Korean Job Discussion Forums

[cedarseoul]

My wife's hagwon sets all their teachers up with KB or something, but I use Woori. We asked if they would deposit her salary into my Woori account if we made it a joint account, but they aren't able/willing to do so.

Due to my wife's schedule, it is impractical for her to wire money out of the country--and if we both send periodic wires, we're paying double fees.

So I'm wondering--is it possible for me to withdraw cash from her account, deposit it into mine, and then include it with my wire? In the "old days," they used to check my pay slip at Woori when I transferred money to the States, but they never do that anymore. So I'm thinking perhaps they don't care how much I send...?

[Fat_Elvis]

I'm with Woori too. I thought you still only able to send up to your yearly income, but you seem to think they're not checking pay slips anymore. There's only one way to find out, and that's to do it. If you do let me know how it goes.

[melirae1976]

don't know if you're sending to US or canada, so this might not be true for canada since i send to the US, but here's how i do it.

i'm with woori as well and my employer direct deposits my pay into the account they help me set up. i have this "secondary" account, also with woori that i set up on my own, that automatically wires any money deposited into it to the US. i don't think woori is charging me a fee for transfers, but my bank in the US charges. i can do the transfers into the "secondary" account at an ATM or online with woori. i also can't get to the bank often because of my schedule, so this is great! and with the ATM transfer option, i can play the pick-the-best-day-based-on-the current-exchange game!

so, if you set up this "secondary" account for yourself at worri, you can just do a bank transfer at the ATM from your wife's KB account directly to the woori "secondary" account and the money will go home. there's a $50,000 cap on transfers and no need to show your pay slips.

[Troglodyte]

Maybe it would be better then if the secondary bank account was a joint account with his wife. That way they can show both of their payslips to justify the transfers (if necessary).


A bit off topic but because this comes up sometimes and if it applies to you then you should know about it... Have you verified that when your wife's school set up her (and other people's accounts) that the account is ONLY in your wife's name? The school has no connection to the account, right? Some employers ("after school" managers in particular) have been known to use teacher's accounts for laundering money. Not necessarily mafia/drug/etc money. But when parents pay money to the school, the manager deposits or has the parents deposit the money into a teachers account, and then he withdraws it himself. After that, the money is relatively untraceable. It's one way of cooking the books. If someone catches on that there is money changing hands then it leads back to the teacher, who is then responsible for paying the huge taxes on all that money. I'm not saying that this is likely happening in your case, but it's something that people need to be aware of because it happens - often.

[melirae1976]

i think the secondary account is just an extension of the original account, so it can only be in one person's name, which in this case would be the hubby since he's the original holder of the woori account. the wife can transfer from kb to his woori account, then they can pool money to send to the secondary account that will leave the country.

alternatively cedarseoul, why don't you guys just go in together and set up a joint account on your own? that may help with the cap on the amount you can remit to your home country. as a foreigner you can set up your own account- you don't have to have anyone support you for any reason other than language. quite a few of my coworkers set up accounts with different banks because they preferred them over woori, which is who our employer sets us up with. they did it on their own.

[cedarseoul]

this is great advice--thanks!

i guess i'm not clear on the advantage of a "secondary" account, if it's true that there's a 50mil cap on transfers and no need for pay slips. couldn't i simply wire my wife's money from her kb account to my woori account using internet banking and then send the combined amount home? what's the advantage to the "secondary" account? is it just that wires can be set up automatically? i guess that's kind of convenient...i'd never heard of doing that before, but it sounds kind of cool...

thanks, also, for the tip re: money laundering. i'll be setting up internet banking with my wife's kb account so we can closely monitor activity. i don't anticipate anything untoward happening, but it's always best to be careful...

[melirae1976]

yeah, the advantage on the secondary account is that the transfers can be done via internet banking or atm. you could just wire your wife's money to your woori account and go into the bank yourself to do the transfers. i only set up the secondary account to save a trip to the bank.