2017, May 25  by Jin

South Korea experienced a recent increase in food prices, such as ramen, coffee, beer and hamburger. From October 2016 to just before the presidential election, the food prices increased significantly. Even soda prices increased May 8, just one day before South Korea’s presidential election.

It seems that companies increased the prices during the government administration’s confusing time, from Choi Soon Sil’s government administration monopoly to the presidential election. Also, consumer prices in Korea increased 1.9 percent in April, according to Statistics Korea.

Lotte Chilsung Beverage averaged a 7.5 percent increase in prices of Pepsi, Let’s be, Milkis, HotSix and other convenience store products. They will going to increase the prices of their products in large markets, too. This increase is the first after January 2015. They said they needed to increase it because of the Labor, oil costs and distribution costs rising. They also said a Pepsi 1.5 liter is still 20 percent cheaper than their biggest competitor, Coca Cola.

A popular summer snack, prices of ice flakes with syrup increased recently, too. Sulbing increased prices of their products as much as 9 percent recently. They changed their ‘Mango Cheese Sulbing’ to ‘Apple Mango Cheese Sulbing’ and increased the price by 900 KRW. They increased the price of a lot of their products, but they also decreased the price of some of their products, like ‘Berry Yogurt Sulbing.’ As a result, the average price increase is 490 KRW.

Samyang increased the suggested retail prices of their main products an average of 5.4 percent, such as ‘Samyang Ramen’ and ‘Hot and Spicy Chicken Stir-Fried Noodle.’

Nongsim increased the suggested retail prices of ‘Sin Ramen’ and ‘Nugoory’ an average of 5.5 percent in December 2016.

Lee Jung Hee, professor of Joongang University, said, “When prices increase when people’s income don’t increase, it finally reduces the real income, so the new government has to take care of it.”