Costco in Korea

Last Thursday I went to Costco with one of my two bosses, Julie, and her mother.  (Yes, it did take me over a week to get around to writing this -_-)  I was going to just give Julie a list of things to pick up for me like my coworkers, but I didn't have any idea what they had in stock and I was curious about the differences between Costco here and in the US.  We met at the school at 10:30 am and started the hour-long drive there, crossing four toll stations along the way.  (Korea is similar to Japan, in that you have to periodically pay tolls on the vast majority of the highways as well as when crossing bridges.  This can make taking taxis to other cities extra expensive, as the drivers will add the cost of the tolls to the fare.)  We did get a little lost on the way and had to break out the GPS, which is why we had to go through four toll stations (it was three on the drive home).  I wasn't keeping a close eye on the costs, but it was over $10.  Keep in mind that's one way!

The store is located in Goyang, a town to the northwest of Seoul and near Gimpo Airport.  The facility was, I thought, really very interesting: what you see above ground is just the five-story parking garage, while the store itself takes up two floors underground.  We parked on the first floor and grabbed three double-sized shopping carts (and filled all three to the brim, too!), then went down two slanted, stairless escalators to get to the bottom floor.

(The above picture isn't from Costco, but these escalators are common in big stores in Korea.  The escalators are magnetized to keep the carts from sliding.  At Costco, they have staff at the top of the escalators going up to help you pull your full carts off when the magnetism lets go.)

According to Julie, the bottom is all non-perishables (clothes, appliances, dishes, soap, vitamins, rice/grains, canned food etc.) while the next floor up has the perishable food (fruit/vegetables, meat, cheese, frozen food, dried fruit and nuts, bread, etc.) as well as the checkout counters and hot food.  It looked very much like the Costcos back home, not too surprisingly.

I picked up some calcium gummis (because I don't like to swallow pills if I don't have to), California black olives and diced tomatoes down here, which none of the local stores sell.  They didn't have cans of plain tomato sauce, unfortunately, though on the next floor they had a large variety of pre-made pasta sauces (which I didn't buy because I prefer to make my own.)  I also got two huge bottles of environmentally friendly liquid laundry detergent and splurged on a Sonicare toothbrush (which, at 149,000 won, was more than half of my total bill).  It's a different style than the ones my family and I used back home, but it came with a UV toothbrush sanitizer and five heads, so I won't need to get more for over a year.  I will need to get adapters if I want to bring them back to the US, but I'll worry about that bridge when I cross it :)

I'd largely been following Julie around on the bottom floor, but we got separated pretty quickly on the next floor because it was a complete madhouse.  I was tempted by cheese and ravioli/tortellini, but decided not to because I didn't really need them and I had no idea how much I was going to wind up spending (hint: it was no small sum).  I did get bananas and a big package of frozen shrimp, but I was underwhelmed by their bread selection; even the "whole grain" bread was like Wonder Bread with brown flakes.  Their peanut butter and cereal were also disappointing - all they had was Jiffy (I didn't buy any), and 90% of their cereal was diabetes in a box.  They didn't have plain Cheerios (just Honey Nut), though I did get a couple boxes of something with heritage grains that seemed pretty healthy.  I had plenty of oatmeal from my trip to the Itaewon Foreigner Market, so I didn't need to buy more.  I also got a big bag of raisins to go with my oatmeal.

About that time Julie found me, and I helped her load up our two carts with things for my coworkers and stuff for school snacks, including seven big packages of penne and six huge bottles of tomato sauce.  We checked out and sat down to eat lunch - Julie got us three large trays of sushi.  According to her, the store rotates its stock frequently and often moves things around in an effort to get people to come more often (to see new things) and explore the whole store (to find what you're looking for).  The place is also apparently quite popular with students, who come to the food court for cheap food after school.  When lunch was over, we hauled our carts back to the van and loaded it up, then headed back to the island.  They dropped me and my stuff off at my apartment around 2 pm, giving me a little time to push away a few things and change into my work clothes before classes started.

Later, I worked out what I owed Julie (the total was around $276, which surprised me) and paid her through an online bank transfer.  I may not have gotten the cereal, bread or peanut butter I wanted, but it's nice to have olives and diced tomatoes again, at least for a little while.  It was a very tiring trip, though I might go again next time just to poke around again.  Julie said she goes every six months or so, so we'll see.  All in all, it was in interesting excursion!