Should I exchange now or later?

That is the question.  Today you would have found me scanning thousands of documents into the computer database and also researching on currency exchange.  Though it seems like I wasn't doing a lot of work I was.  To scan it only takes me about 1 minute to get 15 reports put them in the scanner and hit the button which is followed by 10 minutes of down time while the scanner reads them all.  Some might find it boring to do this all day but I have found it gives me time to study, meditate or research about my trip and today it was researching currency exchange.

The Korean currency is called the won (pictured to the left).  The dollar is quite strong against the won at 1 usd to 1,227 won.  That bill to the left is called man won (pronounced mahn wahn) and is as you might have guessed $8.14.  The funny thing is that man won was the highest bill in circulation up until a few years ago when a 50,000 won note was introduced, but I've heard that it is still pretty rare to see.  That means if you need to pay 1,000,000 won for something you need a stack of 100 man won!  I can just imagine a younger guy out to buy a top of the line rice cooker for his new bachelor pad and his friend stops and asks "you packing a lot of man won or are you happy to see me?"  ahahaha

Anyway,  I found myself trying to decide on exchanging my usd to won in the states through these forex companies that buy currencies at decent prices or wait to exchange in Korea.  Too bad none of the exchange companies in Korea ADVERTISE how much their fee and exchange rate is.  I know they can give you sub par exchange rates and add tons of fees on top of that, but these forex companies exchange for 9% less than the current rate with shipping included.  Also, too bad the TaLK program has not really helped in this regard.  I might exchange a couple hundred here (with those forex companies) and then do the rest when I'm in Korea.  I guess that would spread out my exchange rate risk a little.