::A Geek in Korea::

For whatever reason, when it comes to fruits, cherries in Korea are the most irrationally priced item ever. I grew up in the United States, and not that far from Michigan, which happens to be the largest exporter of cherries in the Midwest. The United States is also the number one exporter of cherries worldwide, so perhaps I grew up spoiled and had no idea of my luck.

My mother could purchase cherries when we wanted them for a snack. I think they were my brother’s favorite fruit growing up too. My fondness for cherries comes not from the fruit, although good, but from home baked cherry pies. We got to choose the pie we could have for a birthday dessert, and I always chose cherry. Waiting for it to bake and for the first slice to be served was really difficult. Even better was waking up early the next day and eating the rest of the entire pie with a huge glass of milk was heavenly.

We noticed that Costco had a sale on cherries. Most supermarkets and grocery stores don’t even stock cherries. I emailed my mother for her cherry pie recipe (even though she used canned cherries) and got excited about the prospect of hand made pies again. We set off for Costco today since it was the very last day of their sale with the coupon. We didn’t know how much the final price was, but since we had a coupon, we didn’t think much about it. We arrived at the store and did our usual route through the aisles.

When we got to the fruit aisle, we were a little downtrodden. Two pounds of cherries for 19,900 won. With our coupon, it would be 17,900 won, or about $19 dollars (USD). $9.50 dollars a pound! While we were debating our purchase, several people came up, picked up the box, stared at the price, then backed away slowly. They looked like excellent quality fruit, but even the most spendthrift shoppers didn’t pick them up.

A funny old couple walked up. The woman was very enthused. She shouted to her husband, "Look! Look at this! This is great! It’s on sale!"

The man remained unconvinced. "What are these? How do you even eat them?"

She left empty handed.

So did we. Even if we purchased it with the coupon, that was far too expensive. I remember getting a large bag full of cherries while we were in the United States and was completely blown away at a price one fifth or less of what we pay here. Until I find some cherry pie filling somewhere, it looks like I’ll have to forget about my dream pie for now. If anyone wants to experience what it is like to buy cherries in Korea, I suggest ordering from this site.

My wife and I went out to a new restaurant in the neighborhood now that our old standby restaurant, Nolboo, has had their service and quality go down tremendously quickly in the past few months. We judge the new restaurant to be acceptable by peering inside. We saw a ton of people eating, and they were all chowing down on a ton of vegetables and side dishes. We went inside and got a semi-private table. We sat on the floor and were separated by a sliding door from the main room, but our room was subdivided by half-walls that blocked us watching people, but didn’t block any of their noise.

The loudest noise was coming from a group of people that were in a sort of Korean investment "club". The group would pay a membership fee to a person each month, then use the money they pool together to go on big nights out. The problem was that each time they elected someone to hold the money for people from month to month that they hadn’t yet spent, the person would run off with the money. The group was arguing about how much each person owed, or who was going to hold the money next time.

My wife’s mother does a similar sort of collective money scheme. 10 people choose to put money into a collective bank account each month. Perhaps they put 100,000 won into the account each month. Then, in a predetermined order, they remove the entire amount when it’s their month. Thus, one month, you remove 900,000 won. The remaining time you pay back into the pot. So, if you had the first month, you’d pull everyone’s money, then spend the next nine month’s paying back the money you got. If you go last, you pay for nine months, then remove that 900,000 won and a bit more for waiting. It’s supposed to compensate you for waiting. The idea is that if you needed money home quickly, say to buy a car right away, but didn’t want to pay interest to a bank, this is a "better" option. It relies on the connections between people in the group to keep people honest and paying each month.

Seeing as how there are perfectly reputable places that do this exact same sort of thing (BANKS) that do the same sort of transactions, I was wondering why people would go to the hassle of doing something that could easily turn into a debacle. It seems that people here are really big into liquidity, and don’t like investment in banks. Perhaps this has something to do with the 1997 financial crisis and a deep suspicion of financial institutions. I’m not sure, but I spent the rest of the evening trying to explain to my wife about what I learned way back in my college finance classes. Phrases like, "The purchasing power of money", and "Risk vs. Reward" were used.

At the time, I thought that Finance was useless, but once I got thinking about the Korean lending/borrowing system, there was a lot of potential to make money and abuse the fact that people don’t know or understand the power of investment. I don’t know if the people setting up these loaning rings are trying to get rich off people that know less than they do, or what.

There is an expression that, "Many hands makes all work light" that is applied to Asian cultures. Collectivism is part of this culture that is very alien to me, coming from an individualistic and independent country. However, I don’t think I’ll let our money go anywhere near a non-insured loaning agent. We’ve heard about people we know getting burned by these plans as well. There is risk, reward, and just plain stupid.