Korea & Her Neighbours/Introductory Chapter

IN the winter of 1894, when I was about to sail for Korea (to which some people erroneously give the name of '* The Korea"), many interested friends hazarded guesses at its position,— the Equator, the Mediterranean, and the Black Sea being among them, a hazy notion that it is in the Greek Arch-ipelago cropping up frequently. It was curious that not one of these educated, and, in some cases, intelligent people came within 2,000 miles of its actual latitude and longitude !

In truth, there is something about this peninsula which has repelled investigation, and until lately, when the establishment of a monthly periodical, carefully edited. The Korean Reposi-tory, has stimulated research, the one authority of which all writers, with and without acknowledgment, have availed them-selves, is the Introduction to Pere Ballet's Histoire de V £glise de Koree, a valuable treatise, many parts of which, however, are now obsolete.

If in this volume I present facts so elementary as to provoke the scornful comment,  Every schoolboy knows that," I ven-ture to remind my critics that the larger number of possible readers were educated when Korea was little more than a geographical expression," and had not the advantages of the modern schoolboy, whose '* up-to-date " geographical text-books have been written since the treaties of 1883 opened the Hermit Nation to the world ; and I will ask the minority to be patient with what may be to them '* twice-told tales " for the sake of the majority, specially in this introduction, which is intended to give something of lucidity to the chapters which follow.

The first notice of Korea is by Khordadbeh, an Arab geog-rapher of the ninth century, a.d., in his Book of Roads and Provinces, quoted by Baron Richofen in his work on China, p. 575. Legends of the aborginal inhabitants of the peninsula are too mythical to be noticed here, but it is certain that it was inhabited when Kit-ze or Ki-ja, who will be referred to later, introduced the elements of Chinese civilization in the twelfth century B.C. Naturally that conquest and subsequent immigrations from Manchuria have left some traces on the Koreans, but they are strikingly dissimilar from both their nearest neighbors, the Chinese and the Japanese, and there is a remarkable variety of physiognomy among them, all the more noticeable because of the uniformity of costume. The difficulty of identifying people which besets and worries the stranger in Japan and China does not exist in Korea. It is true that the obliquity of the Mongolian eye is always present, as well as a trace of bronze in the skin, but the complexion varies from a swarthy olive to a very light brunette.

There are straight and aquiline noses, as well as broad and snub noses with distended nostrils; and though the hair is dark, much of it is so distinctly a russet brown as to require the frequent application of lampblack and oil to bring it to a fashionable black, while in texture it varies from wiriness to silkiness. Some men have full moustaches and large goatees, on the faces of others a few carefully tended hairs, as in China, do duty for both, while many have full, strong beards. The mouth is either the wide, full-lipped, gaping cavity constantly seen among the lower orders, or a small though full feature, or thin-lipped and refined, as is seen continually among patricians.

The eyes, though dark, vary from dark brown to hazel ; the cheek bones are high ; the brow, so far as fashion allows it to be seen, is frequently lofty and intellectual ; and the ears are small and well set on. The usual expression is cheerful, with a dash of puzzlement. The physiognomy indicates, in its best aspect, quick intelligence, rather than force or strength of will. The Koreans are certainly a handsome race.

The physique is good. The average height of the men is five feet four and a half inches, that of the women cannot be ascertained, and is proportionately less, while their figure-less figures, the faults of which are exaggerated by the ugliest dress on earth, are squat and broad. The hands and feet of both sexes and all classes are very small, white, and exquisitely formed, and the tapering, almond-shaped finger-nails are care-fully attended to. The men are very strong, and as porters carry heavy weights, a load of 100 pounds being regarded as a moderate one. They walk remarkably well, whether it be the studied swing of the patrician or the short, firm stride of the plebeian when on business. The families are large and healthy. If the Government estimate of the number of houses is correct, the population, taking a fair average, is from twelve to thirteen millions, females being in the minority.

Mentally the Koreans are liberally endowed, specially with that gift known in Scotland as " gleg at the uptak." The for-eign teachers bear willing testimony to their mental adroitness and quickness of perception, and their talent for the rapid ac-quisition of languages, which they speak more fluently and with a far better accent than either the Chinese or Japanese. They have the Oriental vices of suspicion, cunning, and untruthfulness, and trust between man and man is unknown. Women are secluded, and occupy a very inferior position.

The geography of Korea, or Ch'ao Hsien (Morning Calm," or Fresh Morning"), is simple. It is a definite peninsula to the northeast of China, measuring roughly 600 miles from north to south and 135 from east to west. The coast line is about 1,740 miles. It lies between 34° 17' N. to 43° N. latitude and 124° 38' E. to 130° 2>?>' E. longitude, and has an estimated area of upwards of 80,000 square miles, be-ing somewhat smaller than Great Britain. Bounded on the north and west by the Tu-men and Am-nok, or Yalu, rivers, which divide it from the Russian and Chinese empires, and by the Yellow Sea, its eastern and southern limit is the Sea of Japan, a "silver streak," which has not been its salvation. Its northern frontier is only conterminous with that of Russia for II miles.

Both boundary rivers rise in Paik-tu San, the "White-Headed Mountain," from which runs southwards a great mountain range, throwing off numerous lateral spurs, itself a rugged spine which divides the kingdom into two parts, the eastern division being a comparatively narrow strip between the range and the Sea of Japan, difficult of access, but ex-tremely fertile ; while the western section is composed of rug-ged hills and innumerable rich valleys and slopes, well watered and admirably suited for agriculture. Craters of volcanoes, long since passed into repose, lava beds, and other signs of volcanic action, are constantly met with.

The lakes are few and very small, and not many of the streams are navigable for more than a few miles from the sea, the exceptions being the noble Am-nok, the Tai-dong, the Nak-tong, the Mok-po, and the Han, which last, rising in Kang-w5n Do, 30 miles from the Sea of Japan, after cutting the country nearly in half, falls into the sea at Chemulpo on the west coast, and, in spite of many and dangerous rapids, is a valuable highway for commerce for over 1 70 miles.

Owing to the configuration of the peninsula there are few-good harbors, but those which exist are open all the winter. The finest are Fusan and Won-san, on Broughton Bay. Che-mulpo, which, as the port of Seoul, takes the first place, can hardly be called a harbor at all, the ** outer harbor," where large vessels and ships of war lie, being nothing better than a roadstead, and the "inner harbor," close to the town, in the fierce tideway of the estuary of the Han, is only available for five or six vessels of small tonnage at a time. The east coast is steep and rocky, the water is deep, and the tide rises and falls from i to 2 feet only. On the southwest and west coasts the tid-e rises and falls from 26 to 38 feet !

Off the latter coasts there is a remarkable archipelago. Some of the islands are bold masses of arid rock, the resort of sea-fowl ; others are arable and inhabited, while the actual coast fringes off into innumerable islets, some of which are im-mersed by the spring tides. In the channels scoured among these by the tremendous rush of the tide, navigation is oft-times dangerous. Great mud-banks, specially near the mouths of the rivers, render parts of the coastline dubious.

Korea is decidedly a mountainous country, and has few plains deserving the name. In the north there are mountain groups with definite centres, the most remarkable being Paik-tu San, which attains an altitude of over 8,000 feet, and is re-garded as sacred. Farther south these settle into a definite range, following the coast-line at a moderate distance, and throwing out so many ranges and spurs to the west as to break up northern and central Korea into a congeries of corrugated and precipitous hills, either denuded or covered with chap-paral, and narrow, steep-sided valleys, each furnished with a stony stream. The great axial range, which includes the *' Diamond Mountain," a region containing exquisite moun-tain and sylvan scenery, falls away as it descends towards the southern coast, disintegrating in places into small and often infertile plains.

The geological formation is fairly simple. Mesozoic rocks occur in Hwang-hai Do, but granite and metamorphic rocks largely predominate. Northeast of Seoul are great fields of lava, and lava and volcanic rocks are of common occurrence in the north.

The climate is undoubtedly one of the finest and healthiest in the world. Foreigners are not afflicted by any climatic maladies, and European children can be safely brought up in every part of the peninsula. July, August, and sometimes the first half of September, are hot and rainy, but the heat is so tempered by sea breezes that exercise is always possible. For nine months of the year the skies are generally bright, and a Korean winter is absolutely superb, with its still atmosphere, its bright, blue, unclouded sky, its extreme dryness without asperity, and its crisp, frosty nights. From the middle of September till the end of June, there are neither extremes of heat nor cold to guard against.

The summer mean temperature at Seoul is about 75° Fah-renheit, that of the winter about 33°; the average rainfall 36.03 inches in the year, and the average of the rainy season 21.86 inches. July is the wettest month, and December the driest. The result of the abundant rainfall, distributed fairly through the necessitous months of the year, is that irrigation is necessary only for the rice crop.

The fauna of Korea is considerable, and includes tigers and leopards in great numbers, bears, antelopes, at least seven species of deer, foxes, beavers, otters, badgers, tiger-cats, pigs, several species of marten, a sable (not of much value, how-ever), and striped squirrels. Among birds there are black eagles, found even near Seoul, harriers, peregrines (largely used for hawking), pheasants, swans, geese, spectacled and common teal, mallards, mandarin ducks, turkey buzzards (very shy), white and pink ibis, sparrow-hawks, kestrels, imperial cranes, egrets, herons, curlews, night-jars, redshanks, bunt-ings, magpies (common and blue), orioles, wood larks, thrushes, redstarts, crows, pigeons, doves, rooks, warblers, wagtails, cuckoos, halcyon and bright blue kingfishers, jays, snipes, nut-hatches, gray shrikes, pheasants, hawks, and kites. But until more careful observations have been made it is im-possible to say which of the smaller birds actually breed in Korea, and which make it only a halting-place in their annual migrations.

The denudation of the hills in the neighborhood of Seoul, the coasts, the treaty ports, and the main roads, is impressive, and helps to give a very unfavorable idea of the country. It is to the dead alone that the preservation of anything deserv-ing the name of timber in much of southern Korea is owing. But in the mountains. of the northern and eastern provinces, and specially among those which enclose the sources of the Tu-men, the Am-nok, the Tai-dong, and the Han, there are very considerable forests, on which up to this time the wood-cutter has made little apparent impression, though a good deal of timber is annually rafted down these rivers.

Among the indigenous trees are the Abies excelsa, Abies microsperma, Pinus sinensis y Finns pinea, three species of oak, the lime, ash, birch, five species of maple, the Acantho-panax ricini folia, Rhus seniipififiata, ElcBagmis, juniper, mountain ash, hazel, Thuja Orientalis (?), willow, Sophora Japonica (?), hornbeam, plum, peach, Euonymus alatus, etc. The flora is extensive and interesting, but, with the exception of the azalea and rhododendron, it lacks brilliancy of color. There are several varieties of showy clematis, and the 7niile-fleur rose smothers even large trees, but the climber par ex-cellence of Korea is the Ampelopsis Veifchi. The economic plants are few, and, with the exception of i\\t Panax quinque-folia (ginseng), the wild roots of which are worth 15 per ounce, are of no commercial value.

The mineral wealth of Korea is a vexed question. Probably between the view of the country as an El Dorado and the scepticism as to the existence of underground treasure at all, the mean lies. Gold is little used for personal ornaments or in the arts, yet the Korean declares that the dust of his country is gold ; and the unquestionable authority of a Customs' report states that gold dust to the amount of 1,360,279 was exported in 1896, and that it is probable that the quantity which left the country undeclared was at least as much again. Silver and galena are found, copper is fairly plentiful, and the country is rich in undeveloped iron and coal mines, the coal being of excellent quality. The gold-bearing quartz has never been touched, but an American Company, having obtained a con-cession, has introduced machinery, and has gone to work in the province of Phyong-an.

The manufactures are unimportant. The best productions are paper of several qualities made from the Bronsonettia Fapyrifera, among which is an oiled paper, like vellum in appearance, and so tough that a man can be raised from the ground on a sheet of it, lifted at the four corners, fine grass mats, and split bamboo blinds.

The arts are nil.

Korea, or Ch'ao Hsien, has been ruled by kings of the pres-ent dynasty since 1392. The monarchy is hereditary, and though some modifications in a constitutional direction were made during the recent period of Japanese ascendency, the sovereign is still practically absolute, his edicts, as in China, constituting law. The suzerainty of China, recognized since very remote days, was personally renounced by the king at the altar of the Spirits of the Land in January, 1895, and the com-plete independence of Korea was acknowledged by China in the treaty of peace signed at Shimonoseki in May of the same year. There is a Council of State composed of a chancellor, five councillors, six ministers, and a chief secretary. The de-cree of September, 1896, which constitutes this body, an-nounces the king's absolutism in plain terms in the preamble.

There are nine ministers — the Prime Minister, Minister of the Royal Household, of Finance, of Home Affairs, Foreign Affairs, War, Justice, Agriculture, and Education, but the royal will (or whim) overrides their individual or collective decisions.

The Korean army consists of 4,800 men in Seoul, drilled by Russians, and 1,200 in the provinces; the navy, of two small merchant steamers.

Korea is divided into 13 provinces and 360 magisterial districts.

The revenue, which is amply sufficient for all legitimate ex-penses, is derived from Customs' duties, under the able and honest management of officers lent by the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs : a land tax of $6 on every fertile kyel (a fertile kyel being estimated at about 6 1/3 acres), and $5 on every mountain kyel ; a household tax of 60 cents per house, houses in the capital enjoying immunity; and a heavy excise duty of $16 per cattie on manufactured ginseng.

Up to 1876 Korea successfully preserved her isolation, and repelled with violence any attempt to encroach upon it. In that year Japan forced a treaty upon her, and in 1882 China fol-lowed with "Trade and Frontier Regulations." The United States negotiated a treaty in 1882, Great Britain and Germany in 1884, Russia and Italy in 1886, and Austria in 1892, in all which, though under Chinese suzerainty, Korea was treated with as an independent state. By these treaties, Seoul and the ports of Chemulpo (Jenchuan), Fusan, and Won-san (Gen-san) were opened to foreign commerce, and this year (1897) Mok-po and Chinnam-po have been added to the list.

After the treaties were signed, a swarm of foreign represent-atives settled down upon the capital, where three of them are housed in handsome and conspicuous foreign buildings. The British Minister at Peking is accredited also to the Korean Court, and Britain has a resident Consul-General. Japan, Russia, and America are represented by Ministers, France by a Charge d' Affaires, and Germany by a Consul. China, which has been tardy in entering upon diplomatic relations with Korea since the war, placed her subjects under the protection of the British Consul-General.

Until recently, the coinage of Korea consisted of debased copper cash, 500 to the dollar, a great check on business transactions; but a new fractional coinage, of which the unit is a 20-cent piece, has been put into circulation, along with 5 -cent nickel, -cash copper, and \-cash brass pieces. The fine Jap-anese yen or dollar is now current everywhere. The Dai Ichi Gingo and Fifty-eighth Banks of Japan afford banking facili-ties in Seoul and the open ports.

In the treaty ports of Fusan, Won-san, and Chemulpo, there were in January, 1897, 11,318 foreign residents and 266 for-eign business firms. The Japanese residents numbered 10,711, and their firms 230. The great majority of the American and French residents are missionaries, and the most conspicuous objects in Seoul are the Roman Cathedral and the American Methodist Episcopal Church. The number of British subjects in Korea in January, 1897, was 65, and an agency of a British firm in Nagasaki has recently been opened at Chemulpo. The approximate number of Chinese in Korea at the same time was 2,500, divided chiefly between Seoul and Chemulpo. There is a newly-instituted postal system for the interior, with post-age stamps of four denominations, and a telegraph system, Seoul being now in communication with all parts of the world.

The roads are infamous, and even the main roads are rarely more than rough bridle tracks. Goods are carried everywhere on the backs of men, bulls, and ponies, but a railroad from Chemulpo to Seoul, constructed by an American concession-aire, is actually to be opened shortly.

The language of Korea is mixed. The educated classes in-troduce Chinese as much as possible into their conversation, and all the literature of any account is in that language, but it is of an archaic form, the Chinese of 1,000 years ago, and differs completely in pronunciation from Chinese as now spoken in China. En-mtm, the Korean script, is utterly despised by the educated, whose sole education is in the Chinese classics. Korean has the distinction of being the only language of East-ern Asia which possesses an alphabet. Only women, children, and the uneducated used the En-mun till January, 1895, when a new departure was made by the official Gazette, which for several hundred years had been written in Chinese, appearing in a mixture of Chinese characters and En-mun, a resemblance to the Japanese mode of writing, in which the Chinese charac-ters which play the chief part are connected by katia syllables.

A further innovation was that the King's oath of Independ-ence and Reform was promulgated in Chinese, pure En-7nun, and the mixed script, and now the latter is regularly employed as the language of ordinances, official documents, and the Gazette ; royal rescripts, as a rule, and despatches to the for-eign representatives still adhering to the old form.

This recognition of the Korean language by means of the official use of the mixed, and in some cases of the pure script, the abolition of the Chinese literary examinations as the test of the fitness of candidates for office, the use of the " vulgar " script exclusively in the Lidependent, the new Korean news-paper, the prominence given to Korean by the large body of foreign missionaries, and the slow creation of scientific text-books and a literature in En-mun, are tending not only to strengthen Korean national feeling, but to bring the *' masses," who can mostly read their own script, into contact with West-ern science and forms of thought.

There is no national religion. Confucianism is the official cult, and the teachings of Confucius are the rule of Korean morality. Buddhism, once powerful, but " disestablished " three centuries ago, is to be met with chiefly in mountainous districts, and far from the main roads. Spirit worship, a species of shamanism, prevails all over the kingdom, and holds the uneducated masses and the women of all classes in complete bondage.

Christian missions, chiefly carried on by Americans, are beginning to produce both direct and indirect effects.

Ten years before the opening of Korea to foreigners, the Korean king, in writing to his suzerain, the Emperor of China, said, " The educated men observe and practice the teachings of Confucius and Wen Wang," and this fact is the key to any-thing like a correct estimate of Korea. Chinese influence in government, law, education, etiquette, social relations, and morals is predominant. In all these respects Korea is but a feeble reflection of her powerful neighbor ; and though since the war the Koreans have ceased to look to China for assist-ance, their sympathies are with her, and they turn to her for noble ideals, cherished traditions, and moral teachings. Their literature, superstitions, system of education, ancestral worship, culture, and modes of thinking are Chinese. Society is organized on Confucian models, and the rights of parents over children, and of elder over younger brothers, are as fully recognized as in China.

It is into this archaic condition of things, this unspeakable grooviness, this irredeemable, unreformed Orientalism, this parody of China without the robustness of race which helps to hold China together, that the ferment of the Western leaven has fallen, and this feeblest of independent kingdoms, rudely shaken out of her sleep of centuries, half frightened and wholly dazed, finds herself confronted with an array of power-ful, ambitious, aggressive, and not always overscrupulous powers, bent, it may be, on overreaching her and each other, forcing her into new paths, ringing with rude hands the knell of time-honored custom, clamoring for concessions, and be-wildering her with reforms, suggestions, and panaceas, of which she sees neither the meaning nor the necessity.

And so "The old order changeth, giving place to new," and many indications of the transition will be found in the later of the following pages.