Tag: expats

I can understand the bank’s perspective on this if someone cannot prove they are going to be employed longer than a year. I think even a Korean citizen would have a hard time being approved for a loan under these circumstances:

For Lonnie, a 45-year old Canadian working as a professional English instructor in Seoul, buying his own house in the city has been near the top of his bucket list.

But his plan for a dream house has been let down by local banks rejecting his applications for a credit loan. Despite his status as a full-time instructor at the Graduate School of Interpretation and Translation of Hankuk University of Foreign Studies for more than eight years, the banks have not been accommodating.

“For the first time in almost 18 years after I came here, I applied for a credit loan offered by Woori Bank last year to raise money to purchase an affordable starter home,” he said. “However, a bank clerk said I don’t qualify for the lending as my contract at HUFS was only for a year, saying foreigners could run away if they only had a one-year contract.“

His contract is renewed on a yearly basis, but he is classified as regular worker subject to the state’s employment insurance coverage. He earns an annual income of around 80 million won ($69,300). 

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

Apparently expats do not have a high opinion of living in South Korea and a lot of has to do with making friends and settling in. From a U.S. military perspective there are so many KATUSAs and other to make friends with on base that this is really not an issue. Additionally it is easier to settle in on base as well when you don’t have to worry about getting cheated by landlords:

Korea ranked 47th out of 59 countries in an index based on a survey to determine the favorability of the living environment and conditions for expats. In the Expats Insider 2021 index released by InterNations, the world’s largest expat community with around 4 million members, those in Korea had difficulty settling in, finding friends and feeling at home.

The community conducted the annual survey in January on 12,420 expat respondents, representing 174 nationalities and living in 186 countries or territories, regarding their satisfaction in areas including quality of life, ease of settling in, working life, personal finance and cost of living.

Korea ranked 13th in general living conditions among 61 countries in 2014, but its ranking fell to 55th in 2019. It bounced back slightly to 54th in 2020 and 47th this year.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Although he has lived in Japan for 25 years, Pico Iyer doesn’t choose to learn more than a smattering of Japanese because he says needs mystery and “a sense of open space in life, something to offset the sense of the familiar.” https://t.co/0JpPZ4e03m

— New York Times Books (@nytimesbooks) April 23, 2019

Here is some news about health care coverage changes that expats in South Korea need to be aware of:

Stricter terms will be applied to foreign residents to prevent possible abuse of the national health insurance system, the Ministry of Health and Welfare announced, Sunday.

According to the changes, effective from July, all foreigners who have continuously resided in the country for at least six months must subscribe to the state healthcare program through a non-employer-sponsored plan and pay monthly premiums. 

Previously, mandatory registration was only applied to salaried workers, leading to cases where foreigners who needed high-cost medical procedures signed up for the program because those covered by the insurance get around 62 percent of essential medical costs reimbursed.

Such cases of opportunism ― mostly found in temporary visitors rather than settled residents ― led the ministry to raise the minimum period of residency to make one eligible for the state insurance from three months to six months last December. 

Those who leave Korea for 30 continuous days are dropped from the system and must reside another six months here to be eligible for the insurance coverage again.

The monthly premium for foreign subscribers has also become higher than before, about the average of all Koreans, while it used to be the average of Koreans registered with the non-employer-sponsored plan only. This year’s figure was set around 103,000 won ($90).

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but $90 a month for the national health care plan is really affordable even if it only covers 62% of medical costs.

Korea #27 best expat country to live in according to survey https://t.co/ytwf8B64qy #Korea #expat #life #travel pic.twitter.com/ufGHdVH893

— Haps Magazine (@hapsmagazine) September 7, 2016

https://twitter.com/StevenWard/status/771352547873337344

Read up on these 10 unexpected things that might happen to you after moving into Korea! #SouthKorea #Unexpectedhttps://t.co/hicWMzcqCG

— 10 Magazine Korea (@10_Magazine) August 8, 2016

What the bar owner says about what expat patrons have been doing in his bar sounds pretty bad, but you can’t tell me that Korean customers haven’t done the same thing before?:

Fiesta pub, near Korea University in Anam, Seoul, has been denying entry to foreigners for three years due to promiscuous and irresponsible behavior, the bar owner said.

“We no longer accept foreigners because we had many issues with them. I had many bad experiences three years ago when I ran this place almost like a ‘foreigner only’ bar,” the owner Baek said.

“I even had to pick up used condoms while cleaning the bathroom. Our bar is not a motel. Sometimes we could hear customers moaning in the bathroom.”

Baek said he found a condom in the bathroom twice.

He stressed he could not tolerate the lewd behavior of foreigners anymore and that he was very upset with a female customer who took a shower in the bathroom after sex and some male customers who would sexually molest intoxicated female customers.

An expat recently visited Fiesta but was denied service even though the bar was empty.  [Korea Observer]

You can read the rest at the link.

It is probably smart that the nationalities of these expats are not being released because I can just see some people trying to blame a certain nationality for the MERS spread:

Dozens of foreigners have been put in quarantine for Middle East respiratory syndrome, but health authorities have yet to identify all of their nationalities, sources said Tuesday.

The Health and Welfare Ministry said that about 20 to 30 foreigners in Korea were ordered to be under home monitoring as they were suspected to have been exposed to MERS-confirmed patients.

As of Tuesday, more than 5,000 individuals in the country are being monitored at home for possible infection.

The exact number and nationality of those concerned has not been fully confirmed because the information of their home countries was not collected in the initial stages of the screening, according to the ministry.

“Once the MERS response team sends the list of those that they assume could be foreigners, we first identify based on names whether they are Korean nationals or not, and then proceed with the personal identification. So far, it may be uncertain, but there are believed to be around 20 to 30 expats under quarantine monitoring,” a Health Ministry official who is in charge of foreign affairs told The Korea Herald.

“The nationality identification is underway, but even if everything is confirmed, their nationalities will be kept confidential because of diplomatic issues,” she said, adding that some countries ask that the information not be released.  [Korea Herald]

You can read more at the link.