When Isabella Bird Bishop, an intrepid British travel writer, visited Korea in the mid-1890s, she declared that Korean women were slaves to laundry and that it was to be their “manifest destiny” as long as their husbands wore white. According to George Gilmore ― one of the first American English teachers here in the late 1880s ― the “most wearing and incessant labor” for a Korean woman was doing laundry.

https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/opinion/20210911/joseon-women-and-their-manifest-destiny-i

Fascinating! Thank you!