What is gabs?
Where is value?
값 (gabs): the Korean word for value, price, and cost simultaneously.
Price. The number assigned by the market. Volatile, contextual, negotiable.
Cost. What is consumed in acquisition. Time, labor, opportunity.
Worth. The intrinsic merit that exists beyond the transaction.
Discover the dimensions of 값.
Consequence. The price paid after the price is paid.
The Korean won. A symbol of exchange in a nation rebuilt from rubble.
Personal value. Literally "body-price." What a person is worth.
Water is essential, cheap. Diamonds are useless, expensive. Why?
Worthiness. Whether the price reflects the deeper truth of the thing.
0 ≠ free. The absence of price is not the absence of cost.
Ledger. The merchant's book where all values are recorded and reckoned.
Opening the ledger
The price of everything is the trouble of acquiring it.
Value is not a property of objects. It is a relationship between a person and a moment. The same glass of water costs nothing at a fountain and everything in a desert. The same hour costs nothing in youth and everything in old age. The ledger of 값 is never balanced because the scale is always tipping, always adjusting, always human.