Page:In Korea with Marquis Ito (1908).djvu/330

296 exceedingly common occurrence. If the native wanted a place for the deposit of his filth, and the drain near his house was already full, he dug a hole in the street; if he wanted dirt for his own use, he took it from the street. "Scores of times," says Hulbert, "I have come upon places where a hole has been dug in the street large enough to bury an ox." Meanwhile, petty stealing and highway robbery have been going on all over the land. This, too, is the practical morality of the Korean populace, when unrestrained by foreign control, even down to the present time.

A curious confirmation of the foregoing estimate of the mental and moral character of the people of Korea was afforded by the "confessions" which poured forth in perfervid language, ending not infrequently in a falling fit or a lapse into half-consciousness, from thousands of native Christians during the revival of 1906-1907. The sins which were confessed to have been committed since their profession of Christianity, were in the main these same characteristic vices of the Korean people. They included not only pride, jealousy, and hatred, but habitual lying, cheating, stealing, and acts of impurity.

It is, then, no cause for surprise that a recent writer affirms: "If it seems a hopeless task to lift the Chinaman out of his groove, it is a hundred times more difficult to change the habits of a Korean. . . . The Korean has absolutely nothing to recommend him save his good nature. He is a standing warning to those who oppose progress. Some one has said that the answer to Confucianism is China; but the best and most completely damning answer is Korea."

Can Korea—such a people, with such rulers—be reformed and redeemed? Can her rulers be made to rule at least in some semblance of righteousness, as preparatory to its more perfect and substantial form ? Can the people learn to prize