Page:In Korea with Marquis Ito (1908).djvu/208

180 The reason for this petty falsifying of historical fact was characteristically Korean; it was in order that the honor of casting the bell might be ascribed to the Founder of the present Dynasty.

In spite of these facts, however, the main outlines of the development of Korea are unmistakable. Its history has been, for the ruling classes, one long, monotonous, almost unbroken record of misrule and misfortune; and for the people an experience of poverty, oppression, and the shedding of blood. That they have endured at all as the semblance of a nation, although not "as an organized state in the modern sense," has been due chiefly to these two causes: first, to a certain native quality of passive resistance, varied by periods of frenzied uprising against both native and foreign oppressors; and, second, to the fact that the difficulties encountered in getting over mountains and sea, in order to maintain a foreign rule long enough to accomplish these ends, have prevented their stronger neighbors on all sides from thoroughly subjugating and absorbing them. This latter reason may be stated in another way: it has hitherto never been worth the cost to terminate the independent existence of the Korean nation.

Nor is it difficult to learn from authentic sources the two most potent reasons for the unfortunate and evil state throughout their history of the Korean people. These reasons are, on the one hand, the physical results of repeated invasions from the outside; and, on the other hand, the adoption and perpetuation, in a yet more mischievous and degraded fashion, of the civil and official corruptions received from Korea's ancient suzerain, China. It is customary to attach great importance, both as respects the damage done to the material interests of the country, and also as accounting for the Korean hatred of the Japanese, to the invasion of Hideyoshi. But the undoubted facts do not bear out this con-