124 Chapter 6
they treated me like a servant or slave.” Elena married another Korean
orphan, Vasilii Tsoi, when she was sixteen years old. Vasili was twenty- one,
and now both would work and take care of Vasilii’s four younger brothers
and sisters. He had lost both of his parents when he was ten.^46
It should also be noted that most Korean women, and possibly a major-
ity of the Soviet women who worked on collective farms of this period, worked
long hours in the field and at home. If one includes the hours spent working
at home and for the family, women generally worked more hours than
men.^47 Some worked many more hours than the men. Nadezhda Li explained
that she slept only two to three hours a day until her mid- to- late forties:
I went out early in the mornings to work in the fields [usually 7 a.m. to
7 p.m. or 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.]. Then I came back in the morning to take my
children to kindergarten (detskii sad). I worked from morning to night,
seven days a week. We didn’t have days off. When I got home it was already
late, I always had work to do at home too, washing clothes and other things
[for example, sewing or anything that her children needed]. I got around
two to three hours of sleep every day, then a new day would begin and
every thing started over again. Cooking in the morning and the eve ning.
At night I had to make the fire [during winter] and keep the fire going.Ok In Pak indicated that she too slept only two to three hours some nights
due to the amount of house and family work that needed to be done. When
I asked why no one had spoken up about this, she answered nonchalantly:
“This was normal. Most women don’t talk about it because someone has to do
the work and this type of work, men can’t do it.”^48 Most women performed
not only those duties mentioned by Li, but the duties of sewing, mending,
and making the clothes for the entire family as well. On the collective farms
in the Rus s ian Far East and Central Asia until the 1950s, there were not
enough work shoes or galoshes that served for farming, especially when
planting and for working in rainy weather. On the collectives, the Korean
men made galoshes and all- around (sports, work, school) shoes for their
children from tires, which were cut out and then sewn to canvas by hand.
These shoes were very valuable; one could sell the shoes outright or trade
them for other things that were needed or difficult to obtain.^49
Korean men on the collective farms spent their leisure time playing
chess, checkers, card games (Rus sian), Korean card games (using traditional
Korean cards), and sports. Men or ga nized football teams on the collectives.
They made a ball (chuchelo), which is a soccer ball made from rags and or
matted lamb’s wool. The skin of the ball was made from lamb, goat, or cow’s
hide. They played lapta and kurka (both variants of baseball). Life on a col-