Sericulture
At the age of seven, being the eldest son of the family, I was considered old enough to attend the sericulture school some fifty li (seventeen miles) away from our…
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
“Sericulture” from When I Was a Boy in Korea by Ilhan New, 1928.
At the age of seven, being the eldest son of the family, I was considered old enough to attend the sericulture school some fifty li (seventeen miles) away from our home, and since the trip had to be made entirely on foot it was planned that I should return home only once in two months. Being so young, I do not remember very much of what they taught, though I recall that we did have instruction both morning and evening. I remember nothing but scurrying about the farms near by during the day, gathering mulberry leaves for the silkworms to feed upon, and crying for my own home by night.
Were it now, I could have ridden home daily or, at least, once a week, but in those days when a lad had to go afoot, fifty li was considerable distance for a boy to travel home.
All the older boys in the school made great fun of me. They would say, “Does not your father already own a silk factory where you could at once apply all the knowledge that you could gain from study? Why do you waste all the time in crying for home?”
The teachers were more sympathetic, however, for at the end of the first term I was told that permission had been received for me to return home to stay. After returning home, the task of picking mulberry leaves became more enjoyable, since I had all my village friends to call on and, in true Tom Sawyer style, most of the leaves in my basket were picked by my friends.
Sericulture is a very good household industry. Each family can devote as much time to it as they may feel inclined, and the mulberry-trees, whose leaves are used as the only food for the silkworms, can be raised on fence-rows or in less fertile soil. Silkworms are hatched from small eggs that are laid by the silkworm moth. The moths of the cultured varieties lay the eggs on sheets of paper about the size of a business letterhead, and the moth, during its egg-laying minutes, is guided around the paper in such a way that the space is generally uniformly filled.
Then there are the wild silkworm moths that fly about the country, laying their eggs on dead leaves or on tree trunks where they will hatch in due time and become worms, living off whatever mulberry leaves they can find. Silk cloths made from these two kinds of cocoons are sold in the same shops, leading the merchants to put up such signs as “Best wild silk shirts,” etc. Not that the shirt is very wild, or that the behavior of the wild silk shirt is best, but literal translation would have it that way.
When the eggs are hatched at the proper temperature, the cultured worms are very small and can hardly be seen singly, but are massed and swept together, a single feather being used as a broom to sweep them about the tray in which they are kept. At first, only crushed mulberry leaves are fed to them and one can hardly notice that any of the food is consumed; but, in the course of two days, they become distinct worms and, in five days, they are about the size of a half-inch pencil lead.
From that time on they grow very fast, some varieties maturing, that is, becoming ready to spin their cocoons, in four weeks or even less. In the last stages of growth, when the worms are large enough so that mulberry leaves need no longer be fed to them crushed, finely cut, or chopped, a single worm will eat as many as a dozen large leaves as big as a boy’s hand in an hour. Then it is that all hands must pick mulberry leaves!
When the worms are “ripe”—the term used in Korea indicating full growth—they will stop eating and one must watch very carefully to see the first sign from any one of the worms that they are beginning to spin their cocoons. When this is noticed, the whole tray of worms, sometimes containing as many as five thousand, is taken to the roosting room. This room has large trays from which is extended a lattice work of pine boughs. The worms climb up on these branches and, attaching one end of the silk fibre to the pine bough, they form a somewhat peanut-shaped shell and spin the raw silk cocoon, completely enclosing themselves in a few minutes.
The cocoons are then gathered and boiled, to kill the life inside and also to make it possible to unwind what the worm has wound. When eggs are wanted, the cocoons are not boiled, but are allowed to stay in a fairly warm room till the larvae develop into butterflies or moths, bore holes through the cocoons, and emerge. From butterfly to egg, egg to worm, worm to cocoon, cocoon to moth again—so endlessly runs the cycle. Some varieties hatch only once a year; others hatch and go through the cycle as many as five or six times in as many months.
The weaving of silks, the reeling of the thread, the grading, and the many other fine details of silk-making are another story, but to most Qriental children on the farm this is a very familiar scene.
New, Ilhan. When I Was a Boy in Korea. Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co., 1928.
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