I am back to my home land, finally - Page 5

congrats man, i bet liberty feels awesome lol. =]

2 month old post lol. If you still check the forums, I was wondering, don't you have to serve 2 years in the military if you're a male? Conscription is mandatory in SK I thought and it's understandable cause of NK.

I am seriously reconsidering going back(was my plan B) because I just saw the news about how U.S. military buried toxic chemicals underground (not so deep) without proper sealing in 1960-70 near one of the biggest/longest river . The chemical was too toxic that it could wipe out 3/4 of the population or more. This was denied all along but the secret was finally exposed by the confession of an retired U.S. military person. Korean government, as usual can't say anything about them to U.S. because of some act;; I don't know how they are going to dig it out and take care of it. Now they are finding more and more lethally toxic chemicals underground. Scarier than the North problem.

Not if you don't have a 4-year college degree.

They don't take US K-12 diploma as a valid proof of education(Not good enough), so one is legally a person with no formal-education/elementary school dropout/middle school dropout depending on the time of departure, and one has to be at least high-school graduated to be conscripted. There is one notorious case of one soccer player being shopped for English Premier League fetching twice the price of usual Korean soccer players because he dropped out of middle school, thus not subject to conscription.

If you do have a US 4-year(not 2-year) college degree, then they will take that college degree and will accept you as a college graduate and ship you to the boot camp. While this sounds terrible, you can also apply for jobs as a college graduate and apply for most prestigious local graduate schools, which aren't that hard to get in relative to undergraduate schools.

That is so odd lol. I would imagine they would ship everyone but people without a high school diploma can skip conscription? I think that's ridiculous. I guess that's how Korea works though. But 2 years is a long time especially when you're 20-30 years old and these are the prime years of your life. Thanks for answering my question btw.

Probably should head towards Canada, UK, or Australia if you have a college degree and other reqs, if you want an American-esque environment.

I left the states after almost 18 years of illegal living, went back to the Philippines and am now in Canada as graduate student...it's awesome

How long after you move to the Philippines did you went to canada? Was it easy? Did they ask about your illegal stay in the us?

was this player for premier league in saturdays manchester v barcelona game by any chance? because i kept noticing him he was the only asian in manchesters lineup, hey theres actually been alot more members that have taken off, we really should make a separate part for them to post only and ppl asking questions because its a shame that after leaving, we never hear back from them, and they are some of the most important members of this site with all that theyve been thru

Great idea..maybe you should post this in the suggestions section as well. If you're reading this...thank you pursuitofhappiness for writing back from South Korea. You've inspired us especially South Korean dreamers..that there is life outside America as well. Good luck!