On an unprecedented ATM experience....

So there are many things in South Korea that will take a while to get used to:
Traffic patterns, Kimchi, not being able to read, etc.

Among the things that I am eager to getting used to is paying my bills.  Here in South Korea I have discovered a new way to pay bills that I had never imagined before: paying utility bills at the ATM.

Koreans have constructed special ATMs that can not only read your bank card and bank book (more info below), it can also read your bills and pay them directly from the machine. 
The only quirk is figuring out which button on the machine is "Pay my bills magic box!"

It only took me 3 tries to find it.

But I found it!  And all I had to do to pay my expenses was to simply insert my bank book, tear off the bottom of my bill, and feed them into the machine. The machine calculated both bills, printed a statement on my bank book, and presented a transaction slip.  Easy as pie (on the third try)!

So that's how I pay 90% of my bills now, via ATM at my local bank.  Why is this so fascinating to me?

Well one, is that my bills all come with the same sort of detachable slip that can be read by an ATM.  That is a marvelous convenience for two different companies to utilize and ensure people pay them. 

The more interesting thing is to realize that I, as a functionally illiterate foreigner, am able to pay my bills without knowing a lick of Korean.
Granted I would have enjoyed an English option on this particular ATM (most other ATMs have English language options), even still I was able to pay my monthly bills without help and little inconvenience.  I can imagine that presented with the same situation back home (being illiterate and paying bills) would be considerably more difficult.

So that's my take on ATMs at current.  They have an interesting amount of options that are extremely helpful, in addition to being considerably more sophisticated than ATMs back home.  I look forward to actually knowing what all the buttons mean, it will allow me to bank with more confidence.  Even still, with the run of my current experiences, I look forward to learning how to wire money back to the States.  Putting me one step closer to being self sufficient in South Korea!



Appendix:

Bank Book: In South Korea, people are issued Bank Books as well as check/debit cards when they open an account.  The Bank Book holds all of the account holder's information and when fed into a machine, can be used to have full statements printed across it's pages.  It's a convenient and compact place to keep all your banking information, and it's small enough to fit in most wallets.  You just have to be careful not to lose it!