THE JOYS OF BANKING
Part I: OPENING AN
ACCOUNT
My second day in
I had three choices in banks. This is not because there are
only three banks in
I chose Hanmi bank because it was the closest to my apartment. It took me months to learn enough Korean to know that “HanMi” means “KorAm”, which is an abbreviation for Korean-American bank. Despite the name, the staff inside speaks almost no English, so my boss’s wife had to do all the translating for me. She even had to write my address for me because I didn’t know how to write it in Korean. With apologies to my professors at Penn, I have to say I had more empathy in that moment for illiterate people than in a whole semester of adult literacy classes.
There are two things I recall that lifted my spirits that
day. One, I was able to read a Korean name on the teller’s business card, and
my boss’s wife was impressed that I could already read that much. Two, to thank me for opening a bank account,
the bank gave me a box of Ziploc bags (resealable plastic bags for
storage). Many people already know that
when I lived in
PART II: DAILY ROUTINES
Although I needed help to open a bank account, surprisingly
it didn’t take me long to figure out other aspects of banking in
*I have a “passbook” with an electronic record of my account balance. I learned how to feed it into the machine to get a printout of my withdrawals and automatic transfers. I also learned that the computer even “knows” when a passbook is at the end of the page.
*ATM withdrawal fees are unavoidable. Even if I take money out of my own bank account, I get charged 600 won (about 60 cents). If I go to a different bank to withdraw money from that account, I get charged 1000 won (about 1 dollar).
*Goods and services can be purchased through bank transfer rather than by cash or credit card. For example, when I buy plane tickets, my travel agent gives me a name and account number to transfer the money to. I go to the ATM and select his bank name, type his account number, confirm the name on the account (which he sent me in an email in Korean letters), and enter the amount.
*I haven’t had direct experience with this, but I’ve been told by colleagues that Korean ATMs do not work 24 hours a day. It can be hard to get money late at night because many of the machines are closed. Furthermore, a person who uses a Korean ATM card in the States can only use that ATM card during Korean banking hours.
PART III: THE DAY THINGS GOT UGLY
One other major banking task is wiring money home to my
I should specify here that all though it’s called “Bank
Day”, it’s not a whole day off from work. It’s not even a morning or an
afternoon off. We still leave for work
at
As you can imagine, it’s a very hectic, tight, and therefore stressful schedule to begin with. It’s even worse if you teach only morning and afternoon classes and no electives regularly; you don’t get out of teaching a class, you just lose two hours of prep time. But I know how considerate the company is to give us that time at all so I don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
Anyway, this was my third banking day and my second experience transferring money from Hanmi Bank. (I did another transfer before from Woori Bank, which Samsung uses for all of its expense reimbursements such as my travel and shipping allowance). I knew the wire transfers were special procedures that usually take a while, but I wasn’t expecting any more trouble than usual.
My colleague Connie was with me. She is a fellow Penn grad
(two years after me) and is a Korean Canadian. That is, she grew up in
Everything went fine at Hanmi bank until they ran my passport. They asked me to wait a while. Then they told Connie that they needed proof of my employment in order to transfer the money. I happened to have my pay stub with me and showed it to them; apparently sometimes in other banks that’s enough. But this time it wasn’t. I flung my Alien Registration card and a phone list on the desk. Still this wasn’t enough; they needed a letter from Samsung verifying my employment. I knew I couldn’t just come back the next day with the document; I had only today, this moment, to be able to get that money home. I said in my best angry English, “this has never been a problem before. You can’t change the rules like this on me. My family is waiting for the money.” It didn’t matter to me if they understood my English or not; what mattered was to make them understand that I was angry, and to let them know I was capable of producing sentences with more than one or two words in them.
According to Connie, the bank manager said this was “new
government policy” that had come down two weeks before and that all banks were
enforcing this policy. She was also told
that Hanmi is merging with Citibank and that could also account for some of the
problems. I asked if banks were required
to send notices out about policy changes and she said, “This is
Connie left when it was clear that I could handle the rest of the transfer on my own; it was already after 12 and we both needed lunch. I said I would meet her at Subway sandwich shop and gave her money to order for me. I was finished 5 minutes after she left. I mustered my best ironic Korean to say “see you next month” (ee warl popshida) and half ran, half walked to the sandwich shop. My only joy at that point besides getting out of the bank was the joy of finding my cell phone useful for the first time, when Connie called to ask what kind of bread I wanted my sandwich on.
At Subway I met Connie. We got our food and walked to the bus stop. We sat outside and enjoyed our lunch. I started polling people as they came back about whether they had had similar problems with their banks. No one had. It was literally just my luck. (Though I found out later that another employee had similar troubles at an Woori bank in Yongin.)
To top off the day, about 5 minutes before we were to get on the bus I decided to sort out my purse and to do a routine “passport check”, i.e. to make sure it was really there and hadn’t gotten lost somewhere. Alas, it wasn’t in its usual storage place. I started looking through the papers shoved in my purse but couldn’t find it.
Thoughts started racing in fragments through my mind: Passport
isn’t here. Last time I saw passport was at the bank. Passport must be at bank. Can’t go to bank now or I miss the bus. I am going to
Fortunately, I had the cell phone, the business card of the bank manager with the phone number, and the good sense to use both. I started calling the bank on my cell; while the phone was ringing I continued looking through my purse one more time. Whew! I found my passport in purse after all. I got on the bus a relieved woman, though as my friend Peter would say I lost three years off my life in that experience.
PART IV: EPILOGUE
I went back to the bank on the next bank day and things went much more smoothly. I still messed up by not bringing my pay stub with me, but I was able to show the deposit amount in my passbook so after that things went smoothly.
I have to close my account on the 18th though, so anything is possible.