All About Korean VHS

KOREAN VIDEO TAPES?
South Korea has been fond of VHS for a long time. It is a format no longer used, but by sourcing and curating from what is left we hope to offer a nice invenvoty to VHS fans all over the world. We built up expertise in taking care of the tapes, checking and cleaning them before we list them. This is quite necessary as the tapes are often neglected picking up dust, mold or damage. The end results are listed in our store, so you are not only paying for the tape but also the service that went into it. Hopefully all your further questions will be answered in this FAQ.

CAN I PLAY A KOREAN VIDEO TAPE IN MY VCR?
Korean video tapes are in the NTSC format, which is also used in North America and Japan, so if you are from there you can play the tapes on your local VCR. If you are in a region where they use the PAL format, which is used in most of the rest of the world, these will just show a black screen when putting them in your VCR. So you would need either a special multi-format player or import a VCR from a country where they use NTSC. South Korea is a good option as with 220 volt the country shares a similar voltage with most PAL-countries, so we hope to offer a nice assortment of VCR’s in our shop in the near future.

I SAW A MOVIE FROM 2008 ON VHS IN YOUR STORE, HOW’S THAT POSSIBLE?
In Korea VHS was released until 2010, while pretty much all other countries already made a full switch to DVD. This means there is quite an assortment available of titles that you won’t find elsewhere. The later it gets, the lower the amount of copies were made as VHS was of course slowly fading away, so it generally is harder to find a movie from 2009 or 2010 than from 2005 or 2006.

DOES THE MOVIE HAVE SUBTITLES OR IS IT DUBBED?
We do provide the details and specifications like this in the description on each listed VHS, but generally movies come in the original language with Korean subtitles. Animation and other kids movies often do come in two versions: one with the original language and subtitles and one that is dubbed into the Korean language without subtitles. There then is also a third category: with original audio (English in almost all cases) and English subtitles, which were made for youngsters learning and practicing their English. For some older VHS releases with older movies it does sometimes (very sometimes) happen it is a version (let’s say a Spanish or French spoken movie) dubbed into English, with Korean subtitles.

HOW IS THE PLAYBACK QUALITY?
We check the tapes on playback quality, generally in the beginning and at some random spots in the movie to see if all looks ok. If it does we’ll state that there are ‘no issues detected’. As these are mostly rental tapes, often in the very beginning of the tape there will be some imperfections but as this is common we don’t mention that, we do mention it if significant imperfections persist into the movie. The quality of the video and sound does differ per release, depending on the era, source, label etc. Older (pre-90s) releases generally would be a bit more vintage looking and sounding, while in the prime days of VHS you’d get really neat quality. The very late releases can differ per label, some labels gave up putting in top notch effort in the few VHS copies of their movies while focusing on dvd while other labels kept delivering well taken care of video prints. For the late releases that have notable lesser quality we will mention that, by example some would be a rather average copy of a dvd print (at least it looks like that) with boxed widescreen. In case certain aspects of the video and sound are very important to you and you can’t find the information in the description, drop us a message in the chat.

WHAT BOXES ARE USED FOR THE VIDEO TAPES?
By far most of our inventory are former rentals, which most of the time come in the bigger sized hard case boxes. Generally, but not always, these are branded by the distributor or studio. So among the tapes you will find a mix of familiar logos (like Warner Brothers, Universal, Fox) and less familiar logos (of Korean distributors like SKC and Daewoo) on the sides of the box.

HOW DO YOU SHIP VIDEO TAPES?
As each video tape is pretty much like a little mechanical device by itself we try to protect them the best we can. We put protection inside the case to prevent the cassette from banging around inside, wrap up the case so moist has a hard time reaching it, and put enough padding in the box so the case won’t get hurt. Check out this video for a packing demonstration of a single tape shipment:

WHAT ARE THOSE PUNCHHOLES IN THE COVER?
Well spotted. In video tapes from the early 2000s they started to punchhole the initials or logo of the distributor or studio into the cover, sometimes on front, sometimes on the back. One like the Warner Brothers logo is quite recognizable while others are the romanized initials of the distributor.

ARE THERE ANY GOOD OTHER RESOURCES FOR KOREAN VHS?
There are some enthusiasts and collectors sharing information online. A good place is this group on Facebook specifically focused on Korean VHS, this YouTube channel of a very experienced VHS hunter based in Korea, and this Flickr page by a big time collector that files VHS sleeves and pictures of Korean VHS shops.