(NB This information is from a trip in April 2013)
Is it cheap to shop in South Korea?
It was not as cheap as I expected. Accommodation is cheap, you can eat cheaply and some everyday things seem cheap (eg I got some 1,000 won pads of nice writing paper). Souvenirs are a bit more than I expected and craft things, while well made, aren’t as cheap as I hoped so I didn’t stock up on presents while I was there.
Surely South Korean electronics are cheap?
Not particularly. But there appears to be a lot of haggling potential with significant discounts – but this is based only on my experience in a large electronics market in Seoul, not in small shops outside Seoul.
Buying a mobile phone in South Korea
I wanted to buy a Samsung Galaxy phone and I had figured I’d spend up to £450 in the UK so wanted it to be cheaper than that, particularly as I didn’t think there would be a warranty buying it in a non-EU country.
I did some research and decided to head to Yongsan Electronics Market (accessible from Yongsan metro station). I have been to various electronics areas in Japan and I had expected the Seoul electronics area to be similar. It was a lot less fancy and a lot more basic than I expected. Also, prices were largely not on display and English was not widely spoken. I also stopped enjoying the shopping process after a while as it all seemed a bit too unfamiliar. In the end, my friend said I should just pick a stall/shop/counter that sold lots of Samsung phones and try to find the price.
I knew I had to check my SIM card would work and that the mobile would need to not be locked.
With limited English but a great sense of humour, I found a young man who helped me. They cut my SIM (tense) and inserted it into the phones I liked and got my friend to call me to check that it worked (it did – I could also slot the smaller SIM they’d made from my SIM, back into the SIM shape that my UK phone took so all was fine).
It was hard to ask detailed questions so I was particularly glad I’d done a bit of research and knew the basics I wanted.
The prices start high, on a par with the UK, but there is a lot more scope for haggling than I expected. I decided I wanted to pay £350 after they’d got it to £400 ish. I used their calculator to work out what £350 was in won and that’s what I ended up buying it for.
I bought a Samsung Galaxy Pop with 4G LTE and high definition display. It transpires that that phone wasn’t available in the UK, ie is only sold in the South Korean market, so I felt quite special. Oh, and it also had, erm, an aerial.
The phone came with two batteries, an external battery charger (you can also charge the battery while it’s in the phone) which doubles as a stand (v lightweight) on which you can watch films, etc, on your phone, it had a book style case with it and the plug was EU, which was easy for me to use.
It was fine in the UK. The only issue was that I couldn’t send texts that were longer than 80 characters without sending them as costly MMS. Someone at a Samsung shop in the UK said I could download a text app, which I did, and I then didn’t have that problem.
The phone key pad had Korean and English letters, the apps that were already on the phone couldn’t be deleted and a lot were in South Korean (but beyond the odd download request – I assume that’s what it said – they weren’t a problem).
The stall holders would accept credit card but kept asking for cash. In the end, I did pay with cash but wished I hadn’t because I then struggled to get money out from ATMs (very low, 100,000 won, ATM limits in most banks (only Bank of Busan (or was it Busan Bank? But “Busan” is correct) allowed more), my card getting blocked for trying persistently to take too much out).
Are souvenirs cheap?
If you want silk, pottery, jewellery, paper goods, I would say it’s not easy to find real bargains. However there are some pretty things to be bought.
What are the shops like?
There are shops everywhere. There are lots of underground shopping areas (mainly cheap clothes, cosmetics and costume jewellery sold in shops with fluorescent lights and loud music).
Department store prices seemed largely on a par with UK ones, including cosmetics and perfumes.
Markets are generally covered or down narrow streets. There usually seems to be an area for certain things, eg hats, bags, bedding, food, etc. You can haggle.
What is the quality of South Korean goods like?
Mixed. I broke a bag that I needed to replace. I was around Gukje market in Busan on the day I decided I had to get a replacement. We eventually found a bag area and I couldn’t find a bag I liked or which wasn’t an overpriced designer knock-off. I ended up getting a cheap bag that largely came undone by the time I got home. I guess you get what you pay for.
Is it good to get designer knock-offs?
I thought about it but to me the bags and watches I saw were either ludicrously badly made or still very expensive (as they were leather, for example). Designer things are kind of lost on me anyway though as I have no interest in designer labels. Apparently the cheap sunglasses I bought weren’t really, really cheap (I haggled from 18,000 won to 10,000 won) because they were a designer copy, but I’d never heard of the designer; I just bought them because I didn’t have any and it was sunny and they looked ok – their UV credentials probably weren’t adequate.
There are a lot of designer imitations around. But I really didn’t think they looked convincing or of good quality as a general rule.
What did I buy in South Korea?
I usually buy quite a lot when I go on holiday but I didn’t get much in South Korea.
I did get a novelty USB stick (cheaper than the UK but not by much), a bamboo tea strainer (not cheap but I love bamboo and I love tea and I use tea leaves), a mobile phone (as detailed above), a headset with microphone (lots to choose from, cheaper than the UK but not by much – you do seem to get what you pay for though, ie pay more and you get better quality – I know that’s obvious but I think I was drawn to the cheaper headsets, for example, but should have got a more robust pair that were only a few pounds more expensive), some ginseng sweets and kitchen utensils (v cheap as in the equivalent of a pound store only 1,000 won (c65p), a paper lantern with bulb (not cheap, c£30, but I wouldn’t have been able to get something like that at home), some hand made paper, some bad-English writing paper and, at the airport, a watch.
Shopping at Incheon Airport
The airport is massive. It is a shopping mall on a scale I have never before encountered. Allow lots of time before your flight if you want to shop. You “do” the shops down one area, then come to a kind of central area and realise that all arms off that also have shops, some the same but all a bit different at least. It’s quite exciting if you’re in a post-holiday spend, spend, spend mindset.
There are some very nice souvenir shops (good quality stuff) and you can make things there free of charge (there are classes).
Basically, it really is a shopping mall. I got a funky South Korean-made watch (not cheap, c£85, but unusual and it seems to be well made and it’s rather lovely and colourful) and a few pretty souvenirs (including a spectacles cloth with an interesting pattern on it for someone who often cleans their eye glasses).