When talking about global benchmarks, people use the expression "global standard." A standard means a "norm." A standard is a pact that spans the economy, industry, and technology. Technology can create the need for a "standard," but a single standard can also drive a leap tantamount to a revolution. The Korean Agency for Technology and Standards and ChosunBiz selected the "top 10 standards that changed the world" and the "top 10 standards that changed the lives and economy of Koreans" based on a survey of experts from industry, academia, research, and the press, and reexamine the role of standards. [Editor's note]
In Jul. last year, the Korean thriller drama "84 Square Meters" drew attention by ranking No. 1 globally in non-English viewership on Netflix just two weeks after its release. The title, 84 square meters (㎡), is the most common apartment size in Korea. The drama is said to depict what happens as a young person, who managed to buy an 84㎡ apartment with a loan, suffers from noise between floors.
If this drama had been released 20 years ago, its title might have been "24 pyeong (坪)." Until then, when discussing apartment sizes, it was common to use pyeong instead of ㎡. Pyeong is said to have originated from the area wide enough for a person to lie down with arms and legs outstretched. One pyeong is 3.3058㎡. It originated in China and was widely used in Japan. Japan introduced the unit during the Japanese occupation to measure Korea's land area.
To remove remnants of Japanese rule and adopt measurement units used worldwide, the Korean government enacted the Weights and Measures Act in 1961. At that time, it also banned the use of don, a unit used to express the weight of precious metals such as gold and silver, and geun, a unit used for the weight of meat, grains, and fruit. The ban on pyeong came later. That was because of the practice of recording land width in pyeong on certified copies of the register. In 1983, both the land ledger and certified copies of the register were standardized in ㎡.
However, pyeong and don continued to be used in daily life. People were not punished for using them. A 2006 survey of 374 companies nationwide by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources, the Korea Consumer Agency, and the Korea Association of Standards and Testing Organizations found that 88% of real estate brokerages customarily used pyeong instead of ㎡. It was also found that 71% of precious metal sellers used don instead of grams (g).
In response, starting in 2007, the Technical Standards Agency under the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources (now the Korean Agency for Technology and Standards) decided to impose fines of 500,000 won if pyeong was used instead of ㎡ in documents such as dwelling sales contracts or apartment pre-sale notices. Since Jun. 2010, the agency has been imposing fines for using pyeong in newspaper advertisements. And since Jan. 2013, it has expanded enforcement to include internet and real estate brokerage office ads. In this way, pyeong, which had taken deep root in people's lives, came to be replaced by ㎡.
By using the internationally standard measurement units, consumers have been able to understand product information more accurately and conduct transactions. In the case of apartments, the actual exclusive-use area might be 25.7 pyeong, but when remeasured in ㎡ it often amounts to only 25.6 pyeong. Also, when the don unit used in precious metal transactions is converted to grams (g), one don is 3.75 g. A half-don is 1.875 g, but most scales used at precious metal shops cannot measure 0.005 g. Therefore, when buying a half-don of gold, an error of 0.005 g occurs.