[From Readers] Hard to get Korean cigarettes at airport duty-free shop

Recently, I returned from an overseas trip. After completing exit procedures, I entered a duty-free shop in the airport to buy some cigarettes for gifts.

The store there sells cigarettes at about a thousand won less than at other places and for me, cigarettes are most suitable presents. I asked the salesperson for a certain brand of Korean-made cigarettes but the person said there was no such brand in the store. I went to another shop where the situation was the same. They said that my favorite brand had been out of stock for a week. Then I felt a sense of betrayal. The cigarettes I wanted to buy were one of the most popular brands in Korea.

Typically, even the smallest village shop can get more of the most popular brands of tobacco when it runs out. It is hardly conceivable that the duty-free shops in the nation`s international airport were unable to obtain the most popular cigarette brand for as long as one week. If such a situation is left unchecked, only foreign-made cigarettes will be sold at the airport`s duty-free shops.

Kang Shin-Young (Noryangjin-dong, Tongjak-ku, Seoul)