Looked nice at first but hurts my eyes

I bought this monitor in July 2007 as a second monitor for my workplace. I was impressed with its crisp and bright picture and it looked very nice at first.
It showed significant ghosting (colored shadows dragged behind objects moving on the screen, for example when dragging a window) but since I wasn't going to use the monitor for games or movies, it didn't bother me that much.

However, after a few days I noticed that my eyes were hurting. I blame this on "too much contrast", i.e., tiny white shadows around dark letters on gray background. The monitor has "RTC" (Response time compensation) which allows LG to advertise it as "2ms lightning fast response time", but in effect it just creates harsh shadows on any gray background (for example for menus in Windows XP which are typically black text on gray background). I had to switch back to my old monitor, and now use this one only as a backup.

Unfortunately, I missed the 14 day return period at the store and when I tried to return it only got an identical replacement. That one has the exact same problem as the first one. I have been told that this may be a firmware issue and supposedly doesn't occur on all monitors of this model.