Koreans are Scammers

I went to Mudfest on the weekend. I would love to write about it, but right now I'd rather bitch about Korea.

Andrew and I went to the pension office at lunch today because we were fairly certain our boss was scamming us on our pensions, and paying in less than he should be. A big no-no, but something that all hagwon owners do here, because apparently us foreigners are stupid. (I've been getting my pay stubs for a year and haven't put any thought into, think what you will. Just keep it to yourself). Anyhow we took our stubs down to the pension office, and for starters Andrew's and my pay stubs are itemized differently, which has sketchiness written all over it.

Anyhow the lady looks at it and says she doesn't think anything is wrong, because the Korean government changed the laws, and now foreigners are exempt from paying taxes on 30% of our income, which she tries to tell us is a bonus for us. In reality, we only pay like 3% taxes, and our pension is worth 9% by the time both parties pay into it, so who is it really a bonus for? And on top of that, Koreans are also allowed to allocate a maximum of $100 per paycheck as a "food allowance," which coincidently is also tax exempt. So despite the fact that I am making almost 30% more this year than I did last year, my pension is going to fall short by about a thousand dollars, which sucks. Grrrrrrrrr....