배포 庚子年 사월 二十九일
FOLIO 001
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gabs.cx

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값 — a price-ledger of unsold things — 장부

VOL. I · NO. 001 · PRINTED IN INSADONG · REGISTRY .CX/00012

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ENTRY I · ON THE WORD 값

값에 관하여

On the silent measure of worth.

값, a Korean noun of one syllable, denotes price — but the dictionaries are unanimous in their reluctance: it is also worth, cost, the figure for which a thing is given up. The character is older than the won and older than the yen; it survives in farmers' market shouts and in legal contracts and in pencil arithmetic at the back of every 장부 ever bound. To set a 값 upon a thing is, in this language, an act of attention, never of advertisement.

This document is a record of 값 as it is written by hand — in the columns of a small ledger, on the torn corner of a butcher's wrap, on the back of a receipt for camellia oil. The prices listed here have not been collected; they have been noticed. The intention is archival, not commercial. There is nothing here to buy.

What follows is a partial inventory: dates, items, and the quiet figures someone once committed to paper. We have preserved the original strikethroughs. We have preserved the corrections. The marginalia — in pencil, in a hand we cannot identify — we have left where they fell.

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ENTRY II · THE PRICES

The Ledger · 거래장

Imagined entries from an unreturned account-book, transcribed verbatim.

日付 · DATE 物品 · ITEM 값 · PRICE 標 · MARK
四月 十二日 Camellia oil — 동백기름, half-flask 圜 0.42 ✓
四月 十三日 Pine resin — 송진, paper-wrapped 圜 0.18 ✓
四月 十五日 Linen thread — 삼실, one bobbin 圜 0.31 0.27 ✗
四月 十七日 Iron-gall ink — 먹물, glass vial 圜 0.66 ✓
四月 十九日 Onion-skin paper — 양파지, twelve sheets 圜 0.09 ✓
四月 二十一日 Persimmon dye — 감물, small jar 圜 0.54 ✓
四月 二十三日 Brass nib — 놋펜촉, single 圜 0.12 0.10 ✗
四月 二十五日 Mulberry bark paper — 한지, one ream 圜 1.08 ✓
四月 二十七日 Bone-folder — 접지칼, ox-bone, used 圜 0.38 ✓
四月 二十九日 Vermilion stamp pad — 인주, refilled 圜 0.22 ✓

— 합계 / SUBTOTAL · 圜 3.94 · (회계: vide infra) —

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ENTRY III · A NOTE IN PENCIL

Tucked between the pages of the ledger, in a hand quite different from the bookkeeper's neat columns, a single torn corner of paper. The ink of the prices is iron-gall and dry; the writing on this torn slip is soft pencil. The two were never meant to be read together. We have set them adjacent because they were found adjacent.

이 가격이 맞을까?
— is this price correct? — margin, p. 014

We do not know who wrote this question. We do not know which price was being questioned. We have left both unsigned and unanswered, in the way of every honest archive.