Tag: The Line

Author Marin Limon has new book out titled, “The Line” that has been previewed in the Korea Times.  Part of the book has to do with black-marketing in South Korea:

But in the five tours totaling 10 years I served in Korea I never once saw the 8th Army brass falter or even slow down in their manic quest to stop the black market. In their opinion, the yobo menace had to be stopped. Even to the extent that once a GI and his family members were shipped back to the States, if the Korean wife returned to visit her mother and show off the grandkids, she wasn’t allowed even a few dollars ration to purchase anything in the PX. Not baby formula, not diapers, nothing. This despite being a bona fide military dependent with, supposedly, full Commissary and PX privileges.

Meanwhile, the college-aged children of high-ranking officers who flew to Korea to visit their parents during summer break received a full ration. As did Officers’ Wives’ Club members from Japan on a shopping junket. Even members of some foreign embassies received ration control plates, as did their dependents.

But a Korean GI wife? No ration for her unless 8th Army was forced into it.

During the late 1970s, I was assigned to the strangest duty of my military career. We were given an armband and told to stand at the end of the checkout line at the Yongsan Commissary and write down the names of any dependent wives or GIs purchasing excessive amounts of non-controlled items. Examples were bananas, Spam and frozen oxtail. I felt like a fool. So did most of the other guys on the detail. One of them wrote to his Congressman complaining that he hadn’t enlisted in the military in order to save the world from a Spam apocalypse.

Shortly thereafter, the detail was canceled, no explanation given.

Stop the yobos! That was the real impetus behind 8th Army’s ration control policy.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but the biggest black-marketeers in my opinion were not the Korean women buying too many oxtails, but the AAFES employees.