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Permalink Reply by Erik Cornelius on July 7, 2010 at 7:31am

The basic passport application fee has also gone up. On the bright side, all US citizens can now request 52-page passports, eliminating the need to get additional pages. Those affected most by the new fee are the heavy travelers with skinny passports that don't expire for several years.

Here's a link to the US Embassy in Korea's July newsletter (PDF) with more info: http://www.asktheconsul.org/nl_july10.pdf

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Permalink Reply by Dom LaVigne on July 7, 2010 at 7:54am

Erik,

That's an excellent point, as most people don't realize they have that option when applying for a passport. State normally gives the slim 16-pagers, but you can get a larger one upon request. I think it had been 32 or 44 pages, but definitely worth getting the 52-pager.

---Dom

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Permalink Reply by Peter Song on July 7, 2010 at 1:34pm

oh wow thank you for that news, I need new pages as I was almost rejected into Indonesia because I ran out of pages. I see that it says effective from July 13th, so does that mean I can get free pages until the 13th?

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Permalink Reply by Erik Cornelius on July 7, 2010 at 2:00pm

Peter - You can try to get in before the deadline. When I got pages added it was pretty simple. I just showed up at the embassy, dropped off my passport and picked up the new and improved version four days later. I think you can also opt to have them deliver the passport to you for a nominal fee.

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Permalink Reply by Kent Wong on July 12, 2010 at 3:28pm

I only had a couple of free pages left in my slim passport (2-4 pages remaining is the official requirement), so I dropped off my passport at the embassy Thursday afternoon (no appointment) since I was meeting clients in the Jongno area.

I received my passport back with additional pages today (Monday), via delivery service (nominal fee is 6,000W within Seoul). Get in quick before the effective date ends tomorrow, July 13th!

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Permalink Reply by Sang Chong on July 12, 2010 at 3:44pm

I did not know we had a choice!!!

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Permalink Reply by Peter Song on July 13, 2010 at 6:32pm

went to the embassy today and had to pay the $82 or 102,000 won. I was quite upset...as I thought it was free until Tomorrow..argh 아깝다 >./body>

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Permalink Reply by Kent Wong on July 14, 2010 at 11:25am

Peter,

Too bad. In retrospect, if you travel a lot, it might've been better value to "replace" your passport with a new 52 pager (as mentioned above (new fee being $135)) rather than have the additional pages pasted in for 82 bucks. You would've got twice as many pages without being hit as hard in fees.

I'm now going to be vigilant at airport immigration and ask them not to stamp all over my passport willy-nilly. =)

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Permalink Reply by Dom LaVigne on July 14, 2010 at 11:35am

I've been in some airports where the Immigration officers are not shy about seeing how many stamps they can squeeze into that four-box square on one page... although I've also been in places where -- when people tried to tell the officers where to stamp/not -- that was somtimes disregarded and/or people got hassled.

The real passport-killer is when you work in a place and have to get a visa everytime you go to a nearby country, such as living in Malaysia/Singapore and doing a lot of business in Indonesia. This was never the case before, but some years ago, Indo started requiring many foreign passport holders (US included) to get a single-entry visa (which took up a single page by itself) every time on entry. For ppl I knew who were going to Indonesia every few weeks for business, their passports filled up rather quickly...

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