Carrying Loads in Korea by Ella Camp Russell

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 9, 1913

Carrying Loads in Korea

By Ella Camp Russell

It is interesting to watch the women and girls in Korea as they go to the public wells for the household supply of water. They walk very erect and look straight ahead, for they carry the jar of water upon their heads. I have seen women carrying loads in this way that must have weighed more than one hundred pounds.

Often at the well, where the family wash is taken to be beaten upon a flat rock, when the work is finished and the pile of wet clothing stacked up on a huge wooden tray, the woman finds she is unable to lift the load from the ground. Then two other women, or more if necessary, will lift the tray, and after a moment in which the bearer seems to be trying to get her load to balance, she will walk off with it on her head, not slowly and painfully, but with a swift, firm tread.

I saw a woman returning from market with a large collection representing her purchases packed away in a very wide straw basket, upon the top of which was a red rooster with his feet tied. The effect, as she went down the road with this upon her head, was strikingly similar to some head-dresses worn by her fashionable Western sisters.

ELLA CAMP RUSSELL.

Soonan.