I love Walmart –
I went shopping at Walmart this week. The clothing here in Korea is quite expensive. South Korea used to be a shopping paradise for foreigners back in the eighties, after the reconstruction of the Korean War and before the economic boom that quickly followed. Now you have to search high and low for a good price on good quality. There are, of course, wonderful clothes out here, but they are quite expensive in my area of Korea. I also don’t have the energy to be hauling 18-month-old Andy to the crowded haggling discount marketplace of Namdaemun in Seoul to search for his fall and winter clothes.
I opted for shopping online at the Walmart website. Last year I bought some of his winter clothes at the Guymon Walmart and they are still my favorites due to their good quality and fit. I went online and, from the comfort of my home, I took my time in browsing the selections. So I paid $90 with a credit card for 18 articles of clothing. The clothes will be shipped free of charge to the Guymon Walmart where my wonderful brother, Antonio, will pick them up and repackage (squeeze them into as small a package as possible) and reship them to me here in Korea for about $50. Walmart, along with most U.S. stores, doesn’t ship overseas unless it’s to a military base address. And then they use the cheap military postal price, which is equivalent to mailing packages within the United States instead of overseas. I can’t use that system since I’m not military personnel. I can’t even get on the American military bases here without an escort.
I wish South Korea had a Walmart. A real Walmart, that is. Walmart went out of business here a few years ago. Tom and I went to one during its last year. It had no semblance of the American Walmart. It was just a Korean store with the Walmart sign. No American food to speak of. No American brand products…no people shopping……you could hear crickets. It sold itself to Emart, a Korean Walmart type but with much more expensive prices and nicer look. Walmart should have hung around and observed how Costco did it. Costco is mostly the same as the American Costco, with just a few differences. My guesstimation is that 70% of the products are the same as those in the states. The rest of the products are Korean. They don’t carry everything that I find in the American Costco but just enough for us foreigners to be satisfied. The prices are about 30% higher here too. The place is packed with shoppers daily. I usually have to park on the 7th floor due to 2nd-6th floors being packed.
Nevertheless, I still love Walmart. That’s probably because I don’t work there nor do I slave over an assembly line to make their products. I also didn’t have a main street mom-and-pop-shop that went out of business due to the arrival of Walmart. Thus, I sou nd like I’m being paid to advertise when I tell my friends to shop online at Walmart for the basics. I got some good deals from the summer clearance section. There are good quality children’s three-piece summer sets for $3. You can’t beat that. Even some fall clothes are already on sale. I heard that Michael Jackson was spotted at Walmart. He had heard that little boys’ pants were half off.
