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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Quaint Korea
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Title: Quaint Korea

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK QUAINT KOREA

***
 QUAINT KOREA
BY
LOUISE JORDAN MILN
AUTHOR OF “WHEN WE WERE STROLLING PLAYERS IN THE EAST”

LONDON
OSGOOD, McILVAINE & CO.
45 Albemarle Street, W.

1895

[All rights reserved]

I DEDICATE THIS VOLUME

TO MY DEAR CHUM AND SON

CRICHTON
 A few of the following pages have appeared in “The
London Times,” “The Pall Mall Gazette,” “The Daily
Chronicle,” “The Pall Mall Budget,” “The Queen,” “The St.
James’ Budget,” “St. Paul’s,” “Black and White,” and “The
Lady.” The Editors of these papers kindly allow me to
include those pages in this volume.
L.J.M.
London, 1895.
CONTENTS.
 PAGE
CHAPTER I.
A Few Words about Hamel 1

CHAPTER II.
Some Curious Korean Customs 20

CHAPTER III.
Söul from the City Wall 34

CHAPTER IV.
Korea’s King 58

CHAPTER V.
Korean Women 75

CHAPTER VI.
Korean Women (continued) 122

CHAPTER VII.
Korean Architecture 161

CHAPTER VIII.
How the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Koreans Amuse
Themselves 189

CHAPTER IX.
A Glance at Korean Art 209

CHAPTER X.
Korea’s Irreligion 226
 CHAPTER XI.
Korea’s History in a Nutshell 245

CHAPTER XII.
The Scourges of China 266

CHAPTER XIII.
Japan’s Ingratitude 278

Glossary 305

QUAINT KOREA.
 CHAPTER I.
A FEW WORDS ABOUT HAMEL.

A spoiled woman, an extremely cross Englishman, who was her

husband, and a smiling mandarin, who was their host, sat on the
prow of a Chinese junk. They were rather a silent trio. The mandarin
knew, or pretended he knew, no English. The Englishman pretended
to know considerable Chinese, but, as a matter of fact, knew almost
none. The two men were about equally fluent in rather bad French,
and were wont to use it as the medium for a good deal of
conversation, when they were alone. But to-night, with the spoiled
woman sitting between them, neither seemed to have a word to say.
Perhaps they both felt embarrassed by what to both of them must
have seemed the ridiculousness of the situation.
The junk had left Shanghai a few days before. It was bound for
Korea, where the mandarin was going on business—on business for
the Emperor of China. The party on the boat, not to mention
servants and such, included the mandarin, the mandarin’s wife, the
Englishman, the Englishman’s wife, and a young man named John
Stewart-Leigh.
As I have said, his excellency the mandarin was going to Korea
on business. The spoiled woman was going for pleasure; her
husband was going because he thought he ought to, and the
mandarin’s wife was going because she had to. Stewart-Leigh would
probably have found it very hard to tell even himself just why he
was on board. “It’s as good a way of spending my leave as another,
since I am too poor to go home just now,” he had said to a brother
subaltern in Hong Kong, “and it will be a perfect charity to Q.”
Mr. Q., the spoiled woman’s husband, had been stopped by a
friend a few weeks before as he came down the steps of the
Shanghai club.
 “I say, Q.,” cried the other, “what is this? I hear that you are
going to Korea, and in his junk, with Ja Hong Ting. I say, it isn’t true,
is it?”
“Of course it’s true,” Q. had replied gloomily. “That mad wife of
mine has inveigled the poor old mandarin into inviting her. She
insists upon going, and I am going along to chaperon her.”
The Q.’s had been living in China for almost a year. They had
known Ja Hong Ting when he had been the Chinese minister at one
of the European capitals. Indeed, an uncle of Mrs. Q.’s (she was not
unmixedly English) had been the European secretary of the legation
of which Ja Hong Ting had been the head. The acquaintance that
had begun on the continent of Europe (and which between the then-
girl and the Chinaman had been rather a friendly acquaintance) had
developed in Pekin, as friendships between Chinese and Europeans
don’t often develop. Mr. Q., who alternately laughed and grumbled at
his wife’s odd tastes, secretly shared them. He was a grave, quiet
man; as a rule, almost taciturn. He was a deal of a philosopher,
though no one but his wife ever suspected it, and he had become
very much interested in Ja Hong Ting and the glimpses of real China
and of real Chinese life which had been afforded him through his
acquaintance with the mandarin.
When Ja Hong Ting and the Q.’s had first met in the drawing-
room of one of the European Legations at Pekin, Ja Hong Ting had
exclaimed, as he bowed over and over Mrs. Q.’s hand, “I am so glad
you are here. Now you shall know my wife.” (His wife had not been
with him in Europe.) “You shall teach her English, and she shall
teach you Chinese. I entreat you and your husband to come to my
yamun to-morrow, and there you and she shall be made great
friends.”
Ja Hong Ting had not spoken in English, of course.
The Q.’s had gone to the yamun the next day, but Ja Hong Ting’s
programme had not been altogether carried out. His wife had been
obedient, as most Chinese wives are, but she had taken a dislike to
the Englishman, and a most violent dislike to the Englishwoman. She
was civil then and afterwards (at least, in the mandarin’s presence),
but she never warmed to her husband’s European friends, most
especially not to the lady. She taught Mrs. Q. no Chinese, at least
not voluntarily; and from Mrs. Q. she learned no English.
Some months after, Ja Hong Ting had called upon the Q.’s in
Shanghai. He stayed to dinner, and as they sat down, said to Mrs.
Q., “Do you know where Korea is?”
“Of course I know where Korea is,” replied his hostess.
“Yes,” interrupted Q., “so do I. It is one of the few places that my
wife has not dragged me to yet.”
“Ah, yes! I forgot,” said the mandarin, turning again to his
hostess. “Yes, I remember, you are a great geographer and a
traveller. But I do not suppose you will ever go to Korea. I should
think it the last place pleasant for you to visit. I have been there a
number of times, and I am going next month. The Emperor is
sending me with a message to the King of Korea.”
Mrs. Q. pushed her plate of untasted soup from her, and cried,
“Oh!” Mr. Q. knitted his brows and sighed. He saw trouble in the
distance.
“You pity me,” said the mandarin.
“Pity you!” said the woman. “Ah! don’t you think the Emperor
would send me in your place?”
The Chinaman laughed. “I am sure his Majesty would not care to
give you so much hard work to do.”
“How do you get there, how are you going?” said Q., trying in a
blind, groping way to turn the conversational tide.
“In my junk,” said Ja Hong Ting. “It is one of the biggest junks in
China—a comfortable boat, quite like a floating home, as madame
here would call it, and I always enjoy my sails over to Korea and
back very much more than I enjoy my stay in Korea.”
“Will any of your ladies go with you?” asked Mrs. Q.
The mandarin laughed and shook his head. And then something
seemed to occur to him. He put down the spoon that had been
almost to his mouth, and after a moment’s pause, said, “I could take
one or two of them. There’s room, and there’s comfort in the boat.
Would you”—turning to Q.—“like to come and bring your wife?”
Q. groaned, and said hastily, “Thanks awfully, but I shall have to
go to Calcutta next month.” But as he spoke he knew that he was
like a drowning man catching at a straw. The mandarin’s suggestion
was, of all suggestions in the world, the one to fire Mrs. Q.’s easily
fired imagination.
And so it came about that a month or more afterwards Ja Hong
Ting’s junk had pushed off from Shanghai with “us five in family,” as
Mrs. Q. delightedly called the mandarin, his wife, and their three
guests.
The West has conquered the East. Christianity has triumphed.
Heathenism is mangled, and, let us hope, dying. Across the fair,
flower-dimpled back of Asia we have laid the unpicturesque blessing
of railroads, and thoroughly well-made, thoroughly well-kept paths
for the men who consider life a succession of journeys, and the
animals who enable such men to perpetually journey.
Second-sight seems to be, and to have always been, a genuine
possession with the Asiatic peoples. We in the West have, I think,
never possessed second-sight; but that does not altogether prove
that there is no such thing as second-sight. I remember an Æolian
harp that used to hang upon one of the crumbling, wild-flower-
wreathed walls of the old castle at Heidelberg. I remember the love
songs that the wind used to sing to that harp; the love songs with
which the harp accepted the wooing of the wind. If a nice new
organ, a parlour organ, bought on time-payment, were placed
beside that Æolian harp (for I suppose the harp is still where I, in
my girlhood, years ago, saw it), the wind would have nothing to say
to that organ. If the wind had, the organ would not hear. I do not
for a moment rank an Æolian harp above a nice, new parlour organ,
but I may, perhaps, prefer the harp to the organ. We all have our
secrets.
The Korean mind is, if I at all understand it, an Æolian harp.
Compared with the Oriental mind, the Occidental mind—in many
instances at least—partakes somewhat of the character of the
parlour organ. The peoples of Asia do less than we, but I think that
they foresee more. The wind of prophecy, the wind that prophesied
the unavoidable future, swept the nerve-strung heart of Asiatic
sensibility, swept it very many, many years ago. And Asia, having
ears to hear, and, perhaps, eyes to see into the future, realized that
her only safety lay in seclusion. It seems to me that the sensitive
Asiatic mind, the exquisitely-strung Æolian harp of Oriental
existence, sings one eminently, practicable, sensible song into the
moon-lit, star-gemmed Asiatic midnight, and the refrain of the song
is this: “Asia for the Asians. Mangoes for the Chinese and the
Bengalese. Mogree flowers for the nautch-girls; and the Taj Mahal
for the wife who was loved with a love exceeding the love of
European men.” It has, I think, been an instinct, a second-sight, an
inspiration, with the Asiatic peoples to keep our feet from off the
flower-made brilliance of their native sod. But we have conquered
Asia, as surely as the music pumped by the thick, red fingers of the
Board-School-taught girl—pumped from out the well-manufactured
depths of the time-payment-bought parlour organ—would drown the
indefinable, soft, methodless, nameless music of the Æolian harp.
Just so well have we subdued Asia, hushed her music, quenched her
light, torn her flowers petal from petal.
I am speaking from the sentimental standpoint, of course. But, in
this utilitarian age of ours, isn’t it worth while to look at things
sentimentally, once in a way, if only for variety? We have conferred
the greatest practical blessings upon Asia; that I admit and maintain.
But we have blurred the picture a bit, and I can’t help being sorry.
Only one country in Asia has, until lately, entirely escaped the blight
and the blessing of our civilizing touch—Korea! Korea has not
seemed worth our shot and powder. And many of us have not really
known that there was such a place as Korea. But the war that is
raging in farther Asia now has quickened our interest in the quaint
kingdom of the morning calm.
The following chapters have been largely written from notes that
Mrs. Q. made during the pleasant months she spent in Korea, and
from her memories of those months. But Chosön is too interesting
and, to us, too new a theme to need the fillip of any petty
personality; and so, after these few pages of introduction and of
explanation, we may excuse Mrs. Q., or at least her personality, from
our service, and leave her in her privacy, to congratulate herself
upon her good luck in having had the unique experience of seeing
Korea, and of seeing it in company with one of the best-informed of
Tartars, and one of the most intelligent of Europeans.
I felt impelled to write this explanation of how the material for
the book was gathered, and the manner of woman who gathered it.
Helen Q. lays as little claim to being profound as do I myself, and
this is no volume for those who gloat on statistics, on accurate
tables, and insist upon having over-exact information or no
information at all. It is a peep at Korea as a very average woman
saw it, a woman who enjoyed herself in Korea, and who there jotted
down some of her impressions that they might serve her and
another for ‘sweet discourses in their time to come’—jotted them
down with no dream of future publication. I sometimes think that
the half-gossip of such travellers, the honest, unstudied report of
their observations, gives, to the generality of readers, a more vivid,
concrete picture of a strange land than do the more elaborate, more
careful volumes of more accomplished writers, more professional
makers of books.
These pages have had the advantage of being revised both by
Mr. Q. and Ja Hong Ting, both of whom are acute observers, exact
thinkers, and happen to be in Europe now.
The inclusion here of the chapters on China and Japan needs, I
think, no apology. The histories of the three countries have been so
interknit socially, artistically, and scientifically; the people of Korea
are so like the people of Japan, so like the people of China—though
so unlike both—that we shall only even partially see Korea, by
keeping one of our mental eyes on the rival countries between which
she lies.
The island of Quelpaert is barely fifty miles long and only half so
wide; but it is big with history, huge with interest, and great with
special claim upon European attention.
In 1653 a Dutch boat was wrecked on the shore of Quelpaert. To
that shipwreck Europe owed her most vivid, if not her first
photograph of Korea; for on the Sparrow-hawk was not only Min
Heer Cornelius Lessen, the governor-elect of Tai-wan, but also a
man of genius, a sailor who had a great gift for narrative writing.
That man’s name was Hendrik Hamel. It is two hundred years and
more since he wrote his simple, straightforward, convincing record
of the years he perforce spent in Korea. Since then some score of
books have been written about Korea and things Korean. None of
them are more readable than Hamel’s “Narrative of an Unlucky
Voyage,” and only one of them compares, at all to its author’s credit,
with the quaint old book, written two centuries ago by the Dutch
seaman.
I should like to quote a great deal of Hamel’s own record of the
thirteen years he spent in Korea, and it has been done very much at
length by several eminent writers. Moreover, it would be an entirely
safe thing to do, for the copyright must have long since run out, if
the book ever had a copyright. But I will content myself with a very
few words about this wonderful man and his stay in Chosön, and a
few brief quotations from one of the most interesting books of travel
that has ever been written; a book as fresh and readable to-day as if
it had just come smoking from the printer’s press.
More than half the souls on board the Sparrow-hawk (that is
thirty-six) reached the shore of Korea. They were taken prisoners,
and were held so for thirteen years and more. The history of their
captivity is the history of varying kindnesses and unkindnesses. But,
when we remember the then conditions of Korean life, and when we
remember how little the hermit people of the hilly peninsula desired
colonists, when we remember how they regarded foreigners, and
what cause they had to so regard foreigners, it is more the history of
kindness than of unkindness. Certainly the Hollanders had more to
be thankful for than to complain of during their first years in Chosön
—barring, of course, the facts that there they were and there they
had to stay.
Hamel and his fellows were not the first Europeans, not even the
first Hollanders to land, or rather be thrown, upon Korea. But, for all
that, they were enough of rarities to be regarded by the populace as
strangely interesting wild beasts. They were given rice-water to
drink. They were fed. When the need came they were clad. They
were sheltered. They suffered no indignity, and only comparative
hardship; and, little as they dreamed it, the King of Korea was
sending to them an interpreter; a man whose blood was their blood,
whose tongue was their tongue.
“The first known entrance of any number of Europeans into
Korea,” writes Griffis, “was that of Hollanders, belonging to the crew
of the Dutch ship Hollandra, which was driven ashore in 1627. . . . A
big, blue-eyed, red-bearded, robust Dutchman, named John
Wetteree, whose native town was Rip, in North Holland, volunteered
on board the Dutch ship Hollandra in 1626, in order to get to Japan.”
Now one fine day, when the Hollandra was coasting along Korea,
Wetteree and two of his mates went ashore for fresh water. The
natives caught them, and, as was the custom of the country,
detained them. They were treated with respect, with honour even,
attained to positions of responsibility and trust, and became great
among the great men of Korea. Two of them died in 1635, died
fighting for the country of their enforced adoption when she was
invaded by the Manchius. But Wetteree lived on, and, twenty-seven
years after his own capture, he was sent to interpret between his
shipwrecked countrymen and their captors. Alas! his tongue had
forgot its mother cunning, and refused to utter the language that he
had not used for twenty-seven years. Wetteree remembered but a
few words of Dutch. But the mother-tongue, which more than a
quarter of a century had not served to make him quite absolutely
forget, he regained in a month’s intercourse with his countrymen.
Hamel and his comrades experienced many ups and downs. They
were treated with consideration, they were treated with cruelty.
They held many offices. They were set many tasks—that of begging
amongst them. They plied many trades. They lived in many places.
They saw the interior of Korea, the inside of Korean life, as
Europeans never saw it before, and, I fancy, as Europeans have
never seen it since.
Once an enterprising governor set them to making pottery with a
probable view of introducing European improvements into Korea’s
own wonderful ceramic art methods. The experiment was a failure.
Whether the Dutch fingers were ill-adapted to the pursuit of Korea’s
favourite art-industry, or whether, as Griffis remarks, it was
“manifestly against the national policy of making no improvements
on anything,” history does not authoritatively tell us. I incline to the
first opinion. But the bulk of the learned Europeans, who have
studied Korea, certainly side with Mr. Griffis. At all events, Hamel and
his fellows were not kept long at the moulding of Korean clay. The
Governor was deposed and physically punished; and the Dutchmen
were put to the pulling of grass from the door-yard of the palace.
Hamel and his comrades did not remain long in Quelpaert. The
king sent for them and they were taken to Söul.
Two paragraphs in Hamel’s long account of their stay are
indicative of a good deal that is to-day as characteristic of two types
of Korean character as it doubtless was two hundred years ago.
“On the 21st, a few days after the shipwreck” (writes Hamel),
“the commander made us understand by signs that he wished to see
all we had saved from our wreck, and that we were to bring it from
our tent and lay it before him. Then he gave orders that it should be
sealed up, and it was so sealed in our presence. While this was
being done, some people were brought before him who had taken
iron, hides, and other things that had drifted ashore from our boat.
They were at once punished, and before our eyes, which showed us
that the Korean officials did not mean us to be robbed of any of our
goods. Each thief had thirty or more blows given him on the soles of
his feet with a cudgel thick as a man’s arm and tall as a man. The
punishment was so severe that the toes dropped off the feet of
more than one thief.”
Hamel and his fellows were under the supervision of more than
one governor. They were highly pleased with some, and as highly
displeased with others. Here is Hamel’s description of one:—“It
seemed to us that he was a very sensible man, and we were
afterward sure that we had not been deceived in our first opinion.
He was seventy years old, had been born in Söul, and was greatly
esteemed at the court. When we left his presence he signed to us
that he should write to the king and ask what was to be done with
us. It would be some time before the king’s answer could come,
because the distance was great. We begged him that we might have
flesh sometimes, and other things to eat. This he granted, and he
gave us leave that six of us might go abroad every day, to breathe
the air, and wash our linen. This satisfied us greatly, for it was hard
and weary to be shut up, and to subsist on bread and water. He also
sent for us often, and made us write both in Dutch and in Korean.
So did we first begin to understand some words of Korean; and he
speaking with us sometimes and being pleased to provide a little
entertainment or amusement for us, we began to hope that some
day we might escape to Japan. He also,” adds Hamel, “took such
care of us when we were sick, that we may affirm we were better
treated by that idolater than we should have been among
Christians.”
Lest the reader should think that Hamel had become a Buddhist
or a Confucist, or had adopted some other shameful form of
heathenism; lest the reader may think that Hamel was altogether
partial to the people among whom he had been thrown, I will add
what he wrote of two other governors. After complaining of one in
detail, he adds, “But, God be praised, an apopletic fit delivered us
from him in September following, which nobody was sorry for, so
little was he liked.”
And of another unsatisfactory governor he writes, “He put many
more hardships upon us, but God gave us our revenge.”
These last two quotations ought, I think, to establish Hamel as a
highly civilized, and by no means gushing, historian.
Hamel’s narrative proves two things most conclusively. It proves
that of all the civilized countries the centuries have wrought the least
change upon Korea. Indeed, the geological changes in the peninsula
have scarcely been slower than the changes in the social customs of
the Koreans. It is even more interesting to me that Hamel’s book
proves him one of the most truthful men who ever put pen to paper.
He wrote with a brilliant, vivid pen, but he dipped it in no false
colour. And yet in his own time Hamel was, to put it mildly, called a
liar of liars; and until comparatively recent days his statements have
been doubted, and “exaggerated” has been the least abusive
adjective applied to them. But travellers of our own time,
missionaries and statesmen, men whose word is beyond
impugnment, testify that Hamel wrote well within the mark, that he
created nothing, imagined nothing, distorted nothing. It is much to
be regretted that a man who wrote of Korea so simply, so
charmingly, so truthfully, and from so splendidly inside a point of
view, did not write far more about a country of which the fairly well-
informed of us until yesterday knew almost literally nothing; and yet
a country a-teem with interest for all who feel keen interest in
humanity, in art, and in high civilization, a country which threatens
to disappear, if not as a country, why then, as a country apart, and
whose magnificent personality may soon be lost amid the neutral
generality of modern civilization, and the brotherhood (such
brotherhood!) of all nations.
The history of Korea we may have always with us; but Korea—
Korea of the lotus ponds and the red-arrow gates—Korea of the big
hats and the devil-traps—Korea of the geisha girls and the
omnipotent, red-clad king!—that we may not have so long.
Civilization and war are on the march, and if ‘smooth success be
strewed before their gentle feet,’ why then, the twentieth century in
her youth may see the matrons of Chosön walk abroad unveiled, and
night on the streets of Söul turned into day by electric light.
 CHAPTER II
SOME CURIOUS KOREAN CUSTOMS.

It is difficult to decide how to attack the study of a people of

whom one knows practically nothing, and to whom one cannot have
personal access.
There are two classes of travellers—of people who travel for self-
gratification, and not on business or of necessity.
The traveller belonging to the first class diligently studies a whole
library of guide books and other volumes of more or less tabulated,
and more or less reliable information. He learns the country to which
he intends journeying as he might learn his catechism or his “twelve
times twelve.” He buys a ticket for the land of his destination. He
knows where he is going, and he goes there. He sees everything he
expected to see, all he intended to see, which is all he wishes to see,
and, on my word of honour, he sees no more! I know, for I have
travelled with him often, oh, so often! Having worked out his own
petty educational salvation, he goes home again almost as wise as
when he started for abroad: just a little hazed, perhaps (unless he
be a globe-trotter of the ultra rigidly-minded, blind-eyed type), for
things as they really are often give in so pronounced a way the lie to
things as we have read of them, that the difference between fact
and fiction must shock all but the densest of tourists.
The traveller belonging to the second class starts with a not too
definite intention of seeing Venezuela. He arrives there; unless en
route he stumbles upon the borders of some, to him, even more
interesting country, and turns aside like the free man he is. He
rambles from town to village, and with a mind not so crammed with
information that it has room for no more. He learns his new country
on the spot. He sees the people. He eats their food. He drinks their
wine. He watches them at work, and at play. He learns their
language, and some of the thousand secrets which only language
can teach. He looks into their eyes, and perchance he gets some
passing glimpse into their souls. He goes home. Then he begins to
read his guide books. Then he begins to study the history and the
ancient literature of the people among whom he has been. And
then, and not till then, is he fit to study that history: for we can only
read a history with full intelligence if we are familiar with the people
of whose ancestors it is written.
I trust that no one will think that I am decrying the study of
history in our school-days, or the life-long study of those places we
may not visit. I am not that mad. The study of history is invaluable
as a means of mental discipline and of personal culture. But we can
only get the utmost of delight, the utmost mental nourishment from
history, when we are more or less (and the more the better) en
rapport with the race whose past it chronicles.
Let us then go into Korea after the method of the second
traveller, the happy-go-lucky, seemingly systemless fellow. Let us
look at the Koreans of to-day. Let us peep into their houses, watch
their amusements, ponder over the most characteristic of their many
curious customs, and study their institutions. Then we may spend an
hour or more over Korea’s history, not as a duty, but a treat. Our
appetites will be keen, and we shall relish what would, I am
thinking, seem to us but a boredom of incomprehensible dumb dates
and endless iteration of meaningless facts, were we to, after the
approved style, plunge into it now!
The Koreans are, in all probability, the children of Japanese stock,
but China has been for centuries their wet nurse, and their
schoolmistress. No two Oriental peoples are more essentially unlike
than are the Chinese and the Japanese. And the Koreans, a race of
Japanese, or kindred blood, living under conditions largely Chinese,
and deeply imbued with Chinese ideas, present a picture peculiarly
quaint, even in the quaintest part of the world.
They have Japanese faces, Chinese customs, and a manner of
their own. But into their Chinese-like customs some little Japanese
habit has crept now and again. And the Koreans have even
ventured, once in a while, to invent a custom of their own.
 Every Korean house has a cellar; not for the storing of wine, but
for the storing of heat. The cellar is called a khan—its mouth,
through which it is fed, is some distance from the house. On a cold
night you will see one or more seemingly white-clad figures
cramming the khan’s mouth, as fast as they can, with twigs,
branches, and other combustible food. But once well fed, the
furnace burns for hours, and keeps the house warm all night. So the
attendants of the fire are not kept out in the cold over long; and
while they are there, their hands are full of work that suffices to
keep their blood at a decided tingle. A Korean house heated at
sunset keeps warm all night, because the fire built is invariably huge,
because the floors through which the heat permeates are made of
oil-paper, and because the furnace itself is largely a mass of wooden
and of stone intestines, pipes, and flues that retain and give out
heat. With almost no exceptions the houses in Korea are one-
storied. So simple a scheme of domestic architecture enables so
simple a scheme of house-heating to be thoroughly efficacious.
Europeans sleeping for the first time in a Korean house, usually
complain that in the middle of the night the heat is too intense, the
atmosphere insupportable, and that toward the chill hours of early
morning, when the fire has died, and the pipes at last grown cold,
the room is most disagreeably cold. But these are minor matters,
and far too trivial to disturb Korean slumber.
Next to the Eskimos, the Koreans are the heartiest eaters in the
world. So, naturally enough, they sleep profoundly. They seem to be
always eating. And nothing short of a royal edict, or a bursting
bomb-shell, will interrupt a Korean feast. I regret to say that the
flesh of young dogs is their favourite viand. Japanese beer is their
favourite beverage. And for this let me commend them. For never in
Milwaukee, never in Vienna, have I drank beer so good as that
which is made at the Imperial brewery in Tokio. Like all other
Orientals, they devour incredible quantities of fish; herrings for a
first choice. The herrings are caught in December, and are not eaten
until March. Water-melons are the fruit most plentiful and most
perfect in Korea. They are superb.
 Potatoes were in disgrace, under the ban of a royal edict, when
Ja Hong Ting took Helen to Korea. They had been introduced into
the country shortly before the Q’s. themselves. And their general use
might have done much to alleviate the horrible famines which visit
Korea with a horrible regularity. But their use and their culture were
forbidden. Only in the less disciplined outskirts of the peninsula were
they to be had. The mandarin used to send many miles for potatoes,
and then they ate them in safety, only because of the flag that
sheltered their house from the too scorching rays of the Korean sun.
And it was so at all the legations.
But about the sign-posts in Korea. They are quaint, if you like!
Each sign-post is shaped like an old-fashioned English coffin, and it
is topped by a face; a very grotesquely painted, a very Korean, a
very grinning, but for all that, a very human face. They used to
rather startle Helen at first when she came round the corner of a
country road, and found them smirking at her in the gruesome
moonlight. But she grew used to them. For they were all alike. They
all wore the countenance of Chang Sun, a great Korean soldier.
Chang Sun lived one thousand, more or less, years ago. His life was
devoted to the opening up of his country to the feet of his
countrymen. He intersected the hills of Korea with pathways, and to-
day he beams upon every Korean wayfarer from every sign-post.
Beneath his beaming face you may (if you are learned enough) read
his name. Beneath his name you may read to where the road or
roads lead; how far the next settlement, or the next rest-house is,
and one or two other items that are presumably of general interest
to the Korean travelling public.
There are no inns nor hotels in Korea. But the rest-houses are
neither few nor far between. A Korean rest-house is a species of dâk
bungalow. It does not fill our jaded European ideas of luxury. But it
answers the purpose of the Korean traveller fairly well. He can cook
there; he can eat there; he can sleep there; he can buy Japanese
beer there. The average Korean is a sensible fellow, and wants
nothing more. No, I am wrong; he wants two things more: he wants
to compose poetry, and to paint pictures. The Koreans are a nation
of poets, and of painters. Every fairly educated Korean writes poems
and paints pictures. But there is nothing to prevent him from doing
either, or both, inside or outside the Korean rest-house. The majority
of well-to-do Koreans are highly educated, as Korean education
goes; and in many ways it goes very far indeed.
In Korea, as in China, a man’s social position depends upon the
prestige he can establish for himself at competitive examinations. In
Korea, as in every other normal quarter of the globe, a woman’s
social position depends upon the social position of her husband.
The results of the Korean competitive examinations are said to be
bribable and corruptible. Very possibly. Most human institutions are
fallible. Even Achilles, you know, had a heel. But certainly Korea has
been for centuries and centuries a country where scholarship took
precedence of everything but kingship; a country where education
was esteemed above common-sense.
All the Korean animals are very strong, but very strange. The
peninsula abounds in tigers, bears, cows, horses, swine, deer, dogs,
cats, wild boars, alligators, crocodiles, snakes, swans, geese, eagles,
pheasants, lapwings, storks, herons, falcons, ducks, pigeons, kites,
magpies, woodcocks, and larks. Hens are plentiful, and the eggs are
delicious. But the natives do not make half the use one would expect
of all this feathered plenty.
Goats may be reared by no one but the king, and are exclusively
used for religious sacrificial purposes.
The Koreans are good to their children, and to all animals.
Snakes and serpents are, perhaps, treated by them with more
veneration and tenderness than any other form of animal life. No
Korean ever kills a snake. He feeds it, and does everything else he
can to conduce to its comfort. The poorest and hungriest Korean will
share his evening meal with the reptiles that sneak and crawl about
the rocks that bound his garden.
Ancestral fire is a very important thing in Korea. In every Korean
house burns a perpetual fire, which is sacred to the dead ancestors
of the household. To tend that fire, to see that it never runs the least
risk of going out, is the first, the most important duty of every
Korean housewife. In Korea, as in China, ancestor-worship is the real
religion. Confucianism is the avowed religion of the country. But, like
the Chinese, the Koreans hold dogmatic religions in considerable,
good-natured contempt.
Fortune-tellers and astrologers are as many and as prosperous in
Korea as in China.
Like the Japanese, the Koreans have found a special and
profitable vocation for their blind. In Japan, the needy blind
invariably practise shampooing. In Korea, the blind exorcise devils,
and, in analogous ways, make themselves generally useful. Their
dealings with evil spirits are summary and thorough. The gifted blind
man frightens the devil to death by means of noise more diabolical
than any Satan ever heard, or catches the devil in a bottle, and
carries it in triumph to a place of safety, where devils cease from
troubling, and afflicted Koreans are at rest.
The laws of Korea are explicit concerning high treason. They
smite it hip and thigh. They exterminate it root and branch. If a
Korean is found guilty of high treason he dies, and his entire family
dies with him. In this custom the Koreans are again Chinese and not
altogether un-Japanese.
The constitution of the Korean Home Office is based upon the
Japanese system. The Foreign Office is modelled on the Chinese
Foreign Office. At the head of the War Office is the Pan Sö, or
decisive signature, an official of very great power. Under him are
several lesser officials called Cham Pan, or help to decide. Under
these are men called Cham Wi, or help to discuss, and again under
these are a number of secretaries. But alas! in the present Oriental
imbroglio (although Korea is nominally the causa belli), the Korean
War Department is playing a part so insignificant, that we do not
even hear of it.
The Korean army, as estimated by the Korean War Office,
represents a goodly number of men, and European writers of note
have put down the militant force of the country at a million and
more. But even, numerically speaking, this statement should be
taken with a whole cellar of salt, and martially speaking,
exaggeration could not decently go farther. The Korean army is but
the shadow of an army, the harmless phantom of a force that once
drove the invading Japanese armies from the shores of Chosön, and
made the warriors of an American iron-clad pay dearly for their
intrusion.
But if the prowess of the Korean soldiery is gone, its
picturesqueness remains, and in its very inefficiency it speaks to us
of the days—now probably gone for ever—when weapons at which
we smile to-day were formidable indeed, the days when warfare
which would excite the scorn of our school-boys was warfare grim
and earnest. And as we watch that martial mockery—the army of
Korea—we may realize that the yesterday of Chosön was midway
between the copiously equipped to-day of our modern, European
civilization, and that primeval time when there were no implements,
the days when women used thorns for needles, and men used
thorns for fish-hooks.
Korea deals with crime as rigorously as China does, but her
methods of punishment—especially the most cruel ones—have been
borrowed from Japan, or borrowed by Japan from Korea. In China,
Japan, and Korea we constantly find the same ideas, the same
methods of life, with only the slightest local differentiations, but
more often than not it is impossible for the most erudite scholar—
not to mention the casual European wayfarer—to determine in which
of the three countries the common idea or custom was born.
Some of the customary Korean punishments would make, I think,
too painful reading: this, I am sure, they would make too painful
writing. I must refer the reader who is curious to Hamel; for Hamel
details them with considerable gusto, even the most horrible: the
punishment that used to be meted out to Korean murderers. Happily,
even in Korea, time cures some ills, and of later years, particularly
under the rule of the present king, a good, wise, and gentle man,
the Korean criminal code, if it has not assimilated some fraction of
that quality which “is an attribute to God Himself,” has at least
ceased to be the thing of horrid cruelty it was; and if the laws of
Chosön are more pitiless than the laws of Draco, still they disgrace
the humanity of Korea far less than they did two thousand years
ago. I know of no other respect in which Korea has changed more.
Here are two examples of Korean law—two laws that for
centuries were so rigidly carried out that their enforcement became
national customs.
“If a woman murder her husband she is to be taken to a highway
on which many people pass, and she shall be buried up to her
shoulders. Beside her an axe shall be laid, and with that axe all who
pass by her, unless they be noble, must strike her on the head, and
this none, save the noble, must fail to do, until she be dead.”
There are no bankruptcy courts in Korea. A Korean who once
contracts a debt can never escape from it. Here is the law:⁠—
“One who owes money, and at the promised time fails to pay it,
whether the debt be to his Majesty the King, or to another person or
other persons, shall be beaten two or three times a month on the
shin, and this punishment shall be continued until the debt is
discharged. If a man die in debt, his relations must pay that debt, or
be beaten two or three times a month on the shin.”
This old law, slightly modified, still holds in Korea, I believe. Of
course it works both ways. It makes it very hard for the debtor to
escape payment; it makes it almost impossible for the creditor to
lose any part of his substance.
 CHAPTER III.
SÖUL FROM THE CITY WALL.

Seen from the wall (a most wonderful wall which describes a

circuit of 9975 paces), Söul looks like a bed of thriving mushrooms,
mushrooms planted between the surrounding high hills, but grown
in many places up on to those hills. Yes; they look very much like
mushrooms, those low, one-storied houses, with their sloping,
Chinese-like roofs, some tiled, some turfed, and all neutral tinted.
The houses of Söul are as alike as mushrooms are, and as thickly
planted.
The wall defines the city with a strange outline. Now it dips into
the tiny valley, now it pulls itself up on to the top of some high hill.
Korea is a most distressingly hilly country. If you elect to go for a
decent stroll, it is a matter of climbing a hill, and when you reach the
summit of the hill it is a matter of tumbling down the other side, to
scramble up another hill, and your path will be just such a
succession of ups and downs, even though you go north until you
reach the “Ever White Mountain,” and, in reaching it, reach the
“River of the Duck’s Green,” which, flowing towards the south,
divides Korea from China; reach the Tu Man Kang which, flowing
towards the north-east, divides Korea from the territory of the Tsar.
Up and down it will be, even though you push east until you reach
the purple “Sea of Japan.” Still up and down you will find it, although
you go as far south, or as far west, as Korea goes, and find yourself
on the shores of China’s “Yellow Sea.” Korea looks like a stage
storm-at-sea. Its hills are so many that they lose their grandeur, as
individuality is lost in multitude.
But we must get back on to the wall, the wall of Söul.
The wall, which is purely Chinese in character, is punctuated by
eight gates. All of them have significant names. Several of them are
strictly reserved for very special purposes. The south gate is called
“The Gate of Everlasting Ceremony.” The west gate is “The Gate of
Amiability.” The east gate is “The Gate of Elevated Humanity.” The
south-west gate is “The Gate of the Criminals.” The majority of
Korean criminals, who are condemned to death, are beheaded. But
this may not be within the city walls. The procession of the man
about to die passes through the “Criminals’ Gate.” And that gate is
never opened save on the occasions of such gruesome functions.
The south-east gate is “The Gate of the Dead.” No corpse is interred
within the city walls. And no corpse, save only the corpse of a king,
may pass through any other gate than the “Gate of the Dead.” Any
corpse (but the monarch’s) would defile the gates through which
Söul’s humanity is wont to ebb and flow. The “Gate of the Dead” has
another name. It is often called “The Gate of Drainage,” for by its
side the River Hanyang flows out to the Yellow Sea. The northern
gate stands high upon the summit of a peculiarly shaped hill, which
the French missionaries aptly named “Cock’s Comb.” This gate is
never opened save to facilitate the flight of a Korean king.
The gates differ greatly in size, which adds to the unusual
picturesqueness of the wall.
The Cock’s Comb, up to whose highest ridge the wall of Söul
runs, is at once the most distinct and the most interesting bit of
Söul’s background. It is, among the mountains of the world, so
uniquely shaped that no one who has ever seen it can ever forget it.
And it is the altar of the most sacred of Korea’s national ceremonies.
Although a large portion of this hill is enclosed within Söul’s wall,
Söul itself, climbing city though it is, has not climbed far up the hill.
The summit of the Cock’s Comb is an uninhabited, high suburb of
Söul.
When the night has well fallen, when the “white” clad masses in
Söul’s market-place can no longer see the outlines of the hill, four
great lights break out upon that hill’s crest. To all in Söul those lights
cry out, “All’s well. In all Korea, all’s well.” Each light represents two
of the eight provinces into which Korea is divided. If in any Korean
province or county there is war, or threatening of war, a
supplementary light burns near the light that indicates that province.
If the war-light is placed on the left, war or invasion threatens one
province, if the war light is placed on the right, war or worse
threatens another province.
The bonfire signal service of the Korean War Office is
complicated and elaborated. One extra fire means that an enemy
has been sighted off some part of the sandy Korean coast. Two
lights mean that the enemy have landed; three mean the enemy are
moving inland; four mean they are pushing toward the capital; five
—! Well, when five such fires flare up, the citizens of Söul can only
pray—or run and drown themselves in the rapid rushing river that
leaves Söul as the condemned leave it—because those five bonfires
mean that the enemy draw near the city’s gate.
Telegraphy—as Edison knows it—is unknown in Korea. But the
Koreans have a weird but vivid telegraphy of their own.
At short intervals upon their rocky, sandy coast huge cranes are
built. Each crane is tended by a trusted official of the Korean king.
When dusk begins to fall, the attendant of the crane lights in it a
great bonfire, if all is well. That bonfire’s light is seen by the
attendant of a fire some miles more inland—some miles nearer Söul
—and so from every pace of Korea’s boundary, the faithful servants
of Korea’s king flash to Korea’s capital the message, “All is well.” A
hundred lines of message-light meet upon that queer hill, the
“Cock’s Comb” of Söul.
Many a night of late, unless the wires have lied to us, there must
have been a great confusion among those signal fires, and vast
confusion in poor frightened Söul.
A certain light will mean “China has pounced upon us.” Another
light will mean “Japan has stabbed us.” And a score of other lights
will mean a score of dire facts which only the heads of the Korean
War Department could translate for us, if they would.
Curfew shall not ring to-night. “Ah! how often,” said Helen, when
this Chino-Japanese war was first declared, “I have seen those four
placid bonfires tell the gentle Koreans that no Lion of England nor of
India had roared, that no Eagle of Russia (not to needlessly mention
Austria or America) had swooped, no dragon of China or Japan had
belched destroying fire! To-night, if those fires burn, they flash a
message of dire distress to Söul’s shrinking, blue-robed men, and
hidden, unseen women, unless happily they are unconscious what
an excuse for war their isolated peninsula has become.”
Poor Korea! what has she done? Nothing unwomanly. But
womanlike she has been unfortunately situated.
China has just suffered a plague.
Japan has just suffered an earthquake. For very many years
China and Japan have thought it expedient to soothe national heart-
ache (resultant upon national disaster) with the potent mustard
plaster of war.
The Chinese hate the Japanese. The Japanese hate the Chinese.
The Koreans hate the Japanese and the Chinese, and are hated by
both. An Oriental imbroglio is not hard of conception.
The worst of it is that Korea seems doomed. And Korea, with all
her faults, is one of the few remaining widows of the dead (but not
childless) old world. And she, good purdah-woman that she is, is
lying down with considerable wifely dignity upon the funeral pile,
which civilization has lit to cremate the false, old notions of the past.
One who has lived in Korea can but think it rather a pity that
Korea should cease to be, or be too much remodelled, whoever’s in
the wrong—Japan or China.
Nature has found Korea so nearly perfect, that it seems almost
profane for man (or those combinations of men called nations) to
find fault with her. In Korea there are snows that never melt. In
Korea there are flowers that never cease to bloom.
The land of the morning calm! Poor little peninsula (only twice
and a half the size of Scotland), the soft, rosy Oriental haze is going
to be ripped off of you, and in the cold, clear, brilliant light of
Westernized day you are going to fade away into nothing! But before
you quite fade away let us have a peep at you. You are superior in
many ways to our land. For one thing, you begin your year more
sensibly. You ring the new year in with the birth of the year’s first
flowers.
The Korean new year is a month later than ours. The snow is still
upon the ground there in February. But even so, the fruitless plum-
trees open their myriad buds, and long before the cold snow has
melted from their feet, their heads are covered with a warm, tinted,
perfumed snow of bloom. A few weeks later, and the cherry trees
are white with a magnificence of blossom that nowhere in this world
cherry-trees can excel, not even in Japan. Before the cherry
blossoms fall the wisteria breaks into ten thousand clusters of purple
loveliness. Then the peonies flaunt in every fertile and half fertile
spot, and mock, like the impudents they are, the splendour of the
sun. But their proud heads fall ere long, and all Korea is lovely with
the iris.
Autumn is the most delightful of the Korean seasons. It is
matchless. Not even on the banks of the Hudson does summer die
so splendid a death as she dies in Korea. The Korean summer,
superb and perfumed as she is, is very like that false Cawdor of
whom Malcolm said to Duncan:

“Nothing in his life

Became him like the leaving it.”

Winter in Korea is unqualifiedly cold. The hills are white with

snow, and the rivers are grey with ice. The people huddle into their
over-heated houses. And I believe that the entire nation does not
own a pair of skates. The only sleds, or sleighs, belong to the
fishermen who crack through the ice to catch their finny prey. The
fisherman sits upon the sled as he plies his noiseless industry, and
when his day’s work is done he piles his scaly plunder upon the sled,
and so drags it to the market-place.
But it was summer when Helen first stood upon the wall of Söul.
A parapet crenulates the outer edge of that old wall. It is broken
with loop-holes, and notched with embrasures. And every few yards
its broken outline is broken again by the overhanging branches of
flower-heavy trees, or by the bright blossoms of some vine that has
found root in one of the old wall’s mossy niches.
And within this picturesque wall huddles superlatively picturesque
Söul.
The royal palaces are noticeable for their gardens and their size.
Big as they are, and they are very big, they are none too big for the
vast harem that forms a most important part of their household.
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