hankyoreh

After Emperor Qin Shi Huan of the Qin Dynasty unified China in 221 BC, his first action was to implement a unified system of weights and measures. The first law enacted after the founding of the Empire of Korea in 1897 was the Law on Weights and Measures. While the government’s traditional domain of sole and inherent rights subsumes taxation and the issuing of currency, it does not include the standardization of measurement units for weight, length, and volume. That being said, in order to maintain the soundness of commerce and for the sake of consumer protection, such a consistency in measurements is indeed no less important than the power of taxation and currency printing.

By law, from July of next year the area measurement of land, apartments, buildings, and so on are to be made in units of square meters rather than the pyeong, and the weights of metals, fruits, grains, and so on are to be evaluated in grams or kilograms rather than the geun. In the case that contracts, advertisements, or product labeling is written with the prohibited units of the pyeong or geun, a punishment will be meted out. The Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy’s report to the State Council meeting, entitled "Policy for the Implementation of Legal Unit Usage," advised a 500,000 won fine, effective July 2007, to be levied on those businesses that persist in the use of the old units of measure. In addition, a public awareness campaign will be carried out until June.

Though some may object that the government is needlessly interfering in the everyday life of common people who use the measurements of pyeong and geun, the government’s action to impose a fine and introduce new units is not without precedent. In 1961, the Park Chung Hee regime instituted the metric prefix (SI) and prohibited the use of the gwan, geun, don, and ri. Unlike its compatriots, the pyeong was granted a pardon, for it had been used in all measurements of land and building space contained within real estate registries. During the succeeding 20 years however, the statistics within land ledgers and real estate registries were converted into square meters, and thus the usage of the pyeong was banned, as well. Yet while the law’s wording was strict, most remained ignorant of its very existence, and thus the people of Korea have continued to use the pyeong, geun, and don in their daily lives. Indeed, after the 1960s, there have been no instances of punishment under its provisions.

In 2000 and 2001, the government once more enacted legislation for the institution of metric units. An official at the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy stated, "the government forwarded strong legislation for the usage of [metric] measurements in 2001, but the jewelers and the construction industry objected, and the media took a negative slant, arguing that it was an imposition of unnecessary regulations when the people were already faced with difficult conditions." He continued, "the regulators themselves viewed the issue as one intertwined with the people’s livelihood, so they naturally took a passive stance in its enforcement, and the government in turn retreated." At the time, the government pushed for the parallel inscription of both metric and conventional measures on gold jewelry certificates, real estate registries, as well as housing sale advertisements and contracts.

However, the government is no longer willing to tolerate a delay in the conversion, much less a system of parallel inscription; it is preparing to require the singular usage of metric units. Gold pricing will be set in grams, and will be denominated in even units (i.e. 2g, 4g, 6g). An official from the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy said that "to grant any more deferments of implementation will be merely to repeat what we’ve done in the past. Although it may be inconvenient, we must end this circle [of stipulation and non-enforcement]. It’s a bitter pill that just simply must be swallowed."

In truth, the square meter is a unit much more easily grasped than the pyeong. For instance, an apartment advertised as being 100 sq. m. (10m by 10m) is easier to imagine than one described as being 30 pyeong, Similarly, Yeoido, with an area of 2.6 million pyeong, is much easier to picture when described as being 8.4 sq. km. (4km by 2.1km). When the state demesne is reported as being 6.9 billion pyeong, its almost impossible to comprehend, but when described as 23,000 sq. km., or 230 km by 100 km, an area the length of which stretches from Seoul to Daejeon with a width of 100km, then one can attain a general idea of the scale.

In particular, when the unit of measurement differs based upon the type of article or area that is being measured, confusion results. For instance, a pyeong of land is 3.3 sq. m., but a pyeong of glass is 0.09 sq. m. As for one geun, it can correspond to 200g of vegetables, 400g of fruits, or 600g of red pepper and meat. One majigi of land is 495 sq. m. in Gyeonggi Province, 660 sq. m. in Cheungcheong Province, and 990 sq. m. in Gangwon Province. Though the geun is falling out of favor with the diffusion of electronic scales, there are many restaurants that still sell meats by an all too imprecise unit of "serving size" (i.e., serves 2). In response to this, the government has taken the policy of assessing one "serving" as being equivalent to 100g. However, as for the units of yards and pounds used in golf and bowling, respectively, the government has decided in consideration of international convention to allow a parallel measurement system.

Of course, it will be difficult to turn ones back on the familiar forms of measure in the less than a year remaining. Though it has been 45 years since the government has accepted the metric system, the officially permitted measurement units have yet to completely take root in daily life, and even the government and media organs often resort to their usage. In a survey of 141 officially authorized textbooks, 2,478 separate uses of the unsanctioned units were found, and an investigation of daily newspapers throughout last September found 209 references to the prohibited units, including the pyeong, barrel, and horsepower. Even the measurement of ㏄, commonly applied to automobile engine displacement, belongs in the category of erroneous units. ㏄ is after all not an international unit, and should be written as cubic centimeters (㎤).

Though in the past a pyeong could be measured with a ruler denominated in cheok (30.303cm, thus making 1 pyeong equivalent to 6 cheok by 6 cheok) such rulers are no longer sold, having been replaced by metric ones. Moreover, even China, which formulated Korea’s customary system of measurements, changed over to the use of meters instead of cheok at the beginning of this decade. It is even said that Chinese people can no longer comprehend an apartment space when it is described in pyeong.

Though there are some who decry the abolition of the customary units, strictly speaking, these measures do not trace their roots to Korean tradition. Jewelers did not originally use the don. Indeed, as division leader Yun Byeong-su of the Korea Association of Standards & Testing Organizations said, "the don was originally a unit used by Japanese pearl cultivators, and entered the Korean jeweler’s lexicon during the occupation years." He continued, "the current pyeong in usage does not derive from the unit of the same name used in the Joseon Dynasty, but rather from the unit left behind by the Japanese occupation. Even Japan has forsaken the don for the units of grams and ounces, but here we are standing around like idiots still blathering on about don."

[englishhani@hani.co.kr]