me on KT

Being a reporter, I've been so used to interviewing people. But it's funny when the tables are turned and you're the one interviewed! Its even funnier when the story appears on page 1 of your own newspaper.

Anyway, for posterity's sake, here's the article quoting me (!) which appeared on KT today.

Foreigners Cry Inconvenience in Mobile Phone Service

By Kim Tae-gyu, Tony MacGregor Staff Reporters Some foreign residents complain that getting a cell phone in Korea is a nightmare that amounts to discrimination, but cell phone companies flatly deny the charges. The complaints of the foreigners revolve around the two sets of rules for obtaining cell phones in Korea _ one set for foreigners and another for Koreans. ``It's very difficult for foreigners to get cell phones with the same rates as Koreans,'' said David Watermeyer, a South African who has lived here for about a year. He said that because Korean companies will not accept credit ratings from foreign countries, foreign residents have to either pre-pay for their cell phone time at an exorbitant rate or get a phone in the name of a Korean friend. ``If you don't have a Korean friend willing to lend you his credit and name, you have to pay the high rate,'' he said. ``Why can't cell phone companies accept international credit cards as a back-up?'' he asked. When he first arrived in Korea, a friend gave him an unused cell phone, which Watermeyer put in his name with SK Telecom. ``I had to pre-pay at the high rate, and it was really inconvenient as well. The cell phone was always running out of time at a bad time, and then I had to find an SK Telecom office to recharge it,'' he said. When Watermeyer began working for an language institute, the institute registered a cell phone for him in the institute's name, but he had to put down a deposit of 100,000 won. ``But I received the same rate that Koreans pay,'' he said. He also urged cell phones to have some key words in English in the bills. ``I understand that the bills have to be in Korean, but if there was an option for foreigners to have some basic information on the bills in English, it would help,'' he said. Joanne So-jung Kong, a Canadian citizen who was born in Korea, also had problems. ``When I first arrived, I tried KTF but they said they couldn't give credit to someone without a Korean citizenship number or a Korean-issued credit card,'' she said. To overcome the problem, she asked a cousin to put the phone in her name. That worked well until the cousin left the country and the phone broke down. ``They wouldn't let me buy a new phone and I couldn't shut down the account because it was in my cousin's name, so my cousin called and asked them to put the account on hold, which they did but there was a cost while the account was on hold,'' she said. She eventually got an account with SK Telecom, which has a program for Korean-born foreigners. ``SK was a lot easier to work with than KTF,'' she said. Cathy Garcia from the Philippines also ran into problems. ``A friend acted as my guarantor because at SK, they wouldn't accept my credit card as a guarantee,'' she said. ``They have my friend's bank account number, but I pay almost the same rate as Koreans.'' She added that all services are in Korean and it is very difficult for foreigners to communicate with the phone offices because most personnel don't speak English and don't want to be bothered with dealing with all the problems of registering foreigners with their companies. ``For the first six months I paid an extra 20,000 won per month connection fee. I still don't know what that was for,'' she said. Garcia said there is a sizable foreign community in Korea now and any cell company that offering good service at the same rate as Koreans would do well. Korea's mobile carriers vigorously rebuffed any arguments that they discriminate foreign residents. ``First of all, the claim that foreigners must subscribe to wireless telephony services here merely on a pre-paid basis is not true. Foreigners with citizenship numbers are eligible for the deferred-payment system,'' SK Telecom spokesman Do Hoon said. He added that SK Telecom cannot enlarge such benefits for aliens without the registration numbers because they cannot check their financial backgrounds. ``We are not a financial entity. It is practically impossible for us to check the financial backgrounds of foreigners,'' Do said. Do took issue with the argument that foreigners pay prohibitively high rates for mobile phone services. ``On our pre-paid system, foreigners are required to pay 61 won per minute while Koreans are levied 20 won. But foreigners do not pay a basic fee of 13,000 won that Koreans are charged for,'' Do said. ``When they are heavy users, the pre-paid system is unfavorable. But if they are light users, their burden based on the pay-as-you-go system is much less than on Koreans,'' Do said.