As far as items I can find in Korea go, I have only two things left on my shopping list. Yesterday and today, I got my first-aid kit, a surprisingly cheap tent footprint, a multitool (which I convinced myself I needed to buy, but might not actually need on the trail*), new cell batteries (sold somewhat under the counter), and a portable cell-battery charger that can charge a phone three times before the charger itself needs to be recharged.
The only two items left for me to buy are that damn hanging scale (the scale store was closed today, and I was too late to go there yesterday) and those reflector strips, which proved amazingly hard to find in both the Jongno and Euljiro districts.
One good point about today's shopping trip was that I got discounts. The tent footprint was tagged at W35,000; I got it for a cool W17,000, which is more than reasonable for an item that often retails in the States for anywhere between $30 and $60. The multitool was listed at W45,000, but the seller gave it to me for W40,000. I'm glad I got those discounts because the dude at Jeonja Land gave me no discounts at all for the cell batteries and portable charger.
I may pop out to Jongno early tomorrow morning to visit the scale store before going to work. Whoever runs that store is a lazy bastard: every time I've tried to go there, the store has been closed, either because it was after 4PM or because it was Sunday.
*One guy I spoke with in 2008 told me that, from his outdoors experience, a multitool was more useful to him than a knife was. I had brought a combat knife and a pocketknife along with me in 2008; the combat knife proved utterly useless, but the pocketknife came in handy on multiple occasions. A multitool is like a pocketknife, but its main function is as pliers.
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