Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/510

 are daily in evidence and the ordinary Korean has them ever in mind. Here it is easy to exaggerate, for there are thousands, of Koreans who pay no attention whatever to any kind of a deity or power. They are morally averse to any restriction upon their own passions, and they are too intelligent to believe that their welfare is dependent upon the propitiation of any spirits, whether such exist or not. They may acknowledge the fact, but will not abide by the logical inference. There are very manyKoreans, however, who not only believe in the existence of such spirits, but are anxious to propitiate them. It is safe to say that an overwhelming majority of these are women, whose comparative lack of education makes them highly susceptible to superstition. There are also many men who in ordinary life would laugh the imps to scorn, and yet when laid upon a bed of sickness or subjected to some other painful casualty are willing enough to compound for their previous scepticism by the payment of large bribes to these same imps. It comes out, as we have said, in times of trouble. Korean folk-tales frequently have to deal with a situation where a gentleman is ill, but will have nothing to do with the spirits. His wife, however, holds the opposite opinion, and, unknown to her lord, smuggles in a mundang, or pansu, to exorcise the demon of disease.

We have already pointed out the fact that, as a rule, women are the best supporters of Buddhism, owing to the very inferior position which Confucianism accords them. The latter cult is the avowed enemy of the belief in goblins and imps, but Buddhism has become so mixed up with them that the Korean woman cannot hold to the one without embracing the other. Most Korean gentlemen will scoff at the idea that the spirits have any control over human destiny, but they put nothing in the way of their wives' adhesion to the lower cult.

There are two orders of spirits, - those which have an unknown but extra-human origin and those which represent the souls of the deceased. The various elves that haunt the spring, the rock, the tree, the cave or the river are nature-gods, pure