Until recently Mongolians who wanted a Korean visa had to form a long queue outside the South Korean Embassy in Ulaanbaatar. Currently a new visa offices “Passport Express international” and  “Hang-Mong Law” have opened to take applications officially in Ulaanbaatar so visa appliers will no longer have to wait for long hours outside of the Embassy. These offices have received over 300 visa applications since the beginning of this year. Our journalist spoke to an official from the “Passport Express international” on the changes made to the Korean visa application rule earlier this year.

 -Since when has the visa charge been returned to a person who failed the application process? Are there many cases like this?  
   
-The South Korean Embassy in Mongolia have returned visa charges to Mongolians who failed to complete the application for a visa since last October.

Mongolia and South Korea signed an agreement to streamline the visa process for each other’s citizens in a bid to boost people-to-people exchanges and economic cooperation last June. The agreement became valid on October 26th 2012.

There are many cases where people even paid the visa charge but failed to apply for the visa.

-Does that mean only a person who did not apply for a visa but paid the visa charge will receive back the money? People who applied for a visa but were rejected think that they could get the visa charge back too.

-Only people who did not apply for a visa will get the visa charge back. But people whose visa was rejected or not approved will not get back the money.

-What other changes have been made to the visa rule?

-There are some new changes such as a visa applicant who paid the social insurance premium for the past six months continuously or whose monthly salary is above 700,000 MNT is not required to show property verification.

Before this change at least 10-20 million MNT savings book as property verification was required. But now a visa applicant can apply without it.

In addition the applicants insurance must belong to a company or legal party not a private insurer.

An applicant who has travelled to the countries of Shengen area should also apply for a Korean visa. It is not necessary that an applicant should have been in Korea.

-How many cases are there of a visa rejection ? What is the biggest reason behind rejections?

-Over 100 people applied for visas to the Korean Embassy in Ulaanbaatar since the beginning of year. Only 4 of them were rejected.

Actually only between two and six out of 100 applicants are rejected on average. In most cases the visa is rejected due to the collected documents not being adequate. Therefore applicants should make sure that the documents are correct and legal.