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By Yoon Ja-young
While no one is able to answer when the iPad2 will be available in Korea, some early adopters can’t wait and are flooding shopping agencies. Even there, however, they have to wait for over a month.
Apple launched its latest tablet in the United States last Friday and over 1 million lucky people walked out of stores with the shiny new device in their hot little hands.
Korea is also home to a fair share of eager tech-savvy early adopters, but the tablet isn’t likely to be in local markets anytime soon. The list of countries to start selling the iPad2 on March 25 announced by Apple included Australia, Canada, France, Japan and the United Kingdom, but Korea was not among them.
To buy one from an agent, one should first visit the websites, Internet cafes or blogs. Then he or she should go to Apple’s online store, select the model, along with the other accessories, and make a payment. For the shipping address, they type the address of the shopping agent in the United States. Upon receiving the iPad2, the agent sends it to the customer in Korea charging their own fees.
An agency which runs an Internet café on the country’s top portal Naver had over a hundred requests to purchase the iPad2. On this site it costs 845,000 won to buy a 16GB, Wi-fi iPad2, including the agent fees and shipping costs. It depends on the agent, but the price is usually 1.5 times more than the price in the United States which starts from $499.
Shopping agents for the first iPad operated but the demand wasn’t as high as the second one is now. More people are drawn to the iPad2 despite the inconvenience of going through the shopping agencies as the latest tablet PC by Apple supports the Korean language. It is 33 percent thinner than the original, weighs less but is faster as it uses a dual core processor. Both the first and second versions are priced the same. Even with the shopping agencies, it will still take weeks for Apple fans here to get the device. Apple has extended the shipping for online orders from three to five days to roughly 4 to 5 weeks.
There is also risk of fraud. In the case of the first iPad, a fake agent opened an Internet site and disappeared with the money after accepting payments. Some people were waiting for the Japan release but Apple postponed it due to the earthquake.
Meanwhile, the country had the first iPad2 user registered Monday. Lee Jin-soo, CEO of Podotree, an application developing company, registered the 64 GB, 3G iPad2 at KT, a local carrier, Monday. He had asked his friend in New York to get one for him.
아이패드2 인기폭발
아이패드2가 언제 한국에서 출시될지 아무도 모르는 가운데, 몇몇 얼리어답터들은 기다림을 참지 못해 구매대행업체로 몰리고 있다. 하지만, 그곳에서도 한달 이상을 기다려야 한다.
애플은 지난 금요일 미국에서 최신 태블릿을 출시했다. 1백만명이 넘는 사람이 운좋게도 이 반짝이는 새 기기를 따끈한 손에 넣고 매장을 나섰다.
한국에도 열렬한, 기술에 능통한 얼리어답터들이 꽤 있지만, 아이패드2는 가까운 시일내에 국내시장에 출시되지 않을 것 같다. 애플은 3월 25일에 아이패드2 판매가 시작될 국가의 명단을 발표했는데, 이 명단에는 호주, 캐나다, 프랑스, 일본과 영국이 포함되어 있었지만 한국은 없었다.
대행사를 통해 아이패드2를 사려면 우선 대행사 웹사이트, 인터넷카페나 블로그를 방문해야 한다. 그다음에 애플사의 온라인 매장에 가서, 다른 액세서리와 함께 모델을 선택하고, 결제를 해야 한다. 배송지 주소에 미국에 있는 구매대행사의 주소를 입력한다. 아이패드2를 받으면, 대행사는 수수료를 붙여 한국에 있는 고객에게 보내준다.
