Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/538

 great outstanding fact in regard to the slavery of Korea to-day is that there is not a single male slave in the domains of the Emperor of Korea.

In discussing the status of slavery, therefore, we have to do only with female slaves, and the first question that arises in the inquiring mind is as to the methods by which a woman can become a slave. There are four ways.

Let us suppose that a woman of the middle or lower class finds that she has lost all visible means of support, and must either become a beggar or a slave or else starve; or if perchance she is in great need of ready money to bury a parent or to support aged parents, she will go to an acquaintance and ask him to recommend her to one of his friends as a slave. This is done, and she is introduced into the house of her prospective purchaser. He looks her over, sets her to work, and satisfies himself that she is competent. He then pays her forty thousand, fifty thousand or as high as a hundred thousand cash for herself, and she gives a deed of her own person, made out in legal form. In place of a seal, she places her hand upon the paper and marks its outline with a brush pen, and by this she can easily be identified. She is now a slave. The transaction does not come under the cognisance of the government, but is a private contract. Formerly only men of the higher class were allowed to hold slaves, and it is only during the last fifty years that Koreans of the middle class have been allowed to hold them. This is one of the marked features of the rapid demolition of social barriers that has been taking place during the past half-century. A woman of the upper class can sell herself into slavery only by disguising her high birth and so deceiving her purchaser, for no gentleman would knowingly buy a lady's person, not only because of the innate impropriety of the transaction, but because he would subject himself to the most caustic criticism of his peers.

The second way in which a woman could become a slave was as follows. If a gentleman was convicted of treason (or, formerly, of counterfeiting as well), he was either executed or