Page:Village life in Korea (1911).djvu/38



down the corridors of time in the misty past, when the Western world was unknown and unheard-of, the little peninsula of which we are writing was making history—history which, if it had been faithfully recorded, would no doubt be very interesting reading to the people living there to-day. But, alas! alas! the muse of the historian did not sing in those days in the "Land of the Morning Calm;" and so we are left to tradition for much of what we know, or claim to know, of the history of this little country which has been busy making history for so many successive centuries.

There are stories connected with the Ever-White Mountains about a celestial being who descended to the earth and became the ruler of the wild tribes in those regions. But of course these stories cannot be taken into account as history, so we are compelled to look for something more modern and withal more reasonable to mark the starting point in the history of Korea.

In the year 1122 B.C., about the time that the elders of Israel came together unto Samuel and demanded a king to reign over them, the clock of time struck the hour for the dawn of Korean history. In the above-mentioned year a great man by the name of Kija came with the fragments of a defeated army from (32)