Using money earned in a country for online purchases | Travel/Culture hacking | Forum

Hello everyone,

I've been browsing the "money abroad" thread, and I seem to be suffering from the inverse problem.  I don't want to use American money in Korea, I want to use money I've earned as an English teacher to buy things abroad.  I recently tried to order some things from an American company and they wouldn't take my Korean debit card, or the Korean versions of Visa/Mastercard.  As I'm currently paid in Korean Won, I need a way to connect my purchases to my savings.  

It's occurred to me that this sort of problem may be too context-specific for anyone to comment on, but many people have no doubt run into this, so maybe there is a general solution I'm missing.  I've looked into paypal and transferring funds from my Korean account to my American one, but that seems to be prohibitively expensive.  

Any thoughts would be appreciated.