Korean Job Discussion Forums

[grandpa]

Are banks closed on Monday, February 28th, or just on Tuesday, March 1st?

[weekapaughead]

Why would the banks be closed?

[grandpa]

[CentralCali]

I believe the other poster was asking why the banks would be closed on February 28.

[grandpa]

[CentralCali]

There are exactly two holidays in South Korea subject to that kind of fun, friend. Those would be Chuseok and Seolnal. All the other holidays are one day and one day only holidays.

If you're super lucky, then one of the other holidays will fall either on a Friday or a Monday, giving you a three-day weekend, but never a four- or five-day weekend.

For the Korean teachers, they hope for one of the other holidays to fall either on a Friday before a non-school Saturday or the Monday after a non-school Saturday.

And, if your luck has abandoned you, when Chuseok or Seolnal fall on a Wednesday, you have to work that week's Monday and Friday with a 3-day holiday sandwiched between.

Simply put, this is not the country of the moveable feast.

[AsiaESLbound]

Many of us are finishing up and must leave next Tuesday on the 1st so it's important to us the banks are open and ready to sell dollars, but they will be open on Monday. They obviously won't be open on Tuesday and it's a good idea to be finished with everything by Monday and on a bus to Seoul by that afternoon for they go on the reduced holiday schedule come Tuesday morning. I'm trying to get paid by lunch time Friday instead of much later since I don't want to wait until the last minute to change money. If you are a public school teacher finishing up, you are in a race with many others involving a US dollar cash run on the banks. When a run on the banks occurs, cash currency can temporarily become limited where you have to wait a day or so for them to have more delivered. This is crunch time, because your visa is expiring on the 1st and you have a morning flight to catch. I've never heard of this happening here, but I don't want to take any chances in a small town with only one small finite source of dollars. A single small branch of NH. I would expect your average bank keeps about $10,000 cash on hand and that much more in Euros as I seen their shoe box sized money boxes. We have 25 public school teachers all fishing for about $5000 cash in the next few days so we a growing anxious about getting our money we can't access from outside of Korea before leaving on Tuesday.

When I bought Euros 3 days ago, I met a fresh young banker who recently started working there. He was pleased to meet me and I told him he would be meeting about 20 more of us by next Monday buying around $5000 cash currency each. He got surprised, over joyed, and excited that he's going to practice his English some more. I spent all of 1 hour with him while he was learning how to sell currency for it was his first time. I hope he understands he needs to keep about $125,000 cash on hand to accommodate foreign teachers combined currency needs. Obviously there wasn't that much money in his box unless it's in the back vault.