This is what I was talking about in a recent column in Seoul Magazine about the ridiculously priced Chuseok gifts at the Korean department stores. We really do appreciate the present from my translation colleague, Dong-Hyeok Kim and his wife, and the price makes it all the more meaningful, but it's of course not something we'd ever buy for ourselves otherwise.
In my article, I mentioned that this gift-giving leads to one-upsmanship. I can't say that we actually "upped" the ante with the $100 gift of red ginseng socks and towels, but we at least stayed competitive in the gift-giving race.
