Sounds of Seoul Marketplaces: traditional market

This is the second installment of my introduction to the short video snippets taken from the DVD "Sounds of Seoul Marketplaces", originally published by the Seoul Museum of History. The links to the 2 to 10 minute pieces at the SNU Visual Anthropology Archives are in my earlier note. This one is Traditional Marketplace (jaerae sijang) (link to the video, 10:38), shot at Moraenae Market in Namgajwa-dong, Seodaemun-gu, which has traditionally been a site where many farming products consumed in Seoul were produced, and as a consequence there is said to be more chili mills and sesame oil presses than in other marketplaces. The criteria of a "traditional marketplace" isn't that clear - also Dongdaemun and Namdaemun are sometimes called that - but here the authors define it as an unspecialized site of merchandizing formed out of residents' need for daily necessities. A pangakan keeper grinds red chili. Sesame oil press. k'alkuksu ("knife spagetti") machine. The woman has placed the dough on the conveyor belt, and the machine cuts the dough into strips. Bedding factory: cotton filling of a quilt being made. Women putting a cover on a quilt, ibul. A grandfather tells how an impoverished yangban who could not but start trading was still too ashamed to announce his merchandise properly. A woman sings Kôndûrông* t'aryông, a Gyeonggi-do folk song of young women going out to trade. For more about Kôndûrông t'aryông, see here and here. *here's one example of where the new Romanization leads: geondeureong instead of kôndûrông... Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: marketplaces ∙ anthropology ∙ Koreanstudies ∙ Seoul ∙ businesskeepers