Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/358

 at a price which throws the native product completely in the shade.

It is this progressive displacement of native labour which stirs up these people and makes them question the value of their former conservatism.

Korea is no exception to the rule that the various nations of the world develop peculiar and distinctive forms of amusement. There are some forms that all have in common, but there are others that have only to be mentioned and the hearer places them at once. Of such are cricket, base-ball, curling, bull-fighting, skiing and lacrosse.

Korea also has its own pet diversion stone-fights. This amusement is something of an anomaly, for Koreans are naturally the mildest and most inoffensive of people; but one has only to spend the first month of the year here to learn that the people are as passionately fond of this dangerous sport as Americans are of base-ball.

The fact that these fights occur only in the first month of the year illustrates the general fact that in no country is the periodicity of sports more marked than here. There is a special season for stone-fights, kite-flying, pitch-penny, swinging, topspinning and the like. The reason why the stone-fights occur only in spring is because then only are the fields bare and ample space is available for the contest. After the winter has kept the Korean imprisoned for three long months in the cramped quarters of his little thatched hut, the touch of spring means much more to him than it does to us, who live in comparatively spacious houses. His dormant physical energy awakes to new life, and he simply must come out and romp over the hills, open the safety-valve and give vent to his repressed faculties. The stone-fight originated seven hundred years ago, in the days of the former dynasty, when it was invented for the delectation of an imbecile King. It was at first confined to the palace