Hey American Embassy in Seoul

Fuck you for ruining my travel plans.

Here's what happened. We get to the airport and check in. Bags go through, boarding passes come out, and then there's a holdup. My wife's visa has a problem. The date of issue is right but the expiration date says July 19 2006. Now I had seen this, but it doesn't say 'date of expiry', it says 'IV expires on'. I assumed that since all of this stuff is done on computers and I've seen it written a million times in a hundred places that the visa is valid for six months after issuance that this referred to something else, like perhaps an InterView (hey, give me a break, okay, I've had a rough day). I assure them that that is merely referring to some other date, like perhaps the date our visa application initially expired on. They told us to wait. They had to call New York immigration and find out what to do because if they sent my wife and she got deported they have to pay a $3000 fine. We waited and they called. It seemed that they were bound by some rule to constantly call until they got an answer or final boarding call. We went and had ice cream. My wife leafed through her previous passport and figured out what the date was. It was the date that her first health check (she applied for the visa twice over a one year period) expired. How this expiration date got on her visa we had no idea but we went to explain it to the clerk. When we found her she sort of yelled at us about being 'frustrated' (답답해) about having to keep calling continuously for two hours, which was not a very nice thing to say. We waited until 7:20, at which point the New York immigration office told them that they shouldn't send my wife because they are bound to accept the information on the visa.
I know I know, I was a fool to not look into that date, but what can I say, I was home free.
Any way, I'm over it now. We'll both be there soon, so keep your pants on and think happy thoughts. Tomorrow we will be going to the aforementioned fuckuppy embassy to raise bloody hell and then it's on to the travel agent to try to get a new ticket. That will be the hard part, there's no telling when we'll be able to fly.