That's right, folks, I'm an official member of Korean society again. I have applied and received my alien registration number and will soon have the alien card mailed to my workplace for me. I have a temporary print-out with the number on it. On the strength of that I went out looking for a bank account. Because in Korea, without an account, you are a person of, ahem, no account. Really! It's significantly harder to function here.
So one of the bigger drops in the Korean slow rolling water torture that wears us all down to walking nubs, Korean citizens and expats alike, the banking system splashed into my life of waterboardom here. It's fascinating to me to see how my brain works! I get together with my friend, Heather, and talk about the years we spent here in Korea at the same time and am blown away by the success I have had in blocking out those years. Even the good stuff, which is usually what Heather brings up. The visit to the bank yesterday brought some of the previously blocked information back to me. "Oh yeah... The mandatory bank book."
This is one of my pet peeves about Korean banking and though it's not at the top of a long list, I have blogged on it before. I actually caused a scene once in a bank when after 100 transactions without updating my bankbook my account was frozen. It ruined a good weekend because the banks were closed and I couldn't get money from the bank machines. I could not believe it when they told me MY account was frozen because I didn't update MY bankbook. I think in my blogpost I compared that to going to McDonalds and having your french fries confiscated because you didn't put ketchup on them. The bankbook in Korea is not an option. It's a necessity. So as I recall now, I opened a new account, took the beautiful new bankbook I was given, threw it into the garbage can and said, "See you in 100 transactions." As you can probably guess, I was outta this country vowing never to return before those hundred transactions transpired. I HAVE since returned. Twice. And, yes, I will drink the Korean Kool Aid and update my bankbooks. That's right, PLURAL! I have TWO bankbooks. One for local transactions and one for transfers into my Canadian account.
I went into the Korean Exchange Bank and asked for their "Easy One" account. This is an account designed especially for foreigners to make money transfers to their home country easier. The second I said "Easy One" they hopped right to business! I am worried that might mean high exchange rates, monthly fees, and other penalties for banking while foreign in Korea. This is jaded skepticism that just comes from experience.
I produce, for their convenience, my passport and temporary alien number. Immediately we enter into problem number one. They have these specially designed accounts for foreigners, (more accurately, as I was to find out, Americans), yet nobody in the bank who isn't afraid to speak English. Nor did a word of English appear on the majority of the 15-20 forms I had to fill out. I was signing and initialling until I got writer's cramp all the while wondering what kind of usury I was giving these, (to be redundant), not-to-be-trusted bankers permission to perpetrate upon me. Probably extortional exchange rates and outrageous fees.
The female teller, youngish, (which is always a bad sign), asks me for other official Canadian I.D. I show her my birth certificate and Social Insurance card. No she wants a photo I.D. I AGAIN draw her attention to the Korean alien card paper, with photo, that she has ignored to my surprise. She insists that I give her a driver's licence or my Canadian citizenship card. I told her that as far as I know, we don't have those in Canada. As for the driver's licence mine expired although I HAVE a temporary licence, but it is in paper form and doesn't have a photo. She notices, as I'm fumbling through my wallet, my City of Calgary Recreation gym card, which has a photo. I give it to her. Hey whatever works. It got me on base here one time. She inspects it and isn't satisfied. But she notices my B.C. and Alberta security guard licences. I give her both and she takes a photocopy of them. She says, "This, this and this, we can do." Meaning with my passport and two expired security guard licences, I can open up the account. I pointed out that they were old and in Korean communicated that they were from my job in Canada years ago. She said that didn't matter. Fine. Whatever.
Then she gives me to a dude. You see it was lunch time, (12:30), so this girl had to go. Dude takes me to a table instead of at the bank counter and tells me to have a seat. He gives me the first of many forms. There IS English on them but it's not the best. For instance the bank/beneficiary section asks for name and address so I put the bank name and address. Later it asks for the bank's name and address. Dude had low level English but he got his point across and we were communicating fairly well. He "helped" fill out the forms a bit too. By teling me dozens of places to sign and initial. And missing a couple that the other girl had marked. I figured they might not be very important signatures so didn't ask. He filled in my birth date by looking at my passport and using the passport expiration date. Something I didn't catch until the THIRD person whited it out. That's right, because it was HIS lunch time, (1:00), I was transferred to a third person. This was a lady. Older, (a good sign), and she seemed to know what the frig she was doing. And what the frig she was doing was basically un-frigging what the others had frigged up.
She told me that the two security guard licences were expired so they were not acceptable forms of I.D. She asked if I had anything with a photo. I said, once again, I DO have this Korean Alien card number document. She looked at it and asked why I hadn't shown them this in the first place. Because of the language barrier I chose not to fight this battle. "Yeah, sorry, I don't know what I was thinking." She asked me what my REAL birth date was, actually said it in the question, then changed the November 2017 date the dude had put on a couple of forms, making me negative 22 months old. Eye roll. She and the teller beside her, my first teller now back from lunch, had a good laugh at this while she was whiting it out. I asked her if I needed to sign a few places where the dude hadn't told me to sign and she got me to do that.
She got a whole whack of stuff done and produced a bank card. They call it a checking card. This was a savings account so I'm still not sure what is meant by a checking card. I don't think it's a credit card where I can take money out that I don't have in my account. Maybe it can be used on internet sites as a credit card. Still not sure. She told me it was only for Korea though. I asked if I could use it in surrounding countries like Thailand, Viet Nam etc. She said no. So I asked if I could get one that COULD be used in other countries. She said, "Okay." and got me a different card. This is an account created specifically for foreigners, remember.
Well, not really. The one and only form entirely in English was the form whereby I promised, as an American citizen, to pay American taxes on the transactions that warrant said payment. I asked what the hell she was giving this to me for. In a nice way. She said for taxes. I asked if it was American taxes, cuz, remember, I'm Canadian, or Korean. She said Korean. I think she said this to just get me to sign the paper. There WAS a section that asked if I was a citizen of another country and I filled in Canada. So I'm not really sure what THAT was for. Sketchy.
Finally, after about an hour and a half, she shows me the accounts and the names and tells me to check the spellings. The spellings were correct. However, my bank in Canada misspelled my name when I set up the account there. They made me a Mc instead of a Mac. After several requests to change it, Toronto Dominion Canada Trust did nothing. So I showed her on my phone the spelling of my name on my account. So she sighed and did a whole new set of documents and showed me again. This time the Canadian account name was right, (well WRONG but right), but she forgot an L in my name on the Korean account. MacCannel. So she had to do the whole process a third time.
SO, then I said I wanted to send some money to my Canadian account. I gave her 100,000 Korean won. She showed me the exchange and it was 120 bucks and change. I don't know if that was good or not. Probably not but whatever. She then showed me the transaction cost 11 dollars so 109 dollars would go into my account. That seemed okay to me. I had spent 2 hours opening this account, I had a cold, felt a bit run down, and this was making me late for work. Fine, I don't care, just do the transaction. Today I checked and the money was there! Yay!
What did I just say? "Yay?" Korean bank? "Yay?" There must be some mistake here. Ah, yes, here it is. There was a total of 85 dollars and change deposited. Not 109. So 24 or 25 bucks charge on the Canadian end? Probably. That's 36 dollars I paid for a transfer of 85 dollars. It's not like they're sending a rider with the money. They're pressing buttons. THAT's why the CHA CHING!!! when I mentioned the "Easy One" account I suppose.
What a misleading name!
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