South Korea - Chapter 8: Kim Possible

In Korea, names are written in a different order than in the west. It is last name, first name, middle name. For example, when you hear about the North Korean leader Kim Jung Un, Kim is his last name. As it turns out, it’s also not unusual to have children that have the same first name because their middle names will make them unique.

My in-laws are Kim Chae Kon and Kim Pu Yong. They are 86 and 83 years old respectively. A smart person might have thought twice about spending 25 days with their in-laws let alone traveling internationally with them. I didn’t give it a second thought. Perhaps I should have but I didn’t.

My own parents are both 87. They both have Alzheimer's disease and their bodies are going where their minds already are. They need walkers to avoid falling while going from their apartment in the memory care unit where they live to the communal dining room. Just getting them to answer their phone comes with odds that feel like casino gambling. Thankfully, they still remember who we are though not long ago my dad asked me if I was his son or his grandson. If you’re not careful, a conversation with them can easily become an endless loop.

My in-laws could not be more different. Despite their age, they are mentally clear and physically in great shape. We have walked an average of 4 to 6 miles each day that we have been here in South Korea. They never slow down even when carting suitcases with them. When encountering a long staircase as we exit a subway station, my Father-In-Law grabs both his and my Mother-In-Law’s suitcases and carries them swiftly up the stairs without a thought. When we arrived in Busan yesterday by bus, before even waiting for the bus driver, my 86 year old Father-In-Law got on his hands and knees and crawled completed into the storage compartment underneath the bus to get our bags. They awaken early and are ready to go to utilize every moment we have in whatever place Korean city we happen to be visiting. And even at their age, they are considering buying a home in South Korea so they can feel comfortable being here for extended stays in the future. The don’t see or act as if there is any limit to the number of years they have left. They don’t know how many there are (most of us don’t either) so they don’t allow that to dictate their actions. I suspect they have far more left than 95% of people their age.

In fact, part of our reason for coming to South Korea was to give them the opportunity to look around and decide in what part of their country of origin they might want to live. Much of our time at the front-end of our trip in Seoul was dedicated to dealing with an immigration issue. Yes, immigration. You see, despite the fact that they were born and raised in South Korea and despite the fact that they are, as far as the Korean government is concerned, Korean citizens, they have an immigration problem. By Korean law, as soon as they became citizens of another country (the United States of America in their case), they should have renounced their Korean citizenship. That never happened. If they attempted to renew their very expired Korean passports, they would likely have to explain where they have been.

The solution, according to my Father-In-Law, was for them to renounce their Korean citizenship now. This would allow them to then file for an F4 Visa which would allow them to stay in South Korea for up to five years. The F4 is most commonly for foreigners working for extended periods of time in Korea, and foreigners are exactly what they would be once they renounced their Korean citizenship. However, because of a law that was changed in 2010 and because they are over 65 years old, after renouncing their Korean citizenship, they can go to a Korean Consulate in the United States and apply to have their Korean citizenship reinstated. Yes, you heard that right. My Father-In-Law swore to us that this was the way it’s done. When I asked him for his source, he gave me the source of so much of his knowledge and wisdom these days: YouTube. That did little to convince me that any of it was true.

Despite our urging them to let us hire an immigration attorney here in South Korea and spend an hour explaining the entire situation to make sure they don’t ring a bell that they can’t unring, they insisted on moving forward. We traveled to the Immigration Office in Incheon only to find out that there was an error that needed to be corrected before anything could be done. Apparently when my in-laws married, my Mother-In-Law’s first name was misspelled by one character. The immigration officer told us to head to another government office about four miles away to get that corrected so off we went. When we arrived, we were told that it could be fixed but we’d have to come back the following Tuesday. It as a single character. How could that take several days? It seems that governments and tectonic plates have something in common. They both move at a place that feels truly geologic.

Five days later it was time to head back to Incheon with the hopes that the process could continue. My wife Jeannie had an appointment to get her hair done that day so it was left up to me to cart my in-laws through 3 different subway transfers taking 90 minutes to get from Itaewon back to Incheon. We arrived at that same local government office and spoke to the same government worker who, as she had said she would, was ready with the appropriate paperwork showing that a 50 year old typo had been corrected. With that in hand, it was time to head north to the Immigration Office. Since I had not yet managed to get my KakaoTalk app login working again and thus couldn’t summon a cab from the KakaoTaxi app, I asked the government worker about hailing a cab instead. She shook her head and informed me that that would not likely be successful as the cabs that come to Incheon are here to drop someone off, not look for fares. My odds of success were not good.

With my optimism fading, we headed outside and were crossing the street when I noticed a cab coming towards us that indicated it was available. I raised my hand and when the cab changed lanes I began to think that we would not have to walk back to the subway station and maneuver the well-designed Seoul Metro system after all. Sure enough, we lucked out. On the short drive to the Immigration Office I decided to test the theory that insanity is trying the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result by attempting for the umpteenth time to get my KakaoTalk login working. KakaoTalk is by far the most popular instant messaging app in South Korea but it’s more than that. It’s expanded into an entire array of services as well including taxis. Kakao Taxi is the equivalent of Uber here.

The problem was that I hadn’t used my KakaoTalk login in a few years since our daughter Mia came home from her nine month stay in South Korea that was cut short three months by the pandemic. The app wanted me to authenticate again by sending a text message to my phone. Fine. I entered my phone number only to have it tell me it couldn't send a message to that number. Argh. I got us Korean SIM cards so we would have internet access from our phones while we are here so I entered my Korean phone number thinking that it just didn’t want to send a message to my US phone number (even though it had +1 as an option for selecting the country code). Nope, that didn’t work either.

Then I found myself wondering if there was a different problem. iOS gives developers the ability to indicate the a field is meant for a phone number. There are several advantages to this (including changing the keyboard to one optimized for phone number entry) one of which is that the keyboard’s autocomplete can suggest your phone number which can then be entered with a single tap. It occurred to me that perhaps the app simply doesn’t like the formatting that its receiving along with the digits in my number when I tap on my phone number above the keyboard to enter it all at once. But that can’t be. This app is used by millions of people. Surely the app would strip out the formatting (visibly or in the background) or would at the very least present a helpful error message that it can’t accept the formatting. Not being able to come up with anything else, I decided to try typing my phone number number by number without any formatting. Sure enough, it accepted it, texted me an authorization code and I was good to go. For the rest of our trip, I would be able to summon a cab from wherever we were. As it turns out it’s not quite that simple. The app knows where you are but you need to tell it where you are going and despite the app being localized into english, it doesn’t accept english names of places or addresses so entering a destination can be frustrating. It wouldn’t accept either of my Mastercard credit cards either for payment but fortunately when you summon a taxi, you can swipe left on the payment pane and choose to pay the driver instead which allows you to use just about any credit card you want. But enough about the app.

We arrived at the Immigration Office and went directly back to the desk of the woman with whom we had originally spoken. She remembered us. We showed her all the documentation we had. She then gave my in-laws each a form to fill out with all their basic information. She then explained that they needed to make copies of their American naturalization certificates as well as have passport-style photos shot. Oh. Fortunately, across the hall was a shop of sorts where we could make the copies and shoot instant photos. With that work done, we returned to her desk. She then asked to see their US passports. Oh. That’s something we just hadn’t thought about and Jeannie had them with her. It was looking like we were going to have to come back here again another day. Then I asked, “Would photos of their passports work?” I honestly did not think that would be acceptable but it never hurts to ask and this time it didn’t hurt at all because yes, photos would be fine. I called Jeannie who took pictures of the passports and emailed them to the immigration officer. Finally we were done with immigration. My very Korean in-laws were officially no longer Koreans. Well, no longer Korean citizens anyway.

They both continue to impress me each and every day. They are the most physically and mentally fit people in their 80s that I know. They are truly an inspiration. So what is it? Did they win the genetic lottery? Is it just the fact that they workout 6 days a week? Is it their excellent diet? Those things help but it’s also that they have never really retired. They own commercial property and despite having a management company to do all the real work, they are doing something regarding it every day. I’m sure it has to do with growing up during the Korean War and having to fend for themselves. That gets inside you in a way that never leaves. My grandfather was that way. Just like my in-laws, he stayed physically and mentally active until the day he died at 95. My parents on the other hand both retired at 55 and basically took the rest of their lives off. They had nothing going on that really challenged them. They stayed in good physical shape but they no longer had anything in their lives that put demands upon them and I think that is likely a significant contributing factor. The saying use it or lose it appears to be right on. Like your muscles, the brain needs to be in constant demand or it too will atrophy.

I’m doing nearly all I can think of to continue to be healthy both mentally and physically. At nearly 60 I feel as good now as I have ever really felt. I watch my weight. I get regular exercise. I’m learning a language (Korean of course) and my job requires that I learn new things regularly. I practice mindfulness meditation after reading about a Harvard study that shows that it promotes brain growth. It also teaches you how to control your emotions so that they don’t control you. A lot of bad decisions are the result of overreacting to a sudden dramatic situation. Mindfulness Meditation teaches you how to stop and think before reacting to things. Thankfully, a recent CT scan shows that I have effectively no heart disease which is a relief as that’s the number one killer across the entire world.

If you want to be in your eighties and still have the energy to travel to nearly the other side of the world, make sure your body and mind are well taken care of and are kept in demand. As I often say to those trying to make an important decision, your remaining time on this Earth is your most precious asset. It could be decades or mere moments so don’t waste it.