Page:Korea (1904).djvu/170

118 has been affiliated for centuries to the pursuits and problems of agriculture. Koreans are thus instinctively and intuitively agriculturists, and it is necessarily along these lines that the development of the country should in part progress.

It is impossible not to be impressed by a force which works so laboriously, while it takes no rest save that variety which comes with the change of season. The peaceable, plodding farmer of Korea has his counterpart in his bull. The Korean peasant and his weary bull are made for one another. Without his ruminating partner, the work would be impracticable. It drags the heavy plough through the deep mud of the rice-fields, and over the rough surface of the grain lands; it carries loads of brick and wood to the market, and hauls the unwieldy market cart along the country roads. The two make a magnificent pair; each is a beast of burden. The brutishness, lack of intelligence, and boorishness of the agricultural labourer in England is not quite reproduced in the Korean. The Korean farmer has of necessity to force himself to be patient. He is content to regard his sphere of utility in this world as one in which man must labour after the fashion of his animals, with no appreciable satisfaction to himself.

Originally, if history speaks truly, the farmers of Korea were inclined to be masterful and independent. Indications of this earlier spirit are found nowadays in periodical protests against the extortionate demands of local officials. These disturbances are isolated and infrequent, for, when once their spirits were crushed, the farmers developed into the present mild and inoffensive type. They submit to oppression and to the cruelty of the Yamen; they endure every form of illegal taxation, and they ruin themselves to pay "squeezes," which exist only through their own humility.