Korean markets and independent vendors sell socks aplenty. The selection is dazzling and diverse, ranging from tiny little peds that barely graze the top of your foot to full on stockings that ride up over your hips. They also have racks and racks of k-pop socks and hallyu star socks. Teppy found a pair for each of the members of EXO and of course one of our favorites, Lee Min Ho. My favorites are the fluffy fuzzy socks, that Mary Christmas bought at the market for her betrothed in Mary Stayed Out All Night. (I bought a striped pair from a vendor for $2.00 despite the sign on his cart labelling every other sock for only $1.00--I think he ripped me off--but at least now I can say I have an authentic pair of Korean fuzzy socks, not the imposters they sell at Walmart during the winter.)
All of those fancy socks aside, the ones that stick out the most in both of our minds are the Obama socks. We can't help but wonder, WHY IN THE HELL DO KOREANS SELL OBAMA SOCKS? and, WHY IN THE HELL WOULD ANYONE BUY OBAMA SOCKS? You can't even buy them in America, so finding them in Korea is the LAST place one would expect to find them. The only other high profile ruler, well, she isn't even a ruler, that I can imagine there would be socks for is Queen Elizabeth. The Brits seem to be crazy about putting royalty all over household items like tea cups, stamps, and dish towels, so it truly wouldn't surprise me to find socks with her mug all over them. But Obama? Ok, well, we bought them, but that's because we are tourists and couldn't pass them up. But the people who live there? Do they like Obama THAT much that they would envelop their feet with his mug? I don't get it. I will probably never get it. But I did enjoy spotting him in every sock pile we came upon....because there he was, front and center. If you ever get to Seoul, be sure to check out the sock vendors and see if you can spot the Obama socks. Come our next election, my guess is they will replace Obama with our next Commander in Chief and these little gems in the Korean sock piles will be a forgotten piece of the past. Maybe I could sell mine on ebay then? You saw it here first, folks!!