Won Is Real Money

Some of you are thinking, well duh.  Of course won is real money, you purchase things with it.  But already I have fallen into the trap ignoring the fact that spending won is equivalent to spending dollars.  In the States my money is shaped a certain way.  It has a certain size and weight and color depending on how much it is worth.  Though the dollar bills are not all different sizes, numbers, usually 1, 2, 5, 10, or 20 but sometimes 50, or 100, inform me of how much it is worth.  The faces are recognizable.

But in Korea, the bills are all different sizes and colors.  The number are ones I rarely or never deal with at home.  Numbers like 10,000 or 50,000!  They are the kind of numbers I would see on scratch-its and think "yea right" before revealing I had won two dollars!  The faces are people I would have never recognized, and even after museums and tours I recognize only Admiral Yi Sun-Sin (on the 100 won coin) and King Sejong (10,000 won note).  All of these aspects separate the Korean won from the US dollar in my mind.

Instead of turning my nose up at a difference of two or three thousand won, as I would were it two or three dollars, I simply hand over my colorful money and go about my day.  Though I understand I only have a finite amount of money, won has become much easier to part with.

I have set a strict budget, 150,000 won per week, everything included.  Doing this I am able to write down each of my purchases and keep in perspective how much I have been spending through the week. Though it is a bummer at the end of the day to write down each and every purchase with a descriptions, I feel that it has helped begin to realize that won is real money.  Though that didn't keep me from handing my money over the the makgeolli guy.  Stupid, friedly makegeolli guy...