It's not just in South Korea. It happens in Romania/Europe too and in fact PCs with Windows bundled sometimes are $200 more expensive. Microsoft may or may not

It's not just in South Korea. It happens in Romania/Europe too and in fact PCs with Windows bundled sometimes are $200 more expensive. Microsoft may or may not have anything to do with it. It might be that these PC manufacturers provide Windows for their more expensive models as a way for differentiating them from the cheaper ones. Also not all manufacturers get the same deal. For example I bought a Thinkpad E530 without Windows on it. The other model that was available to me had the same specs, plus an extra 16 GB SSD mSata and Windows and was $270 more expensive. I got the cheaper model and I replaced the hard-drive with a 256 GB SSD, which was a far better deal. Personally I'm glad that this happens, because I don't run Windows and it would be pretty bad if I had to pay the Windows tax.