Well, let's put that filth behind us. Onward and upward to some good, old fashioned Korea bashing! And before I start, let me say this: I don't whinge about any countries I don't love. If I hated Korea, the rantings herein wouldn't bother me much. But it seems every time I see attempts to overcome the crippling xenophobia at the heart of all the worst evils of Korea, like the school where I work or the Global Korea Scholarship I'm honoured to be helping choose recipients of at this moment from probably more than 25 countries, racism rears its ugly head again. I'm not even gonna start this one. I'll let the Korea Times do it for me: Check this out! I mean of all the nerve, nay the temerity, nay, nay I say, the unmitigated GAUL for those foreigners in Korea to start businesses with the permission of the government without knowing the government would change its mind in the future even considering retroactive punishment for the unforgivable crime of being non-clairvoyant! Come on man! Flag on the play!
You might think the Korea Times is the Korean equivalent of the Onion, but I assure you there are no satirists at the Korea Times. This is just one of a bazillion examples of what I have been calling, on and off this blog, for years, "foreigner fuckery" or "foreign fuckery." Either or. You can't get away from it. Even with Covid shutting us away from the majority of our exposure to the locals, we gotta go out sometime and, BAM, it'll getcha! Why, just last week I opened up a bill from the government insurance of Korea, the NHIS or National Health Insurance Scheme (you gotta love that name! "Scheme." That sounds so much like scam, I don't need to make jokes!) and it was for about 400 bucks. I think I explained on this blog before that my previous contract ended at the end of Feb and my new one started April first, so I went uninsured for a month. I knew the new rule about charging foreigners for insurance while they are here, whether they want it or not and if they are not covered by their jobs or don't have a job. I only found out about this because of my dealings with the NHIS that I didn't have and found out I wasn't covered by making a doctor's appointment only to arrive and be charged full price because my employer had not paid my insurance. So you can be uninsured, evidently, if it's your employer who's trying to save a buck hoping you don't go to get your teeth cleaned or some hemorrhoids removed or whatever. That's fine and dandy. But if the foreigner is the one in default, hunt it down and commit fuckery.
I knew they were gonna get me for my missing month. Even though I got no bill in the mail at my last apartment, I was sure they'd track me down. I told my new supervisor, Pyung Hwa about the situation and she said they probably sent something to my old place too late. But they'd find me. And they did. Four hundred bucks! For a month of insurance? I was pretty sure it didn't cost that much. It's just bare bones insurance. In fact, the hospital I was going to for my blood sugar treatments and meds, St. Mary's in Pyeong Taek, doesn't even TAKE people on NHIS. They only took me because my blood sugar was really high! Dangerously high. Gravely dangerously high! Is there any other kind of dangerously high? So why 400 bucks? Well this I DIDN'T know - the national insurance scam charges foreigners for mandatory insurance THREE months at a time! Foreign fuckery.
I have been wracking my brain all day trying to recall the confluence of events from back then, just over a year ago, and can't remember exactly. I know I had to go to Soon Chun Hyang hospital near Itaewon to get the E-2 visa health check for immigration. I had been getting treated by an old doctor who, I gather, is quite a celebrity in these parts. He's the face of the SCH Hospital. If you go to their website, there's his mug. Well he had me eating boiled eggs and taking a couple of pills to try to get rid of frequent urination I was experiencing. I had a couple of incidents on buses where I didn't think I was going to make it. I can't tell you how traumatic that was! "Should I just whip it out and piss on the bus floor? Should I go in my water bottle? Should I wrap a towel around my wiener and let 'er rip?" Those thoughts didn't help things, let me tell you. I thought maybe the stress sweat would dehydrate me enough to ease my urge, but that didn't work. Sleeping was impossible. I got off the bus a bag of nerves, sprinted to the nearest urinal and didn't really have to go that badly by then. I'm still a bit scared on buses even though things are under control. Now it's just psychosomatic.
At any rate, the guy was testing me for everything, (including blood pressure and blood sugar) and he said my numbers were high, but getting better. Our goal was to avoid the use of insulin. I thought we were doing fine. The meds he was giving me caused some issues and we had to change a few times, but I didn't have pee problems as badly. I don't think it fully went away though. I guess I wasn't eating enough hard boiled eggs.
Well then I changed jobs. When you change employers in Korea, you need to undergo a physical examination for general health and illegal drugs. Used to have to take HIV tests too, but a gal from NZ who was teaching over here sued the Korean government for violating foreigners' rights in that way. She won and now we don't have to take the HIV tests any more. I'm telling you this now because it comes to bear later in our story.
I decided rather than searching through the long list of hospitals on the webpage HiKorea that I have found to be very unreliable in the past, I'd just go to SCH Hospital, my hospital, to get my E-2 visa health check because I asked my doctor and he told me they do them there. I'd be working in Cheonan, but I didn't want to waste time looking all over the place for a hospital in Cheonan that did the checks. And don't even bother to ask at the Cheonan Immigration Office which Cheonan hospitals do the health checks they are requiring from you - they won't tell you even though they absolutely know. Foreign fuckery.
So I went to Seoul to SCH Hospital to get it done. There I was met by a team of nurses who hustled me, cattle-like, from station to station doing eye test, blood pressure test, height and weight measurement, blood drawing, urine taking and at the end of it all I was told my blood pressure was high. They asked me to sit down for 5 minutes then they'd test again. After the second test, it was still high. I think we did three tests before I met with the doctor. He was a young fella and his English wasn't as good as my older, more famous doc, but he did okay. He said he was worried about my blood pressure and my blood sugar. I told him I knew about the blood sugar and was seeing a doctor AT THAT HOSPITAL, who was okay with both my blood pressure and sugar. Well, that didn't satisfy him. In the country where they use phones more than any other country, I suppose it was too much effort for him to ring up my doctor and check with him. He said he was going to fail me on my health test. I told him that in order for me to get medicine to treat the symptoms that worried him, I'd need health insurance and I will get that from my new job, but in order to get my new job, I'd need him to pass me on this health check. He eventually relented due to my Catch 22 situation, but only if I promised to see a doctor as soon as I got settled in Cheonan and get my blood issues under control. I said I would, took my test results to Cheonan immigration, got my new work visa and worked my first year for Gonju University. While there, I started seeing a new doc in Pyeontaek because for the first time, I found out what level my blood sugar was at. It was after a big kalbi feast, but my good friend Heather happened to have a blood sugar testing kit on her and we tested me with it. I was over 500. Well over. That's bad. Like emergency bad. So I managed to get an appointment at St. Mary's Hospital in Pyeongtaek even though I only had NCIS. So for a year we've been working on my blood and a few other things. My blood sugar is consistently 150 now. We're still trying to get that down, but it's by no means dangerous. And blood pressure hadn't been an issue all year.
This year I renewed my contract with Gongju University, but I'm based in Gongju now instead of Cheonan. If you renew a contract, you don't need to do a health check. But at Gongju's immigration office, which isn't in Gongju, we have to travel to Daejeon, the worker looks at me funny (I believe I saw a "gotcha" glint in her eye), prints out my health check from last year and points to a Korean word on it that means "fail." She says, "You failed your health check last year, you need to get a new one done." I was shocked! But then I asked the obvious question, "If I failed, how did I work last year?" I could see smoke escaping from the worker's ears, a common result obvious questions to immigration workers tends to bring about, but she remained unshaken in her pursuit of foreigner fuckery. "You need to get a new health check."
While sitting there in confusion I wondered if that young doctor had actually failed me or if he had given me a conditional pass or if there was a note included with my health check from him or if maybe Gongju University in Cheonan had swung some sort of a deal with immigration to get me working even though I had failed my health test. I hadn't been told any of the above if they had been the case. I also thought, since I had already been asked to supply my rental contract, which I had foolishly forgotten to bring, and was allowed to call Pyunghwa and get her to email it to me, then print it out and give it to the immigration worker, why couldn't we just call up the SCH Hospital and get that doctor to send an explanation? Again, in the country that uses the phone more than any other...
The only thing the immigration worker did was asked why I had failed. I told her I was pretty sure I hadn't failed, but I DID remember some concern about my blood sugar. I told her I had a complete physical printout from my doctor in Pyeongtaek that was from about 2 months before that shows my blood sugar at 140. There wasn't any confusion or language barrier, but even though immigration office workers deal with a LOT of foreigners, most of whom speak English, and most of the workers speak English just fine, they are very reluctant to use it. Foreigner fuckery. So I called up Pyunghwa AGAIN and the whole time they're talking on the phone I'm getting angrier and angrier because I know I'm not going to finish immigration, I know Pyunghwa's not going to convince the immigration worker that my blood sugar is fine, and I KNOW we could settle the whole thing with a phone call to SCH Hospital. I also started wondering if there actually WAS some note in the files at immigration and on the screen this worker was looking at that explained how I could have worked last year without passing my health check. She was just ignoring it so she could do what in all of my experience at Korean immigration offices throughout the country I discern to be the primary function of immigration agents: to make sure NOBODY visits a single time without being sent on a wild goose chase to get some additional, superfluous file or certificate or letter or stamped/apostilled pile of dogshit, or several, before they are done with immigration.
I get the phone back and sure enough, Pyunghwa tells me I have to get a new health check done. But I went to Costco in Daejeon so the day wasn't a complete waste.
Not long after, like maybe a day later, Pyunghwa had set up an appointment for me to get a health check at a clinic just around the corner from where I live in Gongju. I was allowed to bring Aminur, a student at Gongju U. from Bangladesh who speaks Korean well, as my translator. We get to the clinic and he's explaining and I'm trying to make sure we get the right thing. I had kept the printout of my previous health check the Daejeon Immi worker printed out for me while I was there, showed it to the receptionist at the clinic, told Aminur to make sure they were told it was an E-2 visa check and the nurses were all saying, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, don't worry, don't worry," which I know has a tendency to mean the exact opposite.
This is us in the Gongju U. Global Language Clinic, my office. The WHOLE THING! At any rate, I was poked and prodded and ex-rayed and tested and such. Blood pressure was given a hearty thumbs up by the nurse who took it using the stethoscope and airball, which I think is more accurate than these damn machines. A coupla days later I went to Daejeon to meet my NEW doctor, an endocrinologist, or diabetes specialist, who gave my blood pressure AND my blood sugar the okay and I got three months more medicine. When I arrived back in Gongju, I picked up the results of my visit to the clinic. I am assured by everyone that I don't have any health problems, but I AM hemorrhaging MONEY! Even with the insurance, this is costing me a lot of dough! Like over a thousand bucks. I know if you're American reading this you're saying, "That's nothing!" but it's a lot to me! Being Canadian, I'm used to getting sodomized at TAX time, not hospital time.
I think it was the next day Pyung Hwa and I got into her car and drove back to Daejeon to hand in my health check. I was worried that it was loose in an envelope that wasn't sealed and I was able to read it, but I assumed Pyung Hwa had things under control. In the car on the way, Pyung Hwa mentioned that it'd be nice to get this over and done with. I told her not to count those chickens just yet. I said immigration likes sending people to get extra papers and things. They LIVE for it! What they like even better is sending people to get extra shit TWICE. I told her what they'd probably say is that this was not the right kind of health check and I had to go to a special hospital to get an official governmentally sanctioned E-2 visa check and it had to be in a sealed envelope etc. etc. etc... and you know what's coming - that's exactly what we were told. Now I was REALLY mad!
I said to Pyunghwa that the only difference between the real thing and the one we had shown her was the drug testing. That makes it slower and more expensive as well. But I said that drugs were not the reason I was marked as having failed my last health check. If they were, I would have been deported. If I failed due to drugs and somehow worked an entire year, I would be deported and the doctor, or whoever allowed me to work after testing positive for illegal drugs, would lose his/her job. And now I had a shiny NEW paper from a hospital in Daejeon no more than a couple days old showing that I was in good health including blood pressure and blood sugar. Well guess what immigration said. Even though there was obviously no need for it, they took distinct pleasure in sending me on another wild goose chase to waste more of my time and money and bark, roll over, and play dead for my waegooky treat.
It was a dismal drive back to Gongju. I was seething. I am pretty sure Pyunghwa thought I was mad at her for setting me up at the little clinic where they lied to her, lied to me and lied to Aminur and said they'd give us an official E-2 visa health check. But I wasn't. I was mad at the utter futility of getting this health check, the time it would waste and MY money I'd be flushing down the Korean Immigration Shitter AGAIN! I related several of my past visits to the throne of the almighty immigration bullshit costly task. I couldn't tell if she was getting mad at the stories or getting mad at me for telling them. Sometimes Koreans don't want to hear how shittily their country treats people. But I gave it to her both barrels.
It was a Friday so we were off for the weekend after we got back to Gongju. But even though she was off, Pyunghwa looked on the stupid HiKorea list of hospitals, which I had told her was shit, and found one in Gongju where I could get the E-2 visa check done. She called them up then called me. She said they had told her that I'd first have to go to another place in Gongju for the psychological evaluation, then bring that with me to their hospital where I could get the health check done. Pyunghwa had asked me earlier about psychological tests being part of the visa health check. I had already told her they weren't. I think I had softened my answer by saying that possibly a coherence check might be done like you might do if you are administering CPR. Ask the person's name or just check if their answers to questions are normal, but there's no psych eval. I then mentioned how the old health check form had a square for the HIV test, but the new one didn't have that square. I told her about the Kiwi teacher and the lawsuit and told her that only a judge can order a psychological evaluation in civilized countries and even then only in extenuating circumstances. Having one on the visa health check would be considered and invasion of rights and freedoms like the HIV check had been. But I guess she wanted to take the hospital's word for it, not mine. I can't blame her for that, it's how we're all socialized isn't it? Doctors don't lie. Hospitals won't cheat you. The medical profession is not just out to get your money.
So I told her I would not be going to that hospital. She argued that it was on the HiKorea list and it was closer and would take less time. I argued that if they think a psych eval is part of the E-2 visa health check, they DON'T do E-2 visa health checks. They're lying, like the other place did, and I will just be wasting MORE of my money while taking MORE time than if I just go to a place where I know I can get a proper one done. I think she took this a bit hard because she was trying to help and I was getting mad. Again, not at her, at the lying, thieving medical profession. But I wasn't going to shell out more dough to spare her feelings. I told her I knew some places where other people and I had had these things done before and I would figure it out myself. She said something like if I don't want her help, fine. I know fine doesn't mean fine sometimes.
I arranged to go back to the source of all the problems, SCH Hospital in Seoul. I had to go in Sunday night and stay over while fasting for the blood test for the third time in a week! That SUCKED let me tell you! I stayed in Itaewon where I had NEVER fasted in my life! Quite the opposite. Good eating and lots of drinking is what's best about Itaewon. It was tough, but I managed. I went to the place to get my health check and again it was performed in production line fashion. I had to go back a few times for the blood pressure check again. I even showed them that my blood pressure was fine like TWO DAYS AGO! But the first reading from their stupid machine was something like 190/100, the second one was 150/90 and the third was 130/81. Those were within about 15 minutes. I think their machine is broken. There were several OTHER people who were sitting down to get their blood pressures re-taken too.
Wouldn't it be just the quintessential Korean immigration/health scam story if all this shit had been caused by a broken blood pressure machine?
It's quite possible. That should scare everyone here. To make a long blogpost short, too late, the results were fine and immigration accepted them. They didn't send me or Pyunghwa on any further wild goose chases and I'm done with immigration for 10 more months.
In a way this is a positive blog post, or as positive as it gets from me, but consider it a set-up for what's coming next. I've ranted here before about toxic positivity and I'm going to blather on about it again in my next post along with another pandemic.
No comments:
Post a Comment