A lot has happened since I last wrote here; this has been an eventful year. I left my old job on the other side of the peninsula and returned to the place where it all started, twenty-one years ago, when the unhelpful situation in Taiwan forced me to leave for South Korea... and I’ve been here ever since. Now, however, it may be that late in life, another change of career is about to unfold... so, on this rainy Sunday afternoon, let me finish taking my blood pressure meds and tell you about it...

Yet again, despite not actually staying out too late on a Saturday night (and not going out too early either, due to yet another screwed-up 3D print), I fell out of bed at a ridiculous time in the afternoon, not quite sure how to start the day beyond popping my now-customary pills and writing briefly in my Stoic Journal. However, a change of career is looming large, and the issue is what kind of output would allow me to set up some cash flows. Some feedback would be appreciated.

It turns out that Korean Immigration seems to have warmed to the idea of the “Digital Nomad”; recently, it has been reported in the media here that despite their efforts to entice foreign investment, there seem to have been too many barriers to entry, and hence the response from potential investors has been rather lukewarm for a long time. It is all very interesting when you start to explore it: apparently, around the time that I arrived here in 2003, a foreigner needed only to invest ₩20,000,000 (about ₤11,335 at the current exchange rate), but abuse of the system, in the form of foreigners coming into the country, getting their visa and then simply living off the ₩20million rather than actually running a business, became enough of an annoyance to the Immigration authorities that the investment threshold was raised first to ₩50,000,000 and more recently to ₩100,000,000; strictly, it should be ₩300,000,000 (work it out for yourselves). 

In any case, I had been wondering about how I might transition to self-employed status here for a long time. However, it was really only after my father (in the UK) died and the estate had to be settled that I really had the funds for it. Quite apart from the fact that inheritance like this is a sad way to get money, and the strange feeling of loneliness when you realise that your parents are gone, it is also a rather different business milieu from the way that it might be done back at home, in the sense that East Asian countries insist upon a large initial deposit before a business can be started, whereas back home, you can simply buy a business off the shelf complete with bank account and registration; how “reasonable” that “large initial deposit” is depends upon the individual East Asian country’s regulations and the exchange rate at the time of deposition.

There was also the question of proving that the funds to be transferred were genuinely through inheritance, proving the intention of paying it, and also proving that it was not an otherwise illegal transfer between banks, which entailed a brief visit back to the UK for the first time since leaving in September 2002, and going to my bank branch in Cambridge. I also had to prove my own identity with a copy of my Birth Certificate (seems my other IDs were not sufficient) plus copies of the Death Certificates for both of my parents.

So, off to Cambridge, where I had graduated back in 1990... and the situation was immediately complicated as I discovered, to my horror, that neither my bank nor any of the other banks there understood the process (I checked all the banks in Petty Cury, which is where they all seem to be located). They knew enough about simple international bank transfers, but not the attendant documentation which had become mandatory some four years prior, and this proved to be a source of confusion for not less than a whole week. This related to the requirement to produce a notarised and apostilled copy of the MT103 transfer form, which had to show details like residential address associated with the account plus the purpose of the transfer, which in this case was “Investment Funds”.

As soon as I had to start communicating with people in England, I also realised that, ridiculously perhaps, as I had forgotten to get an eSIM at Incheon Airport in the rush to get going, I had to start off using SkypeOut (I had brought one of my Win10 laptops with me) and had then to arrange roaming on my phone so that communication was more convenient; plus, my lawyer here in Korea insisted on using Kakao to communicate, and kept waking me up each morning at about 4:30 a.m. with his own messages (but hey, at least I didn’t miss the hotel breakfast).

It took a call to the International Help Desk at my own bank, Halifax plc, to clarify what was required, but even then I goofed up because I didn’t get all of the details on the transfer form, and had to send a third (!) transfer to my new account out here (set up the Friday before departure) to get a final, correct printout. When everything was in place (or so I thought), I then had to find a local Notary Public in Cambridge because each of the documents had to be first notarised and then apostilled. The notary himself pointed out that some of these documents (birth and death certificates) did not need to be notarised before being apostilled, but unfortunately it was a stipulation on the part of the Koreans, so everything became much more expensive. It was not until the beginning of October that all of the documents were verified and could finally be processed and legalised, and they have been arriving here in dribs and drabs via DHL.

I have to say that some things about modern England, which were not quite the same when I left, did shock me after arriving. Perhaps the preponderance of foreigners in the vicinity of Heathrow (or, at any rate, how many seemed to be passing through at the time) should not have been surprising; what did surprise me was how many there were in Cambridge when I got there. Another shock was that, despite the fact that the Heathrow Bus Station’s WiFi seemed to be working fine, I could neither find a cheap room to stay, nor book one online from where I was. Then, the bus to Cambridge did not leave until 11:30 p.m., meaning that I arrived there about 1:30 a.m. and predictably, there were no taxis to flag down and make my way to the local Holiday Inn Express, which seemed to be the only place with rooms free at that moment. I should express my gratitude to a young American lady who allowed me to call up a local Panther cab and finally make my way there. Finally, the next day, I was shocked at the number of people on the streets in Petty Cury, begging, and clearly the worse for wear as a result of using “substances”. The place was already choc-a-bloc with seasonal tourists... which explained the shortage of hotel rooms.

Anyway... storytelling aside, by the following Wednesday it seemed that everything had been pretty much arranged, I kept my appointment with the notary and his assistant, paid the fee and spent the last two days basically relaxing at the hotel, as it was a few miles from the city centre and as I no longer had a current driving licence (nor any desire to return to driving), I was having to get around mainly by taxi, which was not a cheap experience... finally, on September 7th, a Saturday, I jumped on a National Express bus back to Heathrow and flew back to Korea via Munich.

Since then, I have renewed my job seeker’s visa and I am now waiting for the last of the legalised documents to arrive; a third packet is due in some time tomorrow (Monday, October 7th) via our old friends, DHL, and one more to follow some time soon with the legalised Estate Account. 

Oddly enough, although I had a contract with a substantial (and consequently rather expensive) local legal firm to oversee this process, and the lawyer appointed to my case told me that the whole thing was going surprisingly well with the local Immigration Office, I did not know what the stipulations were regarding the day-to-day running of the intended business: meaning, exactly what would I be allowed to do? It seems that, unlike in the UK, the allocation of a business visa is much more restrictive in terms of what you can do. I actually had to message him and ask him about this, and the answers were as follows. Under the terms of the visa, I could do:

* educational video production
* publishing business
* voice actor
* education

... which is not really what I had intended, as I was thinking more of something involving 3D prototyping and developing a 3D printing business. Looks like we got a wire crossed there...

In the meantime, I have been thinking about just what form(s) this business might take. Voicing audiobooks appeals to me, but I absolutely want to avoid “education”, as the whole point of the foregoing was to get out of that, as I am 62 this month and another teaching job seems unlikely, although there are some possibilities of suitable part-time/online work which would suit my equipment quite well. Clearly, the minions at the Immigration Office had been thinking of something along the lines of me becoming some kind of online “influencer”, but exactly what I could do as some kind of social (or perhaps philosophical or scientific) commentator seems unclear right now. I have a feeling that there may have to be some changes to the visa application!

With an eye towards something like a regular podcast, however, I have been making notes and contemplating possible topics, and I would tend to consider subjects like science, philosophy, conspiracies, and paranormal/cryptid theories. I am open to suggestions and I probably have all of the equipment that I need, as it is basically a PC-based operation. I don’t think people really need to see my ugly mug online, however, so stylistically I would probably do something along the lines of RGE or TFM.

As a starter, I had been considering a discussion of so-called “global warming”, as this is clearly BS and can be debunked easily. Another interesting area would be a discussion of anthropoid cryptids such as Bigfoot/Sasquatch, as these are obviously not restricted to North America and need to be put into some kind of wider context. Then there is the abominable (pardon the pun) state of current cosmology and its failure to take into account the flow of current through the plasma of space (two of these topics are also clearly linked). Not sure how I would sustain these things for an extended period, though.

It might be interesting to go live on a platform like Xephula and see how it works out, initially, with viewers on chat or perhaps able to call in. Just a thought.

Any ideas, anyone? Send me a message or comment below with your thoughts.