Remember magic eye pictures? That horrible fad in the 90’s where people would print out blurry shaped blobs and claim that if you went cross-eyed and stared long enough you could see the image of something inane. Usually what happened was you could see it for a few seconds before your eyes started to water and you got a horrible headache, or it didn’t work at all. Remember those?
Yeah, they sucked, didn’t they?
I never really liked the things as they never really worked for me. People at my high school claimed they could seem them instantly, but I never could. My high school year book featured one on the cover that I never got to see properly. Even if you tell me what the image is I could never see it. Usually what would happen is I’d stare at it like everyone else, ask what they were seeing, then say, "Yeah, I see it too." I’m convinced 90% of them never worked.
Imagine my surprise when I stared at one of the new Korean 5000 won bills and saw a magic eye picture (autostereogram) built into the bill to deter counterfeiting. I had never noticed it before. Not only that, I could see what it was without even trying. In fact, even if I looked away and looked back, I could STILL see what it said. It’s the first time I unintentionally found such a picture "in the wild" so to speak. It was a mind blowing experience, as I was in the back of a taxi on the way to school. I wasn’t sure if I was hallucinating or not. I just kept staring at the bill and wanted to make sure I wasn’t crazy.
When I went to school, I showed some of the teachers. They did the same "stare" I did 1000 times before when I looked at a magic eye picture but couldn’t see it. Due to the metallic ink on the bill, if you look at it from an angle, you can see the slightly different color of the area where the effect takes place. Still, it’s cool. I think taking a picture of the bill sort of ruins the effect, or makes it more obvious, but for those of you that don’t live in Korea and have no idea what I am talking about, check out the picture below. It’s very clear here.
