There’s rarely a need to find a grocery store if you just need some fresh veggies for dinner. It quite common to find old women (an ajumma, pronounced “Ah-zum-MAH”) sitting on a street corner selling them. Sometimes it’s from their own garden, sometimes is from a co-op just so they can round out their offerings.

Since it’s still fairly cold sometimes, they’ll wear a mask like the woman on the right, below. It doubles as a dust protector as in the spring there’s a decent flow of dust that blows in from the Gobi desert in Mongolia.

The ability to sit for hours on a little plastic stool, or worse, on the bare pavement, is a testament to the hardiness of these women.

I’ve seen some of these old women sit for hours on end without making a single won. I really wonder if this is just supplemental income, or this is THE income.