울력, ullyeok: a whole village turning out to work on one household's trouble, and the force their doing it makes.
A death in the family. A wall down after a flood. A house where the one who worked has fallen ill. For that kind of work nobody counted wages, and nobody counted the meals either.
It is worth setting beside 품앗이, pumasi — labour lent and returned, mine tomorrow for yours today. Ullyeok is not lent. It is not coming back, and both sides know that going in.
Every flood on the news has the same footage in it somewhere. Strangers in borrowed boots, carrying somebody else's furniture out into the road, handling it carefully — the way you handle things that belong to a person you have not met.