Beautiful drudgery: Laundry in old Korea
For many people, laundry is one of the most dreaded household chores. It is often described as a mind-numbing, tedious and neverending task: Load it into the washing machine, then the dryer, then sort and fold everything by hand. But in the past, it was even worse. When I was a boy, I often watched my grandmother do the laundry. I remember when she used a washboard, scrubbing each piece by hand. Later, when times were financially a bit better, my grandfather obtained an ancient wringer washer to ease her labor. The “modern” contraption had a tub where the clothes were agitated, and above it, a hand-cranked wringer through which she fed the clothes before hanging them on the line to dry. For her, laundry was an all-day affair. The same held true for Korea. In the late 1880s, George W. Gilmore, an American teacher, described the daily lives of Korean women in his letters home and his book. He acknowledged that cooking and preserving food for the larder took time, but claimed these tasks “occupied a modicum of the Korean wife’s time. Her most wearing and incessant labor [was] at t
