Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Real Reality]

Citibank Opens New York Branch for Korean Americans
Citibank opened a new outlet in Korea Town in Manhattan, bringing the bank�s full range of products and services to the Korean American neighborhood in New York, Thursday (local time). At 22 West 32nd Street in Manhattan, Citibank celebrated the grand opening of its new branch, where 16 employees fluent in both English and Korean will be stationed to ease difficulties faced by some Korean American customers at American banks.

Why not

Citibank Opens Seoul Branch for Americans and other English speakers in Korea
Citibank opened a new outlet in Seoul ... where 16 employees fluent in both English and Korean will be stationed to ease difficulties faced by some foreign customers at Korean banks....

Citibank Opens New York Branch for Korean Americans
By Kim Sung-jin, Korea Times (June 30, 2006)
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/biz/200606/kt2006063017482911890.htm

[mithridates]

Who cares about service in English, just give us a card that works overseas. And everything else. The problem with attempting to cater to foreigners (and the implicit assumption in your posts) is that most businesses assume they need a whole new area completely fluent in English to cater to us before they can help out. No, just the same service as everybody else would be fine.

Korean government opens new snazzy English webpage to cater to foreigners! Great! Do our numbers let us do or sign up for anything online now? No? Well then thanks for nothing. How about keep it in Korean and instead let our numbers work and let us get cards like everybody else? Anybody that cares enough will either speak the language or get a Korean friend. *beep* service in English. I would settle for service.

[flotsam]

[Real Reality]

[mithridates]

I think it's good that you advocate improvement of service for foreigners in Korea. The one problem I have with your approach is that it is often tied in with bringing more English in, and I think that's a bad idea for two reasons: 1) because it distracts from the more real problem of improving the system and often lets sites / businesses get away with feeling they've made an effort when really all they've done is translate the same less than useful site into English, and 2) most foreigners in Korea aren't from English-speaking countries.

In this chart Chinese are the largest number. 31% of those are Korean-Chinese so we have to take them out of the equation, but even without them it's twice the number of Americans. Also, the rate of increase is much higher. Over 300% for Chinese and only 100% for Americans. Vietnamese are at almost 400% and people from Thailand at 650%. You'll also notice that no other English countries besides the US are even on the chart.

[mithridates]

[Marley_Doug]

So does this make banking easier(and cheaper)? Or should I stay with my bank here in the states, open a korean account, and wire money to my american bank?

also, do they have citibank atm's everywhere?

thanks

[Woland]