Luis Riestra, founder and CEO of Wise and Wealthy, has an interesting two-part series (1, 2) on the myths and realities dealing with a bank in Korea.
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I banked with Korea Exchange Bank from ‘92 to ‘98. The banking services I received from them were far superior to anything I can find in California.
Wells Fargo, B of A, Washington Mutual, etc. all suck. The difference between KEB and these CA outfits is that KEB treated me as if the funds in my accounts were my own. Here (in CA), the banks act as if the funds in my accounts belong to them.
The first thing Washington Mutual did to me when I joined them recently was to assume that I was a criminal. I wanted to quit them immediately, but driving 400 miles to the Korea Exchange Bank in LA was not a viable option. KEB staff–if you’re reading this–open a branch in SF, and I’m there!
I use the KEB when travelling from/to Korea. They are really great, although they dont have many branches.
“In a country where labor practices basically favor and dismiss lack of performance at work as acceptable, it’s in the interest of the tellers to send you off from their desk, with absolutely no repercussions from the branch manager, let alone headquarters.”
This quote sums it up very nicely. I have yet, in five years (three branches), to find anyone at KB who can send money to my account in Canada without calling some magical person on the phone to make sure I don’t need my passport.
I had a fairly ordinary experience with the local KEB just the other day. I’ve recently returned from a trip home and needed to withdraw a reasonable amount of cash from my Australian credit card for key deposit money as I had wired most of my money back home before my trip.
I try the KEB ATMs – it being the foreign exchange bank and all – but they are not accepting my card. I go to the counter. The clerk mumbles some not so pleasant things about my foreign-ness under her breath and starts to look up how to get money from a foreign credit card. After 30 seconds, decides it’s too difficult and persistently assures me I’ll be able to withdraw the money I need via the ATMs. I grudgingly decide to play along and try again for the same result.
I join the queue again and see another clerk he also assures me that I can retrieve the money from the ATMs and is kind enough to go along with me to the ATMs. The ATMs don’t accept my card to which he says you mustn’t have enough cash despite my protests to the contrary – surely it’s not an issue with the ATMs and surely he shouldn’t have to do his job and do it properly and over the counter for a hairy bastard like myself. I’m a bit shirty at this stage but know when I’ve lost the fight.
I go to my regular bank – where I should have gone from the start – and 15 minutes later, after a coffee and a chat with the kindly old security guard, I have my nice, thick stack of Sejongs for my deposit.
I learnt a few lessons:
1. Always leave a decent amount of money in your Korean account if you are returning
2. Always use my local bank as they know me and the kindly security guard is always trying to hook me up with unmarried female clerks
3. Don’t use KEB Suncheon branch as they’re a bunch of lazy, rude, xenophobic arses.
Went to KB last week to get a check card. Was told that I can’t use it overseas. Even as an ATM. Clerk told me to keep my old ATM card as it allows me to withdraw oversease. “Don’t lose it” because, if you you, you’ll have to get a new one that will not allow you to withdraw, overseas.
Call SC and they tell me I can get a global ATM card, if!, I submit to a credit check.
What surprises me is that most of the Korean banks are ‘foreign owned’. KEB’s CEO is not a Korean and, yet, the same BS persists.
Good luck on being the ‘Global Hub’. Ha!
Obviously, I need to edit my own posts. Full of mistakes.
Mr. Riestra’s article was interesting, but not very well written and poorly edited.
Also, the scene in which he takes his new credit card from one bank to a competitor “to rub it in their face” was unpleasant. Guess why Korean tellers don’t want to deal with foreigners?
I liked the teller at my old KEB bank. One day I asked her out. The other girls were buzzing; everyone was excited. Then she called me later that day to ask me something, and realized how rudimentary my Korean was. After that I got the cold shoulder from her everytime I came in. So it goes. That was a few years ago.
Yesterday I went to Kookmin, from where I transfer money to the States a few times a year. The helpful teller said that he couldn’t do it today, as somehow KEB had become the bank of record for my overseas transfers. Apparently, by law only one bank can transfer money overseas for you. (Is that hub logic?) So he was going to work on getting KEB removed as my bank of record, and I’ll go see him tomorrow.
As one guy here on the Hole put it so astutely awhile back: Your bank service in Korea will vary depending on whether or not the teller’s boyfriend took her out to Bennigan’s last night.
I still chuckle over that one.
I’ve had fairly ordinary experiences at the KEB Suncheon. The first time I tried to send money home it took ages . . . as if nobody had ever seen a white person in there before. But the second time I did it it went pretty quickly. Still boggles the mind that nobody apparently has any electronic record of my transfers home, and they only keep track of transfers done at one particular branch.
Anyway, there’s these articles and the one in the joongang ilbo a while ago, “Banks cite non-existant laws on expat cards.” And every now and then another article will turn up, or somebody will do something on their blog about banking in Korea. Fact remains, there are no facts, no answers. Tellers may assure you that a particular procedure is possible only to have it fail. Tellers may assure you that your ATM card will work overseas, only to have it not. Tellers may assure you that your ATM card will not work overseas, only to have it work perfectly fine. 100 posters on Dave’s will tell you that suchandsuch a branch is excellent, or that suchandsuch a card will work, or that suchandsuch a process is the best way to have something done . . . only to find that there’s still no consistency at all.
I was fortunate to get an international ATM card right after I came here, and I was able to get a new one last spring at a time when everybody else was having theirs denied. Now people are telling me that the rules have changed again, and that my card won’t work overseas.
Needless to say I dread the day I have to do anything complicated at the bank.
I was in Indonesia during Solnal a few years back with a PostBank International Visa card… damn thing wouldn’t work. Not my card either but a Korean’s. She called the PostBank to see why it wouldn’t work at ATMs or at the Hotel charge machines…
The answer, “you’re wrong – it works” obviously made the Korean irate and cancel the card when she returned home. I suspect the card was simply blocked from being used outside Korea… anyone else have a similar experience?
Just went to KEB myself last week, and told her what I was told, that my old cards were “grandfathered in” and would still work. She says that they wouldn’t anymore.
I first signed up for KEB in 1994, back when I had to make a stamp, which required me getting a Korean name in Chinese and getting one (was down in Chejudo at the time, and they were really working hard on that one – was a first for my local branch).
Yet, despite having made ample amounts of money during times of plenty, and decent amounts during thinner days, I have never, ever been able to get a credit card through them. Applied three times. DENIED! Even when I was making, for a time, more than 6 million a month for a couple years at an institution the teller even commented on. DENIED!
I keep and use the vast majority of my money in Korea, with small chunks sent out as student loan payments and whatnot. And the article above is right – you can send out 100% of one’s salary above the $10,000 limit, anyway (if you come in with payment stubs/receipts), so the stupid law cited above is bullshit. If you make 2 million a month, you can send home 2 million a month if you’d really like – all legally. So what’s all that about?
Still, KEB will issue me a domestic check card, while KB won’t.
Go figure.
And online banking is so irritatingly complex (insert USB key and password and match code-card key to the site’s session after entering password – WTF?), and only works on XP, anyway – I just use the 7/11 downstairs to transfer money when I need to, or when I withdraw money.
Korean banking, on one hand, is awesome in the big picture, but for foreigners, is haphazard and stupid. Yes, it does feel like my life is determined by which side of the bed bank tellers got out of that morning, on top of the fact that half the stuff they tell me is wrong whenever I ask to do anything outside of the ordinary in a bank.
Grr. I filled out the little survey (ironically commissioned by KEB, where I wanted to go postal for a long time, and at which I stopped using to transfer funds overseas out of sheer anger and am now a KB customer) to help out and give them a piece of my mind.
KEB customer since 1994 and still can’t get a credit card and now, I can’t access my funds overseas! Membeship has its…oh. Oops, I forgot. AT KEB, Membership has no privileges – if you’re a foreign customer for 10 minutes or 10 years, there’s no difference. You’re an untrustworthy shit.
Switch to KB or Hana, where I had a foreigner friend walk in off the street and successfully apply for and GET a credit card. Weird. I’ve been a KEB member since 1994 and what has it gotten me?
Nada.
“The clerk mumbles some not so pleasant things about my foreign-ness under her breath”
What did she say? You should get her fired.
Korean banking, on one hand, is awesome in the big picture….
How so?
According to my KB bank teller:
A new law passed in Korea last year that states that ATM cards issued to foreigners only be bank-accessible within Korea. This may have been only a bank policy, but since banks tend to think alike, it may in a sense be a “law” if it isn’t already.
So best to apply for a Korean credit card.
I have had no problems with getting credit cards from KB. Last time I checked, I was able to withdraw $5000 at one time from here in the US.
Of course, every KB bank is different. I have a friend who went to the KB bank in Itaewon to get the same card, and they answered her in one word: “No.” Not possible. So then I invited her to my branch, and they said they couldn’t do it because the card would expire when her visa expired.
This is odd since the same card for me expires 2013, regardless of my visa status.
I have had a very different banking experience from most foreigners I’ve talked to in Korea. At my KB bank, the bank manager will let me come through the back doors at 6:00 p.m. for last minute transactions. They give me drinks, invite me to dinner, I NEVER have to take a number, and though their English isn’t perfect, they go the extra mile.
Moral of the story: not only is each bank branch different, each individual foreigner is told a different story, and each teller has a different policy.
In my experience, Korean banking is the same as making business deals. It helps to develop an individual rapport with a teller, become friends, establish the “Chong.” Friends help friends out.
Technically, if a US bank doesn’t assume (and treat you as if) you are a criminal when you try to open an account, chances are they’re breaking the law. Welcome to the unmitigated over-reactionary circle-jerk that is the USA in a post-9/11 world.
I discovered that regulation several years ago when I changed employers, opened an account at a nearby bank and attempted to remit for the first time. The ajoshi handling my transaction started chewing out the lowly younger foreign female, attracting attention from an ajoshi customer, and they had a nice little a**hole ajoshi conversation about my situation in front of my less than human face.
Korean banks discriminate against foreigners. End of story (up till 2006 anyway). Having a different policy for foreigners and locals is discrimination and none of the 3 other countries I have lived in do that.
My favourite story…I had a KEB ATM card with a slight crack in it that worked overseas. Fearing it would get stuck in a machine, I asked a teller to swap it..but they said a new card would not work overseas. I asked to speak to the manager and he gave me a replacement card. Then I went on holiday and the card didn’t work! He just didn’t tell me it was a local only card. I was stuck with only the money I withdrew at Incheon. Needless to say I changed to Citibank upon return, payed 50,000won and got an international card.
Korean banks will look after you depending on your status. Being an intern at a finance company, I wasn’t worthy. My foreign expatriate company head recieved the full treatment, with credit cards and freebies etc.
i’m going out on a guess, but all banking frustrations can be blamed on kyong-sang do’s version of kim il sung, Lt. Okamoto. I suggest you do a song and dance glorifying the his daughter, Park Geun Hye. A sinless woman, indeed.
my father used to be a big bank employee.
I don’t know exactly what went on at work, but,
any money leaving the country by wire or by cash has quite a few restrictions. It’s no surprise to me that Korean credit cards often malfunction overseas.
Before the 1997 collapse, banks gave out a high rate for simply keeping your money tied in the bank.
It was part of Okamoto’s export mercantilism, and banks needed to be full of cash to supply the jaebol machine. And feed the political machine in election season.
There is another tale of Okamoto. Okamoto was once poor and not rich, but his neighbor was. He asked his parents what the hell does that peer of his do for a living to live so well. Banking. Legend is that’s when Okamoto made up his mind to put restrictions on Korean bankers in wages, travel, wiring money, dual citizenships if applicable, etc.
a petty man. He was though, very necessary for South Korea’s place in the modern world.
most gyopos can probably find a tale of his or her blood relatives carrying quite a bundle of dollars from Seoul to Los Angeles, on a plane trip.
why not wire it?
the red tape.
what if a waegook knows that Korean Air or Asiana Air flyers who are Korean may carry a lot more cash than usual? And gets robbed?
blame your god, Okamoto. Pray to him. He might like you, if you are from Dae Gu.
gyopos hide cash from the irs, anyway. I knew this lady who used a fridge with a lock as her bank. Hey, if you’re gonna live in the US, pay the right taxes.
It might be old news, though.
i’m relying on imperfect recollections.
I have a postal debit visa card also and I can not use it outside of Korea also.
Very frustrating.
so, my point is, the South Korean govt still thinks your waegookin money should somehow be tied to stay in South Korea, via numerous hoops and loops, to support Hyundai, Samsung, the Han Nara Party, etc. It’s not legal, but it’s a round about, time consuming way for you to keep your money in Korea.
@#19:
If that’s the case, then why do Korean nationals get a higher interest rate on CDs than foreign nationals? That was the case when I was in Korea anyway – 13% versus 8% or something like that.
i don’t know, except that a waegookin has risk of taking their own money, RIGHTFULLY, back to their own country. Don’t ask me, it’s a guess.
Besides, when a bank gives you that money, a Korean is not benefitting, the govt thinks. I guess.
Next time, on Jeolla do’s version of Kim Il Sung…Kim Dae Jung.
Well Zonath, American banks were bad before that. I had the bank (Bank of America), where I had my paycheck drawn upon, impose un-kind restraints upon me more than once, even though I was at the same local branch every payday. I ended up, before I left the states, having to put a thumb print on the check I wanted to cash. Especially considering the sub-prime crisis in America(neat linik here), there is more than a little something rotten in the states too.
F*** American banks and their system.
Here, it does seem that if one keeps a large portion of money in their local branch and is deemed a “VIP”, they know one and will even give out nice gifts. They still needs some minor coaxing once and a while, regarding doing business with the rest of the world, but I do not have to put thumb prints on my checks.
The only caveat I would say is *never* do on-line transactions with Korean banks. There are serious problems with security here and banking officials know this.
I have a Kookmin Visa card that I use overseas. In-fact, I used it this morning to pay for a taxicab in Tokyo. Blame Japan!
The other day I ran into a guy who had dropped his home country bank account and was suffering no end of grief, having assumed he could do little things like pay his bills by Internet from his account here or use an ATM card overseas. The lesson is to keep your home country account and use it for everything outside this place.
That said, I sometimes am amazed by what I can do here. Back in 1995 I was personally introduced to a branch manager of a Chohung Bank by a foreigner and subsequently was able to deposit checks from my U.S. account IMMEDIATELY into my Chohung account (while Citibank at the time took one fricken month to make such a deposit). So, Lesson Two is to get a personal introduction to the branch manager if possible.
#24: The issue isn’t credit cards, but ATM cards that don’t work overseas.
Forgive the double-posting but there is also this article from today’s JoongAng Ilbo, regarding foreigners and their card problems:
Re. #7, I’m glad you liked my joke about Bennigan’s, Whitey.
The expat “community” here is so funny, and I find this whole bank card thing an interesting prism through which to view its often divided and self-defeating nature.
I was one of the first to write about this issue last May for the Chosun Ilbo (my story also appeared in the Korea Times). I posted a link on Dave’s ESL Cafe and encouraged all posters to copy the Korean-language edition and bring it into their local bank the next time they applied for an int’l debit card and were denied supposedly because there was some law against it. Showing some op-ed piece from The Korea Times is one thing (and easily ignored by non-English speaking bank employees), but showing a Korean-language article from the nation’s largest paper quoting as I did an official from the Ministry of Finance and Economy who stated very clearly “there is no law or regulation against issuing int’l debit cards to foreigners” is something else entirely. Indeed, many Korean bank tellers posted my story on their blogs, I was invited to speak on the matter at the local Rotary Club and the MOFE even mentioned my article the next time they met with Korean banks and made a point to tell them that there was no law or regulation against issuing these cards to expats.
My intention in the case of Dave’s ESL Cafe was to try to harness the power of the Internet as a means of activism in order to further the interests of the expat commnity here. I have no doubt that if a million expats all brought in that article last year to their local banks and called the banks on their BS, action would have been taken pretty quickly. But 6 months after I posted the text of my story on Dave’s and called for mass action, the number of posters who continued to keep complaining that “they couldn’t get an int’l bank card because it was illegal” was so large that I finally gave up. Despite the fact that I had definitively quoted a gov’t official on the matter in the nation’s largest paper, the endless stream of underinformed personal anecdotes by posters on Dave’s continued to cloud the issue and prevent any effective collective action even amongst the 500 or so regular posters and users of Dave’s.
Ditto for the Marmot’s Hole. For whatever his personal reasons are, Robert never links to stories I write, so I didn’t really expect him to link to my Chosun/Times story last year, but at the same time I kind of thought that it would be nice if he might set aside personal interests for once for the sake of the larger good of the expat community. The Marmot’s Hole is the most famous expat blog in Korea and I’m sure that if it encouraged its readers and other expat bloggers to approach this issue from a mass activist angle, there might be some sort of positive effect on this issue.
But no. I see that since I wrote that article, The Marmot’s Hole has linked to several other subsequent articles on the same theme in the local English-language press, and these threads in turn fill up with all sorts of anecdotes and personal complaints.
But it means NOTHING because it is all in English and decision-makers in Korea just don’t really care what gets said if they can’t see it in Korean before their own eyes.
So the lesson I draw from all of this is that the so-called expat community is just too divided by personal rivalies and animosities and individual self-interest to really come together for its greater good. And at this point I’m sick and tired of reading endless stories about the subject of int’l debit cards and reading endless personal anecdotes on the same theme. It’s pretty clear, I hope, how I think The Marmot’s Hole could more effectively serve the various interests of the local expat community (i.e., by being more activist oriented and less ideologically selective in terms of what it links to and posts on), but one thing is clear: All these threads and comments in English have absolutely no effect on Korea, Inc. except to allow people to vent and make themselves feel better. Sorry, folks, but Ban Ki-moon is not reading the Hole everyday.
As for me, I’ve given up on the local expat “community” because frankly I’ve seen that, time and time again, no such thing even exists.
Happy banking, y’all!
how about *you* providing a link in your comment to your article(s), then?
i’ll print the chosun ilbo article, highlight the minister’s quote, and hopefully walk out of keb with my int’l card this afternoon.
instead of playing into the animosity you perceive and letting it drive you to inaction, use the momentum that’s building in the expat community about the foreigner banking issue to further your cause and try to make some change…
I would, but Karl Rove told me not to.
Let’s apply Occam’s razor to this thing:
Luis Riestra got his MBA from KDI. Foreigners at KDI pay no, or heavily subsidized tuition, for the reason that KDI needs to get 35% foreigners into their classes to mingle with the 65% Koreans.
The website for Wise & Wealthy uses the pronoun “we” way too much, without naming anybody as an employee. (I do it, too, on my own website). His location is the 41st floor of ‘presitgious’ Star Tower. Hmm. That’s a set of executive suites. A closet-sized office costs 3 million a month. There is no way in hell that he has 8 corporate divisions housed up there.
3 of his projects were market research for Korea Exchange Bank. Good synergy, turning his work into an article.
I don’t know Mr. Riestra, and have no reason to doubt his work. But at its root, the articles are this: A well-written and well-researched advertisement for his company, which is a start-up by a guy who (I assume) got his former classmates to agree to be ‘directors’, ‘consultants’, or ‘partners’, if and when required.
It’s valuable exposure for him, worth doing for free, and would be even more impressive if he got paid for the articles, billing twice for the same work.
kudos to him, then, for getting such exposure to his one-man op…
So then what are foreigners to do?
Banks are citing made-up laws, but seeing as they all stick to it, it might as well be law.
There is no consistent policy regarding foreigners, their cards, and their transactions.
I’m not being facetious, I’m wondering what are foreigners to do if they want change? Online petition? Hahaha. More letters to the Korea Times? Hahahaha. Seriously, this isn’t an issue that just affects us lowly English teachers, the ones who the butt of jokes by older expats and who are deemed unworthy of help or leniency. So what can be done? Anyone?
I’m afraid that for all the bellyaching that goes on on blocks and forums, enough people just don’t care.
Re. #29: SweetLou, you can find the English-language text and link for my Chosun article on page 6 of my Board’s site (click on my ID here), but honestly it’s a 9-month-old story so I would be reluctant to recommend you cite it now because much has changed since then.
In any case, your presumption that I have been driven to inaction is merely your presumption. I simply find that publishing in Korean is far more effective than writing for the relatively isolated echo-chamber that is English-language blogs and other similar message boards.
Re. #30: Robert, I don’t mind debating with people who are conservative and can respect those who stand by their convictions, but I have always found you to be one of the most intellectually disingenuous writers in the expat blogosphere, which in turn makes me wonder why you even bother doing what you do.
In any case, you definitely have a talent for dressing down Korea noobs like the Director of the New York Philharmonic, so I’ll give you that much.
Korea fighting!
Hey, it’s hard work being part of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, Scott.
#35: Thank you for proving my point better than I ever could have myself.
Always happy to be of assistance.
Re: #31
Just wanted to clear up one point, for what it’s worth. In fact, not ALL foreigners at the KDI School get free or subsidized tuition. Full time foreign students (day time) do receive free tuition in addition to a monthly stipend in many cases.
However, foreign students enrolled in the evening MBA program receive neither free tuition nor a tuition subsidy, while those enrolled in the (evening) MFDI program receive a 50% tuition subsidy from the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy. It should be noted, though, that this subsidy (approx. KRW3 million/semester X 4 semesters) is also given to Korean nationals enrolled in the same major.
King Baeksu said:
If you called them ‘whitey’ in your post they might have just ignored you, like I will from now on.
#27: R. Elgin, muchas gracias for the link. I figured Rich Wacker, decent and upstanding guy that he is, would pay attention to this before too long.
I feel his pain: Having to ensure a waygook doesn’t sneak more than the dreaded $10K out between trips when he has no idea what transactions may have taken place at other banks (hell, maybe his own bank, too). He’s forcing the government to come up with a workable solution. Kudos.
KEB, supposedly the foreign exchange specialist, are bunch of thieving pricks when it comes to their rates on what they deem “unusual currencies” such as *gasp* the Philippine peso.
Today’s interbank rate: W100,000 = P4,299
Today’s KEB rate: W100,000 = P3,897
I have vast experience getting screwed by KEB when buying Philippine currency and at least where I live, they are the only bank around who carry the currency.
Screw you, KEB!
I don’t know if he’s an upstanding fellow or not, but whenever I read “Dick Wacker”, I can’t help but smile.
#11 – The teller mumbled some stuff about it being an unusual, difficult task, then mumbled something incohorent yet judging by body language non-flattering about waeguk-folk to the teller next to her.
As for me getting her fired, I think I’d have as much chance of achieving that as I would of getting caught in the middle of a Lee Hyo-ri – Jun Ji-hyun sandwich on the front lawn of Cheong Wa Dae. Not too likely unfortunately.
#41 Anton. Now that’s a good point.
Today’s interbank rate: W100,000 = P4,299
Today’s KEB rate: W100,000 = P3,897
(4,299 – 3,897) divided by 4,299 = 0.0935
That’s a 9.35% exchange commision. Am I figuring and expressing that correctly?
Assuming I got that right, my second question is this: What is a reasonable exchange commision? 3% to 4%? What are the exchange commissions at, say, Incheon airport?
My experience in the past: I exchanged money at KEB before my Phils trip, thinking I would get the best deal there. I was wrong. I found that I could get a better rate at the airport here and the local exchange places in the Phils.
How does one research this online in advance to get the best deal, I wonder. The interbank rate is the currency exchange rate on any of the common currency converter sites. I looked at the KEB English site (www.keb.co.kr) and couldn’t make sense of their commission on the dollar (that could be me), or on the Philippine peso, which was listed as zero. I wasn’t able to find the Incheon Airport currency exchange rates online. Are they available?
That’s at least three questions, by my count. I’ll add one more: How do you say “exchange commission” in Korean?
Feel free to answer, anyone.
P.S. I didn’t slag anyone off on this comment. Hope that’s okay. I want to fit in here.
I hate Shin Han bank. Using their visa card for 8 years in foreign countries has been nothing but headaches. Not accepted in Uzbekistan, had to turn back after 2 days in the country. Didn’t work in either in Brasil, Cuba, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and recently France. But magically, the card starts working again in Incheon airport. Tired of all that crap, I opened a bank account with HSBC. Now, that is professional service.
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