Shopofkorea guides
Najeon Business Card Case and Wind Bell Chosen as Gifts for a Foreign Man
Official product names are shown in Korean. Product pages are in Korean; prices are in South Korean won (KRW).
As the year-end approached, I wanted to give something to the foreign acquaintances who had helped me throughout the year. Since I saw them often for work, I didn't want anything too trivial, but I also didn't want anything too burdensome. One of them was a man, and honestly that was the hardest part. I can usually think of something for women, but when I searched for gift ideas for foreign men, all that came up was cosmetics and alcohol.
At first I searched using terms like "gifts for foreigners" and "Korean traditional gift sets." Jangseung (Korean totem poles) caught my eye, and I spent a good while looking at najeon (mother-of-pearl inlay) hand mirrors and jewelry boxes too. They were pretty, but I just couldn't picture a jewelry box sitting on a man's desk. Then my eye moved toward business card cases. It's something you take out every day, something you hold in your hand at meetings. For two days I kept adding things to my cart and removing them, and in the end I placed one order, then added more items and placed a second order. That's how much I agonized over it.
What I chose for the man was the 명함케이스-매화(청색) (business card case – plum blossom, blue). It belongs to the najeon lacquerware family, with thin natural mother-of-pearl applied to a metal base, so the shell shimmers softly when it catches the light. The blue ground keeps it from looking flashy, and I thought it would look perfectly natural for a man to carry. The size is about 9.2 × 5.9 cm, small enough to slip into an inside jacket pocket.
I also liked the plum-blossom motif. I read that the plum blossom, which blooms first by overcoming the cold, symbolizes the beginning of a new spring. I thought there was no better story for a gift given right at the turn of the year. Since I wasn't confident I could explain it in English, I left a note when ordering asking them to please include an English information sheet. When the package arrived, there was an information sheet inside for each item, and I felt relieved.
There was one more thing I was particular about: the color of the gift box. I was worried it might arrive in a pink box for a man's gift, so I asked whether I could request a black or blue box. Fortunately it came in a blue box, and when you opened it the business card case was sitting neatly on fabric inside. I had also asked them to send a clean piece with no scratches, and when I checked it carefully it really was flawless.
One More Gift to Hang at Home
If the business card case was a gift for the workplace, I also wanted something that could be kept and enjoyed at home. That's why I chose the 벽걸이 풍경종中 - 벼타작 (wall-hanging wind bell, medium – rice threshing). It is a wind bell made by metal casting, with a scene of rice threshing rendered in relief on the wind-catcher. At 22.5 cm tall, it is just the right size to hang on a wall or by a window.
I decided on it the moment I read that the rice-threshing image represents the harvest and abundance of a year's farming. It felt like exactly the right fit for wrapping up a year with the sentiment of "Thank you for all your hard work this year; I hope next year brings you many good things." It's also easy to explain the autumn scenery of the Korean countryside to foreign recipients.
The Day I Handed Them Over
I brought the gifts in person to a year-end gathering. I was anxious about whether the delivery would arrive in time, but it came safely the day before. The moment the man opened the blue box, he took out the business card case and tilted it back and forth. The mother-of-pearl shimmers as if changing color, and he said, "This is made from a shell?" with genuine amazement. We read the plum-blossom story in the English information sheet together, and when I added that in Korea this flower is regarded as the herald of spring, he transferred his business cards into it right then and there.
As for the wind bell, the recipient sent me a photo a few days later. They had hung it on the living room wall and said it chimes every time the door opens. They asked what the people in the picture were doing, so I spent quite a while explaining that it shows the autumn scene of beating rice stalks to harvest the grain. I never expected one gift to lead to such a long conversation.
Looking back, I think the right approach for gifts for foreign recipients is to think first about "something the person will actually use or have a place to put," rather than "something Korean." Add just one story on top of that, and it's enough. If I ever have an occasion to give small gifts to a number of people at once, I'm also thinking about the 금장 책갈피-국보 10종세트 (gold-foil bookmark – set of 10 national treasure motifs). Since there are ten different national treasure motifs, I think it would be fun to let each person choose their own.
This account is based on an actual purchase experience; individuals and organizations have been anonymized and some scenes have been reconstructed.