Electronics Conundrum

I'm not a TV watcher, per se, and I've never been overly excited to get the hottest or newest cell phone but I was thinking that spending a year in Korea, I might be able to stumble across some ridiculous deals on electronics, since so many globally prominent companies are making their great products right here - LG & Samsung for starters. Unfortunately, any hope of discovering a crazy good deal on, say a ginormous, flat panel, LCD display TV just isn't going to happen. Smart phones, like the Samsung Galaxy IIS, are also pretty much out of the question. Now, don't get me wrong, I could care less as I tend not to be much of a model capitalist in my consumption manners but thought I'd at least find very reasonable prices.

On the contrary! Most all the electronics I've seen over here are far more expensive than the same models being hawked in the states. It got me thinking, especially since Gumi has a very big industrial area & many of the LG displays & Samsung phones are made just a few kilometers from my apartment. Hell, I've even met a bunch of Sri Lankans who work on the LG display's every single day.

How in the world can high quality electronics made just down the street be so much more expensive than the same ones shipped from that facility down the street, half way across the world?

Even after first getting over here & I had to find a replacement microwave for the one that stopped working & I had trouble finding anything under $100....finally end up getting one for $84 or $89 bucks that was on sale but I was surprised I couldn't find a 'cheap' one for $30 or $40. I looked around for a few weeks for hair clippers, too (seeing how I've rarely paid for a haircut in the past 15 or 20 years). I finally found one, only one & it was more of a beefy beard trimmer, which has something to do w/the buzz cuts I gave myself a couple times this past year.

Regardless, I was contemplating this more when I thought I might have to buy a new laptop or a netbook recently. So, as I did my pricing at various stores here, I found most were nearly twice what I'd pay back home. Now, maybe it has something to do w/cutting edge technology or superior quality (i.e. - not junk that'll fall apart after a few months or a year). Then I went to trim up my hair around the ears & that theory got thrown out the window as the 'clippers' failed to operate when not plugged in & even then, they weren't running at full capacity....so, just maybe, the quality of the product isn't any better, either. I can not imagine how the technology could surpass what Apple has been putting out there, so I'm left w/one simple question: Who knows?

Either way, guess I'm happy I haven't found any smoking hot deals, otherwise I'd have a hell of a time getting things shipped back to FL. Besides, I've done a pretty good job as a dependable, 'non-consumer' for quite a few years, why give all that up now? Ahh, disposable society, how I've not missed you....