Success Stories of 2 Korean-Chinese Women

Two ethnic Korean women from China are working in Seoul for banks, having passed a highly competitive recruitment process.

Bang Gak, 27, works for a Seoul branch of Industrial Bank of Korea and Kim Mi-hong, 26, is a staff at a Seoul branch of Korea Exchange Bank. Here are their stories.

○ Competitive worker

Born in Wuhan in China’s Hubei Province, Bang demonstrated superb English skills by earning a perfect score on the TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication). She had planned to go to either the United States or France for graduate study, but arrived in Korea four years ago at the recommendation of her mother.

Her mother encouraged her daughter to study Korean for about six months first before going to another country. Bang finished a one-year Korean-language course at Konkuk University before completing a master’s in business management at Seoul National University. She then decided to work in Korea.

In the first half of last year, she was recruited as a middle-ranking bank employee after surviving the highly competitive selection process, which had an applicant-to-job ratio of 120 to one. She said her Chinese and English skills earned her high marks, though her Korean was not so perfect.

Bang has worked at her bank’s Seosomun branch in downtown Seoul since August last year. “As word spread of a Chinese and English-speaking employee at our bank, many English teachers working nearby and Chinese students started coming to this branch,” she said.

“Living in Korea, I feel a sense of homogeneity. I cannot explain it in words, but I’ve come to understand what a sense of nation really means.”

Her foreign accent, however, has led to painful experiences. When she phoned a customer applying for a credit card to check personal information, the customer questioned whether she was a bank employee after hearing her voice and asked to speak with her branch manager. When she learned that the customer canceled his application without reason, she cried in the bathroom.

A defiant Bang, however, said, “I will do my part to reduce prejudice against ethnic Koreans from China.”

○ Returning to the motherland

Kim Mi-hong has been working in Korea Exchange Bank’s Daerim branch in Seoul since last month. Her main clients are ethnic Koreans from China and Chinese nationals living in the Guro-dong and Garibong-dong districts of the city.

She was born in China’s Heilongjiang Province and graduated from university in Dalian, Liaoning Province. She got a job at a Chinese branch of her bank in 2005 after getting two or three hours of sleep a day studying for the recruitment process.

“My grandfather, who left Korea during Japanese rule, was so delighted over my employment,” she said. “He told our whole village that his granddaughter worked for a Korean bank. He said he would visit Korea with me someday.”

Kim was named an outstanding employee and transferred to Seoul after working in the Chinese branch for three years. Tragically, however, her grandfather did not live to see her good fortune as he passed away in July last year.

Kim said she wanted the transfer very much, but that living in Korea is not all rosy. “I am so sad to hear that ethnic Koreans from China work so hard but are subject to dangerous working conditions like that of the Icheon warehouse, which resulted in a tragic fire.”

“I look forward to the Lunar New Year’s holidays. My parents arrived in Korea last month for a visit, and we will go to my grandfather’s hometown in North Gyeongsang Province for the holidays.”