Before the internet, finding and communicating with fellow mechanical pencil collectors was a near impossible task. Over the course of this blog I have had the pleasure of communicating with several Korean pencil-folk. There are quite a few Korean manufacturers and brands of writing instruments, but it seems most are not generally regarded by Koreans as particularly good quality, which surprises me. I think Korean manufactured products generally have a reasonable reputation, that there is some value in “Made in Korea” Sure, it’s not “Made in Japan” or Germany, but it’s better than many.
Micro was one of the larger Korean manufacturers, but they went bankrupt quite a few years ago. However their legacy continues on under the name eMicro. Recently I have been in contact with Kent from South Korea who publishesI asked him a few questions about eMicro, the use of the term Jedo, etc and he accepted the challenge. Putting on his Sherlock Holmes detective hat, he picked up the phone and let his fingers do the walking, making some calls to eMicro and others. The answers were limited, but interesting.
eMicro was founded by former staff of Micro, but there is no legal relationship or continuation between the two. It appears that Korean companies consider the Korean word '제도' and its pronunciation as written in English as 'Jedo' are both proper nouns and thus not copyrightable. Kind of interesting. I wonder if the Japanese consider the English wording “Sharp” (for mechanical pencil) in the same way?
Well, that’s just another little snippet or two of information. Kent also sent me an eMicro Jedo M105 mechanical pencil. I actually already had one of these, purchased a few years ago at Morning Glory. Like the other Koreans I have communicated with, Kent was at pains to point out that the M105 was not highly regarded in Korea, but was common because of its very low price