This idea came to my attention after watching an episode of Amazing Race where two of my favourite Running Man members, Kwang soo and Jong kook were amongst its participants. They filmed in Thailand and missions were tuned to activities relating to the local culture there.
One particular scene that made me quite angry was when the two arrived really late at their 2nd pit stop. Initially they had hailed a tuk-tuk to take them to the address they indicated, but were instead dropped off at a location far from their destination. They hailed a taxi and was again dropped off in the middle of nowhere. In their last ditch attempt of desperation, they got into a taxi the 3rd time and were finally directed to the right place, but I could sense their frustration from Jk's comment inside the cab. "Amazing Race really is amazing", which quite obviously is hinting sarcasm rather than admiration.
While the show captioned it as simply the driver's mistake and that Bangkok roads were confusing, it seemed to me that this case of getting lost isn't as superficial as it seems. My friend who recently came back from a short trip to Bangkok ranted to me a first hand experience of being swindled. In Bangkok, hailing a taxi isn't as simple as waving your hand out at one. One must go through a middle-man (or woman in most cases) who then will set a price that is usually much higher than normal and he will then hail the taxi for you, asking you to pay up beforehand. Well, my friend went to the middle man and was disappointed at the rates offered, and so he went to a more secluded street to hail a taxi personally. At first, he thought he got lucky when one stopped for him, entered and was offered a rate that was lower than before. However, within minutes, the taxi passed by the street with the middle-men, exchanged glances and immediately asked him and his family to get off.
This brings me back to Jong kook and Kwang soo's case. Could the tuk tuk driver have intentionally brought them to the wrong place, earned his buck and allow more people to profit from them? There seems to be a large network of underground black market activities where large gangs run the taxi business, etc and try to profit from tourists. Now, similarly why is bargaining also so rampant in tourist night markets in Bangkok? While I have no evidence to back my claims, this is what I feel. In Bangkok, goods are dirt cheap when such stalls buy them from wholesalers or the "black market" as I presume. By setting them at higher but still attractive prices, it is up to the customer to either be extremely gullible or to bargain the price a little. These storekeepers are usually great actors who express some forms of discontent but are willing to slash the prices as they still earn a giant profit. The only way goods can be way cheaper than the counterparts sold in shopping malls or retail outlets are that they are managed by the illegal black markets who either steal, imitate the products or escape taxes.
I felt sorry for the two Koreans. For having been to Korea myself, the culture of night markets is different from that of Bangkok. To speak of a personal experience, I had once been scolded at and chased away when I tried to bargain at some stalls at the night market. And while the experience certainly wasn't pleasant and you don't get as much kick as you do when successfully bargaining, the culture is one to be respected. It only means that these stall owners place a lot of pride in their stalls and the products they sell. They may seem nice at first when you ask about the product, but their respect for you as a customer diminishes as soon as you start slashing the prices.
At this point, I can affirm that most businesses in Korea are legitimate ones, and stall owners don't resort to underhand methods to get their goods at dirt cheap prices. So when visiting a country of Korea, what's most important is to maintain a level of respect for the stall owner, and if it is too expensive
