My Gmarket Korea story

As some of you may know, I've been shopping from Gmarket Korea for the past year.

Before you continue, be forewarned that men may get bored reading a shopping post, lol.

It all started out when I watched You're Beautiful, and then I fell in love with Jang Keun Suk, and that made me really feel like 吃嫩草 (a Chinese slang that literally means "to eat tender grass", and the nearest English idiom would be "to rob the cradle").

Anyway I digressed. But I wanted to get the pig-rabbit that Minam got from Taekyung in the show cos it's just so adorable looking:

Doesn't it look so huggable?!

I found Gmarket from some banner link I think, and thought of trying my luck on getting a pig-rabbit. So I used Google translate, for the words in Korean

I copied the words and did a search on Gmarket Korea. I managed to find a lot of sellers selling it and decided to order from 1 of them.

And then I saw from Gmarket's home page that Etude House is available on Gmarket too!! At that time, Singapore did not have any Etude House shops but I stumbled upon their newly-opened shop with my cousin when we were in Taipei in May 2009, and I really love their products. I was so happy that I found it on Gmarket, and decided to order their Mineral BB Cream:

Now there's Etude House shops in Singapore, but it's retailed in Singapore at SG$39.90! On Gmarket, it's approximately SG$17 before shipping. Even if you only order this BB Cream itself via Gmarket, the cost including shipping is still cheaper than SG$39.90. So if you are already using Etude House products and can afford to wait for the items to arrive, you might wanna get it from Gmarket, usually takes less than 1 week for the items to arrive as Etude House ships them real fast!

Anyway so in the end I ordered the pig-rabbit, some Etude House cosmetics & some winter clothings, as I was going to some winter countries. The winter clothings from Korea just looks so much nicer than those in Singapore, not to mention much cheaper too! I was really spoiled for choices.

Back to the dwaeji tokki, I tried to look for it on Ebay, which was my favourite online shopping venue before I found Gmarket, just for curiousity sake. And to my horror, there were sooo many non-authentic dolls like this:

They are OBVIOUSLY fakes! Comparing side by side:

Just look at the fake big nose! The body looks weird too - it's larger than its head when it's supposed to be smaller. The shape of the ribbon looks very different too.

I started to worry whether ordering the pig-rabbit online is a good idea or not. But to my relief, the real authentic toy came! With the DreamToy box too! (Pictures here are water-marked as I was selling the items and was afraid that other netizens steal my photos for their own blogshop.)

Together with other You're Beautiful goodies:

That was my 1st shipment, and the rest was history. =X


Spot my VIP Customer crown icon! =D

I bought a Samsung Galaxy S back in June, and was glad that I can easily purchase Galaxy S cases in Gmarket when there were none in Singapore. A small flaw would be that Korean Galaxy S comes with built-in TV, and there's an additional hole in the case for the antenna.


Recently I was contemplating about buying a Fujifilm Instax which seems very popular in Korea and has appeared in a lot of shows, which of cos includes You're Beautiful!

I was holding some sprees for Samsung Galaxy S accessories, so I decided to buy an Instax 25 cos Gmarket was having a discount coupon event.

It was quite a chore to look for the right priced item, with the limited help of Google Translate to translate the pages. Different sellers are offering the cameras and accessories at different prices, and some items are already discounted by sellers, and I can't apply further discount coupons on them, while you can for some others. In the end, I had to use Microsoft Excel to consolidate the costs and URL and compare the costs.

If you're interested, the seller who offers the cheapest price for the camera only is here at KRW129,500.

Anyway the package arrived yesterday! I waited for it for nearly 3 weeks (because some of the Galaxy S cases were out of stock and the seller waited for a long time before he cancelled my orders), and was so excited about it that I immediately used it!

That's my Christmas present for myself, hehe.

And I bought a few accessories too:

I bought 20 coloured-frame films + 20 normal-frame films here, and at KRW29,500, which converts to approximately SG$36, I personally think it's a very good deal if you order from Gmarket in bulk, since the market rate in Singapore for the normal-frame films is SG$11 for 10 films.

If you want 40 coloured-frame films, there's also a cheap deal here! Cost only KRW27,400 + KRW2,500 local Korean delivery.

I'm already shopping for more films and maybe a photo album on my next shipment =D