My South Korea Gaming Memoirs Vol. 1

Ah yes, South Korea. Without giving away my life's story, I spent a little over two years in the land of 2$ taxi rides and dried squid w/peanut butter snacks in movie theaters. I was teaching English in a Seoul suburb and making a very good living doing so. Let's say I did a lot of shopping while I was there. I really only pissed a small amount of money away of video games as I was worried about lugging it all around (three apartments in those two years, not to mention getting it back to Canada) as well as where to keep it while I was there. I did however make a twice monthly trip to the Yongsan area of Seoul, where there was nothing but games and electronics of all types to be seen. On my first trip to Yongsan in January of 2008 I found this ----




----the Korean NES! This isn't my picture, I robbed it off the inter-web from some dude named Spencer. That is however the same Korean NES that caught my eye that day, and every other time I saw it on my Yongsan adventures. It didn't sell the entire two years I was there. I looked at it often, wanted it, even figured out how to ask the dude how much it was in Korean. He wanted 100,000W for the system and Mario3 game. That's 95$ or so. I'm sure 60,000W would of done it, but I never bothered to haggle. I regret that now. Those things are mega rare.

They sold like crap in South Korea. By the time they arrived dealers were importing Famicoms and Hyundai had a Comboy system to play some form of NES games. Also a factor, South Korea wasn't as well off in the 80's as they are now. Remember, Korea was war ravaged only 30 years or so prior to the NES. I am willing to bet that same NES is still there today.

I plan on going back to the RoK this year, mark my words, I will have it!