By Just like blackmarketing here is another illegal activity that just never seems to go away in USFK:
U.S. troops who buy Korean-made counterfeit professional sports jerseys on the cheap and send them home for resale are in effect acting as middlemen in the illegal international distribution of the goods, authorities here say.
U.S. personnel are buying up jerseys bearing the names of players from the National Football League, National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball, and shipping or bringing the fakes home to the U.S. where they can be resold for upwards of 10 times their South Korean price, Gyeonggi Provincial Police said.
The problem has gotten so bad, police said, that the U.S. Embassy has gotten involved and is pressuring South Korean authorities to crack down on the counterfeit-jersey industry.
Three South Koreans were arrested recently for selling the knockoffs at a shopping mall near Camp Casey, and more than 4,000 jerseys were confiscated with an estimated market value of close to $500,000, police said. [Stars & Stripes]
Commonly in the past the big problem with this issue was that soldiers were using the US Postal Service on base to ship the counterfeit items. This always made me wonder why USFK just didn’t create a policy saying that jerseys cannot be sent through the postal service at all? This would limit soldiers to only being able to ship jerseys back to the US when they PCS with their household goods.
2:45 pm on July 25th, 2009 1
Those prices are inflated. The Koreans make the best knock-off jerseys, but the Chinese crank 'em out in much larger quantities and you can easily get them for $50 or less in the US now.
3:34 pm on July 25th, 2009 2
I can't believe Chickenhead isn't all over this.
10:54 pm on July 25th, 2009 3
I wonder when Hollywood is going to complain about all of the pirate DVDs USFK members buy near the bases…
11:26 pm on July 25th, 2009 4
Notice how they're blocking the ways that poor folks make money?
11:06 am on July 26th, 2009 5
The man is always trying to keep us down.
1:59 pm on July 27th, 2009 6
I'm very impressed with Korea's variety of jerseys. I live in China and have never seen retro NFL jerseys like the 1964 Jim Brown one shown in the accompanying photo. If US soldiers can make a little extra pocket money selling some NFL jerseys then I say "go for it!"
In fact you seldom see NFL jerseys in China, maybe because NBA jerseys are so much more popular.
I can buy a Lebron James Cavaliers jersey in Guangzhou for about $12. The quality is excellent. I could stuff my suitcase with a complete wardrobe of Kobe, Lebron, and Carmelo jerseys without anybody at US customs raising an eyebrow.
I wonder what South Korean police will do with the 4000 confiscated NFL jerseys? Maybe donate them to North Korea? I think it would be cool to visit Dandong and see a North Korean woman across the Yalu wearing a Brett Favre Vikings jersey.
7:56 pm on November 17th, 2010 7
sports jerseys that uses cotton and polyester fabric are much cooler to use ~::
11:04 pm on November 17th, 2010 8
Does anybody remember when you could go the ville and buy the latest album on cassette for 2 bucks?? Some of them were not released in the US yet.