Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/405

 We see, then, that quite a list of Korean books could be gotten together, but the trouble is that very few Koreans can afford to possess them. The ordinary gentleman may have half a dozen works of various kinds, but it is only here and there that one of them will have what we could call a library. And right here comes in a most marked peculiarity of this people. While they are very open-handed with their money, as a rule, yet in the matter of books they are the utmost misers. I know personally of a number of well-stocked libraries in Seoul, but it is absolutely impossible even to get a look at them. Not only will the owner not lend a book, but he will not show one to a visitor except under the most unusual circumstances. They do well not to lend, but it is one of the most difficult traits of the Korean to explain, this extreme unwillingness even to show a book at his own house. It is easy to see, therefore, that the cause of general reading is badly handicapped. There are no public libraries, except those in Seoul, which handle fiction in the native character, and many of the really valuable works are so voluminous that very few can afford to purchase. Let me illustrate. One of the really valuable books is the Mun-hon Pi-go, an encyclopaedia in one hundred and twelve volumes. This work is nearly as well known by name in Korea as the Britannica is in England or America, and yet I have never discovered more than three copies of it in the country. I worked for months to secure even a look at one, and it was only the sudden collapse of a wealthy family which threw a copy on the market and gave the opportunity to buy. Even then it was a matter of considerable diplomacy. There are half-a-dozen of the leading Korean works that I have never been able to set eyes upon even after years of inquiry and search.

When we come to the matter of fiction, we find that the imagination of the Korean was not to be held completely in check even by the iron grasp of Chinese ideals.