Korean sketches Book

Isabella Bird was an Englishwoman who had the wealth and the time to travel the world. Among the places she visited war Korea during the late Joseon dynasty, and here in this book, Korea and Her Neighbours, she records her travels over several visits to the country. Writing from a position of privilege, sometimes Bird's commentary is appallingly racist. But other of her more objective accounts of what is occurring around her is eye-opening, and useful history. For instance, we learn from the book that the women of Seoul were not permitted to come out to do their work, which mainly consisted of shopping and washing until the evening, a period when only they could be out and men had to be indoors, and then the women would have to return at midnight. Women, therefore, we learn, were mainly confined to their homes for most of the day. As one woman told Bird, she had never seen Seoul in the daylight.

Another interesting account concerns the lives of ordinary people. She writes of how the mass of Korean people, inside and outside the cities, have learned to live on very little in the way of food and are able to pass their time with simple entertainment in the form of songs and games. They have to do this by necessity, she tells us, because the yangban, the upper crust of society, will extort money from them if they inherit or earn money or property. So the common person often took to hiding any new money or possessions should he come into it, and found a way to work more lethargically so as not to produce too much for his masters.

Bird's book is not perfect by any means and perhaps you might find it a bit repetitive and mostly not fun. Still, it's a good book to skim for general information for what life was like in Korea as Korea was just coming into the 20th century.