DSB

http://seoul.usembassy.gov/esta_info.html

Looks like South Korea is in the VWP and she can use ESTA.

There is a chance she'll be denied that though since she has been denied a Visa before. If that happens she needs to get an visitor Visa from the embassy. (At least at the German embassy that is a matter of a week. In your case I would do that before booking a flight) I don't know how much of a fit they can throw about that. They might be afraid that you'll spontaneous decide to get married. You should be able to find how people have dealt with that before on here though.

Edit:

Since you've already applied for a K1 they might not even be worried about you getting married on a tourist visa/esta. If you get married without the k1 though she needs to leave the country again or she'll very likely get in trouble if you try to file AOS since she came on a non immigrant visa with the intention to stay. If she left after getting married you would need to file for a cr1 (which is what my wife and I did and that's a long long process. We applied in April 2013 and I'll go pickup my passport in half an hour now).

Thank you for your opinions! ustraveldocs.com now states:

The Passport has been received from the consular section, and is currently being processed for delivery

So we should be good

From what I know that is normal. Ceac will at least show AP for a while.

It did for our case too. It could have hardly been more than a few hours though. Then it said issued. So I wouldn't be too worried yet. In most cases that means they're printing it right now.

So after almost a year and a half and a week after the interview ceac.state.gov says issued.

Is it safe to book a flight and quit my job or should I wait till my passport made it here?

(I want to hear the first thing is fine but I know the second is probably more reasonable - I'm too excited to finally start our common life though)

It's the ceac.state.gov site. At least for germany you can track your passport on www.ustraveldocs.com after they shipped it which is after ceac should say issued.

I would assume that works for other countries that use ustraveldocs.com as well (Egypt from what I know?)

I wouldn't get my hopes up on the ceac website though. I had my interview a week ago and it's still stuck on ready with the "Status Updated Date" updating every other day.

Even so the wait is almost over that website is driving me crazy with showing they're doing something but haven't issued it yet. Why can't they just issue it right away so we can book a flight and get on moving!?

Call me oldschool but we meet in a bar. She was the friend of a friend who's been to germany and was the friend of a fellow grad student.

Good news

Yes this also happened to me at Vancouver consulate a few weeks ago. My interview was July 10th and it took an extra week for my visa to get issued and printed because of a worldwide computer issue that happened July 11th. It that has since been fixed, my visa has been issued and recieved. Makes me wonder if this is another/different issue, or media getting wind of a problem from a few weeks ago.

The email I received from the consulate dated July 18th:

There was a delay in the processing of your K-1 visa because late last week there was a severe worldwide computer issue and our systems were down. Once the system came back up on Monday, it basically took time to catch up on all the cases that were affected by this computer problem. We have since issued your visa, your package is being shipped to Loomis this afternoon. Please wait for Loomis to contact you by email to advise you when to pick up your package at the Loomis location you selected.

I really hope they get that fixed as fast as they did in your case. I have a work contract here that would force me to work till the end of december if I don't quit by August 15th. With my wife working fulltime now that would be a really awefull time since we couldn't even talk besides on the weekends

Those glitches must have been going on for a few weeks. Someone on here had their interview in London about a couple weeks ago but the CEAC site didn't show an update for more than a week. So he/she contacted them and they already said they had heavy problems with the system. If I remember it right he/she got their visa by now though.

I had my interview yesterday and this morning ceac showed that our case was update the day before the interview. So I guess there is a backlog but it's probably not too huge.

I'm sorry about your situation! I just had my interview today and they handed me a brocure that might be relevant to you:

Its called "Information on the Legal Rights Available to Immigrant Victims of Domestic Violence in the united States and Facts about Immigrating on a Marriage-Based Visa"

and is available online here: http://www.uscis.gov/news/fact-sheets/information-legal-rights-available-immigrant-victims-domestic-violence-united-states-and-facts-about-immigrating-marriage-based-visa-fact-sheet

I know that site too. The embassy in Frankfurt Germany send us there to register a delivery address for the passport after the CR-1 interview.

It was a little bit tricky since that function is hidden somewhere past the first steps of scheduling an interview but we figured it out.

Hello everyone,

it's my first post here. I've been around for a while, only reading stuff though.

In the first place we hoped to have a final decision early in January, but here we are without any clue and our lives on hold. So I got to agree, it's the hardest thing not to have a date to look forward to.

The waiting is just an awful torture.