What would you do if you were struck by a serious illness while teaching in Korea? You are suddenly hospitalized and unable to work? You discover that your Korean National Insurance doesn’t cover your kind of major illness and you are most probably going to die here in a foreign land?The Facebook group is a little hard to follow, but has bank information for those interested in contributing a little something:
My next door neighbor, a 47-year-old Native English Teacher from New Zealand, is in the ICU right now at Busan University Hospital in Yangsan with liver failure. He is on the list for a liver transplant and the doctors say that he will not survive without one. He has a rare blood type, O negative. His brother is now en route from New Zealand and is a potential donor, assuming that $50,000 can be found for the operation.
Nonghyup Bank (National Agricultural Cooperative Federation)
Name: 마이클 (Michael Milne)
Account - 811057 52 067773
If you are sending funds from another country to Mick's Korean account:
Bank name: National Agricultural Cooperative Federation
Name: Michael Milne
Account number: 811057 52 067773
Swift Code - NACFKRSEXXX
Address: 75, Chungjeongro 1 Ga
Jung-Gu, Seoul, Korea
Phone: 82-10-7552-1964
There have been a few loud calls for blood donations among expats in Korea over the last couple of years, one of which prompted blogger Roboseyo to summarize the procedures:
The donation eligibility form is the same at any red cross clinic worldwide:
Take a look at this document. Read it carefully.
Take a look at this document. Read it carefully.
These two documents'll help you determine your eligibility.
In this article, and this one, I was told you need to meet these requirements to donate blood in Korea:
1. You need to have an Alien Registration Card. Bring it, and be ready to present it.
2. You need to have been in Korea for a year.
3. You need to be able to answer some questions about your medical history... mostly the ones inthose two documents above... the guy at the Seoul Global Center, when I called in April, was pretty sure that you need to speak enough Korean to answer the medical history questions yourself, but when I went in person, the nurse did allow me to answer the questions through an interpreter. Some of the questions made my translator feel awkward -- "have you shared needles"? But if you can help save a guy's life, it's worth it, right?
9 comments:
I have O negative, and just went to the red cross location in my town. I went with a fully competent interpreter willing and able to translate everything, and was still denied based off of not being able to conduct it one-on-one in Korean.
This is just negligent and stupid. O-neg is rare enough here, and this restriction is pretty ridiculous.
Does anyone know if English only restrictions exist at the red cross locations on the states? Is this part of the same organization?
Just wondering why medical insurance does not cover this. As far as I know the maximum out of pocket amount for a client with NHI is 3 000 000won, please let me know as I am in touch with the developer of the NHI program. My contact number is 01040949130.
ksp115011, I was also wondering about that, and I asked some direct questions about that.
If what we're hearing is correct (see the first comment in my link), then there is a gaping hole that needs to be fixed. But this could be a case of certain things not covered and/or being something so expensive that even the smaller percent that are out-of-pocket expenses simply become a monster item by themselves.
In theory, a 3,000,000 won out-of-pocket ceiling (is that correct?) should cover this, but does it always work out that way? Do you have an English-language link describing coverage from NHIC? Maybe this is a case where the people involved need to arm themselves with information.
@kushibo - I will be teaching the developer of the NHIC white paper this weekend and I will try and get some information for non-Korean residents residing in Korea regarding out of pocket amounts and other issues. This is a big issue and we as non-Korean residents need to make sure that there is indeed equality in the NHI or push to have an alternative option to take out private insurance. Hell, I am sure for 200 000 won a month (50%-50% employer and employee contribution) I can find a good private heath insurer?
http://www.nhic.or.kr/english/insurance/insurance05.html - this is the NHIC link, I am not sure as to how much information is available.
There may in fact not be a universal policy. I think the international Red Cross/Red Crescent organization is a federation of independently run organizations, with an international coordinating leadership committee. I don't know about language restrictions for blood donors in the States.
Do you know of any agencies in Korea that will help register donors for a bone marrow drive? I have a 7 year old son, we live in the States, that needs a bone marrow transplant for a rare immunodeficiency. We have been searching for 3 years and have not found a match due to low number of registrants of Korean descent. Please email me at stephmgk@gmail.com, any and all information would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Thanks for the comment Steph. This is something you may want to post on one of the big forums, such as Waygook.org (www.waygook.org). You'll likely get more responses there, because I don't get much traffic here nowadays. Best of luck.
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