So you just found that perfect thing for your mom and your brother from Breda's recent gift guide - now it's time to ship it home. Oh, snap - WHERE'S THE UPS AROUND HERE?!

While there are FedEx/Kinko's stores or Tara stores around (Tara's the local name for DHL), you're better off finding the closest Korean post office and taking it there instead. It's not only cheaper, but once you get past the language barrier, a bit easier to use than you might expect.

Here's a chart of how long stuff should take when using Korea's postal service:

	International Express, or EMS (국제특급, or guk-je-teuk-geup)	Regular airmail (일반항공, or il-ban-hang-gong)	Surface post (선편, or seon-pyeon))
US, Canada, and North America	3-4 days	9-14 days	50-60 days
Australia, New Zealand	3-4 days	7-9 days	50-60 days
England, Ireland, and elsewhere in Europe	3-5 days	7-14 days	50-60 days

That 'slow boat' approach really is a slow boat. There's a nice cost savings below, however - read on for that information.

Korea uses four zones to categorize their fees based on how remote they are, but some countries (e.g. the USA, Australia, China) have a separate schedule of fees. Canada, England, Ireland and New Zealand are in zone 3, while South Africa is in zone 4.

As in other countries, the fee is based on the service requested and the weight of the package. This page from the Korea Postal Service gives us the breakdown with many of the rates, but for comparison purposes here, a 10 kilogram package (that's 22 pounds for Americans) going to the USA by standard airmail is 96,500 won. That same 10 kilogram package going airmail to Canada, England, Ireland, or New Zealand would be 74,200 won, but it's only 28,000 won if going by ground. South Africans shipping that 10 kg package home by airmail would pay 118,700 won - almost a 50% premium - but only 33,000 won by ground. Curiously, the pricing charts do not show the fee for ground mail to countries with a separate schedule (Americans and Australians, you can expect it to be cheaper, but the website won't tell you the price in advance).

The EMS rates can be found on the EMS page. In summary, it'll get there faster, but will be slightly more expensive than standard airmail. The hypothetical 10kg package would be 87,000 won to send to Canada, England, Ireland, or New Zealand, 80,100 won to get to Australia, or 103,800 won to send to the USA.

There are some other fees applied to international packages, so the final tally may differ slightly. Note that every post office sells boxes as well - I've had no complaints with them, and there are several sizes available.

Readers, any tips or tricks to get Christmas home to your friends and family, or receiving Christmas goodies from people back home?

© Chris Backe - 2010

This post was originally published on my blog,Chris in South Korea. If you are reading this on another website and there is no linkback or credit given, you are reading an UNAUTHORIZED FEED.