Yes, funnily enough the US customs form is the only form I’ve seen that so clearly states that the value only refers to items that will remain in the country. Again I chose the Korean one more as a technical exercise because it was the most difficult one. In fact the sentence specifically starts with “are you carrying”.

I can give another example of the UK duty free allowance info page (I can’t post URL’s as a new member) which doesn’t seem to list any exceptions for personal possessions that you intend to bring back out.

So yes I do understand that “value of items to remain in the country” makes the most practical sense. But for a straight literal read of such things that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Another one I found was the Australian website states that personal goods are exempt if they have been owned for more than 12 months, otherwise they would have to be “imported temporarily (a security may be required by the Department)”. So this would make me think that if I purchased an expensive camera system and flew to Australia 6 months later for a holiday I would have to declare it and possibly pay a security deposit on it? And if I didn’t declare and got checked, I would get in trouble if randomly checked? Which seems awfully inconvenient to me!

Apologies, my OCD has turned this into a technical exercise for me to figure out, so im sorry if I’m being frustrating. Heck I’m thinking many wedding rings would exceed duty free limits, and I certainly don’t expect that every married woman with a moderately expensive wedding ring (or heck a newly married woman on a honeymoon in Australia for example!) would be going to declare their ring.