Korean Job Discussion Forums

[stuck]

I have been in Korea since 2007 and didn't contact the Student Loan Company before I left the UK. I haven't made any repayments on my loan since I quit my job back home. The SLC haven't contacted me to chase my repayments despite having my UK address. I want to get my finances in the UK straight (including claiming a tax rebate of over 1000GBP)

So I have two questions:

Firstly, if anyone has experience of this, did you have to make a payment upfront to cover the ones you missed?

Secondly, how much are your repayments each month? (The SLC website says the threshold is 9000GBP for Korea and I earn a bit more than that!)

Any help would be appreciated, I did try searching for this through google but couldn't find anything.

Thanks!

[E_athlete]

[stuck]

I think it's a loan that will never be repaid. I want to just pay the minimum amount I can towards it.

[E_athlete]

see the thing is you never mentioned how much loans you have. I'm not sure whether it's a good idea to bail/default on your loans because I dont know how much you owe to begin with.

In any case, if you think you will never repay it just stay in Korea. I'm not sure about the laws in the UK but in CANADA after 7 yrs of defaulting if they dont take you to court you are free. If you work and they find you they will garnish your wages, you dont go to jail for white-collar crimes like this.

In your case I doubt you have such a large student loan that they will send a collection agency after you in Korea. For one thing they dont even know where you are. It's not even worth it from them to spend money to go after you and take you to court because of the lawyer fees. And even if they sued you in Korea and won their case you can just leave the country, go to Japan and teach English there.

Sorry but I dont know what the laws are like in the UK but I wouldnt be surprised if they were similar to Canada. I think as long as you dont go back to the UK and work they will never be able to touch you. I'm not sure if the UK has the 7 year rule like in Canada, maybe you might want to look into it.

Another option if you want to return to the UK is paying the minimum for a number of years then filing bankruptcy. You will need to talk to accountant to see how long you have to pay min. payment to get this option because as you know student debt is not forgivable by bankruptcy usually.

cheers

[RufusW]

There was a decent thread on this a couple months back, try a search.

They can force you to pay when you're in the UK, they can't do anything if you're abroad. But you are meant to make payments.