A suspicious cosmetics shop sells products only to foreigners

There is a store on a street filled with cosmetic shops near Ewha Womans University. The store is particularly crowded with Chinese people because it sells Korean cosmetics at lower prices than other shops. It has the largest size in the region. Its sign said in Chinese that Korean brand cosmetics are offered at a 30 to 70 percent discount. It was selling products, which seem exactly like original ones sold at a nearby shop directly owned by the cosmetics maker, at a 25 percent lower price. It was packed with Chinese tourists and had few Koreans. When this reporter tried to buy one, the sales clerk asked if I were a Korean and said that Koreans cannot buy goods. When asked why, the clerk vaguely said the store is exclusive for foreigners.

Other nearby shops were similar. When I asked a sales clerk in the next shop, “What can Koreans buy?” the clerk said, “Only facial masks.” Some shops posted on a display stand that they sell goods only to foreigners because they are for exports. When asked why, the clerk said, “As they are duty-free, we sell them after checking a foreign passport.”

However, some raise suspicion that the shops that sell fake ones shun Korean customers because they are more likely to discern fake goods from authentic ones. A shop manager in a nearby cosmetics shop said, “You can’t sell them at those prices really. This will only taint the image of Korea.” Even some shops hung out a slogan in Chinese, English and Thai, “Buy original ones (at our shop)!”

If it is an official duty-free shop, customers have to buy goods at the store and pick up them at a departure gate at an airport or a passenger terminal. The store is not a duty-free shop because customers can take goods as soon as they pay money. Two famous Korean cosmetics manufacturers whose goods are sold at the store said, “Our products are unique in design so that they can hardly be copied” or “Manufacturers are not responsible for managing shops.”

clue@donga.com