Hello Korea Business Central,

I'm an American teacher of English on an E2 visa living in Seoul. My friend and prospective partner is a British citizen who also has an E2. We have an ambition. We'd like to go into business as an online service that offers English teaching through Skype. Korean learners call it "Phone English" (전화영어).

Our site is already up: http://www.evoenglish.com

It's under heavy construction, and only in Korean at the moment.

Our current plan to carry out our activities legally (and also be able to have access to merchant accounts) was to register an LLC in the US, and then somehow try to "transfer" to Korea.

I've read a lot of information, but there's so much of it, and I would like to seek advice while proceeding. I don't have 50-100+ million won, and if at all possible I'd prefer not to try to raise that capital or take on any debt of that amount. But obvious information on how to get around that hurdle seems hard to find, even here on KBC. Looking through information from the Gangnam Global Business Center, it looks like I could try and seek out the setting up of a Korean "branch" to our business.

I'm not sure if this is the best way to proceed. I have considered other alternatives, such as finding a partner company and having them handle online merchant transactions, sending us the bulk of the money for transactions and keeping a commission for themselves. But I'm not sure if this is entirely legal either.

Any insight would be appreciated. I still feel fairly lost.

Respectfully yours,

Joe Flack