Aging in an uncaring society

I'm in the autumn of my life and my next birthday is less than a month away. I'm less interested in celebrating such an occasion for the typical reason. However, birthdays are getting to seem more ominous for reasons other than the passage of time and the inevitability of death.

I'm generally optimistic and it's not death that concerns me much. Death is a natural part of the life cycle. I'm not afraid of it. We pass on and, for all we know, to perhaps another world. No, it's living well into my old age that concerns me much more.

I'm just a drop in the great sea of millions upon millions of people who will likely lack income and protection in their senior years and be forced to scratch and scrape just in order to survive so that death can take them on its own terms one day. The range of possible scenarios of such a pitiful future existence a horrible prospect. I don't like to imagine the grim and dull grind of eking out a survival method  just for the sake of biding my time until death occurs. My periods of unemployment has been discouraging and boring enough.

Though I'm single and without children, I've plenty of friends, so fear of loneliness does not bother me. I'm confident that, at whatever stage and wherever I'm at when the moment comes, some caring person will be around.

Of course, I'm already watching an expanding parade of friends, colleagues and acquaintances passing on. It's bad enough to have to consider the prospect of having to be a witness to countless passings that wear one down into a morbid occupation of constantly checking the obits, attending memorials and discussing the dead.

Having already observed many in my life pass on, I'm aware of the range of circumstances that passing on occurs.  Sometimes, they're alone but have some sort of friend to help see them off and manage the affairs. Sometimes, there is a partner, though mostly it's the men who have the benefit of a female spouse or lover to help prepare, remember and grieve. Some individuals are well known community members and their communities organize ceremonies, even festivities, to remember and celebrate their contributions to society and notoriety. Usually, there are surviving family members around who have stood by the death beds and comforted them. Still, such individuals are bound to have a higher incidence of disgruntled and unloving acquaintances, I suppose. The presence of the authorities, or at least their shadows, must be acknowledged and feared, as well, I guess, which is one scary aspect of the prospect of death.

If you're worried about in whose hands the management of your death end up in, and the competency and motives of those hands, the best preventive measure is a will. I drew up a will for the first time just a few months ago. It felt good to have done it, though I've been thinking of amending it since then. No matter, for that can be easily done. In fact, making a rudimentary will in the first place is pretty easy these days, since kind lawyers provide internet services for free or at discounts, these days, and many governments allow and recognize self-made wills. Really, all you have to do is make a note and have two reliable witnesses sign it. It's a relief to get it done because there are legal guidelines as to how an estate must be handled, and you can at least express your wishes. Yes, the law allows flexibility, and the subject of the will should too, as their may be obstacles or restraints as to how well and who may be able to carry out your wishes.

Now, money is an issue. One should have enough life insurance to at least cover basic death expenses. I, for one, favour cremation, which cuts down on waste of resources and reduces the funeral expenses. Actually, I don't even want a funeral. Really. I'll be happy if most of the people still alive who I think and care about just paused a bit to remember me and note my passing, without institutional religious and falsely pious ritual orchestrated by strangers to which relatives and friends are forced to witness formally, without a grim observance of a burial, and without the expected orgy of sorrow. Pending any hideous or violent or criminal means of death, which could very well happen, I must admit, death can be a joyful time marking one's success at living a life, however spent, and passing on. Why not? No need to be gothic about it.

Sure, I wouldn't want to die a long lingering death trapped in the hands of dubious medical practitioners and their tight and overbearing policies and procedures set in our cold and bureaucratic legal system. I definitely want it quick and as painless as possible. Some people get lucky that way.

Others, not so much. They die at the hands of cruel or thoughtless others way before what should be their time, or linger in acute pain in cold and filth for weeks or even months, if some administrator or unprofessional professional or sinister corporation doesn't find a manner by which to knock them off early, by a slip or sleight of hand, or push of a pencil, or intimidation of an employee or family member, withholding of funds, and such. It's therefore wise to take this possible scenario into account and enter a clause as to how you wish your long term care to be managed, and by whom, and who you wish to act as Power of Attorney as well as Executor. It should also be another factor in making choices about life and medical insurance.

Now, there's the matter of material possessions left behind in the estate. There are plenty of stories about it and I've seen for myself how vulture-like relatives and false friends and concerned neighbours may circle around and swoop down to selfishly and greedily steal property that is not rightly or legally theirs, even violating probate protocol and norms in order to do it. It is among the most disgraceful and despicable kinds of misbehavior that humans can engage in. The belongings of even the poorest should be handled in an ethical, legal, orderly and dignified matter.

I've just realized that I decided to write this blog on this subject of aging and death on the day before the anniversary of my mother's sudden and tragic passing in 1985. I'm only about 13 months away from the same age she was when she experienced the massive heart attack that killed her instantly. In fact, it is exactly on the anniversary of me having a premonition, as close relatives are, that she might be dying at that moment in 1985 and wanted to see her but could not because of my employment schedule. I remember an aunt who'd come to allegedly "pay her respects" and she did it by crassly rummaging through our (my, by then) household closets to take the best of the good clothes my tasteful and knowledgeable seamstress mom had with a look of evil orgasmic pleasure on her face that I had regretted inviting her to help me clear out her things, and even notifying her of my mother's death in the first place. At least my mother went quickly and with minimal pain. I don't despair because I've seen her spirit and I know she has moved on to a better place making brief visits into our lives and is thriving now. I remember when my grandmother passed, in a November six years later, and discovered the criminal deeds committed by a worker in the government care home where she had lived as a victim of severe memory loss for about 20 years. Though we were careful not to keep valuable items in her room there, she had a couple of nice items of clothing, and they disappeared. I remember how warehouse workers in the storage facility rented by the probate office illegally sold an antique chair of my grandmother's before the estate was settled. I also remember my father clutching a cash box and big manila envelope that he had stolen from among my grandmother's things by telling gullible and careless care home staff that he was her biological son, and from which he obtained insurance papers in order to, through more lies to a gullible insurance agent /"friend of the family" that he was entitled to the benefits, when only her five grandchildren were the rightful heirs. Anyway, he eventually got his just desserts. He was always a self-centered immature psychopath and his passing occurred in a befitting manner as a punishment to many of his real crimes, though he always had escaped the law in life because friends and neighbours didn't care, and the bureaucracy and law overlooked the situation of women and children to a great extent. Two of his sons, who had manipulated the choosing of a lawyer, by the way, so as to get control of communication with the lawyer handling the estate (thus costing us more in money and time because the lawyer was less competent than the one I had first selected) tried to snatch property away from the estate in order to benefit themselves, disregarding hereditary rights and fighting with me not only over the lawyer but handling of the property, just as they had fought with me honouring and supporting my mother in my eulogy to her and in arrangements over my grandmother's funeral and estate, only to say later in bewilderment how the lawyer had reprimanded them and made them store the said property until the estate was settled.

That's how people get. Such moments of change or crisis, if you like, in life expose who people really are and where they stand. I don't want family members handling my belongings and death arrangements when I go. No sirree. So, no burial, no funeral, and a will can control what happens to my belongings and how and who does it. I have enough life insurance and it will take care of expenses and there won't be much for those left behind to grab. So, there.

(It's mind-boggling how mean and petty people can get over a few dollars or a couple of ornaments or pieces of furniture and how they may point fingers at people who get a little promotion, or extra money or property than their neighbours when there are super-rich people walking over most of us and stealing from us most of the time. I mean, if you're really concerned about inequality...)

No, death and dealing with death is not so much an issue as is surviving old age, especially because added to all the perils of the world including global warming, war, incurable disease, time, natural disasters, and overcrowding are the bean-counters and capitalist defense league's mean-spirited and totally uncalled for and unconscionable attacks on pensions and social services. Most Western governments were in a kinder and more benevolent mood for a couple of decades, now they are scarier and more ominous than the Grim Reaper. "The population is aging and we can't afford it!" they warn, failing to mention the overall decline in their respective populations. Not only do they spread alarm about how migrants and people of certain profiles and sick people at any age are draining the life blood of society and menacing the rest of us--all of whom who will get old too, by the way-- to justify their miserly and self-serving aims. With this argument that starving and dying seniors are going to starve and deny life to other segments of the population, and with the bias that seniors are non-productive and therefore not very deserving anyway, the authorities, supported by corporate economists and wise men, decided to cut the lifeline of seniors early, thus causing a general decrease in the society's longevity, mortality and morbidity rates. The Canadian government, long after cutting federal social funding transfers to the provinces, they've acquired a habit for blood-letting and just like it, I guess, for there is plenty of wealth to go around. They went merrily swinging the axe at the unemployed, hospital employees and patients, the disabled and mentally ill, renters, women, refugees, immigrants, and--well, pretty much 99% of the population, finally daring to denounce retirement as a whole, and meanwhile slicing benefits. Funniest thing is how they also expect us to pay greater and greater tributes to them and pay for our own emaciation ourselves by heartlessly increasing fees when we have less and less with more and more debts to pay. I mean, they've raised medical plan premiums for most public plan members, deregularized and under-funded public services, maintained inequitable taxation against the least wealthy among the people, allowed inflation to skyrocket, denied the needy housing, increased payroll taxes and utility fees, pared down public services staff to a minimum and laying off thousands at age 55, and on and on, yet chopped social benefits and programs. The Old Age Security maximum benefit was reduced from $800 to $530. They chopped the CPP benefit paid out at age 60 by one-third. Of course, I should mention that they did that after losing a ton (they won't say how much but somebody must know how much) of CPP funds by investing it on the stock market in high-risk ventures. Yes, really.

While they try to force us all into the job market to around age 70, if we don't die before, the government is trying to convince legal experts to raise the legal retirement age to 70. They're scheming to find a way to not to call a public employment contribution pension plan something else and deny more benefits to more people. You'd better be prepared.

My retirement plan has been revamped. I'm having a good time now, and trying to save enough to take care of housing. I'm battling to protect what meager pension payouts I might be eligible for. I'm widening my income-generating options and potential, to leave various lifelines available well past age 70. I live abroad where I can earn a steady income, and pay less in living expenses and save more. I work at keeping my mind and body fit. I'm scouting countries with relatively stable political and meteorological climates in economies, where the little pension check and my slim savings might be stretched the farthest and where  decent affordable medical services exist, in which I might decide to settle and live out my final years. There is less to lose if the OAS benefit is so puny. There aren't many survivable employment options left in my home country, Canada, given that it had been getting harder and harder to find regular adequately paying full-time work before I went to work abroad, and given the age-bias and shrinking resources citizens can access. Canada is so ruthless it is trying to double-tax us low-paid teachers abroad even though many of us are in countries with tax treaties that are intended to avoid double taxation. Well, damn it, I've decided to renounce my residency. Hey, I can decide to re-enter any time, and just bide a few months time until I would be back in the stream of things there. All the same I'll have to be on my guard.

Yet, I'm supposedly one of the lucky ones. I come from Canada, a country once envied for its welfare programs and policies, peace-loving and active concern for human rights. Well, all that has changed. It's mean, corrupt, stingy, evil and war and hate-mongering nowadays. so I don't have any particular patriotism. Still, there are great aspects to the people, the land and the heritage. Most folks are benevolent, concerned and peace-loving, so I am loyal to them. Perhaps I'll find a new groove to groove to there, perhaps not.

Don't go to China!

Sorry, that's how I feel. It mostly has to do with my experiences during stopovers. Making the flight connections through Beijing and Shanghai has been strewn with damaging hazards and it has not been pleasant. It has also been costly in terms of cash and time.

The first time I experienced the Beijing airport was years ago before the new airport was built. The Air China flight having left Canada over an hour late (without notification for passengers) left me stranded at Beijing. Of course, I missed my connection and could not inform the employer who was sending someone to pick me up at my final destination, which was unsettling enough. I could not find an airline representative to help me. Nobody seemed to have ever heard of this airline. Little did I know that its company name had aliases. After running around for over an hour, I finally found the obscure little office on an upper floor, and exasperated not to find anyone there at first. When I finally got to speak to someone, they arranged the accommodations and transportation to the hotel, and booked me on a flight out of Beijing the next day, then had me whisked away. I was never properly processed through immigration and was actually an illegal overnight visitor, so it turned out. Boy, did the immigration officer checking me through to the departure area get upset! Before I made it to the security and immigration clearance area, however, I had a battle with an apparently corrupt airline official who demanded that I pay for the second suitcase again, even though I had already paid for it at my departure point and had the receipt. He insisted but I refused as the clock ticked away, and I began yelling my protests. The guy finally relented and, after the tussle with the immigration officer, made it through to the departure gate with minutes to spare.

I'm still burning from the last time I had to go through Beijing in order to get home, which was just three days ago. I finally made it home, though after losing hundreds of dollars worth of property. You see, my main suitcase never made it back.

The checked bag was supposed to go through from the Air Canada flight and get transferred to the Korean Air flight at Beijing. Korean Air could not find that bag, even after delaying departure by 10 minutes in order to extend the search. After all the harassment, confusion and trickery I went through to get to the departure gate in the Beijing International Airport in the nick of time, verging on panic at around two o'clock in the morning after the 11-hour flight from North America, I was not surprised when the Korean Air employee told me that the bag had not been found and I told her so. I suspect that baggage staff have stolen it. We'll see. Korean Air said I should wait for three weeks before making a claim of lost of stolen baggage, and it is day three.

I guess I'd had a hunch that something like this would happen. In fact, I had been thinking about how lucky I have always been, having become a frequent flyer, that none of my checked luggage had never been misdirected or lost before this trip, and contemplating the possibility that my number might be up this time around. If I was going to lose a suitcase anywhere, it would probably be in this corrupt and chaotic place, the Beijing International Airport.

When I originally booked this round trip between East Asia and North America, I was seeking a good deal on a multiple destinations itinerary. Shopping online, I had a feeling, based on previous living nightmares in transit through Chinese airports, that I should avoid the Beijing exchange at any cost. Expediency and thriftiness preceded this caution, however. In the end, it was not worth it. I seem to have lost more than the discount value of the ticket because of this foolish decision to stick with the Beijing connection.

I must say, though, that the knowledge that Beijing had a new international airport, constructed for the Winter Olympic Games held in 2008, had influenced me in choosing an itinerary with a connection through Beijing this time, despite the horrible time I had had years ago on my first trip to East Asia when I used Air China and had to go through Beijing to arrive at the place of my new employment in Korea. I was reassured when, miraculously, I somehow made it through the Beijing transfer in one piece and without mishap on the outbound journey this summer. On that outbound transfer, Air Canada staff wisely and kindly sought me to escort me through to the immigration queue and direct me how to get to the departure gate of my next flight in time. That was quite help. I guess they know what can happen.

On the return journey this year, despite the best intentions and helpful intervention of the Air Canada staff who met me as I exited the plane at the Beijing airport, the transfer through the Beijing airport was not smooth at all. I found the immigration queue for foreigners that the Air Canada person had told me to find and waited some 25 minutes for my turn in the course of this 2.5-hour stopover. Yet, the officer I encountered at the immigration wicket then rudely directed me to change queues, telling me to go to the "special" line-up that was tagged for business travelers, not others (thus being confusing enough). I guess what had happened was that the special wickets for foreigners on connecting flights through other terminals had opened while I had been in the first line-up. It was not fair to be asked to go wait in the new queue, though.

When the officer there at the special wicket, that was not obviously designated as special or for international connections (the signs being tiny and tucked in among the equipment surrounding the officer there) finally yet rudely asked me to approach, she did not seem very able at reading my plane ticket. Nor did she understand the concept of time zones, apparently. She kept asking me on what date my departure out of Beijing was supposed to be, not knowing, I guess, that the ticket bore the sequence of connections and that a different departure date would not necessarily be shown on a continuous flight with stopovers. Also, she puzzled over the fact that I left the North American departure city on the 25th of the month, yet it was the morning of the 27th in Beijing. I was not impressed with this person. I explained that Beijing was a different time zone, and that the departure point was quite a few hours behind Beijing time, and that the flight took 11 hours, which came to a total difference of 26 clock hours. She screwed up her face in response. Then she could not see my name at the heading of the ticket. The clock kept ticking and I kept getting more and more nervous.

Finally through this ominous hurdle, I made a dash for the escalator down to the airport train platform, contemplating stopping to fill out a complaint card, but realizing doing so would take up too much precious time. Down at the platform, there was no information about how to get to my departure terminal, Terminal 2. The marquees announced trains for Terminal 3 stops. I asked a security guy who was standing around, and, like most Chinese airport staff, he begrudgingly waved a hand indicating a train on the right side of the platform. Yet, no train arrived there. Trains arrived at the lefthand side and they were bound for Terminal 3. I got quite worried. Seeing the security guy enter a car of the T3 train, I called to him and he motioned me to enter that train as the doors closed me out. I didn't know what to do. I ran around looking for staff, to no avail. As another train bound for T3 was about to leave, I took a chance seeing no other alternative and lept aboard it. I asked passengers about T2 and one European guy said everyone had to go through T3C. Then he said that T2 was for domestic flights and doubted this could be the correct departure area for me if I was supposed to take an international flight. Great. It was indeed perplexing and made me all the more antsy. If only I'd had the complete instructions in the first place. It turns out that you get to T2 by passing through T3, and that T2 is the domestic terminal, although flights between Korea and Beijing and Moscow and Beijing depart from there. Go figure.

Okay. Got to the Korean Air desk and picked up the boarding pass just in time, then flew off to find the gate. Next step: get on the shuttle bus to T2. There didn't seem to be adequate time and this domestic terminal seemed like a dark and evil place at 2ish in the morning. A myriad of taxi drivers accosted me, and I shouted at them to leave me alone. I found the shuttle bus stand, and the staff there discouraged me, insisting that I take a taxi. I almost fell for it, but the guys offering taxi service seemed shady and got buzzing on their cellphones when I asked to be taken to T2, so I hurried back to the T2 shuttle bus stand, convincing myself that Korea Air would have passengers board at the last moment anyway, and probably wait for stragglers. At the shuttle bus stop, I taxi driver accosted me again, claiming that the next shuttle would not leave for another hour. I yelled back at him, "Bullshit!" and I threatened to hit him with my garment bag when he kept pestering me. Everyone around me laughed but I was not amused.

Then, the international departures security checkpoint at T2 had to be overcome. It really hung me up because they were working their way slowly asking inane questions and searching bags. I got frisked for no good reason. Then they were curious about the coins I was carrying. I could not find these coins at first, and wondered about their curiosity. No security check I've ever been through has ever questioned anyone about coins, in my experience, so I wondered what they were up to. It turns out that they did not take the coins, though--but the designer sunglasses somehow got left behind there. Hm.

I made it to the gate, conscious that Korean Air was not worried about punctual departures and liked to have everyone board at the last moment. Jeez, was I glad to board that plane and finally take off the hell out of that zoo at last, even though I was leaving without most of my possessions.

Don't go to China.

Let there not be nukes

Last winter, I went to Hiroshima. In the museum, I remember seeing the numerous copies of letters to governments pleading to end nuclear testing and development that have been written by Hiroshima mayors every time a nuclear weapons test has been done. The letters fill two walls, yet the testing and deployment goes on and on. Incredibly, the mayors persist in hope of an end to nuclear armament and energy.

I also learned that most of the victims of the direct hit hear the epicenter of the nuclear explosion in Hiroshima killed more Koreans than Japanese people. Thirty-thousand Korean slave laborers were working in the armament plants for Japan in Hiroshima at the time of the blast. The museum displays informed me that Hiroshima had been chosen because no American forces were there, among other reasons.

I live in the southeastern region of the Republic of Korea. The Gori Nuclear Power Plant feeds the heavy industry zone and the city of Ulsan just north of it, and the great container port of Busan to the south. It is very old having been constructed in the 60s, and was due to be shut down some three years ago, but was given a life extension of 10 years while a replacement is being built. Not only is it quite old and therefore especially prone to accidents and leaks, there is no doubt that the Gori plant, like all other nuclear power plants, is polluting the environment.

The Gori plant was built on the coast just like the Fukushima Daiichi plant was so that ocean water could easily be used to cool down the reactors. What has been happening to that contaminated water? It has been channeled into the ground and pumped out to the sea. Remarkably, no-one talks about this. The governments at all levels busily promote the local fishery and its products and the recreational beaches. Meanwhile, an important food supply bearing such local staples as anchovies, crabs, seaweed, and eels has been poisoned , and tourists and pleasure-seekers have been happily immersing themselves in the contaminated waters at major beach areas for decades.

Recently, I met an activist who's personal story motivated him to advocate for better protection from the risks of nuclear energy and I admired his dogged persistence and unwavering passion for the cause. He has been sending me some materials about his campaigning in the past few days. I realized that it was close to the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so I used his material to write an article calling for action against nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. It is pasted below here.

Act Now to Ban Nuclear Weapons and Power Plants!

Another anniversary of the A-bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is passing yet nuclear proliferation has not been curbed despite decades of persistent activism around the world. Accidents, breakdowns and threat of nuclear weaponry deployment do not seem to faze the moguls of the nuclear power and war industries and the politicians who serve them.

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant mega-disaster is not over. Reuters Press (video dated August 5, 2013 by reporter Lily Grimes) and Fukushima update websites such as fukushimaupdate.com (August 5, 2013) are reporting today that the infamous private owner of the plant, TEPCO, has released more information about continuing leaks of contaminated water. They now say that underground pools of radioactive water are close to breaching the underground barrier that prevents it from seeping into the sea.

The risks of nuclear power and threat of nuclear weapons are global problems. Countries like the US and France have huge stockpiles of nuclear warheads around the world totalling around 8,000. Though the United States government will not disclose whether and where its nuclear weapons are located, it is reasonable to assume that many are located at home and at overseas bases such as South Korea, the Philippines, the Caribbean, and Europe while war exercises and aggressive campaigns go on.

What is more, many countries, and many of the same countries that also produce and store nuclear weapons, have come to be dependent on electricity produced by nuclear power plants. Stephen Comley Sr. and the organization he founded, “We the People” (WTF), for example, have been reporting on the risks to health and safety that such plants pose for over 25 years.

When the Chernobyl disaster occurred in 1986, Comley was running a nursing home near the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant in New Hampshire, USA. Inquiring about the state evacuation plans, staff at the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission told him to give bedridden residents potassium iodine and abandon them. Finding this answer unconscionable and digging deeper, experts consistently indicated to him that evacuation plans were inadequate. He started his whistleblower organization to raise awareness and campaign for better protection. His continued research has uncovered a range of serious problems surrounding the use of nuclear energy. 

WTF put forward a petition in 2010 that listed the following issues (News Leader, April 20, 2011) regarding all nuclear power plants. It addressed counterfeit and substandard or defective parts, a lack of adequate evacuation planning, reduced inspection and quality assurance standards, the streamlining of licensing and license renewals, and poor storage of radioactive waste.

Despite all the information gathered and urgent appeals over the decades, legislation and regulations remain lame, if not weaker than before. Consider this example. President Obama campaigned to tighten regulation in response to Illinois residents complaining of leaks at a nuclear plant run by the Exelon Corporation (New York Times, February 8, 2008). However, he rewrote his original proposed bill by removing restrictive language and replacing it with guidelines. After Obama was first elected, this watered down bill meandered through committees and eventually failed to be passed.

The problem of the nuclear power industry shows how the economic and political concerns of the capitalist classes and the politicians who serve them are all about profits and ambition. Their economic and political aims override decent living standards for the people to the point where they clearly state that the elderly, infirm and disabled are expendable in situations of disasters. They display little sincere concern for the peoples’ health and safety, and a negligible desire for peace. In fact, it is they who threaten the people around the world with a nuclear holocaust if all nations do not behave the way they want and play their game.

All concerned citizens should help educate and agitate about the nuclear danger. They must unite and rally together for disarmament and demilitarization, working for and demanding genuine and lasting global peace so that a better standard of safety and living conditions can be established for all.

By Barbara Waldern
Note: Barbara Waldern is a resident professor of English in South Korea and the founding member of a teachers’ support network called TEA-KOR, which is a member of the International League of Peoples’ Struggles.

I am a displaced citizen, I am a migrant. I therefore do not completely belong anywhere.

Most migrants migrate for economic reasons. It's a fact of the human existence. It's a fact of life in the capitalist economy and it has been so for hundreds of years. A migrant could be of any color, creed or ethnicity.

Migrants are useful. They provide cheap labor, scapegoats, remittances, extra taxation, niche markets, songs and poetry. Countries such as Canada have been formed in part by migrants and have come to be dependent on them. 

Today, the liberalization and deregularization of international trade and investment has created a tangle of law and bureaucracy, so much so that deciding who belongs where has become confusing. In playing to criminality, they have caused the spread of criminality and have become victims of it. The Canadian government is both afraid and confused for that reason.

Take Canadian English teachers living and working abroad. Even where tax treaties have been created and signed in order to sort out residency and tax obligations, the Canadian government remains afraid and confused. That is why they have been illegally doubly taxing thousands of propertyless low-paid teachers of English who live and work in the Republic of Korea year after year.

The Convention (casually referred to as a tax treaty, for that is basically what it is) between the Republic of Korea and Canada was created so as to avoid double taxation. Article 4 clearly sets forth how to decide whether one is a resident of Korea or Canada for the purposes of taxation. The national tax experts HR Block back this up as well as the text of the Convention itself. Yet, Canadian tax authorities are prone to ignoring it and using standard non-treaty measures of residency for taxation, probably out of paranoia about foreign income from business and tax fraud. 

Therefore, it takes a lot of convincing to get Canadian tax authorities to back off and refrain from double-taxing the non-real estate owning worker abroad in Korea and other countries that have tax treaties with Canada. I have been trying to convince them for several years.

When I first made a tax return in 2008 for the tax year 2007, information on international tax returns was hard to get. I found the tax department staff to be less than helpful. In fact, they were quite confused. Instead of referring me to the international tax authorities of Canada and the relevant forms, they assessed my T1 (standard personal income tax return form) and concluded that I, a Canadian citizen resident in Canada who had filed every year consistently all my previous adult years,  was a resident of Canada who must pay taxes on my Korean employment income, and a non-resident who did not qualify for any deductions. How amazing! 

I immediately objected. A lawyer of the tax office answered all my objections, who quit and was replaced. The debt was eventually chiseled down since the deductions were eventually allowed and a foreign tax credit was applied, but he still insisted that I should  be taxed on my employment income in Korea. Yet, the new lawyer on the case acknowledged I was living abroad and did not dispute my situation of employment and long term life in South Korea, and even commenced communicating with me by mail and direct telephone calls. I continued to argue with him and he finally admitted verbally over the phone that I was right and should not be taxed on my Korean income. Hooray! 

To establish that decision, he asked for some document from the tax authorities stating that I was a resident who paid taxes on income in Korea over the period in question. Problem: getting such a document back in '08. As the mail forwarding from my postal service in Canada was delayed, and I did not forward the required document within three months, the file was closed without any announcement and I was again billed. 

Meantime, I could not get any information about tax records in Korea as the support in English language was lacking. I did, however, obtain an immigration records showing all my comings and goings.

I then made another objection, which required making a case to the Tax Court of Canada in Ottawa. Fortunately, one can apply for an informal hearing free of charge. That is what I did. As the previous lawyer left the position, another lawyer replaced him and started the paperwork. There were strange delays and I received numerous confirmations that I had opted for an informal hearing at all my mailing addresses over a period of about 10 months. When the new lawyer finally contacted me, it was like starting from scratch. She ignored the tax treaty and seemed not to know anything about using a tax document from the foreign state to prove residency. We went round in circles, with months of silence between rounds. They wanted to know my argument and hounded me for it with numerous letters (signed by new lawyers replacing previous ones).

The hearing was not set until January, 2011, which I was able to have rescheduled to the summer when I would have time to travel to Canada. At the hearing, I was never invited to speak and make my argument. Instead, the judge began with a secondary  issue, an oustanding minor issue of a domestic return in an earlier year. That question settled (to my favour) in much more time than it should have taken until I was drained, he then began to give me a residency test in roundabout fashion, asking me standard but stray questions pertaining to the Canadian government's determination or residency in cases where no tax treaty exists. Despite my key argument presented in my documents underlining the existence of the tax treaty, he never once referred to it. The government defense lawyer, meanwhile, presented a huge binder full of mostly irrelevant documentation except the full text of the tax convention between the Republic of Korea and Canada. The judge did criticize the government lawyer for overkill and for the tax department failing to apply the tax credit, but he left saying I was a resident who should pay tax on my 2007 foreign employment income. Astounding! 

No formal ruling was ever passed, however, as it appears. I never received one, though I phone to request it and made sure they used my mailing address in Korea. I believe the judge realized he had made an error, and simply remained neutral by not finalizing the judgement.

This huge expense of the taxpayers money, which surely amounted to much more than the taxes allegedly owed, and all the fuss could have been avoided had the tax authorities just noted the original mistakes and reprocessed the 2007 tax claim, but they seem to want to complicate things and play guessing games. They could help the citizen and tell people the proper procedures. That would require their own staff knowing the procedures, of course.

After that, I got advice from HR Block, who said the determination of residency for the purpose of taxation is quite simple and done by implementing the tax treaty (aka Convention between ROK and Canada). They advised me to get the residency determination forms and complete one for each year in order to prepare tax returns for subsequent years absent from Canada.

I did so and found that the residency determination forms have been improved. They have even placed check boxes for applicants to indicate whether they have been getting income from a country that has a tax treaty with Canada, and a section asking whether your income has been from a foreign employer. I thought the matter would be cleared up and processing straightforward this time round. Not so.

Incredibly, the reply was that they thought I was a resident of Canada for taxation purposes. Fed up, I wrote to the Finance Minister of Canada and  to the international tax office objecting again and quoting Article 4 of the ROK-Can Convention and HR Block advice. Within a month, I had a reply from the tax office full of gobbledygook saying they were correct after all and that the original decision still stood, but that I could submit a record from the tax authorities of Korea showing residency and income tax paid to Korea if I wanted to prove I was a resident of Korea and avoid being taxed by Canada. I won! 

I got the document from the South Korean national tax authority, which is called a Certificate of Income just two days ago. It has to be translated professionally in order to be accepted by Canada, but I sent it off to the Canadian international tax office right away regardless, with a note explaining that I would submit the original and translation later.

I came across another problem: the two hagwons I worked for in 2007 and 2008 never paid income taxes to the Korean government! Shit!

Underpayment and mistreatment of its foreign staff was the reason why I and my other colleagues from Canada wanted to escape Kids Club in Masan. It's the reason why I set up the TEA-KOR and FREED helplines and support networks.

Regarding my current tax predicament, Kids Club completely mislead me because the employment contract vowed that taxes would be deducted as per the law and they provided false pay stubs all along showing that income tax was deducted. Well, they took my money but did not pay the taxes to the government.

As for the second academy, GnB in Masan, I knew that they were trying to accomplish tax fraud and did not want to register me with the government authorities. However, I insisted that I get on the medical and pension plans and pay income tax for several months. The poor go-between was run ragged in this fight. Eventually, she was told that I was on the government plans and given phony electronic pay stubs showing calculations of pay deductions. Again, the employer took the money but did not pay the government. GnB did not even report me as an employee, for the tax record shows nothing on my file for all of 2008!

Now I am dredging up old contracts, pay stubs and correspondence and writing letters to the tax authority and the Finance Minister of Canada to convince them that payments intended for income tax payments were indeed deducted from my pay in 2007 and 2008, and that I therefore should not pay again to Canada. 

Migrant workers of any type constantly face exploitation, harassment and discrimination. They are told they are lowly and that they do not belong. They must pay and pay again and again.

It's easy to distinguish big-time and corrupt business players from honest workers. Sure, there are dishonest workers and false reports by migrants, because the situation creates them. That said, governments can easily process migrants for various purposes in straightforward ways and sort out the debts and services. 

Ed Wise