Steps for getting married in Korea (2 foreigners. Not sure of the steps if you are marrying a Korean):
1. No matter what your nationality, you need to obtain an Affidavit of Eligilibity of Marriage. You can obtain this from your Embassy. If you are a US citizen, you need to jump on the embassy's website and download a form to fill out and then schedule an appoitment to go to the embassy. You will need the form, and if you were married before, your original divorce papers or notarized copies. If not, you just need your form. The cost is $50. They take cash in form of Korean Won or an American credit card (no international fees or anything will be charged on it). If you are a South African Citizen, you don't need to physcially go to your embassy. There is a form you can fill out and mail to teh embassy. They embassy (they only send out diplomatic mail once a month) then sends the form to SA where they will notarize the form and send it back to you. That can take anywhere from a few weeks to 3 months. We needed the document faster so we went through docs4expats.com, paid a bit more money, and had the documents in hand in a week. But if you can wait and want to save some cash, it's easy to go through the embassy.
2. Great! You now have the documents you need in hand. Now you just need to go to any local "gu" office. It can be in Seoul, your town, another town, doesn't matter. We chose to do it in Seoul since we were up there for the weekend anyway. The gu office in Seoul we went to is behind the US Embassy. The MOFAT office where you get your marriage certificate apostilled then behind the gu office. As you walk in, there's an information person there who speaks English to help you. She may or may not give you the form you need to fill out. Fill the form out, take a number and wait. We didn't have to wait. You will need 2 witnesses to sign the form. You can find the form online (I don't know how but you can ask a Korean friend. We found this out later) and fill it out and have any 2 people sign as witnesses at anytime and then just bring that in wiht you to the gu office. We asked 2 random Koreans in the office that day (as there were no foriegners there to sign for us at the time). Last resort, that does work! Make sure you have your Affidavit of Marriage of Eligibilty, your passport, and 200 won with you (each copy is 200 won). Go back to the desk with everything filled out and hand it to the disgruntled government worker there and she or he will do a few things then hand you a piece of paper in Korean and that's it! You are now legally married! Done and done!
3. The next thing you want to do is since the certificate is in Korean, you will need to get it apostilled. We wondered around for a while and walked in circles until we found where we were supposed to go. If you are at the gu office in Seoul, here's how you get to the MOFAT office. Walk out of hte building and turn left. At the next street (it's small) you come to take a left. Walk down about 50 meters adn on teh opposite side fo the road is the Korea BD building. It's the building next to teh very obvious Tax office. Walk in teh BD building and go to the 4th floor. Turn left out of hte elevator and go to the first office on teh right. The little old man speaks English adn will help you. Take a number, give them your certficate, pay 1000 won per apostille, wait 20 min (we hit up the Starbucks across teh street) and you're done. We thought they would also translate it to English but they don't do that. More information on that to come. :)
4. Walk outside, jump up and down, kiss your husband or wife and do a happy dance. You are now married!
***The procedure if you are marrying a Korean is a little different. I know you have to wait 3-5 days for your certificate and the procedure for the Korean before hand is a bit different. Sorry for not having that info.
CONGRATS!!!
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