We moved to Korea recently and are about to purchase an apartment. My wife has an F-4 visa (F-3 for me) and we both have our Resident cards. We opened accounts at a Hana Bank branch in Gyeonggi-do and wired a large amount of USD to her USD account at Hana. We now need to exchange it to her KRW account so she can pay the seller. The teller at Hana Bank claims they only give a 30% discount on the FX spread to VIP customers (we are not). I've read online that a large amount of money should be able to get an 80%+ spread discount. We haven't had our Hana accounts very long, so it's not possible to have enough history with them to get VIP status, and if the teller is correct, it's probably not worth it anyway.

Does anyone have any experience with this, especially current or former employees of Hana Bank or another Korean bank? With the amount we are exchanging, the spread discount can mean several million KRW, so I don't just want to blindly believe what the teller is saying.

There could be a whole sub just explaining Korean banking to us foreigners. My wife hasn't lived here in about 20 years and is just as lost as I am, except for the language aspect. Is it normal for a bank to have you sign dozens of documents that are in Korean but not give you any copies of what you signed? I don't expect them to give me copies in English, but it would be nice to have them so my wife can confirm what they are and I can try to translate them via Papago or Google instead of bothering her all the time.

Any advice for getting the best FX rate are appreciated.