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When Bill Gates met President Lee Myung-bak at Cheong Wa Dae on May 6, the Microsoft chairman came bearing a very special gift: a Microsoft Xbox video game console inlaid with traditional Korean mother-of-pearl. In fact 100 similar Xboxes are being prepared by a Korean artisan, intended as special VIP gifts from the Microsoft chief.
The decoration is the handiwork of Kim Young-jun, the head of a manufacturing company called Gookbo. "I got a call from Microsoft Korea last month," Kim said. "They told me something about an Xbox, but I had no idea what that was. I thought they were talking about some kind of black box."
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Artisan Kim Young-jun, the president of Gookbo
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Microsoft was looking for a unique decoration representing traditional Korean beauty. Kim decorated the console with mother-of-pearl ume flowers and butterflies symbolizing patience and perseverance and treated the surface with a special substance. He entitled the final product "Peace".
"I'm expressing my hopes for world peace through the ume flowers and butterflies existing together in harmony," Kim said. He made three such Xboxes -- one for President Lee, one for Gates and another as a "just-in-case" spare, which he is holding onto himself.
Impressed by the completed work, Microsoft recently approached Kim to produce another 100 Xboxes as VIP gifts. "We're discussing making mother-of-pearl Microsoft logos," he said.
Kim worked as an economist at a securities company before switching careers in the mid-1990s, fascinated by lacquerware inlaid with mother-of-pearl. He has since worked to find ways to use mother-of-pearl in high-tech products like Samsung Electronics refrigerators and LG mobile phones.
"I'm grateful that Bill Gates appreciates the beauty of mother-of-pearl, which even Koreans are forgetting, but at the same time I feel sorry," Kim said. "Shouldn't it be us (Koreans) who give mother-of-pearl gifts to Bill Gates, and not vice versa?"
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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