Consulate General of the Republic of Korea — Local services in Washington

Read this if you’re renewing your passport. Hopefully it saves you time and confusion and you find it helpful.

1-I made an appointment to renew my Korea passport but it wasn’t clear if I was supposed to go to the embassy or the consulate general because my reservation listed both addresses. I went to the consulate general and that was fine.

2- The website says you need to print a color version of the application and use black ink. I paid for color printing at CVS and when I showed up at the consulate general, she said that the application is out of date and she gave me a new one to fill out. So it wasn’t worth color printing the online application. They only have applications in Korean so she had to help me fill it out but she spoke limited English. They also take your expired passport when you renew.

3- She said I’d have to come back to the consulate general to pick up my passport but I don’t live in DC. If I wanted it mailed, I had to have brought my own stamps. Since I didn’t bring any, she told me to buy a booklet of stamps from CVS. Was $15.60 for 20 stamps, and it takes 15 stamps to ship (~$11 worth of postage). Took about 20-30 min round trip to walk to CVS to buy it (they carry it upfront) and she said I could skip the line when I got back to give her the stamps. The girl after me was told the same thing about the stamps and I didn’t have enough to share, so she also had to waste time and run to CVS to buy them.

4- Takes ~3 weeks to get the new passport in the mail. She had me sign a waiver that it’s my responsibility to receive the passport in the mail, which doesn’t make sense to me if it’s the office’s responsibility to send it and the post office’s responsibility not to lose it. But I asked her to clarify what I’m responsible for and she just had me take a picture of the tracking label of the priority mail envelope.

5- I tried to avoid spending $19 at CVS for passport photos by first taking my own photo from home and just color printing it. They also had what seemed to be strict criteria and dimensions but no English translation. Dimensions for the photo were 4.5x3.5 cm with your face filling up specifically 3.2-3.6 cm of the frame. I was worried CVS might not be attentive enough to ensure those dimensions, so I cropped it at home. But their website says you can’t smile in the photo (mouth must be closed), so I ended up just going to CVS last minute to get a back up set. What’s good is that you can select your country for the passport photo and it crops to meet the specific requirements for your country, so they accepted my CVS photo.

6- Some reviews said it’s cash only but they accepted credit card. I expected to be able to get a 10 year passport for $50 but they told me as a dual citizen, I could only get a 5 year booklet. For 26 pages, it was $39.

7- My appointment was 9-9:30 am on a Tuesday. I ended up leaving at 10 am and it wasn’t crowded at all the time I was there.

8- For months I had tried calling this place to find out what I needed to bring but they don’t answer their phones, so I’ll share my experience with what to bring.

What I brought vs. what was necessary to bring. Necessary- 1- Korean expired passport 2- US active passport 3- Passport photo 4- 15 stamps ($11 worth of postage)

Wasn’t needed- 1- Birth certificate as well as photo copies of it 2- Extra photocopies of my Korean passport (they made copies themselves) 3- Reservation Confirmation page printed copy 4-Printed online copy of application (website one is out of date) 5- My military exemption certificate 6-Cash (card was accepted)

Hopefully this helps avoid some confusions that I had and can save you some time. Feel free to add if your experience is...

One of the worse experiences I’ve ever had! I actually went there in 2015, I had been meaning to leave this review because it was so horrible, but now I’m finally getting around to it. Even after 5 years, I remember the unbelievably rude and unhelpful man that worked there. I went because I needed to process some official documents to send to S. Korea. The middle aged man who was working at the window was super rude and unfriendly. He couldn’t care less about the work he was doing, and I almost felt like I was being discriminated for some reason, because I couldn’t believe he would treat everyone this way. I traveled almost an hour to get there and he was not helpful at all. When I had missing documents, he didn’t even let me know specifically what I needed to prepare. He just said he couldn’t do it because I didn’t bring everything and then just sent me off, not letting me ask any questions. When I got back home I had to call the office again to clarify what I needed to bring next time because he barely gave me enough information about what I was missing. The lady who answered the phone call was friendly and clearly informed me of what I needed to bring. Since I couldn’t give 0 stars, let’s just say the one star is for the lady who...

This is the place to submit your visa application.

Posting this list because we were very thorough and still missed a couple things. For a student visa you will need:

New Passport photos US Passport Reservation confirmation - make appt Visa application Certificate of Admission from Korean University Certificate of Business Registration of Korean University Letter of acceptance from university Parent Sponsor letter Home university visit support letter Insurance ID from CISI Proof of Insurance from CISI Plane ticket receipt / itinerary 2 months bank statement, entirety $45 cash to pay for visa Driver's license - copy Transcripts from your US university

There are public computers, though difficult to navigate if you cannot yet read Korean. There is an atm. And a water dispenser. The place was quiet, everyone was helpful, the entire process was 20 mins, including having to step out of line to use their computer and printer and for the atm...