roots from China

Chinese products are looked down upon in Korea (personal experience). The store owner was telling the mother, "These roots look like sh*t, they look like they're from China." To which the mother replies, "They *are* from China [you cheap b*tch]". (my sarcasm added).

As for products made in China (or anywhere else), that's how global business works. Like water, it will always seek the lowest level (of cost). Whatever country provides the cheapest cost will get to produce the product or provide the service. Why? Because you and I want to pay the lowest prices possible.

Taking your example, the 95% "markup" is not really the entire markup-- there's a host of other costs that are piled on top of the actual production cost: things like marketing, sales, shipping, salaries of American administrative staff and management (think how much CEOs make!), etc.

In the end, whatever price you see in the store is what the market is willing to pay for it. Those products would not stay long on the shelves if the price wasn't "right"-- nobody would buy them. They'd simply go to another store, find a cheaper substitute, or not buy at all. Of course, this assumes there's competition in the marketplace.

Check out the book "Basic Economics" by Thomas Sowell. He's supposedly a right-wing, conservative whatever, but there are no politics in basic economic principles, and he describes these in a way that's quite understandable to the average person.

The owner said that because Korean people don't trust Chinese products like people in the rest of the world.

Lots of bad Chinese products became big issues in Korea, such as soy sauce made of human hair, chilly powder made of red brick. Korean people don't want to buy Chinese products, especially when it comes to food.

The owner imported the herb from China because it's much cheaper that way, but obviously tells other people that the origin of the herb is Korea, but the herb somehow looked like they're from China (there's several ways to tell the origin of food, apparently).

The owner goes, "OMG, they look like they're from China (you should have done something to make them look like they're from Korea!)" , and the "mother" goes "They are from China (what do you expect?)"