Welcome to The Korean Banking Blog

From the time I was 9 years old when I opened my first bank account I have been interested in banking. I still have this interest and intend to write about banking in South Korea. Coming from Australia to Korea was a revelation, Korean banks have a lot of branches, and they have yet to discover fee revenue in the big way that banks back home have. Outsourcing and centralised back office functions haven't taken off here either. These things will change, but hopefully Korean banks can learn from the mistakes made in other countries and provide service for the fees rather than removing services and charging more. I hold a masters degree in international business from Griffith University in Australia, which I did after I sold my business as a mature age student without a bachelor degree, not something I would recommend as being particularly easy. I studied accounting, corporate finance, management and marketing for this degree.

I do not and have not worked for a bank and this site does not provide investment advice, but aims to act as a centralised knowledge base for banking in Korea.

I want to keep the tone of this blog positive so if I become aware of banking problems I will contact the relevant body first and when the issue is solved I will then post the story here. The aim of this blog is to minimise the “No, you can't you're foreign” response and hopefully play a small part in developing Korea into a global financial centre.

The Global Financial Crisis (GFC hereafter) was a wake up call for the old adage, high return and low risk are oxymoronic, or maybe you don't need the oxy there. Of course some governments are now looking at punishing consumers for this by introducing a special tax (sorry levy) on banks which will inevitably be passed onto the consumer, but I will look at this later.

I believe the problems experienced by international residents in Korea come down to the following issues:

• A complicated regulatory structure;
• Further complicated by many made up regulations, sometimes spread by the local media who have difficulty distinguishing between public servants statements and government legislation, to be fair as public servants enforce the law, sometimes there is no difference;
• Language difficulties, not that bank staff don't speak English, but usually it is the job of the most junior person to talk to the English speakers;
• Cultural difficulties, if Koreans don't know an answer they will usually deem this as shameful and say “no” instead of checking;
• Unreasonable expectations from international customers, “Hi, I'm here on a 1 year visa, can I have some unsecured debt please?” although this might not be unreasonable when the person has lived here for 5 years and has a Korean wife and child, but is still on a 1 year visa;
• Bank staff being inherently conservative, not a bad thing when you consider the GFC, but in Korea that can mean believing that “foreigners” are the cause of all ills from the IMF period to voice phishing and buying Korean banks cheap to sell them for a profit later.

Should you have any banking stories, successful or otherwise please forward them to koreabankingblog@gmail.com and indicate if you wish to be a guest blogger or if you want me to write about the issues contained in your story.