Saturday, July 9, 2011

Finding Amazing Things

Korean boatman

As some of you may have noticed I've joined tumblr and I've been looking around and seeing what's what. This morning I came across an astounding photo of a Korean sailor from around 1904. It's part of the Cornell University Library collection and they've very kindly shoved a whole load of their photos on flickr (The Korean collection seems to run from page 99 to 109)...

[Korean men with sunglasses]

Possibly the coolest dudes in the whole of Chosun.

Seoul

The Haechi/Haetae was protecting Gyeongbok Palace back in 1904.

[Flood scene]

And Monsoon season was a rather serious event.

Gesang School (i.e. kisaeng school)

Some girls went to Gisaeng school.

[Water-carrier]

And some boys carried water.

Corean artist

Music was played.

[Peasant pounding rice]

Rice was pounded.

[Women washing laundry in stream]

And doing the laundry was a lot less convenient than today.

[A merchant and his friends on a cold day]

Pipes were smoked.

[Line of children (orphans?) with American and Korean flags]

And children were very good at standing in lines.

Corean beauty

Their ten pages of photos are well worth checking out if you fancy a glimpse of Korea at the start of the twentieth century.

4 comments:

조안나 said...

I've found a few collections of photos from Korea's past. It's always amazing to see how people looked... somethings are exactly the same and somethings are so incredibly different it's hard to beleive it's the same country.... nice find!

Nomadic Samuel said...

Some great shots! My favorite was the one of the boys carrying water via yokes. It's hard to believe how much the country has changed in just over a century.

kushibo said...

Possibly the coolest dudes in the whole of Chosun.

LOL

Anonymous said...

Would i download some of these pics?
i'm a Korean guy who's collecting pics of old days Korea.:)