7:10 a.m., the rooftop room in Gongdeok 🔍

At 7:10 a.m. in my rooftop room above Gongdeok Market Alley, I sit up to the rattle of a delivery handcart and the soft Sunday hymn drifting from a nearby church. The linoleum floor is already warm, and yesterday’s washed shirt hangs stiffly from a wire beside the window. I boil barley tea on the gas burner, eat cold rice rolled in gim, and count the notes left in my brown wallet before putting one aside for bus fare. The newspaper by the door is thick with talk of restructuring, unemployment, and the weak economy, words that make breakfast feel smaller. I am thirty-five, but this morning the blank space after “occupation” in my notebook seems to weigh more than my age.

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12:40 p.m., the employment board near Mapo Station 🔍

At 12:40 p.m. beside the employment notice board near Mapo Station, I stand under a striped awning while buses cough dark exhaust into the humid street. Several men in short-sleeved shirts silently copy telephone numbers into pocket notebooks, and no one wastes ten won on an unnecessary call. A radio in the stationery shop mentions the yen’s recent fall to around 147 per dollar, and the owner mutters that imported paper and machinery parts never stay simple when currencies lurch. I copy down two warehouse openings and one print-shop position, then use a pay phone whose receiver is slick with summer heat. Two places say the vacancy is already filled, but the small print shop in Ahyeon tells me to come by before evening. I buy a single chilled barley drink from a glass-front refrigerator and make it last all the way uphill.

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5:35 p.m., Baekseong Printing in Ahyeon 🔍

At 5:35 p.m. inside Baekseong Printing on a back lane in Ahyeon, I wipe my palms on my charcoal trousers before touching a stack of sample paper. The room smells of ink, machine oil, and damp cardboard, and an old electric fan turns its head with a dry clicking sound. The owner cannot offer a regular salary yet, but he asks whether I can calculate paper quantities, trim sheets, and deliver bundles by hand. I align a stack against the metal guide and show him that I still remember how to keep the corners square. He offers me a day’s trial tomorrow and presses a cup of vending-machine coffee into my hand, apologizing that it is mostly sugar. On the bus home, the city lights tremble in the window, and for the first time today I let myself plan beyond tonight.

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The IMF-era employment crisis shadows ordinary households ↗

The newspapers and conversations around me are filled with fear of restructuring and mass unemployment; as I search for work, those national figures feel painfully personal rather than abstract.

munhwa.com

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The yen recently reached 147 per dollar ↗

I hear on a shop radio that the yen hit another low around August 11, and even a neighborhood printer worries aloud about what unstable exchange rates will do to paper and machine-part costs.

namu.wiki

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