Korean Job Discussion Forums

[brento1138]

I am pretty angry with KT for two reasons:

1) So, I went into a KT office on February15th, and asked them to unlock my iphone. I had to pay about 400,000 won to do so, since I had to pay off the remainder of my iphone. So, I paid. About 5 hours later, I got a message on my iphone (a text message) from KT saying "Congratulations, your iPhone has been unlocked."

So, just yesterday I got to Canada, 16 days later. I went into a Telus store (a local Canadian mobile company) and got a new SIM card with a month-to-month plan. They checked whether my iPhone was compatible with their network, and they claimed it was (it should be as all iPhones are exactly the same, hardware-wise). I follow the instructions, replace the SIM card, connect to iTunes, wait, and get a message saying "The SIM card in this phone does not appear to be supported." I took out the sim cards, restored my phone numerous times, shut down my iphone, rebooted it, turned off my computers, opened and closed itunes... nothing works!

My iPhone SHOULD BE unlocked. I paid the fee, I got a message, wtf is wrong? Did they enter the IMEI correctly? Does it take a long time even after they sent me that text message? I am totally confused. And angry. Don't send me a text saying it is unlocked if it isn't.

2) But an even bigger reason I am angry is that KT cancelled my KT account without even telling me, asking me, etc. My first day in Vancouver was fine. But when the second day rolled around, suddenly "no service." So I couldn't even use my Korean SIM card. How annoying was that? I told them I'd end my account after a couple days in Canada, and they just cancel it on me without my notification, or disable roaming. Totally uncool, as I was going to give them my credit card information and pay off everything (I told them I would). What if I ended up in an emergency?

So, I dunno what's up with KT, but I am severely pissed off with them. I cannot call them for a few days, but when I do, I'll try to sort this all out. If anyone had a problem with unlocking their Korean iphone, let me know. Or if it was no problem, or if there is something that I missed with unlocking it, let me know also...

Anyhow, arrrrg.

**UPDATE**: So, I called up Telus (the Canadian mobile company) and everything was in order on their side. They recommended calling up Apple, which turned out to be a pretty good idea. Apple checked my serial number and my IMEI and noticed it still is locked to the KT network. Locked! Grrr. So the problem obviously is with KT. Either they messed up with my IMEI or they lied (which I doubt). I'll call them tomorrow and figure out what's up.

[phatrick]

Did you sync the phone with itunes after receiving the message that your phone is unlocked? They told me I had to do that for it to unlock.

[brento1138]

[pkang0202]

I did the same thing you said, but my phone was a 3GS. It worked fine.

Not sure why yours didn't work.

[brento1138]

Well, I phoned KT up today and gave them the IMEI again. Apparently they must have entered the number wrong. Now my iPhone is unlocked and I'm happy. But advice: get them to read the number back to you.

[Captain Corea]

Frustrating story. I'll be doing the same thing this summer - hopefully I'll have a bit better luck.

So, is it all settled now?

[yourboychris]

That sucks man. Especially since you paid a lot. My story was the opposite, I had a new smart phone from Canada, but it didn't work in Korea ;/

I guess thats why most people prefer to have their contracts taken over to avoid these problems ;/

Hopefully it works out for you

[emacs]

a tricky part is...

right after you get a msg from kt, you need to pop in a "foreign carrier's simcard" and sync. this is how to unlock an iphone officially.

[john110375]

If you don't have access to another sim card (in my case) you can just back up your data. Then do a restore. That also will complete the unlock. I've done that twice so far

[seoul101]

If you don't put a foreign SIM card in straight after, will the unlock fail to work later?

I got the message from KT (after they forgot about it for 3 weeks!) but don't have a foreign SIM card. I used an SK card a few days after and it seemed to connect to the 3G and got a couple of texts ok, so I'm guessing that's it. Is it unlocked?

[pkang0202]

Just a word of advice,

After you put a new SIM in, you have to give it up to half an hour for the phone to download the latest network data.

For example, if you are going from Korea to US (AT&T) then when you pop in an AT&T sim, for the first 30 minutes the phone won't work because it is downloading software updates to make it work on the AT&T network. Different carriers have different features

-Personal hotspot
-Location
-etc...

You have to give time for the phone to update to the modifications each carrier has.

[tran.huongthu]

Got the message today that my phone was unlocked however I put in a sim card from my friends card and it said No Service. Also I checked and under carrier, with no SIM inserted, it say KT 12.0. Does this mean they botched my unlock as well?

Any help is appreciated.

[emacs]