::A Geek in Korea::

Occasionally when you are outside, you’ll see people standing on street corners with envelops full of cash or gift certificates offering them to strangers. This is a somewhat odd behavior to observe, but even more strange is how the people react to an offer of free money. They go out of their way to avoid the person and treat them like he was handing out free samples of the plague instead of cash. People will go to amazing lengths to get free stuff in Korea, so what’s going on? It’s not like these people are driving those creepy windowless vans you see in movies trying to lure people inside with their dough like in a child safety video.

It turns out that the whole situation is related to selling newspaper subscriptions. The people on the street corners are trying to lure you into a newspaper delivery subscription contract for multiple years. They work on a commission that assures that as long as the newspaper is delivered to your house, they’ll make more money than they’ll give away signing you up. What’s so bad about a newspaper subscription?

From what I am told, these subscriptions are of the "impossible to cancel" variety. People that deliver the newspaper will send people to collect their bills and hound people with subscriptions constantly. If you leave the newspapers outside your doorstep and tell them you want to cancel, they will continue to deliver them and try to collect their fee. The only way to get them to stop is to wake up earlier than the delivery service, stalk the door, and tell them to stop multiple times. The hassle involved in canceling is why no one wants to take people up on the offer of free money.

It’s like "Columbia House" except every day extremely early in the morning with newspapers. No wonder no one ever smiles at these people. I’m immune to their offers, because I, as a foreigner, can’t easily sign up for credit based contracts.  People here assume that’ll I’d flee the country rather than pay for a newspaper each month. I get a free newspaper at work that usually isn’t worth the price of the ink and paper if it wasn’t for the crossword. Either way, I won’t get involved in the shady dealings of people handing out free cash on the streets.