gettyimagesbankQ. Why hasn’t there been any panic buying in Korea since the outbreak of COVID-19?

A. Long story short, Koreans have had no good reason to buy goods in bulk or stockpile daily necessities in advance, even during the pandemic. There is a sufficient amount of goods at retail stores or through online shopping websites, and consumers can buy whatever they want at any time. This partly explains why Koreans have stayed relatively calm and didn’t stockpile daily necessities even after cases of COVID-19 infections were on the rise last year. As one anonymous retail store executive said in a media interview last year, there won’t be a shortage of daily necessities, including toilet paper, in Korea because producers have the capability to supply as much of those goods as consumers want.

The only problem retailers are wrestling with is how they can sell more of their products, he added.

Korea has a strong manufacturing base. Most canned food, instant noodles, toilet paper, bottled water and hand sanitizers are locally produced and thus won’t be affected by the virus-hit global supply chain.

Korea is also one of the leading countries in e-commerce. About 30 percent of Korean shoppers buy products online, causing online shopping websites to compete for faster deliveries of ordered products. In Korea, half-day deliveries are common. If you order your product at night, you can get it early the next morning, before 7 a.m. With the surge of online shoppers during the pandemic, some deliveries were delayed by a day or so, but consumers were ensured they would get their products.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Korea’s citizens and healthcare authorities faced alarms over several other deadly infectious diseases. They came to realize that even when a virus is spreading, there is no such thing as a shortage of certain products.

**“Ask Us about Korea” is a Q&A section about Korea and Korean culture. If you have any relevant questions, please send us an email (KOCIS@korea.kr). We’ll choose one of the questions sent by our readers and answer it in this section.**