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The Family Business: The Chosun Ilbo has an interesting story about the “family business” of black marketing. What my wife and I never understood is why, given the dizzying variety of good-quality and inexpensive food in the Korean markets, anyone would pay extra for black-market American food. We always scratched our heads when we saw the ajummas with their shopping carts loaded with 16 packages of bacon, 30 packs of hot dogs, 25 cans of infant formula, and five 20-pound sacks of rice–why? The CID would occasionally send people down to the Commissary to observe, but seldom did they catch the same person enough times to bar them from post. I can see why it’s a nifty cheat for some people to avoid import duties, but why would customers prefer the stuff?

Here’s my all-time favorite black marketing story.