Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/80

 know a good thing when they see it, and they are willing to run a little risk of arrest and punishment in order to keep a fair-minded prefect. They virtually say, "We want this man for prefect, and if you send any other we will drive him out." The result is that there will be no one else that will care to pay the price of the office, and the government has to obey the command of the people, even though it means the loss of the fee for that time. In former years the prefect was chosen from among the people of the district where he was to govern. He belonged to a local family; and it is easy to see how there would be every inducement to govern with moderation, for indirection would injure not only the prefect's reputation, but would endanger the standing of the whole family. This was all done away with, however, and now the prefect is chosen from among the friends or relatives of some high official in Seoul, and is a sort of administrative free-lance bent upon the exploiting of his unknown constituency. He cares nothing what the people think of him, for as soon as he has squeezed them to the limit he will retire from office, and they will know him no more.

If this were all that could be said of the country prefect, we should conclude that government is next to impossible in Korea, but the fact is that the power of the prefect is curtailed and modified in a very effective manner by means of his under officials, through whom he has to do his work. These men are called ajuns, and they act as the right-hand man and factotum of the prefect. Comparatively low though the position of the ajun may be, it can truthfully be said that he is the most important man in the administration of the Korean government. He deserves special mention. The word ajun has existed for many centuries in Korea, and is a word of native origin. It originally meant any government officer, and was as applicable to the highest ministers of the state as to the lowest government employee; but when the administration changed to its present form, the selecting of prefects from the