Page:In Korea with Marquis Ito (1908).djvu/329

Rh promiscuity prevails. "A man may have half-a-dozen wives a year in succession. No ceremony is required, and it is simply a mutual agreement of a more or less temporary nature."

As to business honesty or respect for property rights, as such, there is almost none of it among the people of Korea. But what else could be expected of pedlers, peasants, and coolies, who have lived under the corrupt and oppressive government of such rulers during centuries of time? To quote again from the friendly historian: "In case a man has to foreclose a mortgage and enter upon possession of the property, he will need the sanction of the authorities, since possession here, as elsewhere, is nine points of the law. The trouble is that a large fraction of the remaining point is dependent upon the caprice or the venality of the official whose duty is to adjudicate the case. In a land where bribery is almost second nature, and where private rights are of small account unless backed by some kind of influence, the thwarting of justice is exceedingly common." More astonishing still, from our point of view, is the use made of the public properties, which until recently prevailed even in the city of Seoul, by the lowest of the people. Any Korean might extend his temporary booth or shop out into the street, and then, when people had become accustomed to this, quietly plant permanent posts at the extreme limit of his illicit appropriation. On being expostulated with, "he will put on a look of innocence and assert that he has been using the space for many years"; indeed, "he inherited it from his father or father's father." To this day the making of false deeds, or the deeding of the same property to two different purchasers (by one false deed and one genuine, or by both false) is an