If an American English teacher died in a traffic accident here, would the compensation be based on his or her future income here or in their home country? The nation's high court ruled Tuesday that it is in the United States.
The Seoul High Court ordered Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance to pay 869 million won in damages to the teacher's family, saying the payment should be calculated based on his projected earnings as a school teacher in the U.S., even though he was working here at the time of the death.
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The English teacher, who had a masters degree in education, was riding a motorcycle in December 2007 when he was hit by a bus that crossed a three-way intersection, running a red light, in southern Seoul. His teaching contract expired in July the following year.
7 comments:
interesting ruling :)
but bad for those from developing countries working there..
May God never make them face this situation...
$711,000? With a masters in ed. you'd be making around 50k a year (and closer to 80k a year for the last 10 years of your career) for roughly 25 years... I think they low-balled the estimate a little.
I wonder what his family has to say about the incident, the Korean media and Korean courts after this.
Mike: I'm sure they are discounting the future income at the usual 5-8% a year. It would make no sense to pay out the dollar value at par. (Consider inflation, for example.)
True. I wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth or anything. Just seems low if their goal was to compensate for a lifetime of lost wages.
Hard to use the word generous at a time like this, but getting a lifetime of anticipated lost wages is nice. I'd hate to think what many of us would be left with, with our liberal arts degrees.
Guess that means that those of us on F-visas would be compensated at the Korean rate...
but topik is right about not wanting to be a triple D worker being affected like this...
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