Part two of K Herald “Banking in Korea”

Thanks to Marmot’s Hole, I saw that part two of the “Banking in Korea” series went to press. I’m particularly fond of this quote:

More often than not, an application form to get a credit card will not even make it into the hands of the foreigner requesting it, as it is again much easier to say “I’m sorry, no credit card for foreigners,” than it is to explain the clients options and how to go about them, what documents to bring, and so forth.

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.

Oh, and this one:

Most people are not aware that credit-review teams have another set of more implicit rules they don’t openly tell anyone about.

Hence, the English teacher getting a rough deal for being in the same category as someone who once upon a time stopped by in Korea on his way to another country while running away from the law, or say someone who published his story online on how much of a good time he had in Itaewon mingling with Korean friends, and other such stories.

This astonishing degree of irrelevance between cause and consequence is all too present in Korea at many levels.

Oh, and this one:

You know what? Just go read the article. It goes into a lot of the difficult things about living in Korea. Both Spicy and I love living in Korea and enjoy the challenge of overcoming obstacles related to the Expat lifestyle, but our website itself is evidence of the fact that the ‘Korean way’ of enforcing rules and handling F-words (”Foreigners”) makes the life very difficult. Things are definately changing for the better in recent years though. At SeoulSteves, we focus on the positive, but the fact is, life here CAN be unnecessarily hard for expats. Read part one here.

Okay, I can’t resist posting this one:

The issue with international ATM cards, loans and credit cards still remains largely unsolved, with English speakers getting the rough end of the deal, fueling a very bad reputation for Korea, slowing down any realistic efforts toward a financial hub in the region, and the material for sarcastic jokes at financial market conferences in neighboring countries.

I can tell you of a personal experience while in Tokyo where I interrupted a room filled with about 1,000 financial experts to express my cautious defense of Korea’s government initiatives to improve financial markets.

The panel of experts were people with 20-30 years of banking experience in Hong Kong, Japan and other countries, who simply asked the question of the audience: “Korea wants to become a financial hub of Asia and compete with banking in Hong Kong and the financial market come-back strength of Japan, but is overtly regulated, inefficient and does not allow fair competition to foreign banks. What are they dreaming about?”

His analysis of the Korean banking industry fits very, very, well with my own observations of how a Korean organization reacts to any sort of percieved threat or change agent. Not only have I studied this stuff in grad school, but I’ve experienced it first hand in the various Korean organizations I have been a part of.