On display through Oct. 31 at Seoul Water Museum

Professional guides available for exhibition tours

A water-carrier experience program at the special exhibition "A Day in the Life of a Bukchong Water Carrier." [Seoul Water Museum]
A water-carrier experience program at the special exhibition "A Day in the Life of a Bukchong Water Carrier." [Seoul Water Museum]

The Seoul Metropolitan Government's Seoul Water Museum has opened a special exhibition titled "A Day in the Life of a Bukchong Water Carrier," exploring the lives of the "Bukchong water carriers" who delivered water door to door with wooden carrying frames more than a century ago, and how the introduction of modern waterworks transformed the way people accessed water.

Running through Oct. 31, the exhibition lets visitors try lifting a water jige — a traditional carrying frame loaded with two containers weighing about 23 kilograms in total — and offers guided tours by professional docents.

The Seoul Water Museum is a specialized waterworks museum built around the Ttukdo Waterworks Site No. 1, South Korea's first modern water purification plant, constructed in 1908.

The exhibition is organized into three sections — "Water Carriers at Dawn," "From the Age of Water Carriers to the Age of Modern Waterworks," and "Meeting the Water Carrier Again" — tracing the story from the emergence of water carriers through the introduction of modern waterworks and the changes that followed.

Alongside this, the exhibition brings together more than 50 items, including photographic postcards of water carriers from over a century ago, an original water jige and containers, newspaper articles from the 1908 launch of the city's water supply system, water meters, and literary, audio and video materials.

Lee Moon-ju, director of the Ttukdo Arisu Water Purification Center, said he hoped the exhibition would give visitors a chance to learn about the lives of the Bukchong water carriers — a profession that has long since disappeared — and trace how Seoul's water supply system has evolved over time.


ken@heraldcorp.com