To Market, To Market

I have just returned from the second of what promises to be many bizarre, shocking, endearing, and laughably frustrating shopping experiences at the nearby “Lotte Mart” - a mega grocery/everything complex done up in an over-the-top style of which only true Koreans could dream.

First off, the building is a full 5 stories high. The first floor – just the first floor – has a medium-sized food court, a small shoe section, and numerous tables full of uniformed salespeople trying to sign you up for some service or another. This is all before you get to any of the actual grocery, butcher, baker, cleaning supply, or bedding areas - all of which are also on the first floor. Even before you set foot in the front door, however, you have to walk past the kennels, or, more accurately, the tiny little coin-op lockers into which you can shove your tiny little dog for the duration of your shopping trip. Is this a more or less humane way of treating your dog than tying it to a pole outside? (Discussion ensues).

Anyway, the second floor has bicycles, electronics, games, lighting, picture frames, and all manner of other miscellaneous household mish-mash. It’s pretty much a full Canadian Tire, but with a nice big shoe store to boot. The third floor has a beauty salon, barbershop, florist, and miniature photo studio (for passport photos and the like) on it. Ever thought you might want to do a little Downward Dog in the middle of your shopping trip to blow off a little steam? Well, here in the zany-ass future where nothing is impossible and everything is impractical, you can! Yes, the Lotte Mart yoga studio, while small, is fully functional. It even has a few of those little Pogo Ball-type workout ball things you can bounce on to improve your what-have-yous or your whatnots.

The fourth and fifth floors are still a vague mystery to me. Upon getting off on one of them I was momentarily stunned because I thought there was a car dealership until I realised I was actually just looking out at part of the parking lot complex. (Because I live in the ‘suburbs,’ everyone drives a shiny nice new car here). The weird thing is that I totally wouldn’t have put it past them to have a Hyundai dealer smack dab in the middle of the supermarket. Frankly I’m still a little too intimidated to explore much further onto these upper floors so perhaps I may never know. Honestly, like what else could there be?

Another crazy thing about Lotte Mart is how you get from one floor to the next. It does not have normal step-style escalators as would a large mall or shopping complex back in Canada. Rather, it has very long inclined moving walkways like you have at airports (only, y’know, inclined). This makes sense for strollers and wheelchairs and the like since there is only a ramp and no stairs to navigate. What does not make sense is that everyone feels a need to entirely stop walking on these contraptions rather than continuing to utilise their personal locomotive capabilities. This is kind of understandable if you’re lazy, but most Koreans are definitely not lazy and many of them tend to always be in a big giant rush to go everywhere and are rarely walking as slow as normal human speed anyway (I’ll elaborate more on this in later posts). You would think that they would see these walkways as an option to propel themselves even faster to their obviously important next destination, but this does not appear to be the case. So extreme is this sentiment that I even saw one woman get on the walkway about 8 metres in front of her friend, who then got on it and shouted to the first woman something like “Hey, I’m here behind you!” The woman in front yelled back something I construed to be “OK, I see you there; I’ll wait for you at the top!” Both ladies then stood motionless by themselves and waited patiently for the minute-or-so slow ascent to the next floor. Upon getting there, the lady in front waited for her friend, and when she arrived they both speed-walked off into the abyss together again to make up for lost time. Weird, wild stuff.

This is all well and good for the complex, but what is shopping there actually like? Well, once you have passed the ‘greeter’ (a man in a nice suit with a headset on who bows deeply to each new shopper), you enter what is kind of like your everyday grocery store back in Canada. Except for 2 catches: everything is in Korean, and everyone is yelling at you.

As for the yelling part, my best deduction is that the ancient customs of a traditional Asian marketplace have been transposed into a Wall-Mart-esque supercentre and random people yelling at you is the result of this fusion. Traditionally, a vendor hocks his wares by yelling his advertisements at passersby in an attempt lure the shopper to his specific table. This is indeed how many markets are still run in many parts of the world and it makes a whole lot of sense. What’s weird about this tactic in Lotte Mart is that everything is already pre-packaged and being sold by the same distributor. I assume these employees are drawing only Lotte Mart paycheques and do not actually make a commission if I happen to buy their brand of frozen rice cakes over the other random ones that do not happen to be on the sampling table today. Accordingly, since Lotte Mart is pocketing all the proceeds regardless of which kind I choose, I really don’t see the point in yelling at the customers to buy one thing over the other. I’m already here – you already win. This probably wouldn’t confuse and disorient me so much if I could understand anything they were saying, but since my efforts to learn Korean have so far been very minimal, all I hear is, well, yelling.

OK so just wear your iPod and you can avoid all these frightening language problems, right? Well, kinda. You see, there is still the fact that I can’t actually read any of the packaging. Some of it is obvious enough.

Terrifying Spam-like lunchmeat product is somehow always the exact same no matter where you go.

Some of it is hilarious yet still understandable.

You play fun! hahaha OK! Fun!

And some of it is of it is just plain confusing.

Is it an apple? Is it an egg? Not even close. It's rice.
Regular everyday white rice.

What percentage of milk is this? 1%? No. I’m still unsure of the exact number, but it’s definitely higher than 1. Come to think of it, I may have just picked it up because of the hilarious pun.

Also, I had previously thought that North Americans had the market cornered on useless, excessive, and environmentally-raping over-packaging. Not so. It would seem that in some ways the excessive packaging seen in the West is put to shame by the extreme wastefulness witnessed in wrapping everything from pencils to potatoes all across this country. (Again, I am chalking this truism up entirely to the late and rapid onset of American-style capitalism here in Korea, so if there is anyone to be ‘blamed’ for this reality it is the West anyway). There is a massive amount of junk food on the shelves of Lotte Mart as well – in fact, about half of the grocery section of the store is dedicated to such. From what I have noticed, Koreans seem to have quite the sweet tooth and this shines through in everything from their pastries to their fruit, which I am convinced they inject with some form of glucose before sending to market.

Please note that the above craziness in no way reflects your average shopping experience here in South Korea. Indeed, I have been to independent grocers, fruit stands, and all manner of more traditional, less gaudy, and more respectable outlets to purchase the items necessary to keep me alive. These are all a lot more humane than Lotte World and I don’t feel quite so greeby shopping at them. The downside to such places, though, is the language barrier. Haggling over the price of a banana with only nods and ‘yesno’s can only take you so far. Until I get a little more confident in Korean I am confined to Lotte Mart for most of my needs that are above the bare essentials. It is a crazy and invigorating time, but at the end of the day when I get home to my funhouse sewer and drop off the 20lb haul of fresh nourishment, I know it’s all been worthwhile.