Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/471

 that her husband is bound to respect, and to divorce her requires very sound and patent reasons. She has her powerful relatives who could make it very uncomfortable for her husband should he attempt to discredit their house by wantonly divorcing her. It is a terrible disgrace for a gentleman to have his wife run away from him, and he will go far to conciliate her and prevent such a scandal. Among the common people, however, there is far greater license. Divorce is exceedingly easy and common. If a man finds that the woman of his choice (or the go-between's choice) is not what he anticipated, he will simply send her home to her mother. It is very uncommon for a woman to complain before the magistrate and have her delinquent husband punished, for in any case she cannot go back to him, and so the less said about the matter the better. The utmost promiscuity prevails among the lower classes. A man may have half a dozen wives a year in succession. No ceremony is required, and it is simply a mutual agreement of a more or less temporary nature. The biblical picture of the Samaritan woman at Jacob's Well who had had five husbands is descriptive of many thousands among the low-class people in Korea.

The cost of a regular wedding in this country is very great, averaging some six months' income. This is one of the main reasons for irregular connections. Concubinage is an institution as old as history. It has existed in Korea from time immemorial. There are three main causes for it, - if a man has no son by his wife, if the wife is an invalid or a cripple or old, if the man is a mere libertine; in any of these cases he is likely to take a concubine. The custom is prevalent both among the high class and the middle class. The woman of the high class never becomes a concubine, but men of that class take concubines from the lower strata of society. From time to time we hear excuses made for concubinage in the case of a man whose wife is barren, but the excuse is not a valid one; and for the very good reason that however many sons a man may have by a concubine, not one of them can call