The Korea Post designated Monday 15 post offices in areas with a high number of foreign residents, offering overseas money transfer options via MoneyGram.

Officials of the national postal service have announced that so far Seoul’s Itaewon Post Office, Uijeongbu Post Office in Gyeonggi Province and 13 other places will operate as “special MoneyGram post offices” to meet the high demand of money transfers in those specific areas.

MoneyGram lets customers send money for cash pick-up, to a bank account, or to a mobile wallet. As a global money transmission service, MoneyGram allows customers to make international wire transfers just that recipients can collect with an 8-digit identification code. 

Money can be retrieved at 350,000 branches, including banks and convenience stores, in over 200 countries worldwide.

At designated post offices, foreigners can take advantage of the tablet PCs that are equipped with Hancom’s “MalangMalang GenieTalk.” The program was introduced as the official automatic speech recognition translation device during the PyeongChang Winter Olympics.

The Korea Post also started offering customers a new exemption from wire transfer fees to other banks last Monday. Customers who want to transfer money ranging from 4 million won ($3,750) to 30 million won, do not have to pay fees.

By Catherine Chung (cec82@heraldcorp.com)