Korea & Her Neighbours/Chapter XXIX

Mou-Chin Tai is a beautifully situated village, and has something of a look of comfort. Up to that point small boats can come up at all seasons, but there is almost no trade. The Tai-dong expands into a broad sheet of water, on which the hills descend abruptly. There is a ferry, and we drove our ponies into the ferryboat and yelled for the ferry-man. After a time he appeared on the top of the bank, but absolutely declined to take us over "for any money." He would have "nothing so do with a foreigner," he said, and he would not be " implicated with a Japanese " ! So we put ourselves across, and the mapii were so angry that they threw his poles into the river.

Passing through very pretty country, and twice crossing the Tai-dong, we halted at the town of Sun-chhon, a magistracy with a deplorably ruinous yamen. All these official buildings have seen better days. Their courts are spacious, and the double-roofed gateways, with their drum towers, as well as the central hall of the yamen, still retain a certain look of stateliness, though paint, lacquer, and gilding have long ago disappeared from the elaborately arranged beams and carved wood of the roofs, and the fretwork screening the interiors is always shabby and broken.

About the Sun-chhon yamen and all others, there are crowds of "runners," writers, soldiers in coarse ragged uniforms, young men of the yang-ban class in spotless white garments, lounging, or walking with the swinging gait befitting their position, while the decayed and forlorn rooms in the courtyard are filled with petty officials, smoking long pipes and playing cards. To judge from the crowds of attendants, the walking hither and thither, the hurrying in various directions with manuscripts, and the din of drums and fifes when the great gate is opened and closed, one would think that nothing less than the business of an empire was transacted within the ruinous portals.

Soldiers, writers, yamen runners, and men of the yang-ban and literary classes combined with the loafers of the town to compose a crowd which by its buzzing and shouting, and tearing off the paper from my latticed door, gave me a fatiguing and hideous two hours, a Korean crowd being only unbearable when it is led by men of the literary class, who, as in China, indulge in every sort of vulgar impertinence. Eventually I was smuggled into the women's apartments, where I was victimized in other ways by insatiable curiosity. The women of the lower classes in Korea are ill-bred and unmannerly, far removed from the gracefulness of the same class in Japan or the reticence and kindliness of the Chinese peasant women. Their clothing is extremely dirty, as if the men had a monopoly of their ceaseless laundry work, which everywhere goes on far into the night. Every brookside has its laundresses squatting on flat stones, dipping the soiled clothes in the water, laying them on flat stones in tightly rolled bundles and beating them with flat paddles, a previous process consisting of steeping them in a ley made of wood ashes. Bleached under the brilliant sun and very slightly glazed with rice starch, after being beaten for a length of time with short quick taps on a wooden roller with club-shaped "laundry sticks," common white cotton looks like dull white satin, and has a dazzling whiteness which always reminds me of St. Mark's words concerning the raiment at the Transfiguration, "so as no fuller on earth can white them." This wearing of white clothes, and especially of white wadded clothes in winter, entails very severe and incessant labor on the women. The coats have to be unpicked and put together again each time that they are washed, and though some of the long seams are often joined with paste, there is till much sewing to be done.

Besides this the Korean peasant woman makes all the clothing of the household, does all the cooking, husks and cleans rice with a heavy pestle and mortar, carries heavy loads to market on her head, draws water, in remote districts works in the fields, rises early and takes rest late, spins and weaves, and as a rule has many children, who are not weaned till the age of three.

The peasant woman may be said to have no pleasures. She is nothing but a drudge, till she can transfer some of the drudgery to her daughter-in-law. At thirty she looks fifty, and at forty is frequently toothless. Even the love of personal adornment fades out of her life at a very early age. Beyond the daily routine of life it is probable that her thoughts never stray except to the daemons, who are supposed to people earth and air, and whom it is her special duty to propitiate.

It is really difficult to form a general estimate of the position of women in Korea. Absolute seclusion is the inflexible rule among the upper classes. The ladies have their own court-yards and apartments, towards which no windows from the men's apartments must look. No allusion must be made by a visitor to the females of the household. Inquiries after their health would be a gross breach of etiquette, and politeness requires that they should not be supposed to exist. Women do not receive any intellectual training, and in every class are regarded as beings of a very inferior order. Nature having in the estimation of the Korean man, who holds a sort of dual philosophy, marked woman as his inferior, the Youth's Primer, Historical Summaries, and the Little Learning impress this view upon him in the schools, and as he begins to mix with men this estimate of women receives daily corroboration.

The seclusion of women was introduced five centuries ago by the present dynasty, in a time of great social corruption, for the protection of the family, and has probably been continued, not, as a Korean frankly told Mr. Heber Jones, because men distrust their wives, but because they distrust each other, and with good reason, for the immorality of the cities and of the upper classes almost exceeds belief. Thus all young women, and all older women except those of the lowest class, are secluded within the inner courts of the houses by a custom which has more than the force of law. To go out suitably concealed at night, or on occasions when it is necessary to travel or to make a visit, in a rigidly closed chair, are the only "outings" of a Korean woman of the middle and upper classes, and the low-class woman only goes out for purposes of work. The murdered Queen told me, in allusion to my own Korean journeys, that she knew nothing of Korea, or even of the capital, except on the route of the Kur-dong.

Daughters have been put to death by their fathers, wives by their husbands, and women have even committed suicide, according to Dallet, when strange men, whether by accident or design, have even touched their hands, and quite lately a serving-woman gave as her reason for remissness in attempting to save her mistress, who perished in a fire, that in the confusion a man had touched the lady, making her not worth saving !

The law may not enter the women's apartments. A noble hiding himself in his wife's rooms cannot be seized for any crime except that of rebellion. A man wishing to repair his roof must notify his neighbors, lest by any chance he should see any of their women. After the age of seven, boys and girls part company, and the girls are rigidly secluded, seeing none of the male sex except their fathers and brothers until the date of marriage, after which they can only see their own and their husband's near male relations. Girl children, even among the very poor, are so successfully hidden away, that in somewhat extensive Korean journeys I never saw one girl who looked above the age of six, except hanging listlessly about in the women's rooms, and the brightness which girl life contributes to social existence is unknown in the country.

But I am far from saying that the women fret and groan under this system, or crave for the freedom which European women enjoy. Seclusion is the custom of centuries. Their idea of liberty is peril, and I quite believe that they think that they are closely guarded because they are valuable chattels. One intelligent woman, when I pressed her hard to say what they thought of our customs in the matter, replied, "We think that your husbands don't care for you very much"!

Concubinage is a recognized institution, but not a respected one. The wife or mother of a man not infrequently selects the concubine, who in many cases is looked upon by the wife as a proper appendage of her husband's means or position, much as a carriage or a butler might be with us. The offspring in these cases are under a serious social stigma, and until lately have been excluded from some desirable positions. Legally the Korean is a strict monogamist, and even when a widower marries again, and there are children by the second marriage, those of the first wife retain special rights.

There are no native schools for girls, and though women of the upper classes learn to read the native script, the number of Korean women who can read is estimated at two in a thousand. It appears that a philosophy largely imported from China, superstitions regarding daemons, the education of men, illiteracy, a minimum of legal rights, and inexorable custom have combined to give woman as low a status in civilized Korea as in any of the barbarous countries in the world. Yet there is no doubt that the Korean woman, in addition to being a born intrigante, exercises a certain direct influence, especially as mother and mother-in-law, and in the arrangement of marriages.

Her rights are few, and depend on custom rather than law. She now possesses the right of remarriage, and that of remaining unmarried till she is sixteen, and she can refuse permission to her husband for his concubines to occupy the same house with herself. She is powerless to divorce her husband, conjugal fidelity, typified by the goose, the symbolic figure at a wedding, being a feminine virtue solely. Her husband may cast her off for seven reasons — incurable disease, theft, childlessness, infidelity, jealousy, incompatibility with her parents- in-law, and a quarrelsome disposition. She may be sent back to her father's house for any one of these causes. It is believed, however, that desertion is far more frequent than divorce. By custom rather than law she has certain recognized rights, as to the control of children, redress in case of damage, etc. Domestic happiness is a thing she does not look for. The Korean has a house, but no home. The husband has his life apart; common ties of friendship and external interest are not known. His pleasure is taken in company with male acquaintances and gesang ; and the marriage relationship is briefly summarized in the remark of a Korean gentleman in conversation with me on the subject, " We marry our wives, but we love our concubines."