You know what you are probably right.

What pissed me off most of all was when we would have a unit BBQ and would have to get a special memo signed off by the garrison commander to purchase a large amount of items from the commissary for the unit BBQ. However the black marketers like you just saw will buy even more stuff than what I would need for a unit BBQ and what’s the odds they have a garrison commander memo allowing them to do it?

Who: Elderly Korean man and woman.

What: Multiple trips into the PX to retrieve several shopping carts full of goods. One spouse would sit in the parking lot when the other went into the PX, then without saying a word to each other, one would come out about 15 minutes later with a shopping cart full of things as the other one would go into the PX, almost like a tag-team event. There were five abandoned shopping carts in the parking lot, although I only watched them enough times to witness them bringing out three shopping carts in such fashion. When their trunk was full, they started placing things into the backseat, and I noticed a 24-pack of Mountain Dew and large bags of rice in the backseat as well, presumably from the Stanley Commissary.

I didn’t see what was in the numerous white AAFES bags they brought out, but they brought out at least 3x each of the JVC DVD/VHS players featured on the cover of the 28SEP-04OCT AAFES sale flyer. These were clearly visible as they were in their original cardboard packaging with purple labeling.

When: 30 1600-1730 SEP 07.

Where: Camp Stanley PX gravel parking lot.

Car: Late model silver-grey Lincoln sedan, SOFA license plate 16DA 6836.

The sustainable form of black marketing has been going on since MacArthur landed at Incheon. It’s profitable and it could conceivably go on indefinitely.

The unsustainable type is when you have the the blackmarketeers getting overly greedy and stealing inventory from the back store rooms. This is essentially killing the goose that keeps laying the golden eggs. This is just what happened at Camp Long. Not content just to sell goods for a small kick back, the greed set in and inventory began disappearing off the back loading ramp. Not real smart. Now the PX is closed and these idiots no longer have a source of illicit income. If they’d have been smart they would have just continued to sell the goods over the counter for a small “fee.”

But what can I say, most criminals just happen to be criminally stupid.

Plus should someone working at a small PX be making millions of dollars? The people at the PX don’t work nearly as hard as soldiers serving in Korea, Iraq, and elsewhere who are not making easy millions.

Allowing black marketing only adds to the perception of high level corruption in USFK.