By Bae Keun-min
Staff Reporter
The U.S. Embassy in Seoul has established a bulletin board to answer questions exclusively on visa and consular issues in its first-ever online community, Cafe USA.

The embassy said Friday it has been receiving some 260 questions on visa affairs, including how to get different types of visas to enter the United States, since it launched the virtual community last month.

The board was set up on Wednesday to more effectively deal with questions about visa issues, according to the embassy.

``The decision came due to the need for a consul general to directly address U.S. visa issuance in a separate bulletin board,’’ an embassy official said.

During a chatting session with Korean nationals on Dec. 2, Christopher Hill, U.S. ambassador to Seoul, also said he would suggest the consul general here to open an online venue for visa issues, as the session was filled with relevant inquiries.

Last year, about 420,000 South Koreans applied for U.S. non-immigrant visas, 397,000 of them being approved, making the rejection rate hover at around 5 percent. Some 680,000 Koreans visited the U.S. in 2003, while more than 400,000 U.S. citizens traveled to Korea.

To obtain a U.S. visa, an average of two months is needed here. Michael Kirby, U.S. consul general to Seoul, in November said that the Embassy plans to expand the number of consuls from the current 14 to 22 by next April in order to shorten the waiting period to less than two weeks.

Furthermore, the governments of the two allies held a working-level meeting on Tuesday to discuss a possible U.S. visa waiver to Koreans in the future. The U.S. currently offers visa preferential status to citizens of 27 countries.

South Korea is expected to first pull the U.S. visa rejection rate from the current 5 percent to below 3 percent in order to persuade the U.S. to consider a visa-waiver program for Koreans.

The U.S. Embassy has operated the community since the opening of it on Nov. 8, on the popular portal site Daum as a way to encourage an open dialogue with Korean nationals.

The number of registered members in the community passed the 6,000 mark yesterday.

With the opening of the new bulletin board, the community is running a total of six bulletin boards, including ones for chatting with the ambassador and a discussion room for South Korea-U.S. relations.

The embassy, however, has dealt with messages slandering the U.S. government. Some of them were deleted because they contained too many vulgar or offensive words.

Inappropriate posts have also included photos and disparaging messages on the South Korean government, according to a Web manager of the community.

Cafe USA has had to block some visitors and members who posted inappropriate content.

kenbae@koreatimes.co.kr

12-10-2004 17:22