A Note on Korean Currency

Handling Korean currency is very similar to handling the Dot Com Monopoly money. Even when you’re down to your last $1 bank note, it’s still $1 MILLION. That way, even though your grandmother/best friend’s little brother's obnoxious 10 year old cousin is sitting on every square but the Luxury Tax and owns hotels from The Strip (purple) to Desert Inn (green), somehow its not as depressing that you’ve only got your One (Million) Dollar (s). Note: I know foreign money ISN'T Monopoly money, but who can take a thousand ANYTHING note seriously? But back to the point: You have one 1,000 KRW note. Which seems like quite a lot, doesn’t it? So here I am carrying around 40,000 KRW and thinking, I’ve never carried around $40,000 (hah, like I’ve ever held ONE thousand dollars at any given time), Wow, that’s a lot of money. And maybe it is here. An ice cream bar is 1,000 KRW. A trashcan is 8,000 KRW. Really, who can make sense of those kinds of numbers?