I haven't written my blog in a while, and I apologize for making all of you wait so long regarding why the EP process has slowed down so much in Korea. A few families have written to me wanting to know what's going on as they anxiously wait for their children to come home.
So far the Korean government branch of the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) has not requested the agencies to submit a certain number of EPs that they normally accept from the agencies around February of a new year. But it's already the end of March and no request from MOHW was given to the agencies to submit a new batch of EP applications.
Just this wee, one or two agencies went ahead and submitted the EP applications to MOHW regardless. From what I hear, the MOHW recently underwent a new staff rotation program, and all the staff members have been replaced except for one, thus creating some learning curve for the new members, thus the slow EP process.
However, there have been some EPs cleared this year, but these are the ones that were submitted for application on last November 2016. But for 2017 there has not been any EP batches submitted until this week.
So it's going to be a slow process for the time being, but expect the staff members to learn the ropes soon. I think another reason may be that the whole country has been so absorbed for months by the impeachment of the President Park, and much of the country did not move with their normal activities because of the national emergency.
Stay tuned.
