Deli meat. Cheese. Wine. Fresh bread. Hard-to-find foreign products.

It’s rather rare for me to review a store – of all the places that can be found on one’s own, stores feature colorful and prominent signs. Yes, this store features one of those hard-to-miss signs, but it’s what’s inside that merits the attention.

Notice any Korean on that chalk board? Didn’t think so. Ron Romain, the French gentleman manning the deli counter, speaks excellent English and takes requests with the ease you would expect of a Frenchman. You may also notice American meat on the list – this being the country where too many of the locals are still afraid of Mad Cow disease, meat from 미국 is unusually hard to find in Dae Han Min Guk.

Jams and jellies, along with an ample selection of bread. No sliced and bagged white bread here, folks.

In terms of quantity, E-mart or Homeplus may have a wider selection; in terms of quality, the selection appears admirable. I’d love to hear what Joshua Hall from winekorea.asia has to say about some of the selections, but there are enough offerings to make your choosing difficult.

Did I mention cheese? Being American I’m afraid my personal appreciation for the pressed curd of milk is limited to a few common varieties mostly found on pizza or sandwiches. With that said, plenty of foreign cheeses are here.

I’m not embarrassed to say this section was my happiest discovery. While the Foreign Food Market well-known to most Seoul and Itaewon expats features many of the same things, High Street Market has prices closer to what you might pay for them back home.

There really are no downsides here – between their partnership with Kobaek Meats (and the ability to get most any kind of meat out there) and the imported stuff already available, High Street Market is worth a stop if you’re anywhere in Seoul or Gyeonggi-do. While I can’t vouch for Busan, Daegu, or other major cities in Korea, this is easily the best place to pick up any number of items. If there’s a good place to pick up foreign goods in Busan, Daegu, or elsewhere in Korea, please comment!

High Street Market is a five minute walk from exit 2 at Itaewon station (line 6), and is just past the IP Boutique Hotel. Tell Ron at the deli counter that Chris in South Korea sent you.

Highly recommended.

Disclaimer: Chris in South Korea is a fan of High Street Market, but was not paid or compensated in any way to write this review. He is hoping for an extra helping of their excellent dried beef jerky for the free advertising they’re getting, though. I’m open to doing sponsored reviews for your business!

© 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.

The Economist applies the example of German unification to the Koreas‘ Sisyphean task. Drawing on the two courses open to it, massive handouts or immigration, the weekly recommends Seoul split the pain and the difference.

If the Koreas reunified, the government would face a stark choice. It could try to fill the gap in living standards between North and South, through handouts, public investment and subsidies. Or it could brace itself for heavy migration, as poor Northerners moved to the South in search of higher wages.

Germany leaned towards the first option. East German Ostmark wages were converted into West German D-marks at a rate of one to one, then raised by union pressure closer to Western levels. This allayed fears that migrant workers would flood into the West, or that capital would flood out. But it also deterred private investment in the East—except for heavily subsidised property speculation which ultimately failed—and priced many of its workers out of the market.

Michael Funke of Hamburg University and Holger Strulik of the Leibniz University in Hanover are two of the many economists who have studied Germany’s reunification. In 2005 they used the same framework to model the Korean case. Their calculations (which they describe as “rigorous speculation”) illustrate the scale of the problem. To equalise the standard of living in both parts of the country would initially cost over half of the South’s tax revenues. The government could reduce the fiscal burden to 30% of revenues, but only at the cost of receiving 8m migrants, the two economists estimate.

The government could, of course, spread the cost over time by borrowing abroad: there is no reason why today’s Koreans should pay the full cost of reunifying their country. And in principle, North Korea’s productivity might catch up with the South’s quite rapidly. Because capital is scarce in the North, returns should in theory be high. Investors will be drawn to its promising location, its raw materials and its workers, who are young, reasonably well educated and cheap. (Many South Korean and Chinese firms have already taken the plunge. Hyundai Asan and Korea Land Corporation, for example, run the Kaesong Industrial Complex a few miles inside the North. It hosts 116 factories, employing 40,000 North Koreans, producing over $20m-worth of textiles, chemicals, electronics and other goods a month.)

50%? 30%? Am I the only one who predicts riots in Seoul’s streets? I can foresee a future where Kaeseong figures a bit higher, if only to hide the problem form the South Korean public. And, borrowing from foreigners to finance Korea’s sacred mission? It’ll never happen.

Another ironic conclusion from the article is, that, based on refugee testimony, North Koreans already rely heavily on illicit markets to make ends meet.

Despite North Korea’s obstinate commitment to central planning, the market is growing like a vine in the cracks of the socialist edifice. In their new book, “Witness to Transformation”, Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland document this market reform “from below”, drawing on surveys of refugees in South Korea and China. They find that 62% of the refugees in China had relied on the market as their primary source of food; only 3% relied on the state. And almost 70% of the refugees said they got more than half of their income from some form of private enterprise, such as selling crops or repairing bikes.

The shocker for a center-right newspaper is, that The Economist recommends Pyongyang keep central planning and reintroduce its public distribution system. Unification will take an ideological suspension of belief on all sides, and no one will be immune from pain. This is undoubtedly why my wife and her family vehemently oppose unification. I can’t blame them. I can foresee nothing but a hash of ad hoc policies, crises, and public outrage after a hangover caused by unrealistic expectations.

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