Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/370

 borrower, besides giving security, generally gets some wellknown and reliable merchant to endorse the note. As this merchant cannot afford to have his credit brought in question, the chances of loss are very small.

Considering the great inequality in commercial ethics here, the Koreans trust each other in a really remarkable manner. The aggregate of money placed in trust is very large. The average Korean would scorn to ask from his friend more than a simple receipt for money turned over in trust, and it is my deliberate conviction that in all but a small fraction of cases the ordinary sense of justice and decency is a far greater deterrent to indirection than any legal restraints could possibly be.

Foreign commerce has been carried on for many centuries between Korea and the neighbouring countries. It is not true that Korea was first opened to import and export trade during the present generation. Commerce with China has been almost uninterrupted for fifteen hundred years, though it has been carried on in such a quiet way as largely to escape observation. Ginseng, furs and other special products have been regularly marketed in China, and silks, spices and other luxuries have been as regularly imported. The annual embassy to Peking was allowed to engage in trade.

On the other side of the peninsula the annual trade with Japan through the single station at Fusan was considerable, and was almost uninterrupted from about 1406 till 1866, and even before the opening of the fifteenth century there must have been some interchange of goods between the two countries, although the Japanese freebooters of the fourteenth century did much to keep the two countries from mutual intercourse.

It is a fact to which attention should be specially directed, that before the coming of Roman Catholic emissaries to Korea, and the consequent fear that the foreign religion was a cover for political designs, this was no more a hermit kingdom than was Japan or China. The efforts which both these other countries made to keep foreigners out were more persistent and more radical than