If you ever plan to visit South Korea, I would recommend you trying one of our most famous food called “kimbap” (click here for image). People often refer to kimbap as Korean style sushi rolls, but they differ in their ingredients which I will talk about in this blog post. The main reason why Kimbap is so popular is because people view it as the best “carrying food (literally, food that is easy to carry such as burritos).” I have applied economic concepts that we have learned in class so far to analyze how kimbap has gained such reputation.

As mentioned above, the primary reason why kimbap is so popular in South Korea is because of its conveniency. Kimbap, if translated word to word, means “seaweed rice.” As you can see from the picture I linked above, kimbap is simply steamed rice rolled in a piece of seaweed with carrots, spinach, ham, egg, cucumber, pickled radish, and fish cake inside. The preparation for making kimbap is very simple. Most of the ingredients that are used in kimbap are vegetables, which do not need to be cooked. The rest are processed ham or tuna, which you can easily purchase in any grocery markets. Once you have these simple ingredients ready, it takes less than a minute to roll one kimbap. In other words, kimbap has less implicit cost than making any other Korean dishes, such as kimchi stew, because making kimbap takes much less time.

The opportunity cost of eating outside is another reason why kimbap is famous among people who are busy, such as office workers and students. Kimbap is portable because you can easily slice it into pieces and carry them in a zip-lock while a full set of Korean meal with soup and side meals are not as easy to carry. Many Koreans agree that kimbap is an “easy meal” because the food contains everything that you need in just one roll: rice, ham/tuna/beef, and vegetables. Simply put, a roll of kimbap is equivalent to one meal. Therefore, for workers or students who don’t have time to step out the building for a lunch break can either purchase kimbap or make one for themselves before going to work so that they can save time. For these people, time is very valuable, which means the opportunity cost of going out to eat lunch is very high because they are giving up their time to work.

Finally, kimbap is a great way to minimize our explicit cost. On average, the total cost of purchasing all the ingredients used in making kimbap is about $10. From my own experience, these ingredients are enough to make 5 rolls of kimbap. One roll of kimbap is enough for an individual to be full. Assuming that one roll equals one meal, an average explicit cost of making a roll of kimbap is about $2. Of course, preparing and making kimbap requires time, an implicit cost. However, there is also an implicit cost of eating out because you need to leave your work to go to a cafeteria or a restaurant. When you make an order, you also have to wait for your food to come out, thereby even increasing your implicit cost of eating outside. The act of eating kimbap alone, however, has almost zero implicit cost: it is common to see people working or studying while eating kimbap with their hands. Moreover, the average price of a meal in Korea is about $8, which is about four times the price of a roll of kimbap ($8 / $2 = 4). Given these costs, it makes sense why people favor kimbap in their everyday life. The food is undoubtedly delicious, but at the same time, eating kimbap is an effective way to minimize both our explicit and implicit costs at workplace.

A Huffington Post article written by Drew Guarini (click here for the link) suggests that from 2011 to 2012, the aggregate purchase of music, including both physical and digital music, rose by 3.1%, while the purchase “physical music,” as this articles puts it, such as CDs fell by 12.8%. Because the purchase of CDs fell while there was an increase in the total consumption of albums, we can conclude from this statistics that consumers have become more willing to consume music digitally than physically. Expectedly, the articles mentions online stores such as iTunes and Amazon as the factors that have contributed to the trend described above. For this blog post, however, I want to analyze deeper about this issue using economics tools that I have learned in this class so far.

Obviously, many people prefer digital music to physical music for conveniency. In this 21st century, people carry music everywhere, whether they go on a hike or shop groceries. With the invention of the substitute goods of CD players such as portable music player devices or iPhone, which even has built-in MP3 players, carrying an additional round CD player has now become a burden. A wallet on one pocket and an iPhone on the other, there is simply no more room for people to carry the device around in our daily life. Everything becomes so easy when you just purchase songs on iTunes and put them directly into your iPhone playlist. Digital music is even more attractive because you don’t have to worry about your property being stolen or lost. Even if you somehow lose your digital songs, you can always go back and re-download them for free.

Another economic concept that can explain why people prefer to shop music online is because of the opportunity cost of buying a physical CD. For example, let’s say that I am drinking a cup of coffee at Starbucks when the Beatles’s two hit songs, Let it Be and Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, are being played through the radio. These songs are phenomenal, so I want to purchase them right away. Fortunately, with my iPhone that contains an iTunes application, I can instantly download these songs within less than a minute. Thus the opportunity cost here is nearly zero excluding the price I have paid to purchase the songs. If there were no online purchase of music, however, I would have to make a trip to a store to buy these songs, which takes time and the cost of gasoline (as I will most likely be driving there) that could have been spent differently yet more meaningfully, such as studying for my test or exercising. Thus, the opportunity cost of physically going to a store to purchase music has a higher opportunity cost than the opportunity cost of instantly downloading them through online.

Continuing with the Beatles example above, utility is another factor that can affect people to purchase online music instead of physical music. Let’s assume that a Beatles album costs around $15 (as is on Amazon) and that I only have $25 in my wallet. Unfortunately, if purchase of physical album is the only way for me to get the album, it is impossible for me to acquire both songs that I want because they are from two different albums. Ultimately, I would have to give up one song to purchase the other because if I want to purchase a song from a physical album, I have to buy the whole album. I can’t just buy a part of the album that contains the song that I want. On the contrary, I can make a single song purchase on iTunes for a little bit over $1. Using iTunes, I would be able to get the two songs that I wanted without having to buy the full albums. In the end, I will have maximum utility and approximately extra $23 ($25 – $2) that I can happily spend on other goods. This will allow me to more accurately and selectively allocate my resources.

Every male citizen of South Korea must serve 2 years in the military before the age of 30. Many male South Korean students at Carleton take 2 years off from college to serve out their military duty. While most Korean students choose to leave after their freshman year, some leave after graduation. After debating whether I should leave after my second year or after graduating, I have decided to leave school for military duty after my second year. My decision to leave after my sophomore year was determined after a careful analysis of trade-offs and opportunity costs between taking time off after my sophomore year and after graduation.

The opportunity cost of leaving after my second year at college is the gap in my college education. As an international student whose native language is not English, this gap is significant because while I am in the Korean military, there would be no chance for me to practice English at all. The problem gets worse when I come back from the military because not only will I be not used to conversing in English, but will also no longer be used to taking college classes in English. Some of my friends were a bit worried when I decided to leave after my second year because when I return from the military, I will be taking my major classes right away. Other trade-off of leaving before graduating is that when I return from the military, my friends from the Class of 2017 would be gone and I will have to make new friends. On the other hand, the benefits of leaving after my sophomore year is that taking the 2 years off from college after I declare my major would give me time to cautiously think about how I want to spend the remaining 2 years at Carleton. Also, spending 2 years of my life under strict rules of the military will make me more disciplined and allow me to mature as a person. Therefore, I believe that I would be more psychologically equipped to spend the second half of my life at Carleton than my peers.

The opportunity cost of leaving after graduation is exactly the same as my benefit of taking 2 years off after my sophomore year. My 4 years of college would go very fast without any break for me to think about my future and what I really want to accomplish here at Carleton. Additionally, finding a job after 2 years in the military would be very challenging because if I am at college, I would be able to utilize every employment resources available on campus, such as the Career Center. The only benefit of leaving after graduation is that, as I mentioned, I wouldn’t have to worry about losing my English skills and classmates. Therefore, in my personal view, the cost of going to the military after graduating is greater than the cost of leaving after my sophomore year. I strongly believe that I would benefit more from taking 2 years off after my sophomore year than going to the military after college.