The Korean monisphere

On and above the surface of our planet, we've got a stratosphere, mesosphere, troposphere, biosphere, chemosphere, aerosphere, exosphere, thermosphere, hydrosphere, and an ionosphere.

I submit that there is also a monisphere, and it is especially concentrated above the Republic of Korea.

While so many people spend their time in salaried positions or in freelance work trying to make enough won to pay the rent, buy alcohol, or purchase the latest all-in-one cell phone-PDA-MP3 player-portable TV-Breathalyzer, there are some people who, with little or no work on their own part, have access to an insane amount of money that is just out of the reach of most Korean citizens (and international residents).

Evidence can be seen down here on the Earth's surface, in places like Shinsegae Department Store in Myŏngdong, where this past weekend I saw a television for sale that costs more than I paid for my apartment.

Granted my apartment is twenty-five years old, not a big financial draw in Korea where so many people eschew anything that's not new, new, new. Granted, also, that the television, an 80-inch-diagonal monstrosity, is almost as big as my apartment.

But how on God's green Earth did a television get to be more expensive than a place to live? I'm not talking about wimpy little chŏnsei [전세] deposit money; I'm talking about the actual purchase price of my place. Only people with plentiful access to the monisphere could even imagine paying that much for a TV, yet Shinsegae has it right out there on display, expecting someone(s) to buy it.

I don't have a picture to post yet, but I'll get one of the 80-inch Samsung PAVV PB device being sold for 150,000,000 won [一億五千萬元]. It does have a nice, crisp picture (you can see all the skin imperfections the actors and actresses were probably hoping to conceal), but given the choice, I'd rather have a roof over my head.