Hello, Korea community. I taught English in Korea for a few years over a decade ago. At the time, my bank I used in the U.S. was Wells Fargo. I had an absolutely awful experience with them while in Korea. I never once had access to the money in the Wells Fargo account the entire time I lived in Korea.

I told them ahead of time I was moving to Korea and to allow transactions there. I don’t know if they did, but it got overriden/expired, or if they just pretended to. Either way, when I tried to get money out of that account it failed every time. They would alert me to “fraudulent activity” and lock my card. I had to call, tell them it’s me, I live in Korea, like I said, so please unblock my card and allow transactions from Korea. I did this probably ten times before giving up. I was so mad about it that the first thing I did when I moved back to the U.S. was close my Wells Fargo account.

I am looking at living in Korea again for a time, but I don’t want a repeat of last time. Does anyone have any recommendations for banks that understand that sometimes people actually leave the U.S. and still may need access to their money? I am not opposed to even trying to bank with Wells Fargo again if they are no longer terrible from Korea.

I will have a Korean bank account, and get pay to the Korean account, but may need access to money in my U.S. account for emergency cash.