Korean Job Discussion Forums

[matthews_world]

Are customs surcharges for items received by post nixxed due to the FTAs or is it business as usual?

[premiummince]

I just got some stuff last week and it's business as usual.

[chungbukdo]

I'm from Canada and I order stuff from the US sometimes, still lots of customs charges on those things under NAFTA.

FTA's are only for businesses. Individual people shouldn't be able to benefit, otherwise we would live better lives at the expense of major importers and automobile manufacturing unions. That's why customs duties for individuals and automobile tariffs are left out of FTA's.

Major importers need to be protected from individuals just buying things on their own. If we allowed that to be unhampered, we would have anarchy. After all, the government wouldn't be able to inspect and track all those little transactions. We need the government to track everything and we need to keep employing people at customs to steal from us or they would be out of work.

Also, free trade and comparative advantage are wrong. What economists discovered about the gains of trade are a lie perpetrated by the economists, who are running dog lackeys of the imperialists and bourgeoisie. So we have to have a 94% free trade agreement, with 6% of industries protected, such as automobiles and agriculture. The laws of economics do not apply to automobiles and agriculture and incidentally their lobby groups are the biggest.

Now let's go write up a 1000 page "free trade document" detailing the multitude of exceptions, when all that needs to be written is "let there be free trade."

[luckylady]

[NYC_Gal 2.0]

Business as usual. I was ordering some summer shoes for the hubby and me last week from endless.com, and they wanted a customs deposit. I split up the order into two, and saved a bunch, seeing as shipping is only $10 per package. The extra $10 was still better than the almost $50 customs deposit I'd have had to pay.

[cdninkorea]

I ordered two packages from iherb.com a month or so ago, one valued at ~100,000 won and the other at ~90,000 won (both including shipping). Since each was under the 150,000 won limit, I figured I'd be safe.

Imagine my surprise then when I got a call from Customs saying I had to pay 45,000 won. Apparently, since both arrived on the same day, they were counted as one package.

[highstreet]

I've never had to pay a customs fee. Is it because I have my parents send it to me? I do order protein powder once every two months from a Korean website and they've never charge me for that either (ships from LA)

[Hyeon In]