Studies of rural Korean centenarians suggest that many of the longest-lived women did not retire from daily life so much as remain woven into it — cooking, gardening, tending relationships, and keeping roles that made them needed well into old age

Studies of rural Korean centenarians suggest that many of the longest-lived women did not retire from daily life so much as remain woven into it — cooking, gardening, tending relationships, and keeping roles that made them needed well into old age

In the mountain counties of southern Korea, the oldest woman in the village is often the one with the longest list of jobs to do. Not chores handed to her out of kindness. Actual work that someone has to do, and that she has done for eighty years: the vegetable patch, the drying racks, the pot of soybean paste, the grandchild who needs collecting, the neighbour who needs checking on. Old age in these villages arrives without a farewell party. No…