Yet here we are — a homeless man in Sweden has been busted a second time for trying to hijack the identity of a Korean businessman whose passport and drivers license was stolen at Arlanda airport in 1999. (HT to reader)
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And the reason why Korean banks are breaking the rules by photocopying our passports when we send wire transfers is…
Well that homeless guy sure is acting the part!
Actually, as a point of law, the banks are acting on authority delegated to them by the Bank of Korea under the Foreign Exchange Transactions Act, which itself delegates governmental authority to Bank of Korea to collect and control information concerning cross-border financial transactions. So for those of you bleating “Only governments are allowed to copy the passport!” — when a Korean bank takes a copy of your passport, that’s a governmental act under the laws of Korea. The bank is an agent of the government in that transaction. Hence no “rules” are being broken at all. So you might look into that hot cup of STFU on this topic.
A long time ago, Korean banks put a stamp in your passport every time you changed money. I remember raising a raucus one in a KEB, yelling at the poor bank clerk an approximation of “Who da hell you think you are? The po-lice?”. So they let my passport go untouched with the stern but in the end useless admonition “다시 바꾸면 안되죠!” You’re not allowed to change it back!”…
They still do, and they are still required to do so (in certain circumstances), by the 外國換去來規程.
Oh? Well, the last time Da Missus and I tried to send money home, back in late 2004, it turned into a major clusterfuck, as they didn’t want me, at all, and when she went to do it, being Korean and all, all kinds of problems arose. We finally got the money out of the country, after 2 months of battling, but it wasn’t the finest moment we had in Korea. Comparing this with how things go in the financial hub of Asia, aka Hong Kong, it’s easy to see how long Korea has to go…