300,000, medical retroactive payments for SMOE.

[Aklost]

Well this is a lovely piece of news; any second year SMOE NT's will be having 300,000 (approx) removed from their next paycheck in accordance with medical insurance changes that have come into action. This change takes your salary from last year and Ups your medical insurance by a few percent, this includes any bonus's. This change is only for foreign teachers and no change is happening to KT's medical insurance. There is currently no notification of this in english, all the info i've recieved has been from a Korean info statement (and a peek at my coming salary).

I hope no one is still paying that higher tax at the same time, this is going to be a poor month.

[dachiza727]

what does SMOE stand for????  you are making me nervous.  :o

[confusedsafferinkorea]

what does SMOE stand for????  you are making me nervous.  :o

SMOE = Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, so if you are employed in Seoul in a public school, that is your employer.

[jjminor]

Yep, I'll be paying 350,000 won this month because of that. At least it will only be for one month that we have to pay that amount, although the price of insurance will permanently be more than what it used to be. The number of foreigners have increased so much that the government is starting to charge us more like what Koreans have to pay. I also heard that in the future, your insurance rate may be based more on how much you use it, but nothing set in stone yet. I don't think any of this is just for the Seoul public school workers ( though I could be wrong), but applies to all foreigners in the country.

Anyway, have a nice week~~ :)

[sarsabf5]

I'm not surprised at the addition of a new and unknown retroactive payment, but I recall having my April check shortened last year (my first with SMOE) as well. It was a few hundred thousand won, if memory serves. I wonder if this is different.

[willinkorea]

So, by the sounds of it, this is new payment requirement applies retrospectively, hence the significant lump sum payment next month... (as opposed to a single one-off payment unrelated to the retrospective application of increased health insurance contributions). Have I interpreted this correctly?

If this is the case, it's simply ridiculous...how many other contributions will the government suddenly decide that foreigners haven't been paying enough, introduce a retroactive change to monthly contributions and help themselves to a significant lump sum with little notice...?

On a not totally unrelated note, looks like the comfortable civil servants here may get an even cushier deal with REDUCED health insurance contributions...