to the defendant's ability to pay and motive (CIII, I think). I stored these for possible use later.
After having tried to make the gravity of our situation clear to us, he left us to wait (perhaps thinking "anticipation of an evil is worse than an evil itself."). Whatever.
--> the whole time we were in this room there were at least four people ~ sometimes as many as 8 or 10 ~ busy conferring and looking up things in the dictionary, and conferring, and making telephone calls, and conferring <--After some conference he came back and told us that we would be fined Five Million Won and then have to leave the country to apply for a new visa. He left again. We bitched and moaned a bit. Duke said he didn't have that much money, and I thought that the punishers had not given proper consideration to the defendants' abilities to pay and motives. Mostly Link and Duke talked; I tried to glean anything useful or illuminating from the bits of information I had and the shreds of conversation that I could hear and understand. At one point I heard Mr. Oh (who had been talking to us) and another man haggle over the amount we were to be fined,
||: Oh: 5million; other man: 2million :|| over and over.And we waited. Finally, Oh came back and told us that we would be fined three million, which we would have to pay at the bank within the next five days, and thereafter we would have to leave the country. "Five days?" I said, "In this book it says seven days."
He said, "I say five days."
I tried again. This time I got the response, "You are in violation of Korean Immigration Law!"
Aha! I thought, and said (gesturing at that handy little book), "Right, Article XVIII and XXI, the same law which states that the violator will have seven days in which to pay."
This lively repartee lasted a little while, but at some point I found the passage I was referring to and recited it to him. He was upset. Over and over: "You are in violation of Korean Immigration Law!" He also said to forget the book and consider my position (...in violation...). Ah, I love a cool-headed logical gent!
Duke talked to him about calling Mr. Im (Cause Duke didn't have enough money to pay the fine and hoped that the boss could cover it), but didn't get that chance (Mr. Oh told Duke to ask the American embassy for the money).
So that's about how it was left. We were led by Oh to another waiting room and bade wait. I think it was during this time that we talked passports. We said to him, you must give us our passports.
Guess what he said.
Duke and Link were cool and apologetic, I was logical and recalcitrant. Nothing came of this but more success in getting him to raise his voice.
We tried the "Passports are the property of the U.S. Government" line, but to no avail. Finally I asked him his name. He told me and I tried to write it down, and then, as though it were the capping blow he said to me, "I'll give you my name card." (He never did.)
So we found ourselves stranded in an, as yet, unseen room. It had a bench, a desk, two chairs and a safe. And now it had the three Mi-gook-skateers. Here we waited for what seemed like (and probably actually were) hours. At one point Mr. Snoop from the night before offered us coffee. This is the place / time that I began this record (though now that I am nearing the end of my tale I am in class at 9:15 tonight). I made repeated trips to the bathroom for smokes and otherwise mostly paced and prowled around the room. It had a door which opened onto the hallway (the same hallway as the original waiting room), directly opposite the door was a large mirror. In the room, to the left of (provided you are facing) the door was a large window. This, with the mirror, was nice, because I could stand in the farthest left farthest hallward corner of the room, and see much of the activity in the next room. Unfortunately not much of interest was going on there. At one point two handcuffed men were led in, and after a while they went out free. As I was often going and coming from the bathroom I could get a fair view of the area. I saw Mr. Im and his wife when they came in ~ though I could not tell what was going on with them.
At one point Link was called into the room next door. He was interrogated, sort of, and we could hear it all. The interrogator asked Link over and over how long he had worked at Olympiad. Link, courageously, said over and over that the information about that was contained in the statement he had written. The man got angry ~ yelling that Link had, indeed, worked at Olympiad, and that his director said so. Link maintained as long (longer, in fact) as he reasonably could have, but in the end, said the fateful words, "I have never worked at Olympiad."
After that he was allowed to come back in. And a loud argument ensued in a nearby room, presumably over the information Link had at long last divulged. We waited more. We saw Mr. Im's lawyer and another man come in. Shortly thereafter, a voice called out, "Brown, Duke!" Duke went, and a moment later returned, saying that all of our presences were requested with the Director. So we went.
Mr. Im and his wife were there. The man who had interrogated Link was also there. We were told to sign forms which we were told we translations of our earlier-made statements. I think that we should really have been more careful - asking what we were signing more specifically, but we weren't, we didn't. We signed. They gave Duke a receipt for his passport, told us that the "Captain" would make his decision on Monday, and we all went to another waiting room.
Here Mr. Im was full of Optimistic Bravado ~ enough at least to make us laugh some. After his lawyer was done with whatever he was doing we all left. Mr. Im told us over and over that it wouldn't be a big problem. OK. Then he took us out to an extravagant lunch before delivering us to our respective places of employment.