Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/501

 This craving for justice amounts to a passion; perhaps on the principle that things that are least accessible are the most desired. This feeling is expressed in a multitude of stories in which justice, long delayed, has at last been done. The Korean story-teller has the same penchant for getting the hero into hot water that the Western novelist has, but the Korean always gets his hero out, which is more than can be said for our more realistic style, in which the hero is often left suspended over the coals.

Stories based upon the passion for fame generally take a literary turn. They cluster about the great national examinations. The enormous influence that these examinations have exercised on the life of the Korean is shadowed forth in countless stories relating to the open strife of the competitors, their attempts to cheat or to bribe the examiners, to substitute spurious manuscripts, to forge names, if by any means whatever they may arrive at the Mecca of official position. And right here appears the relative status of literary and military life. The literary man is distinctly above the military. No fame is sufficient that rests merely upon military success. There are a very few exceptions. All Korean fiction goes to show that military glory is thrust upon a man, while it is only literary fame that he eagerly seeks.

Avarice is also one of the chords that are struck in Korean tales, but it is usually only as a secondary theme. Rarely is a story devoted exclusively or even mainly to the illustration of this passion. The Koreans are too happy-go-lucky, and they have too great a contempt for niggardliness to make the sordid acquisitive faculty a pleasing theme in fiction. On the other hand, the tales of generosity and self-sacrifice, of prodigal and even reprehensible bounty, are common enough, for they fit the spirit of the people and go hand in hand with their optimism.

A lad goes forth to seek his fortune. Coming to a village, he meets another boy who is grieving because he has no money with which to bury a parent. Our hero gives the unknown lad