Uncomfortably Nub

It's been a long time since I posted. Mostly because I've been on holidays doing the Christmas, New Years, New Years partying. Two New Yearses in Korea. Gotta like that!

Since I'm not at home I'm writing this on another person's computer. And it's a laptop. And it's hard to type on for a couple reasons. The keyboard is smaller and for some reason it randomly skips letters. But I'm just inspired enough to write and I'll tell you why: I went to the bank this morning.

Anybody who knows me, has been to this blog or has ever talked to me for 5 minutes knows the only thing I hate worse than banks is Korean banks. There are customs and habits that force us to use them but these customs and habits can easily change. It certainly isn't for services, dividends or conveniences that we still use this most useless of necessities in life. For most, (if not all), of us, the inconveniences and charges, (not to mention the stress), far outweigh anything good our banks offer us.

Every time we use a bank machine we are expediting service for those who want to do banking at the bank. For this we are charged. At least a buck. I've paid up 25 and I've heard of even bigger charges for cash machines. If you do international banking, (don't), on the bank machine, you'll get exchange rates that should be illegal and service charges that amount to socially accepted usury. I've even been charged for paying bills at the bank machine! It's exponentially worse when you get into mortgages or loans or credit cards. Which is why I haven't, and won't likely EVER get into that. They'll even fine you for paying back a loan or mortgage early I hear. Only a bank! Then they use all our hard-earned money, move it around magically, make billions and billions of dollars and CHARGE us for making them rich. You do the work and they get the money. Pretty sweet deal! For them.

And what else do banks offer us for making them rich? They limit our access to OUR money. When the banks are closed, when the cash machines are closed, (and they close every day in Korea for some insane reason), on holidays, if they deactivate your bank card or freeze your account to protect you from getting to your own money, if you don't have all the appropriate documents, if the bank is being robbed, if exchange rates are especially unfavourable, on a whim, or for no reason at all they enjoy keeping us from our money.

What do we get from banks really? Is our money safer there? Hah! Tell that to the people who have lost money when their bank has gone out of business. That happens a lot too. And how does it happen? It's not like the money disappears. Your bank makes stupid investments with your money and loses it all for you. Yes sir! Risk-free investing. That'd be pretty sweet! For THEM.

Your money is statistically safer in a safe in your home. Even safer in a safe NOT in your home.

If we weren't paid by direct deposit we'd need banks to cash our paychecks or we'd have to carry large amounts of cash home on payday. And yet mugging and robbery haven't disappeared since we stopped getting paid by cash or check, have they? Cash is untraceable. People all over want to know how much money you make and where you spend it. You can bet nowadays with so little cash flow, almost every purchase you make with electronic money is sold by your bank or credit card company to advertisers or marketers. Hence we're making them even MORE money by not using cash.

Having said all that, Koreans have IMPROVED banks! They've made all these services even MORE effecient and even added a few more ways to make our money the cause of and not the solution to so many of our problems. I've dealt with many of them on an individual basis but today I'm gonna talk about passports. Now of course passport-based services are not offered to the locals in Korea. Only the foreigners get these bonuses.

Some banks stamp your passport every time you do anything wasting valuable space; I've been refused by my own bank when I asked to deposit Korean cash into MY account but didn't bring my passport; if you're sending money home, transfering money, withdrawing money, there are banks that will require your passport. It's almost like they don't know it's totally and in ALL of these cases unnecessary. But the teller has been given a rule and zero power, (or understanding), of discretion.

You see when a person comes to Korea they get something called an alien registration card. In order to get it your passport has to be produced for and verified by no less than 20 officials and organizations. The business you work for, the Korean consulate or embassy, Korean immigration, airlines, airport immigration and customs in all countries you pass through to get to Korea, your country's government, police, hospitals and I'm forgetting some for sure. When you come to Korea you become a number. Your alien card number. You need it to start a bank account, rent a movie, do almost anything. It's the same size as credit card so you can keep it on you at all times. It's a more convenient size than your passport because it's more useful. Everything you do at a bank requires the alien card and exactly nothing you do at a bank requires a passport. The cards used to have your passport number ON THEM! And in those days I was STILL asked frequently for my passport. I have argued with tellers and had older people come to my assistance and do whatever I wanted done SANS passport more than once. Some tellers in this country used to know the rules and not ask for the passport all the time but it seems like along with a whole pile of other rules and laws that have been invented or more strongly enforced in Korea recently to make things as inconvenient as possible for foreigners, all the banks are just saying, "screw them, ask for passports for everything."

I am visiting friends and I needed to wire some money home today. Something I've done from many banks without a passport before. We went to KEB, the Korean Exchange Bank, which is supposed to specialize in this sort of stuff. Needed a passport. Now you can ask WHY but expect the thousand mile stare as your response. Today I had Min Ju to translate and the teller mentioned money laundering I think. Like I make 2 million a month and I send home 3 million a month. So I'm making extra money illegally. That's money laundering. I was sending 400 bucks to a storage company where I keep some of my stuff in Canada. Just a little common sense and discretion... No, rules are better!

Who "launders" 400 bucks at a time. There used to be a limit of 5000 dollars a day. I think it's up to 10,000 now. I'm not gonna break the country by sending home an extra 400 bucks a month. Of course the teller can't know this. But who DOES know? How do they catch money launderers. Although our teller might think she heroically helped her country today, nope. We are just numbers. Those numbers, (our alien numbers), are attached to all our banking. We are only allowed one account for payment in Korea and one bank card from that account if we want to take money out of that account, or transfer money via bank machine overseas. But that privelege has recently been take away from all foreigners too. Because of fears of money laundering? I don't think so. So now we have to send money home by the stone age method of wire transfer. No internet banking is allowed either. Money orders or certified checks are a huge hassle too. Koreans are absolutely petrified of foreigners making money here and taking it out of the country. I wonder why Koreans are so knowledgeable in this area. Setting up shop in another country and piping all the profits back to yours. Hmmmmm. At any rate it's the alien registration number that is traced.

So why do they do it? There are service fees, early payment fees, overdraft fees, well this is just a foreigner fee. That's all it is. So essentially foreigners have to carry around their passports all over the place. There are more and more places unnecessarily demanding them. I'd rather walk around with huge bags full of cash. I won't get killed for all the money I have in the bank but I could very easily be killed for my passport.

Incidentally HSBC recently tried to buy out KEB but the Korean repesentatives of KEB let the hugely favourable deal lapse. The least politically correct reason I've read for this deal's collapse was their "fear of foreign interests benefiting from a Korean-based, (not owned), company." Less than a year after the deadline of the deal and now Korea is searching for foreign banks that will loan them money to replace deals they had with banks in the U.S. that have gone tits up. Hmmmmm do you suppose H.S.B.C. will do it? Hah, Korea had their chance and blew it. You can't even open an account at an H.S.B.C. here in Korea any more. I've tried. And every time I read the newspaper I hear of another giant company either passing up Korea for their business or pulling their business out of Korea. They give carefully worded reasons for pulling outta here but we know why it happens.

I'm not going to carefully word it: the longer I stay, the worse this country gets at dealing with foreigners. I am going home in June and I wouldn't be surprised if I just stayed. As one of my good friends here in Korea says, "I'm a nub." This place has finally worn me down to a nub.