National Pension Service Office in Ansan

Today's blog entry should partly serve to advise any other Ansan-based English teachers as to how to claim their pension.

I didn't have all the documents printed off, so I went to the Ansan Media Library by bike. The second floor is all English! It seems to be for the purpose of people studying to take English examinations. Those helpful people directed me to the third floor where I found the printers. One of the library works helped me to sign into the computer. From there I got the documents up on the computer and went to print them. It asks for a pin number which is actually one you just decide yourself. Take that pin to the printer, it asks you to pay, maybe 50 won per page, and then it prints. Easy.

Ansan Media Library there at the bottom.

The office itself is not where the city of Ansan English website says it is -5th floor Ocean Building 529-2 Gojan-dong Danwon-gu Ansan City. It is however, where the NPS website says it is -2th Floor, Samsung Fire Bldg.,Gwangdeok-daero 259 , Danwon-gu, Ansan-si, Gyeonggi-do. That location is actually pretty easy to get to. I rode my bike from the media library but you could:

• take exit 1 from Jungang station, turn left and keep walking along the main road until you reach a large intersection with a boulevard, and take a right up to the Samsung Fire Building which will be on the left hand side of the road.

         or

• take exit 1 from Gojan station turn right and keep walking along the main road until you reach the large intersection, take a left and the Samsung Fire Building will be on the left hand side of the road.

The building is quite clear and you can see Samsung written in Korean. The website specifies that "You can find Ansan city hall and find Samsung Fire Building on your left across the Nonghyup Building. We are in the Samsung Fire Building on 2nd floor."

The office is on your right when you exit the elevator. It has no front desk so it helps to know why your there. To the left of the door when you enter is a table with forms for the lump-sum payment. Careful though, because the forms there are actually country specific. I filled mine for Uzbekistan, it turns out they keep Canada behind the counter. There are two cubicals with the word "foreigner" in English. You just kind of loiter around until their free -or return from lunch in my case. There's no line or take a number, but it's really not busy.

The woman who helped me spoke perfect English. I was curious if the money could be sent to my Canadian account or if it had to go to my Korean. I suspect the reason why some people never recieve their lump payments is because they put in their foreign bank but don't provide adequate information. I was equipped with more than enough info, thanks to my wonderful Mum being a bank manager. It's probably more guaranteed to go into a Korean account though, since the process is also less complicated. The form will also ask what currency to receive the payment in, I chose USD on the wise advice of my Mum. Since all currency converts through USD anyways, you loose the least on this.

You will need that banking information, your passport, your ARC, and a flight ticket proving that you are leaving the country within 30 days. The lump sum takes between 1 and 2 months to process after having left Korea. If you don't leave Korea, or you come back before it's paid, the application falls through.

Here's hoping mine survived.