In Ganghwa, an hour from Seoul, the looms have never quite stopped

The bus from Sinchon crosses onto Ganghwa-do (강화도) in about ninety minutes, and most people ride it for the fortress gates, then ride back before dark. The reason to stay past lunch is harder to photograph: in a few sheds behind the market, the looms are still running.

The cloth Korea wrapped things in

Sochang (소창) is a loose cotton gauze, woven thin enough to hold light. Korean households used it for baby diapers, for straining broth, for wrapping tofu. After the war Ganghwa wove most of the country's supply and counted its looms in the thousands; imports and disposable nappies took that apart within a generation.

A dyeing works with the machines left in

The Sochang Experience Center (소창체험관) sits on an alley in Ganghwa-eup, inside a former dyeing works the county restored rather than cleared. What reaches you first is the noise: shuttle looms in a tiled room, thread feeding off frames, the floor keeping time. Staff will set you up to weave a handkerchief, and across the yard a bathhouse from the same decade still has its tiles.

Nothing here is behind glass. The looms are the exhibit and the noise is the label.

Five minutes uphill

Ganghwa Anglican Church (성공회 강화성당) was consecrated in 1900 and built by carpenters who worked in hanok joinery. Inside, the plan is a basilica with a nave and aisles; outside, the roof is Korean tile and the gate reads like a temple's. Below it stands Yongheung-gung (용흥궁), the house where a royal exile was farming when the court arrived to make him King Cheoljong.

What to carry home

The market sells sochang by the roll, as dishcloths and hand towels now rather than diapers. Unbleached, it comes stiff and goes soft after three or four washes, which is the argument for buying more than you need.

소창은 기저귀와 두부를 싸던 천이었고, 지금은 강화 시장에서 행주로 팔린다.