By Kim Ji-soo
Staff Reporter
The dollar is sometimes referred to as the greenback. The Korean won, in casual parlance, is known as ``baechu'' (Chinese cabbage) for its 10,000-won note is colored green.
But the color, the hues and the characteristics of money seem to vary these days, more so in light of recent news and sightings.
There is a popular food stall in downtown Seoul that sells ``tteokbokki," deep-friend snacks and ``sundae'' (Korean blood sausage). It's so popular the cook and owner has no time to rest. He's constantly refilling his tteokbokki grill with new rice cakes, and dipping fresh dough into the wok to give customers what they want. He works nonstop; he has no time to exhale. His face displays the characteristics of his money: red, hot and honest.
As for me, after a day's work, I often find red or black ink used for marking corrections on dummy sheets on my fingers and wrists. The irregular pattern of red and black dots is the color of my money.
One of the closest things to modern people is their bodies, says renowned author Lee O-young in his latest book ``From Intelligence to Spirituality.'' This line reads true when we think about it because at lot of the time we know we are sick when we feel a fever in our body, or that we are feeling shy when our face turns red. Our body tells a lot about ourselves.
Recently, a larger than usual amount of stories on bribes and corruption has surfaced in Korea. The county governor of Dangjin in South Chungcheong Province is currently on the wanted list after attempting to leave the country on a false passport after government auditors suspect him of receiving a holiday villa and an apartment in return for distributing business rights to an entrepreneur. Another local government chief, the head of Yeongyang County in North Gyeongsang Province, is also suspected of having received kickbacks from a construction company that he is a major shareholder of. The color of their money? The burning red of greed and desire?
A construction company chief, based in South Gyeongsang Province, recently came forward with his private books on how he had been ``treating'' prosecutors in his region to gifts and perks, including paying for prostitutes, for 25 years. A cozy relationship between the prosecution and those who might have an interest in knowing a prosecutor has been a steady factor in Korean history, I'm sorry to say. President Lee Myung-bak hit the nail on the head on this matter, when he spoke out for the first time about it on April 26. He said, ``Prosecutors may have thought that being treated to a round of drinks or a meal is OK because there are no tangible interests involved … But because these practices have been in place for a decade, two decades, we now have no notion that they may be irregular.'' The color of money here ― for both the patron and the clientele ― is the ambiguous shade of gray.
Once upon a time, journalists also received small gifts, a white envelope with a small sum of cash known as ``chonji," which was an embarrassing shade of white.
On April 13, North Korea froze the South Korean government assets such as the inter-Korean reunion center and other Korea Tourism Organization assets such as the duty free shop in the Mt. Geumgang area in North Korea, putting ``freeze" stickers on these properties. On April 27, North Korea seized, as they had forewarned, all of these assets, completing the process with ``seize" stickers. South Korean Unification Ministry officials said that both of these stickers had a white background on which the ``freeze" and ``seize" letters were written in black. But that the "freeze" ones had one diagonal red line going through them while the ``seize" stickers had two. The color of inter-Korean business and relations at the moment.