Korea in TransitionJames Scarth Gale


P R O P E R T Y O F
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FORWARD MISSION STUDY COURSES
EDITED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF
THE YOUNG PEOPLE'S MISSIONARY MOVEMENT
OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA
KOREA. IN TRANSITION
N. B.-Special helps and denominational mission
study literature for this course can be obtained by
corresponding with the Secretary of your mission board
or society.





Korea in Transition
By fl
A:.
JAMES S: GALE
Seventeen Years a Missionary in Korea
CINCINNATI: JENNINGS & GRAHAM
N E W YORK : EATON & MAINS


TYS
3o4.
,G-/ 5.
CoPYRIGHT, 1909, BY
YoUNG PEOPLE's MISSIONARY Movement
of THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA
fy


TO THE
YOUNG HEARTS OF AMERICA
IN BEHALF OF
THE OLD WORLD OF THE EAST





Exch.
tiºn. of Ill. Lik -
-----
* CONTENTS
chapter PAGE
1 The Land and the People...... • * * * * * * * * * - I
II The Nation's Present Situation........... 29
III. The Beliefs of the People....... • . . . . . . . . . 65
IV Social Life and Customs ...... • - - - - - - - - - - 93
V Special Providences............ • * * * * * . . . . I25
VI Pioneer Methods of Missionaries.......... I59
VII. The Response of Korea.................. 189
VIII Growth, Present Condition, and Outlook.. a 25
APPENDIXES
Appendix A Division of Territory, Population,
Distribution of Missionaries..... 257
Appendix B Statistics of Protestant Missions in
Korea...... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
Appendix C Bibliography..................... 26o
Index • * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * - e. e. e. e. e. e. e. e. e. e. e. e. e. 263





ILLUSTRATIONS
Pagr:
Plowing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Sawing Timber. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Beating Turnip Seed into Meal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I9
Building a House. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I9
Prince Min. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Marquis Ito, First Resident General in Korea. ... 37
Moving Dead Body Three Years after Burial by
Order of Geomancers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Ancestor Worship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Mourner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Masked Heroes at a Funeral to Chase Away Evil
Spirits. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Royal Tomb and Guardians. . . . . . . . . . . . - - - - - - - - 87
Spirit Posts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Groom Returning with His Bride............... Io.4
Bridal Feast after the Ceremony................ Io.4
Group of Presbyterian Missionaries Itinerating... 131
Itinerating. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I31
Beginning of a School for Girls.................. I43
Korean Teacher with Pupils.................... I 43
Junkin Memorial Hospital, Fusan...... - - - - - - - - - 177
Ivey Hospital, Songdo.................... . . . . . I 77
Severance Hospital, Seoul......... - - - - - - - - - - - - - 181
Divinity Students ............... - - - - - - - - - - - - - - I93
College Students. . . . . . . . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - I 93
Church Built by Koreans.................. • . . . . I 95
Methodist Church, Wonsan.............. • . . . . . . I 95
Bible Training Institute, Pingyang.............. 209
Presbyterian Church, Pingyang. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
ix


× ILLUSTRATIONS
Pace
Members of Bible Class, Four Walked Ioo Miles
to Attend. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..... 213
Upper Class, Pingyang Theological School, Ping
Yang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213'
Methodist Church, Seoul ....................... 229
Christian Men Gathered for Two Weeks' Bible
Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .......... • - - - 23.I
Methodist Congregation, Seoul............ • - - - - - 233
Women's Bible Institute ........ ------------ • - - 233
Missionaries and Native Workers................ 239
Young Men's Christian Association Building, Seoul 239
A Group of Korean Leaders........ ------------ 247
Colored Map of Korea.. -- ------------------- ...End


EDITORIAL STATEMENT
According to the rules of the Young Peo-
ple's Missionary Movement, the Editorial Com-
mittee has liberty to make any alterations that
it may consider necessary in the manuscripts
submitted to it for publication. In making
such changes it is customary to consult with
the author. The absence of Dr. Gale in Korea
has made it impossible to secure from his pen
a few additions that were found desirable.
These have been made exclusively in Chapters
VII and VIII, and have been taken mainly
from the reports of other missionaries. These
are indicated by quotation marks. There have
also been some rearrangement of material and
a few elisions. The Committee regrets ear-
nestly that it has been impossible to submit all
these changes to Dr. Gale for his approval.





THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE


As one first approaches Korea, especially if one has come
from the fertile and verdant terraced hills of Japan, the
bleakness and barrenness of Korea's mountains is oppressive.
Tradition has it that the Korean, in his desire to maintain
his independence, deemed that he could do it best by a de-
termined exclusion of all outsiders, and, with the intention
of making Korea appear desolate and unattractive, he pur-
posely devastated the whole coast. Whether there is truth
in this or not, it remains a fact that the seaward coast of
almost all its islands, even where they have a southern
exposure, is barren, rugged, , and desolate, while ofttimes
the northern but landward side is well cultivated, woody,
and fertile, and that, while the whole coast-line appears
so bleak and bare, when one travels in the interior, one is
charmed with the many fertile hills and valleys, teeming
with grain and yielding such crops that, while not all of
the arable land is cultivated, there is ample for Korea's
millions, leaving a large balance in all good years for export.
—Horace G. Underwood
Her resources are undeveloped, not exhausted. Her ca-
pacities for successful agriculture are scarcely exploited. Her
climate is superb, her rainfall abundant, and her soil pro-
ductive. Her hills and valleys, contain coal, iron, copper,
lead, and gold. The fisheries along her coast-line of 1,740
miles might be a source of untold wealth. She is inhabited
by a hardy and hospitable race, and she has no beggar class.
—Isabella Bird Bishop
The climate of Korea may be briefly described as the
same as that of the eastern part of the United States between
Maine and South Carolina, with this one difference, that
the prevailing southeast summer wind in Korea brings the
moisture from the warm ocean current that strikes Japan
from the south, and precipitates, it over almost the whole
of Korea; so that there is a distinct “rainy season” during
most of the months of July and August. This rainy season
also has played an important part in determining Korean
history.
—Homer B. Hulbert


I
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE
Korea lies in the same latitude as Boston,
New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and
Washington, 35 to 43 degrees north latitude.
Its location is on the eastern rim of Asia, look-
ing southward. At its back is Manchuria, the
barbarian land; on its right, China the su-
preme; on its left, Japan, once the island
savage; round about it, many waters; to the
east, the Sea of Japan where Russia's fleets
still lie submerged; to the west, the Yellow
Sea, touching Port Arthur, Dalni, Wei-hai-
wei, Chemulpo, and Tsing-tao; to the south,
the China Sea with its typhoons and water
“dragons.”
A journey straight south from Korea would
carry you past the east side of the Philippines,
between New Guinea and the Celebes, and
through west central Australia. North, would
take you over Siberia through the mouth of
the Lena into the Arctic Ocean. Going due
Tº waterspouts have been “sea-dragons" to the Koreans
since time immemorial.
3
** ^
*-
Location
Relation to
Other Countries


4 KoREA IN TRANSITION
The Name
Korea
Size
west, you would see Peking, Kabul, Teheran,
Constantinople, Rome, New York, and San
Francisco. An elevator shaft sunk right
through the Northern Hemisphere, would
come out in the Atlantic Ocean, distant one
hour of sun time from New York.
Korea is a foreign name, learned a hundred
years ago from China, and belonging to a
defunct dynasty that fell in 1391 A. D. Like
the star that came into collision and was
knocked out of being five hundred years ago,
whose light still shines, so we still say “Korea.”
The average native, however, asks: “‘Korea?
What is that? Whom do you refer to?”
Korea has had many names. When mission-
ary work first began, it was called “Chosun”;
now after unimagined changes it is Han Guk
or Han, “The Church of Han”, “the men of
Han”, “the golden opportunity in the land
of Han”, and similar expressions. -
Roughly speaking Korea is 600 miles from
north to south, and 135 miles from east to
west, with an area of about 80,000 square
miles. It is about half the size of Japan, one
third that of the Province of Ontario, twice
that of the state of Kentucky, and about equal
in extent to Kansas.


6 KoREA IN TRANSITION
Mountains
to anything like exactitude in dealing with
figures. Chun-man or its equivalent is one
of the common words, “ten thousand times a
thousand”. When eight hundred people meet
together, thousands are gathered; and fifteen
means several score. My old friend Kim
prays, “God bless our twenty millions of a
family.”
“But, Brother Kim, we are not sure that
there are twenty millions. Fifteen would seem
to be a wide estimate, the census returns show
even less.”
“Census returns!” echoes Kim, “Dear me,
as if we did not know our own family! I
chun man tong po (20,000,000, brothers and
sisters). Everybody says so.”
Korea has a backbone of mountains, that
runs irregularly all down the map. From the
Tumen, over against Vladivostok, it drops
southwest to Wonsan, then southeast to the
Kyung sang border, and from there south
along the east border of Chung chong and
Chulla. These ridges are not snowcapped nor
tall, an elevation of 2,500 feet being a king
among them. From the parent range, hills
have sprung up everywhere. “San way yu san,
san pul chin” (“Over the mountains, moun-


THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 7
tains still, mountains without number”). These
hills have talked to the people for hundreds
of years, not with so much music as those of
Switzerland, nor awakening so patriotic a re-
sponse, but they have talked with many per-
suasive voices. Like David, the Korean too,
at times, sees his hills skip and dance, and
again they weep with him in sackcloth and
ashes. So much is said of mountains in Korea
that I mention them particularly. They live;
in old days their spirits walked about and had
their being. They were guardians of the liv-
ing and watchers over the dead.
There are ten rivers in Korea, but, with
the exception of the Tumen, none on the east
coast. The hills there come up so close to the
seashore that only rivulets are possible. The
four noted rivers are the Nak Tong, in the
south; the Han, in the center; the Ta Tong,
past Ping yang; and the Yalu, in the north.
The soils of Korea are varied, from stiff
clay to black loam; but the characteristic soil is
rotten granite, a white, gritty, porous, barren-
looking earth, in which nothing would seem
to grow. If you dig it, and inhale the ex-
halations, you will develop ague till your
teeth chatter, your bed rattles, and your whole
Rivers
Soil


8 KoREA IN TRANSITION
Grains
Fruits
being vibrates. If you walk on it, it will grind
down the soles of your walking shoes in a very
short time. Seven hundred miles, with rotten
granite here and there, once completely used
up two pairs of shoes. This soil is like the soul
of the Oriental, it gives little promise of any
seed taking root, but once get the roots
fastened, then everything grows and flourishes
luxuriantly.
No grain in the Western world stands out
preeminently over all others as does rice.
Wheat and corn have to do with huge monop-
olies, and are kings in finance, but rice is the
imperial majesty of the cereal world. It is
the prettiest grain grown. More people eat
rice and flourish on it than on any other grain.
Korea is a land of rice. There are beans, and
lentils, and barley, and millet, and sesamum,
and what not, but these are unseen and unmen-
tioned in the glory of rice. In years when
rains are favorable, waving paddy-fields speak
the praises of the land all the way from Fusan
to the Yalu and the Tumen.
Fruits grow well in Korea, coarse pears,
hard peaches, wild apples, tasteless dates. But
every fruit failure is atoned for in the glorious
autumn of persimmons. “Korean persimmons


Copyright, Underwood & Underwood
SAwiNG TIMBER


IO KoREA IN TRANSITION
Minerals
in a day. To even matters however, Korean
smoking means a united pull, men, women,
and children at it from first cockcrow of the
morning till the curfew says “Lights out.” It
is as difficult to find a man who does not smoke
as it is to find a ten-year-old son of a gentle-
man who is not married.” This extended ref-
erence to tobacco is by no means out of propor-
tion to the place it occupies in the life and
habits of the nation. I notice that among
Korean Church leaders and teachers there is
a quiet but most emphatic putting away of the
pipe and all that goes with it. It is one of the
old kings whose power to command allegiance
is gone forever.
Korea is a land supposedly rich in minerals,
such as gold, silver, copper, iron, coal, and
graphite, but because of the sacred character
of the hills, and of the spirits supposed to re-
side within them, very little mining has been
ventured upon. Now however the audacious
Westerner, who regards neither hill-gods nor
devils, is at it in various parts of the land,
blasting the rocks, sinking shafts deep into
the earth, hauling out the debris, grinding it
to powder, extracting the gold by a magic
spell hitherto undreamed of. Koreans are as-


THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE II
sociated with him in this work; they see and
take part in their humble way, and have won
the name of the best miners in the world from
managers who have had experience in Cali-
fornia, Australia, and elsewhere. One of
Korea's future sources of great wealth is
undoubtedly mining, but seeing that it is
managed and owned by Americans, English,
and Japanese, the Korean will come in for
only a modest and secondary share of the
profits.
Money is called ton, and while Chinese tones
are absent from our problem of the lan-
guage, the problem of ton is always here.
Two words wedded together are wafted on
every breeze that blows, ton, money, and pap,
rice. They are the ultimate to which all hearts
aspire and all energies seem directed. Twenty
years ago Korean money was the cash piece
with a hole through it. It took six horses to
carry one hundred dollars, and pocket-money
was out of the question. While the old cash
is still seen in some remote corners of the land,
it has almost entirely vanished into the for-
gotten past, its place taken by the nickel, that
has been counterfeited and forged and smug-
gled and made such unlawful use of that its
Money


I2 KoREA IN TRANSITION
Transportation
name and character are ruined forever. Money
without the hole in the middle Koreans call
mang-jun (blind money), and so they mat-
urally inquire, “Will a country not go to pieces
that uses blind money?” We still use the nickel
to a limited degree, but Japanese currency and
a new coinage have come into general use—
gold, silver, paper.
In America transportation has been from the
first by means of carts and wagons, and later
by railway, but in Korea it has been and still
nearly altogether is by pack-bullock, pony, and
coolie. Animals and men are built to carry
great loads. Every beast of burden is keyed
up like the Brooklyn Bridge to measure its
strength by the middle of its back. The coolie,
again, differs from the strong man of the West
in that his arms are of very little account, little
better than a sea-lion's flippers, but when it
comes to muscles up and down his back, he is
a marvel of strength and can lift 500 pounds.
On these patient bodies are slowly carried over
the land, rice, beans, hides, timber, fish, salt,
Bibles, hymn-books, evangelistic literature, and
other burdens, cutting deeper and deeper into
the rock and rotten granite the footmarks of
successive generations.


THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE I3
The weather in Korea is blocked out in great
lots, not distributed evenly and piece by piece
as at home. When the sun shines it shines for
days with unclouded sky, one month, two
months, three months, with scarce a fleck on
the horizon. Toward the close of these long
spells, the very earth seems to cry out of its
thirsty soul for water. Then the rains come;
first what is called the little chang-ma (great
rain), and then the great “great rain.” When
this is fully under way, it comes down in
double spouts, tin cans, and buckets. Percival
Lowell says: “During the month of July the
sun rarely shines; it is cloudy almost contin-
ually and nearly every day it rains. It stops
raining only to gather force to rain again, and
the clouds remain the while to signify the rain's
intention to return.” Dr. Underwood says:
“The largest rainfall that is recorded is 5
inches in twenty-four hours; 21.86 inches for
a rainy season. The average yearly rainfall is
36 inches.”
Mortals are supposed to have, directly and
indirectly, an influence on the weather. When
the electric trolley-cars were first set running
in Seoul, a peculiar result manifested itself in
TThe can of Korea, 26.
Weather
Trolley-cars
Blamed for
Drought


I4 KoREA IN TRANSITION
Temperature
the life of the nation. We quote from an ac-
count that appeared in the Outlook, February,
1902. “Little by little the heavens grew dry
and the earth rolled up clouds of dust; day
followed day with no signs of rain, and the
caking paddy-fields grinned and gaped. What
could be the cause of it? The geomancers and
ground-prophets were consulted, and their
answer was, “The devil that runs the thunder
and lightning wagon has caused the drought.”
Eyes no longer looked with curiosity but glared
at the trolley-cars, and men swore under their
breath and cursed the ‘vile beast’ as it went
humming by, till, worked up beyond endurance,
there was a crash and an explosion, one car
had been rolled over, and another was set on
fire, while a mob of thousands took possession
of the streets foaming and stamping like wild
beasts.” This was all on account of the ma-
lign influence which these American electric
cars were supposed to have on the rainfall
of Koreal
As for the weather and temperature in gen-
eral, taking Seoul as our representative point,
it is cold in winter and hot in summer. Fre-
quently the temperature falls to zero and even
lower, while in summer with a damp, muggy


THE LAND AND THE PEoPLE I5
atmosphere, it goes up to 86 or 90 degrees.
This constitutes a kind of Turkish bath very
trying to the Westerner.
To hear a missionary physician read his an-
nual report, and line off the list of diseases that
have afflicted Korea's unhappy people for the
space of one year, would leave one to infer that
the only missing complaint was ‘housemaid's
knee', for surely everything else in the cata-
logue from leprosy to anthrax is present; but
this is only nominally so. Actually and really
we see only a few diseases at work. First and
foremost is hak-jil, ague. Rare indeed is the
person who has not had a periodic chill; as
rare as the man who does not smoke, or the
man who cannot sleep comfortably on a hot
floor with a wooden block behind his ear.
Korea is a land of chills and fever. There is
also smallpox, but the percentage of pitted faces
has decreased wonderfully since the coming in
of Jenner's great preventive. Typhus fever is
heard of on all sides at certain seasons of the
year; and, following close on the summer,
comes Asiatic cholera. Consumption is com-
mon to all the land, but diseases like typhoid
fever and appendicitis seem rare. Scattered
cases of leprosy are met with, and, as in Judea
Diseases


I6 KoREA IN TRANSITION
National Odors
in old days, there are always the lame and the
halt and the blind.
As each nation has its peculiar cut of dress,
so each has its national odors apart from race
odor. Esson Third says: “The Korean gentle-
man carries about with him two odors that are
specially noticeable to a newcomer. I once
made a journey with a Western friend who
had a somewhat highly keyed sense of smell,
and I remember his stopping short on the road
as we walked along, tapping me on the arm
and with a long sniff saying:
“There it is again.”
“What is it?' I asked.
“That peculiar smell,” said he.
I sniffed long and hard but there was noth-
ing but the fresh morning breeze, and the de-
lightful odors of hill and field.
“I’ve smelt it before,” said he, ‘and I'll tell
you later when I smell it again.”
He tracked that odor for two days, and then
we discovered that it came from the black lac-
quer hat. The odor of lacquer is one of
Korea's national smells. The second smell is
due to a mixture of garlic, onions, cabbage,
salt, fish, and other ingredients, that make up
the Korean pickle so greatly enjoyed with their


THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 17
rice. This odor clings like that of Limburger
cheese, and follows the native to church and
into all the other walks of life.”
Compared with the Western world, with its
indescribable hubbub, Korea is a land of the
most reposeful silence. There are no harsh
pavements over which horses are tugging their
lives out, no jostling of carts or dray-wagons,
no hateful clamor that forbids quiet conversa-
tion, but a repose that is inherent and eternally
restful. The rattle of the ironing-sticks is not
nerve-racking, but rather serves as a soporific
to put all the world to sleep. Apart from this,
one hears nothing but the few calls and echoes
of human voices. What a delightfully quiet
land is Korea! In the very heart of its great
city Seoul, you might experiment at midday in
the latest methods of rest-cure and have all the
world to help you.
Among other restful national features are the
roadways. They are not surveyed at right
angles and fenced in with barbed-wire, but are
left to go where they please, do as they like,
and take care of themselves, just as suits them.
Hence a Korean road will find the easiest pos-
sible way over a hill. It will narrow itself
down to a few inches rather than pick a quarrel
National Sounds
The Roads


I8 KoREA IN TRANSITION
General Aspect
Houses
with a rock or hummock on the way, or again
to please you it will widen out like a Western
turnpike. To follow a Korean road is like
reading one of Barrie's novels, you meet with
surprises and delights all along the way.
While the general aspect of Korea is a sad
and desolate one, that of a mountainous land
shorn bare of its trees and foliage, there are
pretty vistas and views that break out occasion-
ally from behind the hills. As a people Koreans
thoroughly enjoy natural beauty, but they have
taken no steps whatever to conserve it. Trees
and grass and brushwood and flowering shrubs.
everything in fact that grows, comes under the
woodman's sickle, and is shaved bare as the
locks of a Buddhist priestess. Around the cap-
ital, especially, the hills have been denuded so
often that the rains have washed away the
upper soil and left them gray-topped and bare.
There is a wide field for the work of forestry in
Korea.
In the hidden and often picturesque nooks
nestle clusters of brown huts thatched with
straw. In and out of these mud beehives go
people dressed in immaculate white. A hut
is built by first pounding the earth for the
foundation-stones, then setting up the posts





i


THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE I9
and beams. Between the posts are put cross-
bars and bamboo lathing, then mud is plastered
on the inside and out. It is not just common
mud, but carefully prepared mud, that will not
crack and let in the wind. For flooring, flat
stones are used, placed over flues; a thin layer
of mud covers the surface and makes it even.
Then the whole inside is papered with white
paper on the walls and thick yellow oil-paper
on the floor. The windows are of paper also.
When the fire is built in the kitchen, the heated
vapors from it pass underneath the living-
rooms; the stone floors warm gently, and here,
cross-legged, you take up your abode.
A friend called just now, and I asked him
to please take off his horsehair hat and let me
weigh it. The whole hat, crown, brim, border,
string, and other parts, weighed just one and
a quarter ounces. How light and ethereal the
Korean garb is, especially in summer! If we
follow Mr. Kim from the crown of his head
to the tip of his toe, his wearing-apparel
would run thus: first, the ounce and a quarter
hat; then the inner cap, lighter still; then the
headband, equally light; then the spectacles,
the long outer robe, the inner coat, the rattan
jacket, worn in hot weather next the skin, the
Dress


2O KOREA IN TRANSITION
Food
pantaloons, the leggings, the socks, the shoes.
The material is cotton goods made wide and
loose and roomy. In a dress like that you may
sit all day cross-legged without a suggestion
of bagging at the knees, perhaps because they
are all bags, and wide enough to accommodate
the wearer two or three times over. White is
the prevailing color, but bright tints and hues
are interspersed, especially with young people,
so that a school yard alive at recreation hour
looks like a fluttering congregation of blue-
birds, orioles, and robins. The belt, or girdle-
string, binds the man of the East together, just
as suspenders serve for girders and mainstays
for the man at home. The woman's dress dif-
fers somewhat from that of the man, but white,
loose, baggy, badly gripped and held in place,
unsuited for a busy, dirty world such as this is,
would apply equally to both.
The Korean is a stranger to sweets, and
no sugar-sticks ever tempted the children of
his land. Honey is used in small quantities,
but chocolate creams, and fudge, and sweet
sodas through a straw, and ices, he never
dreamed of even in connection with Nirvana.
In place of these his delights have been of the
salt and peppery kind. He has chilli sauce and


THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 2I
chilli soy, salt and red peppers mixed in pickle,
and greens and soup. The average foreigner
who tries Korean food is compelled at short
intervals, to open his mouth, draw in cool
breaths, and fan wildly. The tears in his eyes
and his general look of agony would lead one
to infer that he had been dining off live coals
instead of plain rice and cabbage pickle, and
soup and beans and soy. This is the Korean
average meal every day and all the year round.
They are not great meat eaters, rice, beans, and
cabbage taking the place of meat, potatoes, and
bread. It is a very monotonous fare, and yet
men are strong in the strength of it and can
work like horses and carry enormous loads.
In soul the Korean is the son of a Chinaman,
but in language he is related to Japan. He
can sound both l and r, while the Japanese has
to say gay-roo for girl, and the Chinaman says
Amellican for American. The Korean stands
between them not in heart and geographical
position only, but in a still greater sense, we
trust, that will be manifest in days to come.
Korean is a simple speech, unartificialized by
a fixed set of rules and a printed literature like
our own. It belongs to Gospel times, for while
it labors hard to express Romans and Gala-
Language


THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 23
end of wild surprise and political upheaval,
unutterable despair and blind suicide.
But in the midst of this crashing and break-
ing up of every ideal come callers not dreamed
of before. One is Peter. He says: “Are you
a low-caste man? So was I. Are you dead
beat? So was I. Do you long for victory?
So did I. One name solved all my troubles,
just one name, let me whisper it to you, Jesus,
Jesus, Jesus; so the vibrations carry it as by
wireless telegraphy from Peter's lips to the
farthest limits of the land.”
Another preacher follows, hard to under-
stand. Paul is his name. He asks: “Are you
an aristocrat and a scholar? God has no use
for aristocrats. He wants sinners, the un-
thankful, the unholy. Which class do you be-
long to? Stricken from off my exalted seat,
down in the dust I first recognized him. Shut
your eyes to the world, get into Straight street,
and try prayer.”
Another preacher is Jesus' mother. Mary
says: “So many people were round about him
I could not get near. All I wanted was just
to see Jesus. His answer was: “Who wants
me? My mother? Why all you Korean peo-
ple need to see me just as badly as my mother
Spiritual Veices
—Peter
Paul
Mary


24 KOREA IN TRANSITION
Factors of
Her Destiny.
does. Look on me as she does with love, and
you'll be my mother, and sister, and brother.’”
Korea's heart beats one with China. The
chords struck across the Yalu find response
here. She is under Japan tighter than lock
and key can make her. Has God a purpose
for the Far East with his hand upon her, and
she between these two mighty questions of the
world, China and Japan?
x
SUGGESTIONS FOR USING THE QUESTIONS
The questions below, as their title indicates, are in-
tended to be suggestive. They make no pretense to
review the contents of each chapter. Such a memory
test can easily be constructed by any leader or student
by writing out the contents of the chapter and then
expanding them without the aid of the text. The
present questions are intended to stimulate original
thought, and they therefore use the text-book only as
a point of departure.
Leaders may find it profitable to assign some of these
questions in advance for study and discussion. It will
usually be better to discuss a few questions thoroughly,
rather than to try to cover the entire set. In many
cases the leader can fit them better to the use of a par-
ticular class by careful rewording.
If they are used in private study, it is recommended
that conclusions be written out. It is not expected that
the average student will be able to answer all these
questions satisfactorily; otherwise there would be little
left for the class session. Let results, however frag-


THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 25
mentary, be brought to the class and supplemented
by comparison and discussion.
The questions marked * are perhaps most worth
discussing in detail.
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER I
AIM : To CoME INTo SYMPATHY witH THE LAND AND
PEOPLE
l, Space and Time Distances.
I.
6.*
Compare the area and population of Korea
with that of the State or Province in which
you live.
How does it contrast in area and population
with the combined States of New York and
Pennsylvania?
How large would the States of New York and
Pennsylvania seem to you if we had only the
Korean means of intercommunication?
How far do you think you would have traveled
from home under such circumstances?
About how long would it take you to go from
Boston to Richmond, Virginia, on a pony, if
the roads were bad?
Try to estimate the relative size of Korea and
the United States measured by the time con-
sumed in travel.
Try to imagine what your life would be like
if you were entirely cut off from modern
means of transportation.
II. Influence of Environment on Character.
8.
What sort of climate would you choose for a
nation in order that its inhabitants might de-
velop the strongest character? -


26
KoREA IN TRANSITION
III.
9. Find on a map of North America points which
approximate the latitude of the northern and
southern limits of Korea.
Io. What are the relative advantages of a nation
of extended latitude and extended longitude?
II.” Try to discover some of the influences that
have made the Koreans inexact in their mental
processes.
12. What do the comparative methods of smoking
reveal to you of Korean and Western char-
acter?
13. What advantages will Korea derive in the
future from her comparatively compact area?
14.” What things in the physical features of Korea
give you most hope for the future?
The Inevitable Changes.
15.” If Korea were made over to you as a gift,
what measures would you take to improve
your property? Name in order of their
importance.
I6.* Describe what you think would be the effect
of each of these physical improvements on
the life of the people.
17. To what extent are these changes inevitable
in Korea?
18. What would be the probable effect upon an
ignorant country boy without principles of
being suddenly thrust into city life?
19.” In what ways does this example illustrate the
present position of Korea?
20. What would be the effect of Western civiliza-
tion upon a primitive people without the con-
straint of Christianity?
21. For what reasons do you think this land de-
serves the sympathy of the Christian Church?


THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 27
REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY
CHAPTER I
I. Resources.
Hulbert: The Passing of Korea, ch. I, pp. 274,
275. -
Bishop: Korea and Her Neighbors, pp. 14-18, 391,
392, 445.
Underwood: The Call of Korea, pp. 23-35.
Gifford: Every-day Life in Korea, pp. 20-22.
Noble: Ewa : A Tale of Korea, pp. 11-13.
II. Transportation.
Hulbert: The Passing of Korea, ch. XVIII.
Bishop: Korea and Her Neighbors, p. 128.
III. Recent Improvements.
Hulbert: The Passing of Korea, ch. XXXIV.
Bishop: Korea and Her Neighbors, pp. 435-443.





THE NATION'S PRESENT
SITUATION


-
HISTORICAL SKETCH
It seems best, as Dr. Gale has done, to avoid a discussion
of the causes leading to the Japanese control of Korea. On
this subject bitter charges, and countercharges have been
made, and the complete truth is not easy to discover. A brief
table is given, however, to indicate the principal political
events since 1876:
1876. First foreign treaty of Korea with Japan.
1883. First treaties with the United States, Germany, and
Great Britain. First American minister to Korea.
1885. China and Japan sign convention agreeing not to send
troops into Korea without previous consultation.
Chinese influence dominant.
1894. China sends troops, into Korea to repress Tong-hak
rebellion. This leads to war between China and
Japan. Japanese influence dominant.
1895. Queen of Korea assassinated by Japanese and Koreans.
1896. King takes refuge in Russian legation in Seoul. Rus-
sian influence dominant.
1898. Japan and Russia agree to recognize the independence
of Korea and to abstain from interference.
1904. Russia's encroachments lead to war with Japan. Korea
agrees to accept the advice of Japan as to adminis-
tration, and Japan guarantees the independence of
Korea. Virtual Japanese protectorate.
1905. Jagº secures control of the foreign relations of Korea.
arquis Ito becomes Resident-General.
1907. Emperor of Korea forced to abdicate in favor of the
: Prince. The Resident-General in complete
control.
In general it may be said that Japan has assumed control
of Korea in order to exclude any further possibility of Rus-
sian intrigue, to which the Korean government had always
been susceptible. The administration initiated by Marquis
Ito is undoubtedly far more efficient and modern than that
which it displaced. On the other hand, it is claimed that the
Koreans have suffered many abuses at the hands of the
Japanese soldiers and settlers.
3o


II
THE NATION'S PRESENT SITUATION
Over the hill from my home, in a little house
with tiled roof, lives a widow, Mrs. Shin. Her
family consists of mother-in-law, son seven-
teen years of age, long waited for, now a man,
daughter fourteen, and Samuel her youngest,
aged four. It did not attract much attention
from the outside world, this home, but it was
everything to the humble inhabitants thereof.
Su-nam, the tall son, was the new, strong flag-
staff around which age and tender years ral-
lied. Through many seasons of hardship and
Sorrow, this home had come to commit its way
to God, to trust also in him, knowing that he
would bring it to pass. True Christians they
were and Su-nam was their hope and joy.
He was on a visit to Ping yang when yes-
terday (July 27), between the torrents of fall-
ing rain, there came a telegram to me saying,
“Su-nam drowned.” What a dire stroke for
that poor home in two short words, a double-
edged sword cutting to the hilt through the
For introductory material to this chapter see opposite page.
Sorrow’s Unit
of Measure
31


32 KoREA IN TRANSITION
Rorea's
Desolation
center of the soul! With this information in
hand I crossed the hill to Mrs. Shin's house.
They were at evening meal in the little veranda
round a very small table. With smiles they
greeted my coming, for I was their friend, and
would bring good cheer and hope. What
cruelty! I was to turn all these smiles into an
agony of woe unspeakable. “Alas,” I said, “I
have news, such news as will break your hearts,
God help us all!” Every face instantly fixed
itself into an expression of pained suspense,
and I went on, “God has called Su-nam. He is
drowned.” The little girl of fourteen, as if
shot with a rifle bullet, broke into a cry that
would melt the soul; the mother dropped on
her face but no word passed her lips; the old
grandmother, whose hopes were on this boy,
lifted up her heart to heaven and said, “We
thank thee, O Father. Thou didst give Su-
nam; thou hast taken Su-nam; blessed be thy
name.”
Multiply this heart-breaking scene to a
family of fifteen millions, and make their little
table this desolated peninsula, and you will
have some idea of what Korea has passed
through in the last few sad years. Indescrib-
able is the wailing that has gone up and beating


THE NATION's PRESENT SITUATION 33
of the breast over the death and burial of hopes,
aspirations, and long-cherished desires.
Korea's was a patriarchal form of govern-
ment from the beginning. Officials were often
still but callow youths, but by reason of office
they were magnified and glorified into mature
age with beard and rod of authority. The peo-
ple at large were their children, whom they
fathered, arrested, beat, stood in a corner, kept
in after school, or set digging weeds, just as
they saw fit, and no reply would be forthcom-
ing, except perhaps a wail open-mouthed and
loud such as children break out with, but with
a voice fifty or sixty years of age.
Under this system the people individually
were nothing, and they were reasonably con-
tent to be so, provided their ancient customs
continued. They were oppressed and down-
trodden, but it was oppression dealt out accord-
ing to custom, and custom is higher than law.
This was their country and they were free to
love or kill each other with no foreigner to
interfere. To them patriotism consisted in
minding your own business, and keeping clear
of the official's long-handled paddle, but on the
opening of the gates and the inrush of Western
life all is changed. Now Korea must awake
The Way that
Failed
Misruke


34 KoREA IN TRANSITION
The Retired
Emperor
and adjust herself to a new age, or the age
would roll over and crush her forever. For
twenty years Korea had a chance to get into
line with these new forces, but it was not to be.
It was a question of life and death, but she was
not able. Many saw it, many spoke thereof.
As great father for the land was the deposed
emperor, chosen of God to bring his people to
a state of woe unexampled, under which how-
ever we believe there lie hidden hopes higher
than she has ever dreamed of. The emperor
could say as Louis XIV did, “L’état c'est moi”
(“The state, I am the state”), though he forgot
that he was not the twentieth century, and
forgot other outside forces as well. His walk
was backward. Kings of the Orient until recent
years have favored the rearward march in their
movings, or else their eyes have been hope-
lessly fixed in the back of the head; for with
fixed gaze on Yo-sun (2300 B.C.), they have
backed up into all sorts of confusion, never
seeing where they were going until too late,
dreaming only of the past from which they
had emerged, no progress ever contemplated,
no reform undertaken lest it detract from the
glory of Yo and Sun the king-gods of the
Golden Age. The retired emperor was un-


36 KoREA IN TRANSITION
Rorea's Day
of Reckoning
Opposing
Factors
Korea through its ruler was out of touch
with the age in which it lived; in heart, sym-
pathy, and tradition it was out of touch with
the Japanese, and yet here were these three
gradually coming to occupy the same room,
and the same bed, at the same time: the twen-
tieth century, the Korean emperor, and the
spirit of Japan; unsuited as fire and water, or
wood and lightning, destined to kick and smash
and resist until one of them was reduced to
hopeless and non-resisting silence.
The emperor too and his people were not at
one. Esson Third wrote some years ago: “The
Korean emperor has no confidence in his peo-
ple, and his people have no use for the Japan-
ese, and the Japanese have no faith in the
emperor. Reverse it and it is still correct. The
emperor mistrusts the Japanese, the Japanese
have no confidence in the people, and the peo-
ple despise the emperor.” Reform was stamped
out. The best and most enlightened men were
shut up in prison. It was a fight on the part of
the old emperor, single-handed, against his own
people, against the onrolling centuries, with
the Japanese accompanying, keeping pace and
persistently shouting “Banzai" (long live our
emperor).





THE NATION's PRESENT SITUATION 37
Then it was that men's hearts began to fear
and to turn toward Christianity. Wiser ones
said, “All the forces of the universe are bear-
ing down upon us; unless God help we are
lost.” It was the beginning of the awakening
in the Korean's soul to the helpless condition
of his country. Once, on a call at his home,
Prince Min said to the writer, “Pray for Korea.
God can help us if no one else can.” Eyes that
never looked heavenward before did so now in
view of uncertainties.
The emperor, by his old “underground”
methods, was in touch with Russia, anxious for
her belated civilization, if he could not hold on
to 2000 B. C., but every move turned against
him, everything was out of gear. On Novem-
ber 17, 1905, in the dead of night, at the
Palace in Chung dong, Seoul, the first pay-
ment was made for all the mistaken years, the
wrongs done and suffered, and the lies told
and unrepented of. It was made by the sign-
ing of the treaty of that date, giving over to
the Japanese government the control of Korea's
foreign affairs. On receipt of this news, Prince
Min concluded that his country was gone and
that he would die with it. He locked himself
away from all his friends, wrote out his will,
Looking Toward
Christianity
FirstRetributive
Results


38 KoREA IN TRANSITION
The Final Crisis
The Aftermath
and a few farewell letters, and then with a
dull, short pocket-knife accomplished his own
quietus. Written large round his name, Korea
will ever read the sentence, “Sweet and seemly
is it to die for one's fatherland.”
Again in July, 1907, another crisis was
reached. The nation that had so long at-
tempted to sail in a leaky boat, and had per-
sistently clubbed any man who had tried to
stop the chinks, was going down. The water
was deep and all straws were caught at, Russia,
The Hague, Mr. Hulbert, Hawaiian Petition,
Bethell and Company, appeal to rifles; but
everything failed. The Japan-Korea Treaty
of July 24, 1907, resulted, and the last act of
the drama was the exit of the old emperor-king.
He was asked to move out and make way for
oncoming generations, to sign away all rights
as emperor, king, autocrat; to abdicate once
and for all. The wildest cry was of no avail.
There was no resisting; force sufficient was
back of the order to project him into eternity,
and so he bowed to the inevitable. According
to the understanding of the people at large,
the last breath was drawn, and Korea had
expired.
A mad sort of spurious patriotism started


THE NATION's PRESENT SITUATION 39
into being, with suicide, chopping off of fingers,
sworn oaths, guerilla warfare, flint-lock re-
sistance. It still goes on to a considerable de-
gree, while the poor people in the valleys,
caught between the contending forces, have to
pay the price of Korea's past failure. With
the question as to how in other ways she came
to such a pass as this, as to where the right
and wrong of it lay, as to what ought to have
been done and what ought not to have been
done, it is not in our province to deal. Here
she is to-day. If it had not been the Japanese,
certainly the twentieth century single-handed
would have crushed the old emperor and all
he represented out of existence. Evidently the
purpose in this plan of God was to bring Korea
to a place where she would say, “All is lost,
I am undone.” Like Mrs. Shin and her house-
hold, nothing remained for the people but to
commit the whole burden of it to the Lord
himself.
First and foremost they had lost their coun-
try. There have been men who have had no
citizenship, and who have passed the pilgrim-
age of life without flag or nationality, unpro-
tected by state or consular arm of the law, but
most people would feel unhappy under such cir-
Looking for a
Country


4O KOREA IN TRANSITION
cumstances. Even Paul emphatically made
announcement of the fact that he was a Roman
citizen, and as good a man as Dr. Guido F. Ver-
beck knocked at the state entrance of Japan,
requesting that they please take him in, as he
and his family were without country and felt
shelterless.
Still, there are those who overcome such
sentiments and walk the earth victoriously. A
Chinese lived in Yokohama some twelve years
ago. He was a house-painter by occupation,
and went about wearing a very much bedaubed
suit of clothes, caked here and there with white
and green and yellow. He was a Christian and
attended church regularly. When the leader
said, “Let any one pray who will,” John
never failed to take part. The gladness of
his soul spoke itself forth in a kind of Can-
tonned Japanese, the full meaning of which
was known to himself and God only. When
the Shinasan (Mr. Chinaman) prayed, many
a face in the room became wreathed in smiles
and sometimes a hand was necessary over the
mouth to help hold the hearer steady. John
paid no attention, he cared not who laughed at
his prayers, he was happy, God had forgiven
him and though a Chinese, he had said good-


THE NATION's PRESENT SITUATION 41
by to the world, and cut his cue off. One day
a Korean friend met him and said, “Honorable
sir from the great country, where is your cue?”
“Cue? Cue belong no good, makee cut off.”
“But you will not dare to go home, you have
lost your country.” “Maskee country,” said
John, “my country belong Htien-kuoa, Htien-
kuoa” (“Heaven, Heaven”), pointing upward.
Could we but convey John's upward look
and happy spirit to the hearts and homes of
Korea, we should have done the work for
which all this agony of sweat and blood has
prepared the way. The Korean says: “I have
no country, no citizenship, no flag, no land
that is my own, only the skeleton and remains.
They are worse than nothing, ghastly, ought to
be buried out of sight,” and the hoplessness
of a worldly man with none of the world's
backing settles over him. He did not know
that his country was worth anything till he lost
it. He abused it and disgraced it for genera-
tions, still it was his; now it is dead, and no
man is on hand to raise the dead to life.
In former days when the state threatened
collapse there were supports available. Rus-
sia served at times, then France, sometimes
China or England. Says friend Kim:
Hope for the
Hopeless
Humaa Failure.
Divine
Faithfulness


42 KoREA IN TRANSITION
Like a Fairy
Tale
“America we were sure of, for the first article
in our treaty with her read, “If other powers
deal unjustly with either government, the one
will exert its good offices, on being informed
of the case, to bring about an amicable ar-
rangement, thus showing its friendly feel-
ings.” England joined the enemy, and even
America went back on us. Verbeck may have
found a door to knock at but there is no door
for lost Han.” How like oil on the troubled
waters of the soul fall such sentences as these,
“My kingdom is not of this world.” “Resist
not.” “For our citizenship is in heaven.”
There also we have our “city which hath the
foundations, whose builder and maker is
God.”
The possibility of a poor Korean, really and
truly under such circumstances, knocking at
the palace gates of heaven and making applica-
tion for citizenship in the name of Jesus, being
received, his name recorded, and a happy
peaceful heart given as proof thereof is like a
fairy tale of the Taoists. It is like the story
of the resurrected Jesus to Peter and his com-
panions, a something that the women must
have hatched up, but that sound-minded men
could not receive.


THE NATION's PRESENT SITUATION 43
My friend Kim says: “We have no king.
The one we had was a poor makeshift, to be
sure, but anything is better than no king. He
would never take a reprimand. The number
of heads of chief officers that dropped during
his reign was astounding. He was mighty in
having his own way, and in keeping the people
under. He used to say: “Don’t make a noise.
Don't talk about the government. Don't fight
each other and send petitions to the Palace.
Just eat your rice, and do your work, and be
good.’ When the people attempted to carry
on the Independence Club, his majesty put up
a notice on the Bell-kiosk, ‘Let there be no
meetings, or shout-talk of any kind in the
streets. You are commanded every man to
stay at home and mind his own business.’ He
handcuffed us, he robbed us, he paddled us,
he hanged and quartered us, he lived for him-
self alone and for his worn-out superstitions,
but it was better than no king. So deeply is the
patriarchal thought written on the heart, that
bees could as easily swarm without a queen-
bee as Korea lift up its head without some
choice in the way of ruler.”
The old king, after having been execrated
for twenty years or more, suddenly swings
Many Faults
but Still Their
King
Turning to a
Heavenly King


44 KoREA IN TRANSITION
into a niche of honor, by virtue of the death
that his kingship dies. The Japanese, through
the present cabinet, put his son on the throne
in his place, but Kim knows nothing of that.
He repeats, “Alas, there is no king to-day.”
For these kingless, downcast, fifteen millions
of Koreans there was written long ago, The
name of your King is “Wonderful, Counsellor,
Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of
Peace.”
** What a day in which to proclaim the nature
of his kingdom! He too was an Oriental. He
too lived in a land fallen as to kingship. He
too felt the shame of the nation's loss. He died
with and for guilty men. “He lives and holds
in his hand all the kingdoms of the world,
Japan as well as Judea. He brought you here
under the harrow; he sent the Japanese that
you might be taught to yield to him.” An old
man with teeth out and cheeks fallen in says,
“I used to be an officer of state myself, and
my heart was caked hard with the doings there-
of, but since I came to Jesus and he is my King,
I love even the Japanese, and the mountains of
the west over which my sun is setting are all
lighted up with glory.”
Since I 122 B. C., when the Chinese sacred


THE NATION's PRESENT SITUATION 45
books were first brought to Korea by Viscount
Ki, Korea has been a worshiper of literature.
As the sycee-silver shoe might represent China,
and the two-handed sword Japan, the brush
pen with the bamboo handle would be the
choice of all for Korea. Happy the man who
knows its companionship, who can grip it verti-
cally, strike across the page and bring his line
to the required finish, mark it downward and
not weaken at the end, cut east and west, dot,
and turn the corner. It requires years to
learn all this. The labor-blunted hand of the
Westerner could never do it. The joy of writ-
ing the characters takes its rise high up in the
Korean's heaven. Then the reading of them
is like deciphering messages from the gods.
The man who could do so well, was honored
by king and commoner alike. To encourage
this sublime art, there were periodical examina-
tions held, to which candidates presented them-
selves from all corners of the land. Many came
hundreds of miles all the way on foot, in the
hope of gaining some distinction at the Koaga
(Examination). Though you failed, the fact
that you were a candidate was distinction un-
questioned. To pass and become a Koup-je
clothed you with Korea's most excellent glory.
National Low:
of Literature


THE NATION's PRESENT SITUATION 47
There are no more periodic examinations, no
more singing off of the classics in hope of high
honor and distinction, no more meditating over
the Book of Changes. The bamboo pen lies
dishonored, and the barking of ten-inch guns
takes the place of infant voices singing out
“Heaven blue, earth yellow,” and the other old
school phrases.
The Korean is a gentleman by instinct, he
worships intellect and not the god of force.
In his tears over his fallen divinity, he fumbles
at the sword, thinking to try it, but the sword
is not his, as it was not Peter's. What shall
ſhe do for something that will take the place
of all that he has lost? When in tears, just
at this time there comes to him the Bible, sixty-
six books, oldest in the world, written by
thirty-six writers or more, among whom were
shepherds and plowmen, as well as kings and
princes. It stretches in its range over fifteen
hundred years, including history, doctrine, and
prophecy, in prose and verse; it points to
the past, even back of the days of Yo and
Sun; it speaks with kingly authority as to the
present; turning its searchlights on into the
vistas of the future; it tells of God, what he is,
and what he has done; it solves the problem of
Finding Biblical
Truth


48 KoREA IN TRANSITION
Weman's
Freedom
man, and his lost condition; it leads one on into
places of deliverance, victory, and peace. Was
there ever such a literature, and was there ever
such a time as this? Let all hearts and hands
unite in getting into his soul these divine and
kingly truths. Some who were never scholars
in the ancient classics have become men of
mighty influence, because the heart has been
filled with the sayings of sages such as Moses,
Daniel, Isaiah, Peter, Paul, and John.
Among the breaking down of ancient cus-
toms to-day, Nai-woi is destined to go likewise.
Now Nai-woi is not an Anamese nor an East
Indian god, but an old Korean custom of ma-
ture years and long standing. It has been
like the feathers and paint on the red Indian
giving him glory in the eyes of men, to the
obliteration of his female partner, who is
buried under the monotonies of life with the
papoose on her back. Nai-woi means “inside-
outside’, ‘prisoner-freeman’, ‘woman-man’.
Because of Nai-woi, Korean women have
gradually disappeared from the world of
recognition, to the world of slavery and im-
prisonment.
History has from time immemorial shown us
a locked-up world of women, women made pris–


THE NATION's PRESENT SITUATION 49
oners, bought and sold. Occasionally one has
risen superior to her wrist-rings and shackles,
and made her name and influence felt, but the
woman's world has been the dark curtained
region full of oppression and despair. Jesus
came and set the women of the world free. He
seems to be the only one who knows how to
unlock her prison-house, so as not to have it
open into another equally woful. Korea's
women have been under the closest sort of
battened down hatches. But the twentieth
century has come in, holding aloft the name
of Jesus and proclaiming all women free.
What a consternation has been created in the
breaking down of the middle wall, Nai-woi,
fraught as it is with great danger as well as
great hope.
High women of the land who never saw
sunshine or the open air till a few days ago,
are suddenly shoved pell-mell into public func-
tions and asked to drink champagne and be
Thail-fellow-well-met with all sorts and con-
ditions of men. With no precedent behind,
with no knowledge accompanying, and with
no mature vision of the future, these women
are drifting into uncertainty with all the barbed
wires and safeguards of Nai-woi done away.
Her New
Perils


50 KoREA IN TRANSITION
Color and
Woman's
Raiment
Hope in Jesus
Peach-red
The East is full of color and can match the
most glaring extremes in a way pleasing and
grateful to the eye, but let it get out of its world
into the tints of the West, and green screams
out against magenta, and purple and red fight
furiously. So in dress, shovel hats and hollow-
chested shirt-waists run riot with black skirts
waisted high up under the arms. How sadly
the once dreamy woman's world of the East
has developed under the harsh sunlight of to-
day!
Where is hope to come from? Only from
Jesus, seems the consensus of opinion, even
among unbelievers. In lowly companionship
with him the Eastern woman may safely meet
the breaking down of custom. A few days
ago a Christian official on a call said: “Our
women are emancipated from the slavery that
besets them, only to fall into a deeper and more
deadly one. May God in his mercy protect
and defend them!”
As I write I see the face of one called To-
hong (Peach-red). She was a low-class danc-
ing-girl, bought and sold. Restoration was a
word not applicable to her, for she never was
right. She was born lapsed and lived lapsed.
Over the walls of the world that encircled her


52 KoREA IN TRANSITION
Social Barriers
Renooved
*Face”
was here to-day with an overflowing heart
to thank the Lord.
By her side sat Madam Yee, wife of one of
Korea's noted men, once imprisoned, curtained
round, secluded, shadowed by the awful form
of Nai-woi, proud too, not deigning to look at
such refuse as Peach-red. To-day they sit to—
gether and Madam Yee says: “You know so
much of the Bible. Let me listen while you
read it. Truly you are dear.” Jesus had
broken Nai-woi so that Madam Yee came to
this crowded meeting-house. He had bridged
the chasm that divided these two women. He
had delivered the poor dancing-girl from the
life of a broken Nai-woi and from the slavery
under which she was held. Surely at such a
day as this when the woman’s world is crashed
into and the dividing walls are down, we need
the gospel to point out the new and better way.
The word “face,” Mo-yang, flourishes
widely in the Far East and has one of the first
claims on the heart of Korea. Be the dress
however fine, unless the face be comely the
man stands at a disadvantage. If he be fur-
rowed and bristled over with a jungle of hair,
the wearer may be Thomas Carlyle, and may
have written Sartor Resartus, but that does


THE NATION's PRESENT SITUATION 53
not redeem him from a certain flavor of bar-
barism. Perhaps the face of Yüan Shih-k'ai
would as nearly answer the ideal of Korea as
any other, round, well set, carried with all
dignity, agreeable to look upon, proud, in-
scrutable. This pertains to the outer face,
but there is an inner face that is the real ques-
tion. We notice it when he says, “If I be put
to shame, so that others know it, I have lost
face.” Korea has no nerves to speak of, but
any amount of abnormal appreciation of this
word “face”.
Esson. Third writes: “My neighbor across
the way has had about seventeen dogs snarling,
grinning, yelping, round his corn-stalk paling
for the last forty-eight hours. All the discord-
Nerves
Unaffected by
Noise
ant sounds imaginable have been repeated a
million times. I inquired this morning as to
the neighbor and the neighbor's wife, of what
they were made—of wood, or mud, or dry
bones—that they could tolerate forty-eight
hours of such a pandemonium. My Korean
friends could not understand what I meant.
They understood the words but not the
thought. What had these dog noises to do
with the make-up of Mr. and Mrs. Chew.
Chew is at peace, Mrs. Chew is at peace as


54 KOREA IN TRANSITION
But Unable to
Bear Criticism
Loss of
*Face”
well, both are in possession of unbroken face.
She has no diseased harp-strings in her Soul,
that get all on edge with every noise that the
Orient gives off. I am struck with the differ-
ence between Mrs. Chew, for example, and
Thomas Carlyle. After forty-eight hours of
yelpings, snarlings, Screamings, she is in per-
fect peace, and her soul reposes blissfully.
Carlyle had had one night of it at the hands
of a small dog over the way. He says, “By
five o'clock in the morning, I would have given
a guinea of gold for its hind legs firm in my
right hand by the side of a good stone wall.”
Mrs. Chew, unmoved after forty-eight hours
of seventeen dogs, thinks what a diabolical
frame of mind for any man to be in. Carlyle
would die under this grinding of the nerves,
but to die because of what others thought fail-
ure he knew not. Nothing served better to
rouse the war-horse within him and his bris-
tling mane than to feel that he was the one man
against forty million other Britishers; “mostly
fools.” Not so Korea.
In the recent political shipwreck the worst
is that Korea has gone down with loss of
“face”. This is why Min suicided. This is
why the present brings a lonely shameful sense


THE NATION's PRESENT SITUATION 55
of death to the people. Not the loss of tangible
property so much as this ruin of the proper
form, is what the Korean dies under. Humilia-
tion unspeakable has gripped his soul, and he
says: “With what face can I look upon the
whole world, with what face will I meet the
spirits of my forefathers in the Yellow
Shades?”
However unreasonable this position may
seem to be; how much better soever the pres-
ent may seem as compared with the hopeless
past, he views it not so. Friend Kim says,
“Face is lost and eternal shame is my portion
forever.” At such a time as this, when he
has written large over the portals of the future,
Chul-mang-mun (the gateway of despair),
“Abandon hope all ye who enter here,” what
a joy to be a missionary, called to such a time
as this and to so needy a people to say to them:
“Listen, while I read to you, ‘Why art thou cast
down, O my soul? And why are thou dis-
quieted within me? Hope thou in God; for I
shall yet praise him, who is the help of my
countenance, and my God.’”
“Can he truly heal loss of face?” This
is the question. Some think he can,—those
who have tested him; some think he cannot, -
An Evangel of
Hope
Reality of
Divine Help


56 KoREA IN TRANSITION
Power in
Alien Hands
A Contrast
those who have not. One young man by the
name of Wonderful, T. J. Wonderful, spoke
in last Wednesday's meeting. He is a student
twenty-two years old. He said: “I once looked
with admiration upon a minister of state, I
thought him the acme of all in all, till I learned
God's message to my soul. When that came,
the whole world changed; in place of admira-
tion, there was nothing but a pitiful longing
left, and a prayer that he too might believe.
For a world of fallen countenances there is
no help like God.”
Korea like all other nations loves power,
power over the lives, destinies, and liberties
of men. Millionaire kings are not seen here
as at home, but official kings have always ex-
isted. Then too there are kings of literature
and kings of ancient aristocracy. Power is
sweet, but when one cannot have it, the next
best thing is to look up and admire the man who
has, if you consistently can. To-day power
has passed out of the Korean's hand and into
the hand of a man whom he cannot admire;
hence there comes this feeling of desolation.
Nominally power remains his still, but it is
only the ghost and thin shades that we see.
In olden days tax-levying, collecting, dis-


THE NATION's PRESENT SITUATION 57
bursing, transmitting, and other details of ad-
ministration, provided an unlimited field for
the science of ‘squeeze', and out of this grew
One of Korea's most deadly national sins. To-
day no taxes pass through the Korean's hand,
except what he pays, or what he receives after
permission of a Japanese official. This is the
logical result of a long list of national wrong-
doings, but it is bitter none the less. The yel-
low harvests of rice and the long stretches of
beans and millet have lost their poetry, and are
flat and colorless.
Then there was the field of office-seeking and
appointing. Fierce were the tugs of war and
glorious was the end to the victor with the
spoils thereof. Happy the man who could ride
down all opponents and get himself possessed
of the two-handed paddle. To-day all this
high privilege is in the hands of the Residency-
General. To think of such a thing is like a
nightmare from which he tries to shake him-
self into substantial awakening. He finds
however that the dream is real, and that the
desired reality is only a dream.
All educational matters, too, are in the hands
of those who were once supposed to be illiterate
island savages. They decide as to the course
Office
Education


58 KoREA IN TRANSITION
Mining
Privileges
The Customs
The Military
of study, as to grants, as to grades of schools,
as to teachers, as to everything that pertains
to the world of letters.
The hills that were given Korea by God four
thousand years ago, sown rich with gold and
silver, have waited in vain for the miner's hand
to dig them. Instead the Korean has peopled
them with white and blue devils," who threaten
him with dire destruction if he dare cut into
their backs or tails.” The result is, God has
taken the hills away from him, and passed them
on to others, and the Korean has no power to-
day even to hold a mine, much less to grant
concessions.
The Customs, organized by Sir Robert Hart
and developed by Sir John McL. Brown, are
in the hands of the alien, too, and all the dollars
that accrue therefrom.
The Korean soldier who used to stand guard
by the Palace gates or drill out in the open
square has been spirited away. He has gone,
and not even the echo of his bugle-call remains
to us. He was the nation's representative of
power and glory, standing at present arms
1 The “White Tiger" and “Blue Dragon” as named in
geomancy.
* A street in Seoul still shows the Dragon's back protected
by stones.


THE NATION's PRESENT SITUATION 59
beautifully, or giving the general salute when
the king went by. He is gone. The cicada-fly
still sings, the tree-toad pipes, and the peasant
quavers his old-fashioned throat notes of an
evening, but “lights out” no longer greets the
ear of the Korean soldier, and the reveille is
silent. Only celestial armies, such as Elisha
saw, fill the distant hills. Like a far-off whis-
per comes the word: “All power is given unto
me in heaven and on earth. Accept my life.
Swing into line with me, and all your doings
will be victorious.”
These have been bitter years. Hatred, sus-
picion, strife, with their accompaniments of
bloodshed, burned villages, poverty, tears, and
suicide, have cut deep into the souls of the peo-
ple. Those whose hands were accustomed to the
gentle methods of pipe and pen are to-day
cold-blooded in the use of rifle, bayonet, and
revolver. Every day the government papers
report so many insurgents captured, so many
wounded, so many shot. How men can hate,
how they can lie and steal and murder, are old
stories not to be learned in the East only. Who
can pour oil on the troubled waters? Who can
say to Galilee, when the typhoon bears across
it, and blind with fury, drives Peter, John, and
Who is
Sufficient P


60 KoREA IN TRANSITION
their associates toward the grinding rocks,
who can lift his hand at such a time and say,
“Steady, cease!” Who can look on the man of
failure, the man who has tried the sword and
missed the mark, who has lied and sworn, and
filled his heart with hatred and fear, a good-
for-nothing, lost man, who by a look can melt
such a one and bring him to his knees in tears
of repentance? Who can say to prison doors,
“Swing back”, and to all of Caesar's guards,
“Out of my way”? Who can speak and be
heard by ears long dead? Who can turn
a land of sorrow into glad rejoicing? Who
can make me forget my wrongs, and love the
man I hated, and make him whom I have
wronged love me? Who can take zero and by
multiplying it all down the ages make it spell
infinity? Who can make out of poor Galilee
drift-wood a being like Peter, almost divine?
Who can bind together in one unbreakable
bond of love Korea and Japan, and making
them forget their mutual grievances, form of
them a mighty people for the glory of his
Father's name?


62
KoREA IN TRANSITION
III.
14. What are the special dangers in the transition
from the first to the second of these stand-
points? -
15. What are the disadvantages of a progressive
society for a man who is not trained for it?
16.” What sort of training do you think Korean
boys should have to fit them for the chang-
ing conditions?
17.* What sort of training should girls have?
18. What ideals of personal character does Korea
need most just now?
The Comfort of Christianity.
19. Work out the points of resemblance between
the present Korean political situation and
that of the Jews in exile.
20. Select several passages from the Old Testa-
ment which you think would be of especial
comfort to Koreans to-day.
21. In what respect was the political position of
the early Christian Church like that of Korea
at present?
22.* What things has the Christian Church to
offer that help to supply the loss of nationality?
23. Collect the New Testament passages that you
think would be most helpful in the present
situation.
24. What is the message of the Bible on the
subject of race hatred?
25.” What would be your counsel to a Korean
patriot in the present distress? -


THE NATION's PRESENT SITUATION 63
REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY
CHAPTER II
I. Recent History.
Hulbert: The Passing of Korea, chs. VIII-XIV.
Bishop: Korea and Her Neighbors, chs. XXI-
XXIII, XXXI, XXXVI-XXXVII.
Gale: Korean Sketches, ch. XI.
II. Korean Misrule.
Hulbert: The Passing of Korea, ch. III.
Bishop: Korea and Her Neighbors, pp. Iol, Ioz,
329, 446-448.
Gifford: Every-day Life in Korea, p. 57.
III. Character of the King.
Hulbert: The Passing of Korea, ch. XXVII.
Bishop: Korea and Her Neighbors, pp. 257, 258,
433.





THE BELIEFS OF THE PEOPLE
65


In no department of Korean life is the antiquity of their
civilization so clearly demonstrated as in the mosaic of
religious beliefs that are held, not only by different indi-
viduals, but by any single individual. We have no choice
but to deal with these separately, but the reader must ever
bear in mind that in every Korean mind there is a jumble
of the whole; that there is no antagonism between the dif-
ferent cults, however they may logically refute each other,
but that they have all been shaken down together through
the centuries until they form a sort of religious composite,
from which each man selects his favorite ingredients without
ever ignoring the rest. Nor need any man hold exclusively
to any one phase of this composite religion. In one frame
of mind he may lean toward the Buddhistic element and at
another time he may revert to his ancestral fetishism. As
a general thing, we may say that the all-round Korean will
be a Confucianist when in society, a Buddhist when he
º hizes, and a spirit-worshiper when he is in trouble.
ow, if you can know what a man's religion is, you must
watch him when he is in trouble. Then his genuine religion
will come out, if he has any. It is for this reason that I con-
clude that the hº religion of the Korean, the founda-
tion upon which all else is mere superstructure, is his original
spirit-worship. In this term are included animism, shaman-
ism, fetishism, and nature-worship generally.
—Homer B. Hulbert
66


III
THE BELIEFS OF THE PEOPLE
Korea seems peculiarly devoid of religion.
There are no great temples in the capital that
tower above the common dwellings of men.
There are no priests evident, no public pray-
ings, no devotees, no religious fakirs, no sacred
animals walking about, no bell-books or candles
sold, no pictures with incense sticks before
them, no prostrations, in fact no ordinary signs
of religion, and yet if religion be the reaching
out of the spiritual in man to other spirits over
and above him, the Korean too is religious.
He has his sacred books, he kneels in prayer,
he talks of God, of the soul, of the heavenly
country.
We hear him repeat: “The man who does
right God rewards with blessing; the man who
does wrong God punishes with misery.” “If
we obey God we live; if we disobey him we
die.” “Secret whispers among men God hears
as a clap of thunder; hidden schemes in the
darkened chamber he sees as a flash of light-
Outward Signs
of Religion
Lacking
Religious
Sayings
67


68 KoREA IN TRANSITION
Superstition
Prevalent
ning.” “Let the body die and die and die a
hundred times, and let all my bones return to
dust, and let my soul dissipate into nothingness,
yet not one iota of loyalty shall I change to-
ward my sovereign lord [the king].”
Korea's is a strange religion, a mixing of
ancestor worship with Buddhism, Taoism,
spirit cults, divination, magic, geomancy, as-
trology, and fetishism. Dragons play a part;
devils (kwi-shin) or nature gods are abundant;
tokgabi (elfs, imps, goblins) are legion and
are up to all sorts of pranks and capers; spirits
of dead humanity are here and there present;
eternal shades walk about; there are personali-
ties in hills, trees, and rivers, in diseases, under
the ground and in the upper air, some few
ministering to mortal needs, but most of them
malignant in their disposition, bearing wo and
terror to the sons of men. So easily are they
offended and so whimsical in their make-up
and difficult to please, that the spirit world is
little better than Hades let out of school, with
all mortals at their mercy. Hornets are hard
to fight against, as the kings of the Amorites
found in the days of Joshua; still a sure hand
may hit a hornet; but who among mortals can
overcome sprites, wraiths, and banshees, where


~
S*** *
*/cº/


Moving DEAD BoDY THREE YEARS AFTER BURIAL BY ORDER of
GEOMANCERs
ANCEstoR Worship


THE BELIEFS OF THE PEOPLE 69
no head ever pops up or other visible appendage
accompanies?
But is there any religion that possesses the
heart of the nation as a whole, or are the people,
as Mrs. Bishop and Percival Lowell lead
one to infer, without anything of the sort?
The longer I am in touch with Korean environ-
ment the more emphatically would I say that
they have a religion, and that they do much
more for it, and because of it, than the average
Christians do at home for their faith. High
above all other cults and customs stands An-
cestor Worship. It is the key-stone of Korea's
gateway to the happy lands of prosperity and
success. To neglect it blocks the whole high-
way toward life and hope. A good ancestor
worshiper may consult the Buddha, may inquire
of Ok-wang Sang-je (the Jade God of the Tao-
ists), may bow or expectorate before the or-
dinary hill-gods, may set up posts to the Five
Point Generals, and consult luck and divina-
tion; but to forget the ancestors and to resort
to these only, would be to pray to the shadow
without the essence. Ancestor worship pos-
sesses completely the heart and soul of Korea.
How does ancestor worship manifest itself,
seeing that there are no temples to remind one,
Ancestor
Worship Holds
Chief Place
Its Outward
Marks


70 KOREA IN TRANSITION
The Grave Site
no altars, no shrines, no priests, no litany said
or sung? What are its marks or features? We
answer, the mourner's dress, the tablet, the
tablet-house, the grave. As these, and the
thoughts that accompany them, have occupied
a very much greater place in the life of Korea
than the tenets of the Christian faith have ever
done in any of the Western nations of the
world, I shall enter somewhat carefully into
their detail.
A professional “earth-master” (Chi-sa),
ground doctor, tomb inspector, or whatever
you may call him, is summoned by the chief
of a house and asked to find a grave site for
the family. He is a father-confessor, but in-
stead of pointing upward he points down. He
requires money too, the more the better, if the
family would be redeemed by his lucky find-
ings. He seeks out a quiet spur of a hill that
looks off toward enclosing peaks. There must
be no oozy waters, no noisy people, no nerve-
wearing winds, but the gentle breeze, the quiet
of the hills, and the full blessing of the sun-
shine. He sets his compass and then takes aim
from the different lines that radiate from the
center, to see what hill peaks show up, on the
right, or left, or in front. Lucky the site that





MoURNER
MAsked HEROES At A FUNERAL to CHASE Away Evil SPIRITs


THE BELIEFS OF THE PEOPLE 71
finds one along the compass line of posterity,
for the family will then go on generation after
generation; on the line of education, for then
the house will be great as to scholars; along
the line of rank, that many may be official
kings; along the line of goods and chattels, so
that every man may be wealthy. This is the
heaven aimed at by the professor with his com-
pass. When once found and proved satisfac-
tory, he is paid off, and the grave is dug and
plastered with lime, sand, and mud, and
covered over ready for the departure of the
father or mother or both.
When they die, wailing goes on for a time,
not gentle or smothered sobs, but open-mouthed
howlings. In four days the members of the
family are dressed in sackcloth, with ropes tied
about the waist and head. All colors are set
aside, as color denotes pleasure, joy, delight.
The house is unswept and desolation reigns
supreme, with wailings and self-denunciation.
Envelope this in an atmosphere tainted by the
presence of the dead, and you have a Korean
demise and the accompaniments just as they
ought to be. The mourner wears string shoes,
never leather, for leather denotes ease and com-
fort; he eats no meat, holds no office, goes
The Mourner


72 KoREA IN TRANSITION
The Funeral
The Soul
Sacrifice
about with an umbrella hat on that hides the
face of the sky from his guilty gaze. “Because
of my transgressions my parents have died,”
says he, and when he writes a letter he signs
it, “Yours truly, J. W. Kim, Sinner.”
The corpse is dressed in finest silk, wrapped
in hemp cloth, and then tied with three, some-
times four strips, the slit ends being fastened
tightly round the body, which is then put into.
the coffin and covered. Books and articles
specially prized by the deceased are often put
in as well, and after a few days or months, as
the case may be, the funeral goes out at night
with lanterns burning and wailings of “Aigo!
aigo!” Into such a discordant world as this
come the words, “For if we believe that Jesus
died and rose again, even so them also that are
fallen asleep in Jesus will God bring with him.”
Each human being is supposed to possess two
souls, one a male soul (hon), and one a female
(pāk). Naturally the male soul goes to heaven
and the female to hell, while the body sleeps in
the ancestral grave. There is no word of
resurrection, for resurrection is over and above
and outside of all the Confucian calculations.
Sacrifice on the part of a Confucianist equals
going to church, praying, entering the Sunday-


THE BELIEFS OF THE PEOPLE 73
school class, joining in singing. To be the
head of a clan is more than to be a minister
or Sunday-school superintendent. For three
years, on the first and fifteenth of each month,
the head of the home offers rice, bread, beef,
Irish stew, greens, dates, chestnuts, walnuts,
persimmons, honey cakes, oil candy, and other
articles of food before the tablet which remains
in the room. The male soul comes down from
heaven on these occasions and inhales the fra-
grance and then goes back. The poor female
soul has no part therein. Wailing continues
for three months, and then the silent sacrifice
takes its place. It is observed each time at
midnight, or just before cockcrow. When the
tablet has been worshiped for three years, it
is put into the tablet-house, and mourning is
finished. Only three generations occupy the
tablet-house at one and the same time. When
a new spirit comes in, the tablet belonging to
the great-grandfather is taken out and buried.
On four or five special days of the year, sac-
rifice is offered early in the morning at the
grave, which becomes far more important than
the home of the living. A neighbor may en-
croach on the precincts of the living, and noth-
ing result but a very noisy seance; but to
Requirements
Respecting the
Grave


74 KOREA IN TRANSITION
The Most
Desperate
Trouble
invade the enclosure of the dead calls for the
strongest arm of the law, the long paddle, the
knife, the deadly potion, the fierce feud that
goes on forever. The grave is cared for,
watched and tended, combed and brushed, for
the repose of the dead is all-important. If they
be misplaced, the opposites of health, wealth,
and happiness come to pass. A poor thin-faced
consumptive came to the writer to have him
help him move his mother's grave. “Where
she lay was oozy with water, and I caught
consumption,” said he. “If I could but move
her I’d get well.” Poor lad, his hopes of life
were centered in the situation of his mother's
remains!
Let a thief at home kidnap a child and write
the distracted parents, saying, “I have Nelly in
my keeping; when you bring $500 to Smith's
Corners at I.OO A.M. and hand it over, you may
have her back,” and it would set the whole
village by the ears. But suppose Pak the out-
law write to Min the millionaire, saying, “I’ve
dug up your father's bones, and have them
with me. If you send $5,000 at midnight to
Long Valley Stream you may have them. If
not sent by next full moon, be warned, I'll
grind your ancestors' bones to powder.” In


THE BELIEFs of THE PEOPLE 75
this case, the extreme limits of desperation
would be reached.
If one were to sum up the good and evil of
the system, we might say that it is good in that
it teaches children to reverence parents. There
are no restive feelings on the part of a Korean
son against his father's authority, for such a
thing would be equivalent to rebellion against
God. There is something noble and exalted
in the choice of one's parents as divinities in
default of a revelation from God. Surely
highest on earth come the father and mother,
higher than the hero of the Shintoist, higher
than any intermediate beings whatever.
The destructive influence of ancestor wor-
ship, however, far outweighs its benefits. It
is a ruthless and voracious land-grabber; the
best of the hills are for the dead. The living
may go to Jericho, or may huddle together
down in the malarial flats, while the ancestral
shade rests in the high places on the hill. The
exhilarating surroundings of trees and green
sod are for the dead, the living are left to the
dust and heat and smells of the market-place.
Ancestral piety forbids the digging of the
hills for gold or silver or any other treasure.
What are the living and what is yellow gold
The Good in
the System
Its Destructive
Influence
Prevents Mining


76 KOREA IN TRANSITION
Impels to
Early Marriages
Forbids Travel
Causes the
Spread of
Disease
compared with the sweet repose of my father's
ghost? Away with all sordid visions and leave
the hills in peace!
Ancestor worship impels toward early mar-
riages in its hurriedly reaching out after a new
generation that will offer sacrifice to one's de-
parted shade. Children are married off at ten
years and sometimes less. Love marriages?
What has love to do with it? There result,
therefore, unhappy homes, concubinage, irre-
sponsible parents, a score of families all hud-
dled together in two or three little rooms,
stupidity and misery untold.
The system forbids travel in this widely
journeying age. If you are a good child, home
you must come for sacrifice; no world-enter-
prise can interfere, a certain room, a certain
plot of ground, a certain day, holds you fast
prisoner. Some filial sons build a little shed
out by the grave, and unwashed and uncombed
take up their abode and exist there.
The uncleanness that goes with ancestor
worship, the lack of bathing, the keeping of the
dead remains long in the home, all minister to
the spread of disease and to the promotion of
epidemics which have worn down Korea since
time immemorial.


THE BELIEFS OF THE PEOPLE 77
Its extinction of woman is one of its most
pernicious influences. She cannot sacrifice, she
cannot carry down the family line. When she
enters the world, disappointment announces
her arrival, unless sons galore have preceded
her. Her life is a life of submission, imprison-
ment, and burden-bearing. Her final destina-
tion is Chi-ha or Whang-chun, the Yellow Hell.
The end of all sacrifice is a people bound
hand and foot, interfered with in office, hin-
dered in travel, debarred from the use of the
land that God gave them, impoverished and
made unhappy by early marriages, walking,
with gaze backward, more and more hopelessly
into inextricable confusion, all in conflict with
the age we live in. The twentieth century has
no regard for ancestor worship, or ancestral
hills, through which it goes on the railway
train, around them, in front of them, cutting
off luck and prosperity, screaming its wild note
in the most sacred valleys, roaring like wild
wheel-devils let loose.
Even if there were no Christianity to take
its place ancestor worship must go. Out of
the backs of the “blue-dragon” and “white-
tiger” come long lines of cars loaded with ore
Tº spirits supposed to reside in the hills.
Depresses
Woman
It Must Be
Discarded
Cannot Stand
against the
Modern Spirit


78 KoREA IN TRANSITION
Course of the
Missionary in
Meeting It
that is fed into the mining stamps to be bitten
and chewed and pulverized, till all the metal is
extracted. The age rolling forward, as it is
inexorably, is smoothing out all old supersti-
tions and with them ancestor worship.
Confronting the young missionary, in his
ignorance, is the stupendous question of the
ancestor, rooted deep in the generations that
lie buried, and with its tentacles all about the
living, associated with the wisest of the Orient,
and backed up by the master (Confucius) him-
self and the sages. What can the young and
often callow missionary do to meet this? Can
he argue the point? Never. Can he speak of
it at all with any effect? No. What can he
do? Do as the negro did when he saw the
black dog waiting guard at the gate, his jaw
“big” and his eye “mighty dangersome”. What
did he do? He let him alone. Let it alone.
Know all about it, but don’t touch it. There
is no need. Ancestor worship is dropped off
by the spiritually alive, as the beggar drops off
his old garments to become a prince imperial.
As mentioned before, the Korean talks of
God. He is Hananim, the one Great One. His
name in Chinese and also in Korean is made up
of terms meaning “one” and “great.” So he


THE BELIEFS OF THE PEOPLE 79
is the Supreme Ruler for whom there is no
image or likeness in heaven or earth or under
the earth. Greatness is his. Love and light
and life and joy are not associated with him.
I said to the old woman (not a Christian)
dusting off the door-steps, “It will rain to-
day.” Her reply was “Rain? Who knows?”
“But the morning paper says so under weather
probabilities.” “Morning paper? Dear me!
What does the morning paper know about
what Hananim will do?”
Immediately when the Bible is read, “In the
beginning some One created the heavens and
the earth”, they answer, “Hananim.” “Who
is angry with the wicked every day?” “God.”
“The heavens declare the glory of Hananim;
and the firmament showeth his handiwork.”
But to tell of Hananim coming down to this
poor earth's manger, and living, suffering,
dying, with the outcast and the lost, is a story,
for the East, unreasonable, impossible, and yet
a story that grips the heart and compels belief
and acceptance.
Koreans consult the Buddha sometimes.
Buddhism has been here since 372 A. D. and
its long course of history has been marked by
various degrees of corruption and by dark
His Revelation
Buddhism


8O KOREA IN TRANSITION
Varying
Recognition
deeds. In delightfully secluded corners and in
the shade and quiet of the hills are its temples.
So separated are they from the wicked world
and so shut away into the silent lands of medi-
tation and repose, that you would think them
the habitation of the holy, but it proves not to
be so. The phrase Na-mu A-mi-ta-bul is the
chief article of their creed, and their chief
forms observed are celibacy, vegetarianism,
and the non-taking of life. The Buddhist has
always been careful to have a shaved head in
a land of topknots and his bowing and manner
of speech differ from the ordinary “worldling”
(sok-in) as he calls him.
The fall of the Koryu dynasty in 1391 A. D.
was supposed to be due to the corrupt influence
of Buddhism, and since then the state has
looked down upon it as an outcast religion.
No Buddhist priest was admitted within the
walls of Seoul for 500 years, and even to-day
the Confucianist uses the lowest and most dis-
respectful forms of speech to the Buddhist
wherever he meets him. Yet in times of
trouble, as when no son is born heir of the
family, or when worries or anxieties beset the
Palace, there come calls on the Buddha, and re-
quests that his priests pray. Many a time have


THE BELIEFS OF THE PEOPLE 8I
these seasons of prayer kept the writer awake
at night—“O cha-ri chu-ri chum-je sa-pa-ha.
Om man-hi pad-mi hum, om man-hi pad-mi
hum.” The priest knows not the meaning of
what he says. They are set sounds that have
passed down to him as propitious and lucky,
and like a pent-up and bottled cask, once start
the flow and he goes on with the most astound-
ing rapidity seemingly forever and forever.
What shall we say in commendation of
Korea's form of Buddhism? Perhaps it is that
Sakyamuni has taught a lesson in tenderness
and compassion. There is a gentleness in some
of the old priests and a dreamy mystic some-
thing that inspires one to go softly, and to put
all iron and hardness out of the soul. But
Buddhism, with its gilded idols and its awful
representation of the Ten Hells that await mor-
tals and its unintelligible litany and its immoral
priesthood, constitutes but a poor portal for
the soul of man.
Of Taoism there is almost nothing. Some
few followers read the Old Philosopher. “The
way that can be walked on is not the eternal
way, the name that can be named is not the
eternal name.” Some in the spirit of this
sect pray the long night through to find God,
Influence and
Value
Taoism


82 KoREA IN TRANSITION
to get into touch with divinity. Our dear
brother, S. J. Keel, was once a Taoist. Chang-ja
one of the sages of this religion says: “The
number one man is unconscious of his body,
the spiritual man knows nothing of merit, the
holy man thinks not of his name.” Here is a
verse of his, the opening poem in his book of
writings. It pictures the greatness of the
great as compared with the mediocrity of the
mediocre who are looking on.
“There is a fish in the Great North Sea
Whose name is Kon;
His size is a bit unknown to me,
Though he measures a good ten thousand li
Till his wings are grown,
And then he's a bird of enormous sail,
With an endless back and a ten-mile tail,
And he covers the heavens with one great veil,
When he flies off home.” -
A strange, dreamy, elfish, Rip Van Winkle
kind of doctrine is Taoism. Some scholars in
China think they find in its teaching a relation
to the Hebrew Bible and intimation of the
Trinity, but Koreans see no such resemblance,
and it is a dead cult as far as the peninsula is
concerned.
It must not be supposed, however, that an-
cestor worship occupies the whole spiritual


THE BELIEFs of THE PEOPLE 83
realm of Korea. It is the great religion of the
people; it is the essential belief of the orthodox,
the all-necessary form to observe and follow,
if one would be admitted to the society of the
holy. You are required to be an ancestor wor-
shiper, but you are not required to be a spiritual
medium, or an exorcist, or a believer in hill
gods, or dragons, or divination, or star influ-
ences. Nevertheless the whole land is shad-
owed by these as was Egypt by the swarms of
locusts which came up to strip her. Mrs. Bishop
says demon-worship costs Korea one million
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars gold
per annum."
A graphic and correct picture of spirit exist-
ences in Korea is touched off by the pen of
Dr. George Heber Jones: “In Korean belief,
earth, air, and sea are peopled by demons.
They haunt every umbrageous tree, shady ra-
vine, crystal spring, and mountain crest. On
green hill-slopes, in peaceful agricultural val-
leys, in grassy dells, on wooded uplands, by
lake and stream, by road and river, in north,
south, east, and west, they abound, making
malignant sport out of human destinies. They
are on the roof, ceiling, fireplace, kang, and
1 Korea and Her Neighbors, 403.
Belief in
Demons


84 KoREA IN TRANSITION
Revengeful
Spirits
beam. They fill the chimney, the shed, the
living-room, the kitchen, they are on every
shelf and jar. In thousands they waylay the
traveler as he leaves home, beside him, behind
him, dancing in front of him, whirring over
his head, crying out upon him from earth and
air and water. They are numbered by thou-
sands of billions, and it has been well said that
their ubiquity is an unholy travesty of the Di-
vine omnipresence. This belief keeps the
Korean in a perpetual state of nervous appre-
hension, it surrounds him with indefinite ter-
rors, and it may truly be said of him that he
passes the time of his sojourning here in fear.
Every Korean home is subject to demons, here,
there, and everywhere. They touch the Korean
at every point in his life, making his well-being
depend on a series of acts of propitiation, and .
they avenge every omission with merciless se-
verity, keeping him under the yoke of bondage
from birth to death.”
The spirits of the dead who have passed
from earth under some wrong or other, keep
after the living till their wrongs are avenged a
thousandfold. Many of them have not found
a resting-place, neither in beast nor man, and
So remain at large, more dangerous by far to


THE BELIEFs of THE PEOPLE 85
meet than even a striped man-eater. Terrors
untold accompany these vindictive spirits, who
are loose and on the warpath. Sickness, mad-
ness, poverty, disgrace, death, mark their
course. In each county there is a sacrificial
place set apart called yo-dan, where all the dis-
contented, displeased, distracted spirits are
wont to congregate and be sacrificed to. It is
a dangerous business, for any slip in the cere-
mony brings down the pack on the head of the
director of ceremonies. Again they are heard
crying at night; sometimes they become visible,
but usually they are hid from mortal view.
Some are big and some are little. Some guard
a whole village and have to be propitiated or
else they smite it with typhus and the like.
Some possess the hills and keep bit and bridle
on the tiger. If these hill gods be neglected
or insulted, they let loose their woes on the
market-place and we hear of children being
carried off and eaten or bitten by snakes, or
other mischances befalling them. There are
hill “bosses” or village “bosses” who are in
touch with the pit itself, and can call forth
legions on their own behalf.
Pan-su, or blind exorcists, ply their trade of
casting out demons. They possess themselves
Exorcista


86 KOREA IN TRANSITION
Tokgabi
Demon Posts
of some great name, like that of George Wash-
ington, for example, and by its repetition and
the telling over of his sayings, out go the
devils. Then there are women called Mu-tang,
mediums who yield themselves up to some
demon or other, and then utter prophetic
words, or words that reveal mysteries.
The tokgabi is half-demon and half-elf, al-
ways on the go, and up to all sorts of capers.
He will frequently cut off a Korean's topknot
when he is not looking, or walking peacefully
all unawares. The man is unconscious of it
till he feels the top of his head and says, “Hello,
who is it? Is it I or a Buddhist? Not a Bud-
dhist? No, then I. Alack, the tokgabi has been
here and my topknot is gone.” They push
covers inside of dishes, they throw sand against
the window-paper, they play with fire at night
out on the mountainsides.
Here, there, and everywhere in Korea are
posts seen by the wayside, cut roughly with
grinning teeth, horrible face, and most fero-
cious eyes and ears. They are placed there to
keep devils from passing. Usually they are
called by the name of General, General this,
and General that. Frequently they stand in
pairs, side by side, or facing each other, one


wº
*/cº


SPIRIT Posts


THE BELIEFS OF THE PEOPLE 87
the General and the other the General's wife.
Down his front runs the inscription, “The Gen-
eral of Heaven,” while down the front of his
wife it says, “Mrs. General of Hell.” These
were the strong defense of Korea's poor people
through the generations gone by against the
countless forces of the unseen world.
The dragon is king of all scaled and crawl- The Prae"
ing creatures. He mounts high up to heaven,
as when we see a waterspout; he goes down to
the unfathomed depths of the deepest pool. He
is a monster divinity, is the dragon. He exists
under the hills, where his back is often pro-
tected by a pavement of stone, where the road
is likely to cut into the quick. St. George
may have slain him in England, but he flour-
ishes in the Orient still. On Japanese coins is
seen his clawy form twisted and mixed with
many coils. On the Chinese flag he still breasts
the breezes. In the most honored of Korean
sacred books, The Canon of Changes, I read
such a sentence as this: “The sixth line shows
dragons fighting in the wild, their blood is
purple and yellow.” Yong, the dragon name,
is in all mouths, from the king on the throne
to the maid servant that is behind the mill.
Enough has been told to give the reader an A world • **


88 KOREA IN TRANSITION
Collective Spirit
Host
Gospel Picture
of Christ's
Power
idea of the terrible world in which the Korean
has lived and lives. Every moment of his pil-
grimage has been under the dominion of fear.
As was said before, he becomes a fatalist natu-
rally, what comes to pass must come. His
birth-year, birth-month, birthday, birth-hour,
are in possession of the spirits, and they hold
them at their mercy, to toss about or worry as
the tiger does the unfortunate village dog that
has been caught napping.
. Gather this world together as it has passed
the reader in review, and there will be the
ancestral spirits, mean enough and whimsical
beyond all reason, sufficient to make life a pil-
grimage of awful suspense; but add to them
demons, goblins, elfs, dragons, hill-gods, and
what not and you have old Korea.
Into this world comes the missionary with
his Book and its stories about demons. The
Korean reads and at once is attracted. Plenty
of demons in the New Testament, thousands of
them, but they are all on the run; down the
slopes of Galilee they go'; away from Christ's
presence they fly, till the blind sees and the soul
is lighted up”; hosts of them, howling devils”;
and devils that shriek and foam at the mouth.*
* Matt. viii. 32. 2 Matt. xii. 22. * Mark v. 15. “Luke ix. 39.


THE BELIEFS OF THE PEOPLE 89
Never before in the history of Korea was
the world of demons seen smitten hip and
thigh. This Wonder-worker is omnipotent, for
verily he has issued a reprieve to all prisoners,
all who will accept of him, and has let them
out of hell. Throughout the land prayers go
up for the demon-possessed in his name, and
they are delivered; prayers for healing, and
the sick are cured; prayers for the poor, and
God sends means.
Was there ever a land more needy, and
where was a message ever dreamed of so mirac-
ulously suited to the need? Some of us have
come East to learn how wondrously Jesus can
set free the most hopeless of lost humanity. We
have come to realize that there are demons in-
deed in this world, and that Jesus can cast them
out; to learn once more that the Bible is true,
and that God is back of it; to know that his
purpose is to save Asia, and to do an important
part of the work through young Americans,
Canadians, Britons, and others, who will
humbly bow before him and say, “Lord, here
am I; send me.”
His
Omnipotence in
Korea
Message Suited
to the Land


90 KOREA IN TRANSITION
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER III
AIM : To APPRECIATE THE INSUFFICIENCY OF KOREA's
RELIGION To MEET THE New NEEDs
I. The Good and Evil of Ancestor Worship.
1. Name all the good points that you can find
in ancestor worship.
2.* Should an effort be made to incorporate any
of these points in Korean Christianity? If
so, how?
3. What effect would it have upon real rever-
ence for the dead to imagine that the position
of a grave might bring disease to the living?
4. To what extent should reverence for the dead
be allowed to interfere with business and
travel, and to what extent not?
5. What recommendation or criticism have you
for the relations of parents to children in
Korea?
6.* In what ways does ancestral worship affect
the position of woman in society? -
7.* Do you think that missionaries are justified
in refraining from all attacks upon ancestor
worship? Defend your views.
II. The Mental and Moral Confusion of Superstition.
8.* Try to think out in detail what practical dif-
ference it would make in your life if you
really believed in the existence of imps and
spirits.
9. What possible defense would you have if evil
spirits attacked you?
Io. What effect would a belief in spirits have


THE BELIEFS OF THE PEOPLE 91
III.
upon a man's resoluteness in confronting
difficulties?
II. What effect would it have upon plans for the
future?
12. In what way does this belief stand as an ob-
stacle to science?
13. What evils arise from attributing every mis-
fortune to the arbitrary displeasure of some
spirit?
14. What do you think would be the relative value
of the scientific and religious method in com-
bating the belief in spirits?
15.” Sketch the line of argument that you would
employ in dealing with believers in evil
spirits.
The Message of Christianity.
16. How would you utilize the Korean idea of
Hananim in teaching Christianity?
17. Where would you expect to find your greatest
difficulty in using this idea?
18. Contrast the message of Buddhism and Chris-
tianity for a nation in political distress.
19. Contrast the external and public manifesta-
tions of Protestant Christianity with those of
religion in Korea. What elements are most
peculiar to each?
20.* What principal needs of Korea in the way of
institutional and social life will Christianity
supply?
21.* How will Christianity remove the evil and
supplement the good of Korean life?


92
KoREA IN TRANSITION
REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY.
CHAPTER III
I. Ancestor Worship.
Gifford: Every-day Life in Korea, ch. VI.
Gale: Korean Sketches, pp. 215, 216.
Underwood: The Call of Korea, pp. 79-81.
Noble: Ewa: A Tale of Korea, pp. 57-60.
II. Spirit Worship.
Hulbert: The Passing of Korea, ch. XXX.
Bishop: Korea and Her Neighbors, pp. 290, 399-
426,443,444.
Gifford: Every-day Life in Korea, ch. VIII.
Underwood: The Call of Korea, pp. 85-94.
Noble: Ewa : A Tale of Korea, pp. 49-53.


SOCIAL LIFE AND CUSTOMS
93


Woman's rights are few and depend on custom rather
than law. She now possesses the right of remarriage, and
that of remaining unmarried till she is sixteen, and she
can refuse permission to her husband for his concubines to
occupy the same house with herself. She is powerless to
divorce her husband, conjugal fidelity, typified by the goose,
the symbolic figure at a wedding, being a feminine virtue
solely., . Her husband º cast her off for seven reasons—
incurable disease, theft, childlessness, infidelity, jealousy, in-
compatibility_with her parents-in-law, and a quarrelsome
disposition. She may be sent back to her father's house for
any one of these causes. . . . Domestic happiness is a thing
she does not look for. The Korean has a house, but no home.
The husband has his life apart; common ties of friendship
and external interest are not known. His pleasure is taken
in company, with male acquaintances and gesang; and the
marriage relationship is briefly summarized in the remark
of a Korean gentleman in conversation with me on the sub-
ject, “We marry our wives, but we love our concubines.”
—Isabella Bird Bishop
“Before Christ came into our home,” said one of our native
Christian women, “I never knew what it was to eat a meal
in the same room with my husband. His meals were served
to him in the sarang (reception room), while I had mine on
the earth floor of the kitchen. He always spoke to me in the
lowest grade of servant talk and often called me by insulting
names. Sometimes when he was an or drunk, he used to
beat me, and my life was as miserable as that of most all the
heathen Korean women. But now that Christ has come
into our hearts, everything is changed. My husband has not
struck me once since he ame a Christian. We have our
meals and prayers together in the sarang, and now he always
speaks kindly to me, addressing me as an equal. The past
life was a bad dream; the present is a foretaste of heaven.
We did not know what love was until Christ came into our
home to teach us.”
—George Heber jones
94


IV
soCIAL LIFE AND CUSTOMS
Society has rested on five strong pillars,
called Oh-ryun. They were chiseled out of
ancient marble, by unknown hands, in prehis-
toric times, and have stood high through all
the ages, holding the four corners of the East-
ern world, and propping up the middle beams
thereof. The Five Laws they are sometimes
called, and on them rests the world of Con-
fucius. Recently a Mr. Yi Wung-geung, a
Christian, and one of Korea's most noted
scholars, has written a reader for girls, and in
the opening chapter he begins: “The doctrine
of men rests on the Five Laws. Between father
and son it requires chin (friendship); between
king and courtier, eui (righteousness); be-
tween husband and wife, pyul (deference);
between old and young, saw (degree); between
friends, shin (faith).”
Allied to these are the Five Virtues, in, eui,
ye, chi, shin, or love, righteousness, ceremony,
knowledge, faith. Herein the whole of su-
The O6-ryun, or
Five Laws
!
The Five Virtues
95


96 KoREA IN TRANSITION
The rive
Elements
A Faithful son
perior teaching was summed up, and concern-
ing these millions of pages have been written,
and armies of Chinese characters have been
called into requisition to tell all that was to be
told. In-eui-ye-chi-shin is pronounced as one
word, and all the people use it. The coolie as
well as the statesman or gifted man of letters
says, “In-eui-ye-chi-shin”. Any nation exem-
plifying it is civilized and any failing to ob-
serve it is barbarous.
Another five must be called in, and then we
shall have the fifteen that round out the circle.
These are the Original Elements, metal, wood,
water, fire, earth, keum-mok-su-wha-do, also a
single word in its frequency of use and wide-
ness of application. These are called the Oh-
hang, and what is there that cannot be ex-
plained by them? The Oh-ryun (Five Laws),
the Oh-sang (Five Virtues), and the Oh-hang
(Five Elements) govern the Korean world of
thought. The Five Elements serve as founda-
tion, the Five Laws as the pillars, and the Five
Virtues as the firmament above.
These might be designated the soul of
Korean society. How many stories are told
to illustrate the Five Laws! For example,
such and such a lad was good to his feeble


SoCIAL LIFE AND CUSTOMs 97
mother, and faithful in bowing before his
father's grave. He was dogged by every cir-
cumstance of evil; poverty was after him with
hungry eyes; winter was upon him, biting cold;
sickness and ill luck tried him to the bitter
end; but through it all he cared for the needy
one, and walked daily through the snow to the
mound on the hillside. As a reward for such
virtue, an angel appeared to him, crowned him
with high honor, and pronounced wealth and
happiness his forever. He married a beautiful
princess, had untold riches and many sons, and
was happy ever afterward.
A set of five readers prepared some hundred
years ago, abound in such stories. Undoubt-
edly a strong steadying influence has been exer-
cised on the state and on society by the observ-
ance of the Oh-ryun, so that courtiers have
been loyal, children filial, wives faithful, age
honored, and friendship sacred.
To illustrate the Five Virtues, love, right-
eousness, ceremony, knowledge, faith, let
one story suffice, written by a governor of
north Korea, one hundred and fifty years
ago. “In the late autumn a peasant caught
two wild geese, clipped their wings, and gave
them to me. I kept them in the court, where
Influence of the
Five Laws
Wild Geese
Illustrating the
Classic Virtues


98 KoREA IN TRANSITION
Relation of the
Elements to Life
the steward looked after them. One day
he came to me and said, “These birds are
better-flavored than quail or pheasant; I
advise your excellency to kill and eat.” “Kill
and eat? Out on you, man,’ said I, ‘Have you
never noticed wild geese, how they fly, for ex-
ample? They preserve the strictest ye (cere-
mony, order); when they mate there is no
disorder or impropriety, they understand eui
(what is right); in their migrations they fol-
low the warmth of the sun, they have chi (wis-
dom); though they come and go you can al-
ways count on their passing at the right time,
that is shin (keeping faith); they never make
war on other creatures with bill or claw, that
borders on in (love). It is a bird of the sacred
classics, and would never do to make soup of
like chicken or quail.’”
As to the Oh-hang—metal, wood, water,
fire, earth—they play a most important part in
all the affairs of life. They underlie every-
thing, are the foundation in fact, not only of
material things, but of domestic life and spirit-
ual existence as well. In the case of a marriage
they are anxiously called in, shuffled, and con-
sulted. If a young man whose element is
wood is mated to a metal girl, he will suffer


SocIAL LIFE AND CUSTOMs
*
as wood does from ax and saw and c
If he be married to a fire girl, nothing
total destruction awaits him. Earth and v
are the only safe elements with which wood. --..
mate. All the domestic unhappiness of olden
time was explained on the principle of the Five
Elements and bad mating. To say that the
Oh-hang enters into every detail of life is
scarcely putting it too strongly.
Society, based on, built up, and covered by
these sets of laws, got itself into a fixed and
immovable condition. The compass of the
law governing was so small, and the conditions
enclosed so multifarious, that no independent
move could be taken by any one member of
society without disturbing all of the others.
“As it was, is now, and ever, shall be,” was
written large over all things Korean; every
wheel in the brain was stopped except those
moved by Oh-hang, or Oh-ryun, or Oh-sang.
A Fixed Social
Condition.
º
Independents thetight-was-not-dreamed of..... :
Korea has scored no invention, no discovery, no
advance, in a thousand years. Backward, ever
backward the nation has gone, little by little,
in its unconscious existence, saying over and
over to itself: “As it was, is now, and ever
shall be; as it was, is now, and ever shall be.”
!


IOO KoREA IN TRANSITION
Whether in architecture, or in education, or
in dress, or in other affairs of life, custom rules.
Custom explains everything.
“What about this absurdity?”
“Oh, it's custom.”
“Yes, but see here, why are the dead propped
up on sticks and not buried?”
“Oh, it's custom.”
“Do you sometimes marry off children as
early as nine years of age?”
“Yes, that's custom.”
The reader must learn this word if he would
understand old Korea, and if he would read
into much of the life of the East still. The
forefather may have been an imbecile, or may
have walked in his sleep, but what he did has
come down, down to the present, and custom
maintains that it is the sane and right thing
to do.
“Why do you feed all these idle tramps, who
come calling at your door, and you a poor
man?” I once asked of my host.
He replied “It’s custom, and for my life I
can't get out of it.”
“What about these dolmens set up all
through these valleys here like tables of the
gods, what do they mean?”


SocIAL LIFE AND CUSTOMs IOI
“They were set up by the Chinese invader,
thousands of years ago, to crush out the ground
influence that brought forth Korean warriors.”
“You mean that they have stifled out the life
of the nation for all these centuries?”
“Yes.”
“Then why don't you roll them off and get
back your lost vigor?”
“Oh, that's no use now, never do.”
“As it was, is now, and ever shall be,” is
the only reply.
Jn Korea the most distressing condition of
all was this strangling of independent thought.
There was ceremony, gentleness, deference,
kindness, appreciation of fun and humor, but
for comparison and conclusion and action there
—was no room. One longed to drill a hole into
the brain, pour in oil or anything that would
lubricate, and set the wheels moving. They
are moving now, however, and some of them
with fine freedom. An Edison may little by
little come forth from the shadows and be
born, but for three thousand years it was as
impossible to bring forth such as he as for a
scrub pine to grow glorious persimmons.
We shall look for a moment at the home
life, ever remembering these bands of iron and
A Stifled World
The Head of the
Family


IO2 KoREA IN TRANSITION
brass. The father is the lord high executioner.
The Oh-ryun says that he shall be revered al-
most as a god by his posterity. He is greater
even than the king. What he says is law, and
what he does must be acknowledged respect-
fully and agreed to. While the majority of
Korean fathers are kind to their children, cus-
tom paints him a Nebuchadnezzar with a fiery
furnace prepared for other members of the
household. He talks in terms of command to
all others about him, as we might say in Eng-
lish, “Come here. Go there. Sit down. Stand
up. Bring my pipe.” The Korean language
is rich in tones and expressions of high com-
mand, and the father is a past master of the
whole subject. When you live near him, watch
his daily life, and catch the accents of his voice,
you think of Sitting Bull, the Turkish Sultan,
the Grand Vizier, the Czar, and yet none of
these seem quite to describe him.
He says, “There's John now, he's three
months old; I must look sharp and get him
betrothed.” He calls in a go-between and after
various seesawings, consulting of Oh-hang, and
casting of lots, John is betrothed, sometimes
to a girl baby, sometimes to one already six
or seven years old. John is not interested. He


IO4 KOREA IN TRANSITION
At the Period of
Marriage
The Mother
“Well I should say not, I wouldn't trade you
for a dozen boys. But why do you ask?”
She said, “The Koreans were talking just
now, and they pointed at me and said, ‘What a
pity that she wasn't a boy!’”
The Korean woman is married at last, but
not with any high hilarity such as attends wed-
ding-days at home. She goes with blood-red
marks painted on her face, and her eyes sealed,
like a wooden doll, turned this way and that,
stood up, set down, moved here and there,
pulled and pushed through all the wooden cere-
mony of marriage, till at last she emerges
daughter-in-law, with three powers set over
her head, husband, mother-in-law, and father-
in-law. Young wives are not always unhappy,
but it is no thanks to custom or circumstance
that they are not.
The mother is an important member of the
family in her relation to children only. If
she has no son, alas for her! better had she
never been born. Not only is she condemned
by her husband and every member of the clan,
but she condemns herself, and no ray of sun-
shine ever gladdens her broken soul. She is
Rachel, and Hannah, and Elizabeth, as they
were before joy visited them. In this matter


GROOM RETURNING WITH HIS BRIDE
BRIDAL FEAST AFTER THE CEREMONY





SoCIAL LIFE AND CUSTOMs IOS
the spirit of the opposite seems to rule from
that of the West. Happy the woman who has
a great circle of posterity to look down upon.
“Who is the most noted woman in Europe?”
asked the childless Madame de Stael of Na-
poleon. “She who has reared the largest
family,” was the sharp reply, and Korea would
say, “Amen.”
Woman is a useful member of society, for
material interests hang on her hand. Once,
on a walk by the city wall, we saw a man sit-
ting on a stone weeping. His was a full-
mouthed, heart-broken cry, as though the
world had given way under him. “Why,”
we asked. “Why all this fuss?” He looked
vacantly at us for a moment, and then resumed
where he had left off. We found that the
trouble was about a woman, his wife, she had
left him. “How he must have loved her to cry
like that,” remarked a lady in the party. It
was translated, but he resented it, “Loved her?
I never loved her, but she made my clothes and
cooked my food; what shall I do? boo-hoo-oo,”
louder and more impressively than ever.
Thus was, yes, and still is, the world of
woman, but mighty changes are taking place,
and underneath the framework of her prison-
Woman’s
Service in
Material Things
Changes and
Her
Emancipation


IO6 KoREA IN TRANSITION
The Family
Circle
house earthquakes are shaking. She is to be
free, but what will her freedom mean? Con-
fucius never guessed the place of woman in
society, he missed the mark as widely as the
Russians did in the battle of Tsushima. Jesus,
in the face of all the ages that spoke opposition,
placed her where God would have her and there
by his grace she stands. She has been the
slave, the dog, the toy, the chattel, the con-
venience of men, for all past ages. Now new
voices are heard proclaiming that she shall be
free.
The family exists but not the circle. There
is notable around which they gather for meals,
no reading nor music, no evening parties which
draw them together, no “At Homes”, no family
pew in which to sit on Sunday, no picnic ex-
cursions in which all members join. The mas-
ter eats by himself, the wife by herself, the
sons and daughters each separately and alone.
Because of this, our custom of conversing at
table, and allowing the talk and attention to
wander all over the universe, while semicon-
sciously engaged in the serious act of “eating
rice,” seems very absurd. “When you eat,
eat, and when you talk, talk, but why try both
at one and the same time?”


SOCIAL LIFE AND CUSTOMs Io/
Korean homes are in a sense open to all the No Privacy
world. Any one who pleases may try the door,
push it open, and come in. He needs no first
acquaintance, and no introduction. An ordi-
nary Korean guest-room is free to all the world.
On the other hand the inner quarters are sep-
arate, and for a male traveler to venture there
would be a breach of the most sacred law of
society. Into this outer room, come gentle-
men of leisure, tramps, fortune-tellers, Bud-
dhist priests, all mankind, in fact. Here is
located the high seat of the master. As you
live in this guest-room, you feel the fearful
lack of privacy. You are as though encamped
on the open highway, under the gaze of all
men. If you write a letter, the question is,
to whom are you writing it. “Why do you
write thus and thus? What reference is here?
Who? When?” These are the questions that
are asked by those who look over your
shoulder, without any breach of proper form
or infraction of the eternal law that governs
things. -
It becomes a question sometimes with the
young missionary as to how much he can stand
of the search-rays of the human eye, and if
he does break down what form the break-
An Ordeal to the
Missionary


IO8 KoREA IN TRANSITION
Unreasonable-
ness
An Illuminating
Conversation
down will take. In the early days especially,
from chinks and corners came these never-
ceasing search-lights. This is the East; it was
born so, raised so, and lives so, unconscious
of the burden of it.
The regular laws of cause and effect seem to
be out of gear on this side of the 18oth merid-
ian. Medical practise is unreasonable. If you
have a pain, a long darning-needle is stuck into
you to relieve it. If you have an inner sick-
ness, the doctor will ask you a question or two,
then he will multiply earth by fire and divide
by wood, and the result will be a mixture fit
for the witch's caldron, and this you are ex-
pected to steep and drink from. To us it seems
very unreasonable. Still, we, on our side, to
them are as much out of touch with their fitness
of things as they to us.
Recently a conversation between two Ko-
reans, Yi and Kim, ran thus:
“I’ll tell you the reason, Kim, that we
Koreans do not make as good soldiers as the
Japanese, it's because we are no hands at shut-
ting one eye and keeping the other open. You
must shut one eye, you know, to aim,” and Yi
screwed up his face into a twisted knot to get
his one eye to close, but it was in vain.


SocIAL LIFE AND CUSTOMS Io9
“Nothing of the kind,” replied Kim, “I can
shut one eye and leave the other open as much
as I please.”
“Then let me see you do it,” said Yi, all the
time trying frantically to get his one eye to
close properly.
“No trouble about it,” said Kim, rubbing
the ink on the inkstone and then dipping his
brush and tasting it.
“Then I ask you to do it, let me see you
shut one eye now and leave the other open.”
“I could do it if I had a gun,” said Kim.
“Oh, yes,” said Yi, “You could do it if you
had a gun, but you can't do it if you haven't,
and the Japanese can.”
One of the curses of Korean society is debt,
and the persistency with which all people run
therein. Every man would seem to owe the
other. A clear statement, with all paid off and
none due, seems never to have been heard of.
Borrowing and paying huge interest has been
the custom. Twenty years ago it was 12 per
cent. a month. Little by little it has fallen till
to-day it is 4 or 3 or 2 per cent. monthly, the
lowest on record.
Here is a note from the Seoul Press, written
in 1906: “Koreans are not misers; they are
Debt
Unduly
Generous


I IO KoREA IN TRANSITION
Habitual
Kindness and
Official Cruelty
spendthrifts. Money glides by them and goes
easily the way of all the earth. Every man
aims to be rich, in order that he may have cash
to spare; and nothing pleases him better than
to part with it for a friend, in hospitality and
good fellowship. Are they poor people or are
they rich? No man knows. They have little
money for necessities, but any amount for lux-
uries. Americans would quarrel over a mite
that Koreans would scorn to speak of. His
relative over the way, the Chinaman, is a loath-
some miser in comparison. The Korean will
be hard up always and yet never break his pace
as a gentleman of leisure. If I were poor, and
had no means, and was obliged to throw my
remaining days on the generosity of the pub-
lic for food and clothes and comfort, I should
appeal to the Korean, knowing that he would
never see me want, would be respectful while
generous, and would never be so mean as to
cast up my good-for-nothingness to me.”
The Koreans are a kind-hearted people.
Those of us who have gone in and out among
them for nearly a quarter of a century can
vouch for it. No more gentle or hospitable
race exists, and yet there have been through
its history fearful outbreaks of cruelty, and


SoCIAL LIFE AND CUSTOMs III
traces of these remain till to-day. If a man
sinned against the state, the innocent women
of his household suffered and the little children
as well.
In the troubles of 1885 an old conservative
gentleman lived near the East Gate. When the
names of the movers of the riot were published,
his son's name stood high up on the list. See-
ing this, he went into the inner room, called his
little grandchild and said, “Alas! we have lived
to be disgraced, you by your father and I by
my son. We shall die together.” So he and
the little laddie drank the hemlock, and made
atonement for the son.
There is no individual in society, it is one M
body corporate. If one member sin all suffer
with him. The fearful forms of torture loom
up yet out of the shadows, the paddle, the rack,
the chair, the cangue collar, the strangle-ring,
the shin-rod, and various forms of mutilation
remind one of what we see in the Tower of
London. Truly we are brethren in cruelty if
we go far enough into the dark past. But God
who is rich in mercy, when he transforms an
Oriental, seems first of all to take out of his
heart the poison of cruelty, and to leave the
spirit of self-sacrifice and tenderness instead.
|
|
i
!
Making
Atonement
utual Suffering


II 2 KoREA IN TRANSITION
Lack of Hygiene
Mr. Yi and the
Mummy
“For the public weal” has never until re-
cently cut any figure in Korean society. All
common interests were left to the other person.
Roads, as we have said, go where they like
and as they please. Garbage-carts and wag-
ons and a garbage-heap miles away from the
city do not exist. The refuse heap is just out-
side the front gate, and the kite birds and the
summer rains are the scavengers. The streets
become the backyards heaped high, and trav-
elers through Ping yang and Seoul get a fear-
ful view of Korean life, seeing the very worst
possible from the very first. Odors abound and
epidemics are rife, but long usage has hardened
those passing by, and the olfactory nerves no
longer respond to this high vibration.
It recalls to the writer Mr. Yi, consul-
general and minister, who was once walking
through Central Park Museum, New York.
We reached the mummy chamber, and Mr. Yi
gave one look at them and took firm hold of
his nose. “Why do you hold your nose?” was
the question asked. Without letting go his
hold he pointed with the other hand at a
mummy. “But he has been dead for five thou-
sand years.” “Has he?” said he, taking a firmer
grip. He would not have noticed one of these


SocIAL LIFE AND CUSTOMs II3
fearfully unkempt streets, but the supposed
scent of the mummy he could not tolerate.
Korea is clean in dress, however, and this
makes the land a paradise when compared with
Chefoo, China, for example. The frequent
bathing that one sees in Japan does not exist,
but the immaculate suits that are donned at
every short interval, even by the poor, go far
to make amends.
Society as a body has been blind and deaf
and dumb. There have been no public gather-
ings, no public opinion audible, and no eye
that could see for the many. Christianity
comes gently but persistently, step by step, in
at all gateways. One of its marks is that it
can speak, it is peculiarly a voice; it can see,
and can control the eye. Through its good
news society is awaking to see and to hear and
to speak.
Society is so interlocked and bound together
by the patriarchal system that, not only is inde-
pendent thought out of the question, but there
is no room for patriotism, no room for sin-
cerity, no place for accuracy. Chief among
the many fathers, is the father of the family.
Then there is the father of the state, the king,
and as the father of the family has power ab-
Immaculate
Dress
Society
Becoming
Conscious
System of
Patriarchal
Authority


II.4 KoREA IN TRANSITION
Several Present
and Past
Embodiments
No
Independence
of Thought
solute within the limits of his own home, so
in state affairs the king is absolute. Human
life and honor hang on his hand. “Exalt him,”
reads the command, and behold the man is
exalted. “Take him out and behead him,” and
lo, the man, without trial or chance for his life,
dies.
Then there is the provincial father or magis-
trate. He too within a narrower circle is ab-
solute, and can reprimand and order and be-
rate as he pleases. Then there is the literary
father, the schoolmaster, once greatly held in
esteem, now fallen amid the debris of ancient
systems and ideals. There are many other
fathers, all of whom hold sway within their
own sphere.
Such being the case, independence of thought
or action is out of the question. Do, I must,
as all others have done, safe-guarding the Oh-
ryun, exalting the Oh-sang, and using the Oh-
hang to help keep my bearings. When a new
set of conditions arise that are not already
provided for, the Korean is at sea. He is con-
fronted by the dress problem these days, for
example, and scoop hats and pole-stick skirts
are coming on. He has never had any freedom
in action heretofore, and suddenly he has fallen


SocIAL LIFE AND CUSTOMs II5
heir to it without preparation. Knowledge
under any condition is the result of experience,
so that even a sage in the classics may be but
a child when it comes to baking bread or
gardening.
For generations the Korean has walked by
instinct and not by reason. Every possible
circumstance was provided for, and all he had
to do was to shut his eyes and let himself go.
But new conditions and a new world have
come crashing into his ancient domain, and
where is he? Esson Third says: “The other
day an unsophisticated Korean was riding on
a through train from Fusan, the fast express
going at thirty miles an hour. For a time it
amused and interested him to look about the
painted wagon beneath which the landscape
seemed to be racing in all directions. He
looked at this and examined that, and finally
grew tired of the inside of the car and poked
his head out of the window to see how the
world wagged. A gust of wind carried off his
hat and hat-string, and away it went sailing
down the valley. He shouted, “My hat,’ but
the wagon made no response. In an instant he
was at the door, out onto the platform, and
before you could think, head first he went down
Facing New
Conditions


II6 KoREA IN TRANSITION
An Impulsive
Interrogatory
Patriotism
over the embankment after that hat. We saw
no more of him, but I imagined a pitiful bundle
low in the valley, a mixture of white clothes,
black topknot, and brown honest face, fear-
fully crumpled over his plunge after a five cent
hat.” Here were a new set of conditions, and
he acted in his old way, by instinct instead of
TeaSO11.
Another Korean sat on the open platform
of a construction train. The day was warm
and he nodded in deep sleep. He was a man
of the world, had seen much, and knew how
to ride on railway trains. Deep was the nod
and comfortable the sleep, but a curve met
them around which the train whip-lashed
violently, and away went this son of the Orient
over the edge, down the green bank over and
over till he reached the bottom. In an instant
he was on his feet, wide awake, with a flash
in his eye and a look at the train that said,
“What in creation do you mean?” This cir-
cumstance also was new, and the thought called
forth was an impulse rather than a conclusion.
With these laws governing, and customs
binding round and round, and fierce ancestors
standing as if on guard with shotgun, there
has been no room for patriotism. “Keep your


SocIAL LIFE AND CUSToms 117
hands off Caesar and all that pertaineth to
him,” has been a rule of life for old Korea.
The principal association that went with gov-
ernment was the long knife, the cangue collar,
the paddle, the shin-rod, and other instruments
of punishment. Patriotism therefore is a
new product, and as yet somewhat abnormal
in its character and growth.
Korea has lived in an atmosphere of fear.
When you could be arrested and beaten at
the will of state father or provincial father,
just when the whim might take him, what room
was there for a long easy breath? The same
writer quoted above says: “Koreans are all
more or less cowards. Why should they not
be so, living as they do without any confidence
in anybody, ignorant of everything, and threat-
ened all the time by ten thousand evil influ-
ences? They have no idea of standing together
or of organizing, and are just beginning to
hear the mysterious words, “liberty, equality,
fraternity'.”
In olden days the standard of education was
that derived from China, to-day it is mathe-
matics. The Korean has come suddenly on a
new vein, and is digging like a “forty-niner”
to possess all of its treasure. Until the present
Fear
Lack of
Accuracy


II8 KoREA IN TRANSITION
A Fatalist
time a lack of accuracy has been one of Korea's
characteristics. A writer in the Seoul Press
says: “Time was nothing, day after to-morrow
was just the same as the day before yesterday.
A promise fails, not because men are dishonest,
but because no one ever dreams of being exact
in anything. In Korea a definite description
is impossible, and exact information is out of
the question. Hard and fast accuracy of
statement does not get within signaling dis-
tance of the Korean's soul. He cannot under-
stand what you mean by it. The newly ar-
rived missionary physician says to the inter-
preter: “Tell the patient to shake the bottle
and take one half teaspoonful half an hour
after meals, in a wine-glass of water'. The
interpreter says: ‘Shake the jug, and take a
good lot of the mixture five or six times a day
till you feel better’.”
The Korean, shorn of independent action
and riveted to this machine called society, is
an out-and-out fatalist. His Eight Characters
settle his destiny. God the distant, all-power-
ful, unapproachable One has his life in his
keeping. His Oh-hang are always after him.
What happens must happen, when he falls he
must fall, if he's poor he must be poor, when


SocIAL LIFE AND CUSTOMs II9
he dies he dies. His being has no play
inside of the tight clamps that grip him round
about. His belief in the fearful law of Unsu
possesses him. If he fails in business it is
Unsu; if he is dirty and miserable it is Unsu;
if the state falls, no one is to blame, for no one
can withstand Unsu. In a recent public lec-
ture the Hon. T. H. Yun, who is both a West-
erner and a Korean, said to those before him:
“Until you give up the word Unsu, there is no
hope. It is nonsense, there is no such thing.
Every man is his own Unsu, and can make
of life what he will.”
Underneath this social structure with its Oh-
ryun and Oh-sang and Oh-hang great charges
of dynamite are exploding. They have come
about through the opening of the gates, the
incoming of the missionary, and the invasion
by Japan. This country's ideals, so different
from and so diametrically opposed to those of
old Korea, are upon us, and a great smashing
up of all the social system is taking place.
Has the gospel anything to offer at such a
time as this? When the old paternal system
has given way and domestic life and govern-
ment are at sea, it comes in tones of matchless
simplicity and says: “Our Father, who art in
Social Upheaval
Startling Gospel
Truths


I2O KoREA IN TRANSITION
:
Freedom
heaven, thy kingdom come. In the Father's
house are many mansions, prepared for those
that love him.” How about in-eui-ye-chi-shing’
The character in, is made up of men and two,
two men, showing that love always keeps in
mind the other one; but chief of all altruis-
tic teachers is the Word of God, and it comes
with its message to take the place of the lost
virtue, in. Eui, righteousness, is made up of
sacrificial lamb, and first personal pronoun, I.
I, underneath the sacrificial lamb, means right-
eousness. My oneness with Jesus not only
takes the place of the character, but fills
out its thought, and makes the studies of the
past a prophetic voice pointing to the great
revelation.
Where is freedom to be found, freedom from
past bondage, from present bondage, from the
bondage of self, from custom, from fear, from
superstition? The heart of the nation these
days goes out in longings for freedom. “Ye
shall know the truth, and the truth shall make
you free.” Korea's ancient civilization appears
to be a planned opening of the way for receiv-
ing the gospel at the present day; and the
reader will doubtless be able to see through its
bondage a groundwork for present hope.


SocIAL LIFE AND CUSTOMs I2I
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER IV
AIM : To APPRECIATE THE NEW NEEDS OF KOREAN
SoCIETY
I. The Ideals of Korean Society.
1. Which of the five laws seem to you most, and
which least ideal as to relationships?
2.* Name what you consider the five principal
virtues for mankind, and compare them with
the Korean list.
3. Compare the five Korean virtues with the
fruits of the Spirit, mentioned in Galatians
v. 22-23, and note the most striking differ-
ences.
4. Compare them with the two great command-
ments given by Christ.
5. What do you consider the most notable omis-
sions in the list of Korean laws and virtues?
6. What would you infer as to a system that
made ceremony one of its five cardinal
virtues?
II. The Rule of Custom.
7. What effect will the Korean power of custom
have upon the character of the virtues de-
veloped P
8. What classes profit most from a social order
based on custom, the superior or the inferior?
Illustrate your answer from the position of
the woman and child in Korean society.
9.* What are the advantages and what the dis-
advantages of a society in which custom is all-
powerful?
Io. What is its effect upon personal development?


I22 KoREA IN TRANSITION
III.
II. What is its effect upon public progress?
12.* What have been the different ideals of Korean
and American education?
13. What ideals of American education are most
needed in Korea?
Changes Needed in Family Life.
14. What have been the advantages and disad-
vantages of giving the father of the family
such absolute control?
15.” Name in the order of their importance the
changes you would like to make in Korean
family life. Tell what you would expect to
accomplish by each of them.
16. What obstacles would you expect to meet in
persuading the average Korean to accept these
changes?
17.* What new moral ideals would be needed in
order to make these changes effective?
18. Why are these ideals especially needed in the
present crisis?
19. How can these ideals be secured?
20. Tell how you would present Christianity to
meet the needs of Korean society.
21. Give passages of Scripture that you think
would be most useful. -
REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY
CHAPTER IV
. Korean Character.
Gale: Korean Sketches, chs. II, IX, X, pp. 23,
238-243.
Gifford: Every-day Life in Korea, pp. 59, 66-69.
Hulbert: The Passing of Korea, ch. II.


SoCIAL LIFE AND CUSTOMs I23
II.
Bishop: Korea and Her Neighbors, pp. 235, 236,
336, 337.
Underwood: The Call of Korea, pp. 44-51.
Underwood: Fifteen Years Among the Topknots,
pp. 273-276.
The Position of Woman.
Hulbert: The Passing of Korea, ch. XXVIII.
Bishop: Korea and Her Neighbors, pp. 114-120,
339-343, 355.
Gifford: Every-day Life in Korea, pp. 59-63.
Underwood: The Call of Korea, pp. 52-55, 61-63.
Noble: Ewa : A Tale of Korea, ch. II.


SPECIAL PROVIDENCES


A second cause contributing to the success of missi
work in Korea is found in the conditions amidst which the
missionaries labored. Misgovernment and oppression had
reduced the people to despair. The measures taken for com-
mercial and political betterment under native leadership had
terminated in *:::. failure. The people were tired
out, weary, and disheartened with the barrenness of pagan
beliefs and religions. Morally they were decrepit and mori-
bund. Into the gloomy, chilly atmosphere of their moral life
came the gospel of Jesus Christ with its radiant promises of
better things, and the Koreans turned as instinctively to it as
the flower to the sunshine. There has been a lack of com-
petition with Christianity which has given to Christian forces
virtually a monopoly of the field. No great educational de-
velopment or commercial expansion, no large military, and
naval development has taken place to challenge and hold the
attention of the people. There has not yet arisen in Korea a
many-tongued press and literature, with its babel and clamor
of beliefs, and propositions, to dispute with Christianity the
control of the intellectual life of the people. The only new
literature, and, with few exceptions, the only periodicals
issued, came from Christian sources. Each poſitical change
and disturbance of the social order has accelerated the turn-
ing of the Koreans to the Christian Church, while the absence
of a. nationalistic idea has resulted in a lack of strength and
yirility in the devotion of the average Korean to his religious
liefs.
—George Heber jones
126


V
SPECIAL PROVIDENCES
It is noticeable that missionaries who are; the Hermit
long in the interior develop a kind of hermit Tendency
instinct that makes them shun the company
of their fellows. One dear wife, in her lonely
exile, mourned for two years the loss of faces,
voices, and companionships that had been her
joy and had made the world for her; for the
next two years she awoke to new environ-
ments and found her soul tuned to new vibra-
tions; for all the years afterward she was out
of touch forever with the world that she had
wept over. Its voices were not agreeable, its
faces foreign, and she was at home and at peace
with the yellow world and all its yellow ways.
There is a disease that might be called hermi-
toid, that manifests itself in a desire to be alone. A
Like malaria it will overtake the missionary
unless he guards against it. Nations too may
fall victims to the same complaint. The vic-
tims avoid all foreign invitations; they shun -
commerce; they mistrust everybody; they want "
127


I28 KoREA IN TRANSITION
Former
Opposition to
Foreigners
Ignorance of the
World
to be alone. This was Korea's complaint, till
the decade of the eighties.
The present universally beloved and honored
Director of Religious Work in the Young Men's
Christian Association, S. J. Yi, was secretary
to the first embassy to Japan in 1876. It was
a great and unheard-of venture for Korea to
reach out as far as Kobe, she being the Hermit.
When there an Englishman sent in his card to
the ambassador and said, “Let us meet and be
friends.” The ambassador said, “Don’t touch
it. Send it back and say, ‘We have no dealings
with foreigners.’” Sign-posts along the way
as late as 1880 said: “If you meet a foreigner,
kill him; he who has friendly relations with
him is a traitor to his country.” There seem-
ingly is not a moment of quiet or a place of
privacy in the whole land, and yet the broad
base of Korea's soul has marked on it, “Let me
be alone.”
Three great nations closed right in upon her,
but the walls held, and, until the eighties,
scarcely even the name of a foreign country
was known. In 1889 the writer met the gov-
ernor of Whanghai province, and in the course
of conversation learned that that dignitary did
not even know the name of America, Mi-guk,


SPECIAL PROVIDENCES I29
or Yöng-guk, England, but thought that the
Western world was all one country, Yang-guk.
He knew of China as the Great Country, Tā-
guk, and of Japan as Wā-guk, Contemptible
Dwarf Land. His world was still flat, and in
the middle of it all was China, while on the east
side of it was Korea. If you went far enough
there were falling-off places into nowhere. All
outside races were barbarians, and Korea de-
sired converse with none of them.
While other parts of the Orient were touched
by this and that influence, Korea as though by
order of some great resident-general was kept
closely locked and barred. When the Chinese
envoy came bringing a message from the Yel.
low Emperor, he had a long train of retainers
and hangers-on, horses and camels following.
It would seem as though Korea would be oc-
cupied permanently by this invading army, but
not so, for when the envoy retired all others
were “shooed” out after him. “Go in peace but
go,” was the parting word. The retired scholar
in the hills, living in a little hut, who sits with
rod and line by the side of a stream catching no
fish, but ever dreaming endless dreams of three
thousand years ago, this man was the ideal of
old Korea, the Hermit, the Unsa.
Unreached by
Outside
Influences





º
- - -
GROUP of PRESBYTERIAN Mission ARIES ITINERATING
ITINERATING


SPECIAL PROVIDENCES I31
Not only was she pushed before the world
by newspaper reporters, war correspondents,
and political writers, but the Hidden Hand
linked her to the world's newest and greatest
highway. In place of being a forgotten corner,
she is now a part of the steel rings that en-
circle the earth. To this once unvisited city of
Seoul, callers are coming from all over the
world. Sunday after Sunday we have visitors
who look down on the congregation from the
platform, visitors from Japan, America, China,
India, Europe, Australia. Korea is not mod-
ern like Japan, she is older than China, and yet
here is the West, sitting by and looking on.
God is using Korea as a missionary advertising
agency for the whole Far East, and the line of
callers is unbroken and growing in breadth and
thickness. “How wonderful,” they say, “to see
these hundreds of people gathered here in wor-
ship!” “What are they talking about?” “He
shall make you free, free from self, free from
sorrow, free from sin, free from sickness and
death,” and they all sing “Hallelujah.” The
sightseer says that this is wonderful and
passes on to tell of the awakening in the Far
East. Korea is evidently being used as a pivot-
point for the whole hemisphere.
Visited by the
World


SPECIAL PROVIDENCES I33
are outside of it, and that God has brought this
last, little, long-forgotten people to the place
where they say, “We have no king and no de-
fense.” His reply out of the thick clouds of
sorrow is, “Behold my Son, he is your King,
and he is your Defense.”
The place that trouble holds in the world of
Christian experience, the turbulent seas of Gali-
lee, the prisons, the lions' dens that await the
Christian on his pilgrimage, are of intense in-
terest to the Korean. He studies them; he
thinks of Peter under iron gate and guard, of
Paul and Silas with feet in the stocks, of John
on Patmos, and he comes to the absurd con-
clusion that these men are not really Roman
prisoners, but rulers of the world. Then he
says: “Here am I; nobody knows the trouble I
see; my nation is shipwrecked; we are all in
prison.” A son who was a political suspect
wrote to his father from the lock-up, “I’m in
prison.” The father answered, “Be patient,
my son, we are all in prison.” “Among tigers”
is a fruitful theme for story-writers and politi-
cal speakers; the Christian, however, with
vision cleared for the distant horizons, sings,
“Stand up my soul, shake off thy fears.”
Wedded to God's good news is tribulation.
Trouble


I34 KOREA IN TRANSITION
Korea's Position
How absurd it seems, and yet it is certainly so
in the days of our best experience. They have
met in Korea, these two, and hand in hand
they move persuasively everywhere, into the
Palace, into the hut back of the grinding-mill,
into the schoolroom, into the life of the lost,
into the den of the slave, till trouble becomes a
beautifully arched bridgeway to the regions of
freedom and joy. As Caesar, the great enemy
of the Jew, ruled at the time when the Savior
himself came to visit them, so to-day under the
rod of the alien a universal gospel invitation
goes forth.
Three great nations press close up around
Korea. Japan to the fore, a first-rate power, is
in command. She rules, keyed up to concert
pitch. Very little remains for her for further
advance; all the taxes she can bear, all the
army she can raise, all the navy she can stand,
this is Japan. No marked change in her near
future is expected or is possible. Korea is per-
fectly helpless in her hands, and if no other
consideration were involved in the question of
the Far East, her place would be fixed world
without end. But Korea's place and Korea's
future are by no means settled. To the north
and west are the world’s greatest questions as


SPECIAL PROVIDENCES I35
to nations, Russia and China. Russia, half
awake, elbows the East all along its northern
boundary, Persia, Mongolia, China, Korea,
Japan. Everybody is aware of Russia, and
reports concerning the White Czar pass con-
stantly. Korea spells it “white” and “king”,
“white” up above and “king” down below and
that spells a special character meaning “su-
preme emperor.” White Czar points fatefully
to the ultimate supremacy of the Russias in
the East.
On the west is China, snoring soundly as
from a sleep of opium. Will she awake some
day, colossus of the world? We love her. The
Chinaman somehow stands for diligence, sim-
plicity, capability, good order, mind-your-own-
business, indifference, geniality, superstition,
lack of hygiene, trustworthiness. Heaped up
against Korea's west boundary line are his un-
countable millions. There was something ex-
ceedingly impressive in the quiet voice of
Hudson Taylor when he said “China's mil-
lions.” What possible relation has the atom to
the mass? and yet God has put Korea here
and surrounded her by these portentous possi-
bilities. Undoubtedly her position has in it
something of God’s great plan. Let the stu-
China's Millions
on the West


136 KOREA IN TRANSITION
Language
Three Written
Forms
dent of missions ponder well over the map of
Asia and see where and how Korea sits.
We think we see a providence in the matter
of Korea's written and spoken languages. Be-
ing a little country she has but one speech, and
when a man of the north says, “Peace,” to the
man of Quelpart, he understands and answers
“Pyung-an-hassio” (Peace). Their ears are
all tuned to the same sounds, though there are
variations of dialect, as between the Scotch and
Irish, each of whom understands the other
perfectly and each maintains that his talk is the
standard “King's English”.
As for written languages she has no less
than three: pure Chinese, pure Un-mun, and
mixed script. Japan, while somewhat similarly
situated to Korea in the matter of language,
has not all her freedom. Poor China flounders
about hopelessly trying to find some vehicle
that will convey thought from the page to the
mind of the simple. She tries the character and
labors hard to learn it. The teacher, in ex-
plaining the ideograph to the pupil, says: “Now
listen. When you have “heart’ to left and
‘blood’ to right, the character means ‘to
pity'; but when you have “heart’ on one side
and ‘star’ on the other, it means “wake up'.


SPECIAL PROVIDENCES 137
When there is ‘hand' on one side, and ‘foot'
on the other, it means ‘to take hold'. When
‘water' is on one side, and ‘stand up' on the
other, it means ‘to cry’. When it has two
‘speeches’, and “sheep' standing between them,
it means ‘good'. When ‘grass' is on top and
“name’ is down below, it means ‘tea', and so
on and so on, till the brain grows dizzy,
and two thousand characters and more are
learned. Then they must be read from the
string along which they are strung. “For-
father-thing-do-one-son-also-do-father-love-
son-so-already-everything-do-one-make-know.”
This represents the struggle of China, Korea,
and Japan after thought through the medium
of the character. How labored and shadowy,
but how simple when run out in native script:
“For the thing the Father does, the Son does
also; the Father loves the Son, and shows him
all he does.”
Korea's native script is surely the simplest
language in the world. Invented in 1445 A.
D., it has come quietly down the dusty ages,
waiting for, who knew what? Never used, it
was looked on with contempt as being so easy.
Why yes, even women could learn it in a month
or little more; of what use could such a cheap
Un-man, or the
Native Script


138 KoREA IN TRANSITION
Mixed Script
script be? By one of those mysterious provi-
dences it was made ready and kept waiting for
the New Testament and other Christian litera-
ture. Up to this day these have had almost
exclusive use of this wonderfully simple lan-
guage. This perhaps is the most remarkable
providence of all, this language sleeping its
long sleep of four hundred years, waiting till
the hour should strike on the clock, that it
might rise and tell of all Christ's wondrous
works. They call it Un-mun, the “dirty lan-
guage,” because it is so simple and easy as
compared with proud Chinese picture writing.
God surely loves the humble things of life, and
chooses the things that are naught to bring to
naught the things that are. Tied in the belts
of the women are New Testaments in common
Korean; in the pack of the mountaineer on
his brisk journeying; in the wall-box of the
hamlet home; piled up on the shelf of the liv-
ing-room are these books in Un-mun telling
of Yesu (Jesus), mighty to save. The writer
counts it among his choicest privileges that he
has had a share in its translation, that to him
were assigned John, Acts, Romans, Galatians,
Ephesians, and Revelation.
As for the third language we have the mixed


I4O KOREA IN TRANSITION
A Literary
*eople
The Korean's
Ambition for
Scholarship
backward ways, the New Testament should be
sold by millions of portions and whole copies?
Another providence is that they have been
preserved a literary people through all the
changes of the past. They are not commercial
nor military, but are literary. They exalt
books, and so the Book of all books is gladly
welcomed. They honor high teachings, and the
gospel is treated as a prince bearing his tribute
of righteousness, peace, and joy. This being
the case, the missionary has had prepared for
him a special place of honor, prepared from
past ages and awaiting his arrival. He is the
man with the book, not the man who comes to
deal in lands, houses, or money; he is a spiritual
master of literature, a teacher, a guide, a model
for the common man. How shall we express
regret sufficient for the missionary who fails to
hold the exalted place prepared for him and
given by this people?
The fact that education has been the supreme
object or prize of Korean ambition evidences
another special providence. More than for
wealth or office, he has longed for scholarship.
To be a litterateur and able to read the dots
and strokes and spear-points of the Chinese
character was the all in all of existence. The


I42 KoREA IN TRANSITION
The Present
a third of the time he writes. From twenty
years of this treadmill comes forth a peculiar
but most interesting type of graduate. From
long contact with imperious and opinionated
teachers, he has grown perfect in the matter of
respect to seniors, his downsittings and upris-
ings are all in accordance with eternal law, his
manner of deportment would delight a czar or
imperial Mogul, his powers of concentration
and attention are remarkable, his refinement of
bearing most distinguished, and in forms of
expression and dignity he could teach a prince.
Within certain fixed limits he is a poet, a prose
writer, a dreamer, a dream. It seems like sacri-
lege to break into this old and interesting
world, but, like Burns to the daisy, there is no
help for it:
“Stern Ruin's plowshare drives, elate,
Full on thy bloom,
Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight
Shall be thy doom.”
The new century with keen colter and long
share has driven, is driving, will drive, through
all the ideals of the East, and with them edu-
cation. The rooms that once echoed with the
voices of little boys shouting out the old
phrases, as they memorized the Thousand





KoREAN TEACHER witH PUPILs


SPECIAL PROVIDENCES I43
Character Classic, are silent, and instead, on
benches arranged in rows, sit a new generation
of this new century learning arithmetic, geog-
raphy, history, and the other branches of
modern education. The change is the most mo-
mentous that has come in a thousand years;
namely, that the ideals and gods of yesterday
should to-day be dishonored and forgotten.
Some of us have seen it with our eyes, have
lived through this revolution, have lived in it
over a span of twenty centuries, out of yester-
day's B. C. into to-day's A. D. Is it a dream
or is it real? Are these people those of twenty
years ago, with their thoughts and desires and
purposes, or are they another race who have
been grafted on in a night, and have I slept
like Rip Van Winkle and lost track of my
bearings?
Christian schools are the crying need. To
catch this wave on the crest and this moment
ere it pass is our heart's desire for Korea. In
Ping yang and Seoul already schools have been
established where the students make as good a
showing as in any place in the world, though
they say the multiplication table backwards and
write the denominator of a fraction before they
write the numerator. -
Mission Schools


SPECIAL PROVIDENCES I45
presses, such as Kyung-kuk Mi-tam, which tells
the immortal story of Athens and Sparta; one
about Madame Roland, one about Garfield, one
on Garibaldi, one on the time of King John of
England, on Algebra, Trigonometry, Meta-
physics, Surveying and many other subjects.
Groups of young men are seen going about
with light red-ringed poles and tables for re-
cording every angle and measuring every hill.
The difference in time represented by a map of
the city made ten years ago and one made to-
day by these young surveyors is the difference
between the days of Balaam the prophet and
Edison the seer.
One young man, an earnest Christian, and
altogether a gentleman, has the name of being
the best teacher of mathematics in the city. He
is worn down by the incessant calls on his time.
He teaches an hour here and then dashes off in
his jinrickisha to teach an hour yonder. On into
the night he keeps up this treadmill till his face
is pale and his body worn down by the grind
of it. Hundreds of young men are after him
like hounds on the scent. Fathers who yester-
day whiffed the pipe of indifference and rumi-
nated of Yo and Sun, are but ghosts and shades
compared with these sons and daughters of
New Currents
of Interest


148 KOREA IN TRANSITION
References to
Marriage and
Other Customs
The Law of
Sacrifice
intelligible way than it does to the American
or European.
“Behold, the bridegroom! Come ye forth to
meet him.” Here he comes mounted high on
his white charger, with royal robes on, accom-
panied by an army of glad retainers who shout,
“Clear the way, the bridegroom cometh.” How
much it seems like dreamland. All untouched
by the rest of the world, these customs have
held till Jesus came, and thus his words and
his times are most familiar; thus too the
watches of the night, and the cockcrow of the
morning.
The great law of sacrifice, so dimly under-
stood by Western people, is the commonest talk
of Korea. For thousands of years sheep and
oxen have died for the sins of the people. Birds
and beasts have been offered in a vain effort to
lift this burden from the human soul. I read
in a history of Korea that in the year when our
Savior was born in Bethlehem, the king of
Kokuryu went out into the open plain to offer
sacrifice to God. Two ‘swine beasts' were to be
offered, but in the preparation of the sacrifice
they took to their heels and ran away. The
king sent two officers in pursuit, Messrs. Takni
and Sappi. They chased the pigs to Long Jade


SPECIAL PROVIDENCES I49
Lake, caught them and hamstrung them, so
that they could not run again; then they
dragged them before the king. “How dare
you”, said he, “offer to God a mutilated sacri-
fice?” He had these two gentlemen buried
alive for their sin, but behold he himself shortly
after fell seriously ill. A spirit medium called
and told him his sickness was due to the sin of
having killed Takni and Sappi. He confessed,
and prayed, and was cured of his complaint.
In this story old as our era, we read of the
need of a sacrifice to God, of a perfect sacrifice,
of sin being followed by punishment, of for-
giveness following confession. A race drilled
in stories like this find no difficulty in the great
vicarious sufferings of Jesus. His perfect of-
fering is simplicity itself; his forgiveness of
sin the logical outcome of his whole attitude of
heart.
The expression, “Girt about the breasts with
a golden girdle,” is never quite clear to a
young Bible reader at home, and China and
Japan cast no special light upon it; but in Korea
there was the long white robe down to the feet,
and round the breast the embroidered girdle. It
remained until after the missionary arrived,
1 Rev. i. 13.
Ideas Long
Prevalent
References to
Dress


I5O KoREA IN TRANSITION
and then in the changes of the new century the
girdle was swept away. The white robes too
find their corresponding part in Scripture, and
the expression, “So as no fuller on earth can
white them,” often came to mind in the old
days, when out of the little squalid huts came
forth coats that shone like polished marble.
Then there is the foot-gear or sandals.
Neither China nor Japan so markedly reflects
Scripture in this respect as Korea. Here are
the strings tied over the instep, here the humble
servant is called to bow down and unloose
them. As in Judea, they are never worn in-
doors but are dropped off on the entrance-mat.
“Take up thy bed, and walk,” seemed to
the writer in his boyhood days as a most ex-
traordinary expression. He pictured a four-
posted bed being tugged out of a bedroom by
one poor man only just recovered of his sick-
ness; but when he came to Korea, he under-
stood it all. The bed was just a little mattress
spread out on the floor of the living-room, and
to roll it up and put it away was the common
act of every morning when the sleeper awoke.
Morning light and consciousness had come into
The Bed
1 Mark ix. 3.
* Matt. ix. 5, 6.


SPECIAL PROVIDENCES I5I
the life of the poor invalid, so he would roll
up his sleeping-mat and walk off to where it
was put for the day. In so many of the com-
mon acts of life in Korea we were in touch with
the days of our Lord on earth.
Especially are Koreans inquisitive and curi-
ous as to custom. Had the Scriptures been
filled with Western ways of life, it would have
taken all day and all these years to tell what
this and that meant; but, as they talk from
first to last about Korea's own world and own
people, there are few or no questions as to
custom.
How far away the Bible seems to us when
it tells of sackcloth and ashes, and about Jacob'
and Mordecai” and Isaiah” who marked their
desolation by these signs. In Korea sackcloth
is still such a mark, and with hair unbound and
their persons wrapped about with these coarse
folds of bagging, they sit like Job and cry
“Aigo, aigo.” “And the mourners go about
the streets.” From the writer's house we look
out on one of the main thoroughfares of the
city; and frequently, as the sun goes down,
there comes a procession bearing lanterns and a
long line of mourners in sackcloth following
1 Gen. xxxvii. 34. * Esther iv. 7. *Isa. lviii. 5.
Forestalls a
Multitude of
Questloats
Sackcloth and
Ashes


I52 KoREA IN TRANSITION
the dead with mournful wailings. Is there not
a thought and a providence underlying the one-
ness of these things with all the settings of the
Scripture? -
What grinning teeth and glaring eyes meet
you on the highways and byways of Korea
that you unconsciously associate with Dagon,
Moloch, Chemosh, and Baal, and other gods
and idols to whom Israel bowed down. Amer-
ica has heard of idols, has seen them in muse-
ums, has looked on them through the pages of
Scripture, but to see an idol actually in com-
mand of his own and at work would be thought
almost an impossibility.
Another fact that brings the people closely
into touch with Christian thought is their
understanding of demon possession. They ac-
cept it as a something not to be questioned any
more than their own existence; demons are
everywhere, and the casting of them out a
lucrative profession. “By thy name cast out
demons;” “He cast out the spirits with a
word;” “Authority to cast out demons;”
“Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast
seven demons.”* We of the West read these
statements as if they belonged to another
Idolatry
Demon
possession
* Matt. vii. 22. * Matt. viii. 16. * Mark iii. 15. “Mark xvi. 9.


SPECIAL PROVIDENCES I53
planet. We question the whole subject of
demon possession. Can it not be diagnosed by
the doctors? Will not a tablet or a pill settle
the matter? Is it not the misunderstanding of
an unenlightened age? All of these questions
put us so much out of touch with the story.
The Korean's doubts are along another line.
Can Jesus really cast them out? That's the
question. Big devils as well and wicked? Is
this all true, and does he care for the possessed
and the imprisoned? “The devil we know and
demon possession we are sure of, but just who
is Jesus?” Surely the Korean's preparatory
course has been eminently one to fit him for
the reading and appreciating of the New Testa-
ment.
He attributes sickness in so many cases to
the influence of malignant spirits. “Divers
diseases,” is a phrase terribly applicable to the
filth, poverty, and teeming multitudes of the
East. The twisted limbs, the blinded eyes, the
diseased and marred bodies, were all invited,
yes, and are all invited to come to Jesus, and
according to your faith it shall be unto you.
Assuredly God can take the wrath, the mean-
ness, the sores, the impurity, the leprous spots,
* Matt. iv. 24; Mark i. 34; Luke iv. 4o.
Sickness


SPECIAL PROVIDENCES I55
just as they were in the days of Israel's decline;
their understanding of spiritual forces just
what the nations round Judea understood them
to be; their conclusions concerning life what
the worldly of the Bible concluded life to be.
To meet these conditions, is this wonderful
language, Un-mun. Like the shot that hit the
target, it strikes squarely into the opportunity
of to-day, and prepares the land for what God
is asking of it. Nationally last, least, and less
than nothing, how beautifully is Korea suited
to God's hand! At just this time, too, mission-
ary boards are awake, and new forces are press-
ing in. Yesterday Korea sat weeping over her
disbanded soldiers, to-day she welcomes the
army of salvation to take the vacated and deso-
lated place. Through these things a multitude
of providences seem to shine and shimmer
forth.
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER V
AIM : To UNDERSTAND THE PROVIDENTIAL ENCOURAGE-
MENTs to MissionARY WoRK IN KOREA
I. The Providences of History and Geography.
1. State as vividly as you can the contrast be-
tween the exclusiveness of Korea thirty years
ago and the situation to-daj ,
Providential
Encouragements


*
KoREA IN TRANSITION
II.
2. How completely has God answered the prayers
that the doors of Korea might be opened?
3. What has he done to call the country into
public prominence?
4. Why must it inevitably remain in public
prominence?
5. Of what advantage has it been that the most
representative foreigner has been the mis-
sionary?
6. Why does the size of Korea fit it for becom-
ing a missionary object-lesson to the Far East?
7. Could you choose a more favorable geograph-
ical position for such an object-lesson?
8.* Why has Christianity a better chance to ally
itself with Korean than with Chinese or Jap-
anese patriotism?
9.* Sum up the message of Christianity to a peo-
ple in political distress.
The Providences of Language and Literature.
Io. Name several advantages to missionary work
arising from the currency of a single spoken
language throughout an entire country.
II. What would be the disadvantages to a nation
of knowing only the Roman numeral system?
12. Would this be such an obstacle to progress as
having only the Chinese character for literary
purposes?
13.” What are the advantages to Christianity of
having so promptly appropriated the Unmun
script?
14. As far as literature is concerned, what would
be the relative difficulty of evangelizing Korea
and a province of China of the same size and
population?


SPECIAL PROVIDENCES I57
15. What practical effect should the Korean re-
spect for literature have upon the training
and methods of missionaries?
16.” What advantages has the missionary in Korea
over the average African missionary in his
evangelistic work?
17.* In view of present providences, make as
strong an appeal as you can for evangelistic,
literary, and educational missionaries for
Korea to-day.
18. What practical recommendations would you
make to the Church at home as to the support
of educational institutions in Korea?
19. In what ways is the present a greater oppor-
tunity for education than either the past or
the future?
20. How would you translate, “Behold the Lamb
of God,” for a people that had no sheep and
no sacrifices?
21. In what ways would it be more difficult to
translate the Bible into Esquimo than into
Korean?
22.* Arrange the principal providences of mission-
ary work in Korea in what seems to you the
order of their importance.
REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY
CHAPTER V
. Korean Education.
Hulbert: The Passing of Korea, ch. XXVI.
Gifford: Every-day Life in Korea, ch. XIII (up
to 1896).
Bishop: Korea and Her Neighbors, pp. 387-391.
Underwood: Fifteen Years Among the Topknots,
pp. 303, 3O4.





PIONEER METHODS OF THE
MISSIONARIES
159


The missionary body in Korea is made up of a very superior
company of men and women. Both sexes are apt to be col-
lege graduates, while the men are in addition graduates of
seminaries or medical schools. Quite a number have shown
marked scholarship in the study of the language, in interpre-
tation and translation, and in general literature. Historical
and descriptive works of value have been published by them,
while at least one extended and well-received romance is
the result of one man's leisure, and another was a contributor
to some of our best magazines.
—Horace N. Allen
In the spring of 1890, Dr. and Mrs. Nevius, of Cheefoo,
China, visited Seoul, and in several conferences laid before the
missionaries there the method of mission work commonly
known as the Nevius method... After careful and prayerful
consideration, we were led, in the main, to adopt this, and it
has been the policy of the mission first, to let each man
“abide in the calling wherein he was found,” teaching that
each was to be an individual worker for Christ, and to live
. in his own neighborhood, supporting himself by his
trade.
Secondly, to develop Church methods and machinery only
as far as the native Church was able to take care of and
manage the same.
Third, as far as the Church itself was able to provide the
men and the means, to set aside those who seemed the better
qualified, to do evangelistic work among their neighbors.
Fourth, to let the natives provide their own church build
ings, which were to be native in architecture, and of such
style as the local church could afford to put up.
—Horace G. Underwood
16o


I62 KoREA IN TRANSITION
foreigners
The Pioneers
She replied “Whist, Yesu-Maria, my sons were
in it you know, Yesu-Maria, Yesu-Maria.”
Although there has grown up, little by little, a
distinction between Yesu Kyo (Protestantism)
and Chun-ju Kyo (Catholicism) it was not
recognized at first, and the dread associated
with the one gathered about the other.
Western people too, as well as their doc-
trines, were unsavory. There had been an
American ship captured and its crew massacred
in Pingyang, in 1866. In the same year a
French expedition was fitted out against Kang-
hwa. In 1871, Americans had come in many
ships and fought likewise. In 1875, the Jap-
anese came and fought too, so that the West
and the Japanese were alike. Kanghwa, the
island at the mouth of the Han River, has been
a broad target for all shots, from the days of
Kublai Khan (1225) to Admiral Rodgers and
Commodore Shufeldt (1867, 1871, 1883).
Fortunately the missionary entered Korea
with many things arrayed against him. Had
everything been in his favor, his work would
have been easy and very badly done, but he
had to fight every inch of the way. Let the
reader think what he would do first, if he were
asked to transport America over to the East


PIONEER METHODS 163
piecemeal, where would he begin, what would
he ship first, and when would he expect to get
through? About as bewildering a problem is
it to carry the gospel to an entirely new race
and new people, having to place before each
person, little by little, our motives, our expec-
tations, our customs, our hearts especially,
ere we can get into tune to begin Bible work
and Scripture teaching. Let us be thankful
that the pioneers were just the right men for
the work on hand. While the Hon. H. N.
Allen, M. D., as a medical missionary opened
the work, in the mind of the writer he is dis-
associated from the missionary list. He was
a diplomatist, from his first entry till the close
of his distinguished career, in 1905. His name
stands high in Korea, honored and beloved by
native as well as foreigner, for he served many
years in behalf of Americans and this people
faithfully and well.
But of missionaries proper, Underwood and
Appenzeller were the clerical, and Heron and
Scranton the medical. It needed men of cour-
age, men of vision, men of courtly manner,
men of magnetism; it needed also men of
strong conviction and physical endurance, and
we had such qualifications in these four. Of
Qualities
Needed


I64 KoREA IN TRANSITION
r
N.
Counter-
cumsiderations
the Presbyterians, the writer recalls a day in
1888, his first tiffin in Seoul. Ten were at the
table, among them these two pioneers. To-
day after a score of years, he is alone on
the field of all the ten. When he thinks back
over that first bright company of the young
hearts, each with life offered for Korea, of the
hopes, of the vacant places now, of the long
farewells, he would bow his head and repeat
slowly:
“They climbed the steep ascent to heaven,
Through peril, toil, and pain;
O God! to us may grace be given
To follow in their train.”
The considerations that have acted against
the work have run somewhat as follows: For
the first few years it was dangerous to be a
Christian, it was counted the same as Roman
Catholic, and Roman Catholics had been
slaughtered by the thousands. Later it was
not dangerous, but it was cheap, common;
butchers, and basket-makers, and well-diggers,
and shopkeepers, and coolies were all admitted;
certainly it was no calling for a gentleman.
Still later, in stirring political times, it was
the popular thing to be a Christian, till it was
discovered that the Church was “hands off”


I66 KOREA IN TRANSITION
Sitting on the
Heated Stone
Floor
Sleeping on the
Heated Floor
hardships, but there are also compensations
great and wonderful. The writer can best il-
lustrate what all other missionaries have passed
through by telling a little of his own first ex-
periences. What were the hardships? There
are seven of them, complete and fully rounded
out as to number.
First, should be mentioned sitting all day on
the heated stone floor. You ask, “Why not
use a chair?” Because it would be as much
out of place as if a Korean should call on you
and, instead of sitting on a chair, should sit
on the floor and talk up at you. It would put
you out of touch at once with the very world
you were endeavoring to get at. Let the reader
try sitting cross-kneed for three hours at a
stretch, if he would fully understand this para-
graph. To some it becomes a veritable tor-
ture-rack, knees and hip-joints and ankle bones
are crying out against you. You rest this one
and the others only scream the louder. There
is nothing for it but a chair or to go out for a
walk. Still the sitting life is a part of your
calling, and in the early days it was absolutely
necessary.
Second, the sleeping. For those of us who
have slept for some years as the Koreans do,


PIONEER METHODS 167
on the hot floor, it was practise in the science
of being baked brown. On many a cold night
the floor seemed at first grateful, but as the
hours went by the room became a Dutch oven,
and you were being cooked. All night the
tossings and the tumblings would continue,
mixed with fire and labored dreamings, the
room stifled for want of ventilation, and the
whole universe apparently in torment.
Third, the food. Instead of fruit, cereals,
bacon and eggs, a cup of coffee, you would be
served with rice for breakfast, cabbage and
turnips in salt water, dried fish shredded, red
pepper soup, and other preparations, the odor
thereof being strong. Epicurean-like, your
whole being would long for a mutton-chop,
pancakes, hot biscuits, ice-cream, and other
favorite dishes, but in all the flavors of the
busy day not one of these was present.
Fourth, the crowds of men. How they
would trample over you! To quote from The
Vanguard: “On into the night his room was
the rendezvous for all classes. Men with Mon-
gol thoughts and fetid breath sat cross-kneed
about him, shouting all manner of useless ques-
tions over and over, proposing that he measure
his strength of arm with them, asking for his
Food
Crowds


17o KoREA IN TRANSITION
Pagan and
Christian Usage
ing on the water” was the subject. The patient
would sometimes cry, and then again he would
stifle his agony, brighten up, and listen. “Sit
over there,” said I, “there's a draft here where
I am sitting.” I was so thankful there was a
draft.
Death, ever present all the world over, how
softened his grim visage is when associated
with the name of Jesus, how awful when he
appears alone. The writer still recalls one sum-
mer long ago, May, 1889, when funeral prep-
arations were being made before a neighbor-
ing house. He made inquiry of An, his host:
“I didn't know that there was a death.” “Yes,
the master of the house is dead; they will bury
him.” “But when did he die? To-day when
we were out?” “No, no, not to-day. He died
before you came.” I had been there two
months. They had a bier ornamented with
dragons’ heads, painted in wild colors, that
suggested skull and cross-bones. The funeral
service was a fearful row, everybody was
noisy, many were weeping, many were drunk.
A more gruesome performance than that which
I saw, over that horrible, unburied body, no one
could imagine. To-day that same village sits
as it did then, with background of mountain


PIONEER METHODS I7I
and foreground of sea, but how changed! All
is Christian, Sunday is a day of rest, and every
house is represented at the service in the chapel.
They have lived down old-fashioned death in
that village and exchanged it for quiet sleep.
Seventh, the language. This is a trial
harder than the reader can well imagine. In
a sense you have to take the place of a child
and prattle in monosyllables, and say foolish
things, and make no end of silly mistakes, and
cover all your friends with confusion, over and
over. You may be wise, and think great
thoughts, but in actual experience you are less
than the least. This humiliation lasts for a
year or so, sometimes it lasts longer, sometimes
it lasts forever and a day. One often prays,
“O for the day of Pentecost, when even the
illiterate Peter could soar like the eagle over
the nations of the world!” but it comes not in
that way. It is best that we learn little by little,
and by a very humble pathway, but it is a hard-
ship indeed.
In missionary work, first and foremost, con-
fidence must be established and the heart won.
The missionary may be learned, may be hard-
working and godly, may be earnest as John
Knox, and indefatigable as Mr. Moody, but
The Language
First Secret in
Missionary
Work


PIONEER METHODS I73
prayer for God's light and leading, and then
read, means the entrance of the Word. An-
other secret is to leave matters alone that you
are not called upon to speak of. Read and
pray. Get Jesus into the lost soul, and then an-
cestor worship and rags and kitchen devils and
filth and ignorance will dissipate, like the dark-
ness when the sun shines over Camel Mountain
and lights up our hill in the morning. This
fias been the way of the cross in Korea, not
by street preaching, not by great crowds, not
by spectacular effort, but in the little room
seven by seven by ten, seated cross-kneed on
the matting, with the Bible opened and some-
body to read and pray with.
Keeping time with the first stages of the
work is the press. The toil and sweat and
agony that accompanies the management of a
Western printing plant in the Far Orient baffles
description. There may be breaks, smashings,
losings, pages with lines upside-down, but
“Never mind,” says the Orient, “Reverse the
book and read it down the other way, the
thought is all right.” Gray hairs come out like
snowbirds on a wintry day, and sit all round
the superintendent's ears, but he too has to keep
heart in tune, be one with his blundering men,
The Press


I74 KoREA IN TRANSITION
Demand for
Literature
love them, and pray with them. That is the
main part of the lesson.
In Korea from the day of Rev. F. Ohlinger's
setting up the press till the present, when sev-
eral large Japanese and Korean houses are es-
tablished, what a work of grace has been done
by this Methodist superintendent! No one can
measure or calculate or guess in the least the
extent to which his work has aided the procla-
mation of the gospel. Not only the New Testa-
ment and portions, like the Gospels, have gone
out in thousands upon thousands, but tracts
like “The Two Friends”, “The Peep of Day”,
Pilgrim's Progress, and similar writings. The
struggle to have the printed page keep pace
with the proclamation and the loud demand
have gone on for twenty years, and to-day
(1908) bookmen come, saying, “We are out
of books, what are we going to do?” A change
however has come about. If the Tract Society
now fails to keep up the supply, individual
Christians publish the books themselves. Re-
cently the writer was asked for the manuscript
of The Life of Martin Luther. “We must have
it,” said this Christian friend, “and as the
Tract Society is unable to publish it, I’ll do so
myself,” and thither went the manuscript.


PIONEER METHODS I75
Along with pioneer missionary effort went
the translation of the Scriptures; and what a
huge undertaking it is no one knows who has
not tried it. Sixty stories of a life insurance
building in New York City is not as big an
undertaking. It takes about ten years to do it.
If we think of all the digging necessary as a
foundation on which to work, of every shovel-
ful of paragraphs, of what each word means,
sifted and weighed and valued and recorded,
with malaria and weariness all round about, it
reminds one of digging the Panama Canal. A
Panama Canal it is, this New Testament, link-
ing two great oceans, the ocean of God's bound-
less love with the immeasurable expanse of
human need.
When China was in the throes of Boxerdom,
in 1900, we had just finished the New Testa-
ment, and some of the refugees were present
when the Hon. H. N. Allen, M. D., United
States minister, made a speech and presented
specially bound copies to the translators.
Since then the Old Testament is under way
and will in about a year more, we hope, be
completed. Already Genesis, Exodus, Samuel,
Kings, Psalms, Isaiah are on the market, and
Koreans are reading about Joseph, Jonathan,
Bible
Translation
Completion of
New Testament
Old Testament
Translation


S**t
ZC*.


-
JUNKIN MEMORIAL Hospital, FUSAN
Ivey Hospital, SoNCDO


PIONEER METHODS 177
during the year, the men at their suitable sea-
son and the women when it best suits them.
For the two weeks or so that they are together
these selected Christians are taught and helped
in Bible study. They are full of questions as
to the meaning of this and that in Gospels and
Epistles, and the application of it to every-day
life. While engaged in this work, they pray
together, and enter into the business of it as
men do into a joint-stock company of this
world's affairs.
When the measure of mission work is taken
for the wide mission fields of the world, many
a medical man will come in for the wreath of
laurel. In Korea this will be true. The first
missionary to be appointed was a medical man,
the first to arrive on the field was a medical
man, the first great loss was a medical man.
The medical missionary's life is a ceaseless war
waged against typhus, and leprosy, and small-
pox, and cholera, and all the fearsome heritage
that has scourged humanity. His calling is
to go into the most noisome dens of suffering,
where poverty, crime, ignorance, and super-
stition sit huddled together, to go in with
kindly expression and heart full of love for all
mortals.
The Medical
Missionary


178 KOREA IN TRANSITION
An Ambassador
of Cause and
Effect
Groundless
Oriental
hºferences
The question is sometimes asked as to just
what place the medical missionary takes in the
work of missions, and the answer is usually
that he helps win the people. This is true,
though it is also true that any one can win
the people who loves them and is unselfish. But
outside of this the medical worker has a distinct
sphere of his own. He is the man who helps
break down the ignorance and unreasonable-
ness of non-christian nations. He is the am-
bassador of the law of cause and effect that
the Orient has been out of touch with for all
these ages. He teaches the first lessons in
hygiene; he shows the difference between rags
and royal robes; he is the representative of the
advanced world of Christian thought, and no
mission can afford to be without him.
Even Chang Chih-tung, the distinguished
man of China, only a few years ago attributed
a cancerous formation on his face to a roadway
that had been cut through an ancient hill near
his home, and he straightway had it filled up.
All down through Korean history we read how
this and that phenomenon of nature was fol-
lowed by this and that catastrophe in life. I
read of 80 A.D. in the Sam Guk Sa (Korean
History): “In the fourth moon a great wind


PIONEER METHODS I79
blew down the East Gate of the city, and in
the eighth moon the king died.” “Sure,” says
the old-time Eastern reader, just as we would
when we read, “John Robinson Smith jumped
from an express train, fell on his neck, and
broke it.”
The medical missionary turns his guns on
this world and pounds its fortifications might-
ily. Yet he has to be patient withal, for per-
haps while he is prescribing for the sick man
the latest scientific output of a drug company,
Grandma Kim, behind the house under the
rear thatch, is brewing a decoction of deers’
horns and ginseng to mix in, and when the
man recovers “the deers’ horns did it.” -
The medical man fights dirt and filth, and in
every direction we see them giving away and a
new and cleaner order coming in. We may
even have a shower of meteors these days with-
out associating it with a plague of cholera or
some other dire thing to follow.
The medical man, too, falls like the soldier
in the hot assault, and we comrades of his pass
on over the way he has opened. Western
medicine planted strongly in Seoul, in Syen
chun, in Song chin, in Fusan, in Mokpo, takes
in the center and four corners of the land. In-
Medical
Missionary has
Need of
Patience
Fights for
Cleanliness
Falls Like a
Soldier





* 1. noas
“i villuso 1:1
31， N vºisi Aa S


I82 KOREA IN TRANSITION
Prison-lighted
lives
other stage of the work. In these schools are
the choice men of the land, gathered for study
at set times of the year. The course is adapted
to the stage of the work, the attainments of
the men, and the needs of the time. Under
the leadership of Dr. Jones of Seoul, and Dr.
Moffett of Ping yang, men who have read far
into the soul problems of Korea, this part of
the work becomes a strong hope for the fu-
ture. In fact, the missionary's life grows into
the life of a teacher of the few rather than a
herald to the many. While this short notice
only is given of our theological schools, seeing
that they have just begun, on the wide range
of the horizon that marks the coming history
of the Church they occupy perhaps the most
important section.
Still, there are other theological schools that
have played a great and important part in the
work of missions, and one of the best of all
was the old Kamok or Criminal Prison.
Filthy, cold, infected by all the germs that
flourish in the East, crawling with vermin,
associated with crime, torture, and horrible
death, and yet a pok-dang or house of blessing,
it has become. The old emperor in his days
of absolute power locked in this pesthouse Yi


PIONEER METHODS 183
Seung-man, Yu Song-jun, Kim In, Yi Sang-
jai, Yi Won-gung, Kim Chung-sik. He
thought that these men meant reform along
Western lines, and they did. Without trial
by judge or jury, they were shut behind
the bars; some of them wore the cangue
collar and worked in the chain-gang. Here
they suffered from cold, from ill treatment,
from the constant fear of execution, though
they had the proud blood of a long ancestry
in their veins, and a deadly desire for
revenge in the heart. They hoped for
escape, for the opportune moment, the keen
knife, for accounts squared for time and
eternity, when all unexpectedly, there came
into their company the New Testament, Bun-
yan's Pilgrim’s Progress, and some of Moody's
tracts in Chinese. Their prison, visited regu-
larly by the Rev. and Mrs. A. D. Bunker,
became first an inquiry room, then a house
of prayer, then a chapel for religious exercises,
then a theological hall, and when the course
was completed, God let them all out of prison
and set them to work. With their high social
standing, with their political influence, with
their superior training in Chinese, these men
have become the first Christian leaders of the


PIONEER METHODS 185
lives of those who have gone abroad, become
Christians, and returned. As a rule they are a
hindrance rather than a help. Why is this?
It is explained on the ground that they have
had no Kamok Prison in their Christian ex-
perience. It has been all easy sailing. They
have gone to America, have met Christians,
have been helped by Christians, have become
Christians, have been spoken well of as Chris-
tians, have lived with Christians, all as easy
for the Oriental as for the log that floats down
the stream, but on return home, when the test-
ing-day comes, and they meet no Christians in
their circle, are spoken ill of, are received
coldly by society, have to live in their old
world with no fighting qualities to sustain
them, they are carried back into heathenism
like Kipling's Hindu. A Korean Christian is
not made without many strokes of the ham-
mer, much heating of the furnace, and many
testings of the metal during the long hours of
the day. A place like the Kamok Prison has
proved a much better Christian school than
the delights and hospitalities of an American
or an English home.
A house of prayer for all Eastern peoples is
what God apparently means to make of this
A Gateway to
China


I86
KoREA IN TRANSITION
little peninsula. By small degrees already we
see that across its border are going messages
and influences that are to help great China to
awake from her opium sleep of ages to see and
to hear God calling, and when China awakes
the world is won.
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER VI
AIM : To APPRECIATE THE DEVELOPMENT OF MIssionARY
WoRK IN KOREA
I. The Native Church and the Public.
I.
2.*
4.
5.*
What are the advantages and what the disad-
vantages of having it dangerous to profess
Christianity?
If persecution is an advantage to the native
Church, what substitute for it would your
recommend in a time of peace?
If you were a missionary, would you do any-
thing to dispel the notion that Christianity
was a religion mainly for the common people?
How would you, as a missionary, act if Chris-
tianity became for a time very popular?
What should be the attitude of the mission-
aries toward Korean patriotism?
II. Missionary Methods.
6.
In view of the hardships mentioned in the
chapter, what sort of training would you
recommend for a prospective Korean mis-
sionary?
Did the missionary do the right thing to stay


PIONEER METHODS 187
9.*
IO.”
II.
I2.
I3.
I4.
I5.
I6.4
17.
19.”
at the meeting where there was a man with
smallpox?
Why is it so important for the missionary
to have a thorough command of the ver-
nacular?
If you were a missionary beginning work,
what methods would you follow in order to
win the confidence of the people?
Why is argument of so little use in missionary
work?
Why is it better not to begin by attacking
superstition?
What are the relative advantages of chapel
preaching and personal interviews?
Why has reading been so effective with
Koreans?
If God wishes us to evangelize the world, why
do you think he has put so many obstacles in
our way?
Try to imagine what Christianity would be
like in this country if we were altogether with-
out a Christian press or literature.
Give the respective arguments for investing
$50,000, in a hospital, or a college, or a press,
in Korea. -
Which parts of the New Testament do you
think it would be most difficult to translate
into Korean, and why?
If you were appointed to translate the Bible
into Korean, what various kinds of preparation
would you consider necessary?
Arrange the things accomplished by the
medical missionary in what seems to you the
order of their importance.


I88 KOREA IN TRANSITION
II.
20. In just what way can he best dispel super-
stition in treating a case?
21. Why are theological schools so important on
the foreign field?
REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY
CHAPTER VI
. Methods of Work.
Gale: The Vanguard (passim).
Gifford: Every-day Life in Korea, ch. XI.
Underwood: Fifteen Years Among the Topknots,
pp. I30-132, 234, 235.
Underwood: The Call of Korea, ch. IV.
Medical Work.
Underwood: Fifteen Years Among the Topknots,
pp. 133-145, 305, 306.
Gifford: Every-day Life in Korea, pp. I42-144.
Gale: Korean Sketches, ch. V.


THE RESPONSE OF KOREA


The class-leader here, who is a well-to-do farmer, so ar-
ranged his farm work this year as to devote practically his
whole time, without pay, to church work. he result has
been an increase of about fifty per cent. There are two
churches, with Christians in eight other villages. The mem-
bership, including probationers, is 135, who with 112 other
attendants make a total of 247. . . . At another point we have
four churches, with three prayer rooms, and Christians in
some, thirty villages. Persecution at one church brought
with it the stoning of two helpers, and, through their fidelity,
victory, and an increase of over one hundred per cent. Here
we have 306 members, including probationers, and 120 other
attendants, making 426 in all. . . . During the wonderful
revival that shook part of Korea the past year, until not one
tile remained on top of another of the three thousand year-old
devil-house, the thing that caused more remarks among the
missionaries than anything else was the wonderful way in
which the Koreans prayed for each other and the remarkable
answers to these prayers. Not only in prayers, but in works
as well, are the rank and file of the Korean Christians instant
in season and out. I dare say there is no land in the world
where there is so much personal and unpaid—in money—
hand to hand, and heart to heart, evangelistic work done as
in Korea. During the revival, when strong men were in
utter despair, crying out in agony under conviction of sin,
most beautiful was the way others, who had gone through
the struggle and come out victorious, would go to their
brother, put their arm about him and lead him into the
light. The wonder of this is the greater when we remember
that the Korean gives little expression to personal affection.
. . . Early one morning as I was going out from Chinnampo
I met one of the Christians coming in. They were having
a week of prayer, and as he had pledged himself not to go
empty-handed he had been out to a nearby village getting
his man for the night. At the time of the women's class in
Ping yang women who had received new experiences of sins
pardoned and fulness of peace and joy in the new birth,
came to me with tears pleading that I might go or send some-
one to their church that all might have this new experience
and live. In some cases these women themselves were the
means of bringing the revival to their local church.
—}. Z. Moore
190


VII
THE RESPONSE OF KOREA
Many years of testing by the question,
“Where did you first hear the gospel?' at
church? on the street? at prayer-meeting? by
reading the Bible?” brings the characteristic
response: “No, I heard it first from Brother
Kim, or Brother Pak, or Brother Choi; he
came to my house and we read together.”
From lip to lip and heart to heart it has gone
to the distant valleys on the Manchu border,
to the windings of the Tumen, to the whirling
tides, and rocks, and cross streams of the
southern archipelago, from east to west all
over the land. God will bless Korea, for if ever
a land exemplified the Christian principle of
passing it on, it is this same country.
“The Korean Christians are unceasingly
active. A tract is accepted, a book is bought,
a meeting is attended, an impression made, a
desire to know more aroused; then follow
regular attendance, conversion, and entrance
into the Church. But they do not stop here.
Acquaintances, friends, and relatives are
Pass It On
Native
Christians
Ever Active
191


I92 KoREA IN TRANSITION
sought, importuned, and reasoned with on
righteousness, temperance, and judgment to
come. Some of the leaders are making noble
sacrifices for the spread of the Word. In the
cold of winter and in the heat of summer; in
the crowded city and at the country market;
in the library of the Confucian scholar and in
the comfortless wayside inn; in the lonely
country farmhouse and in the privacy of the
inner room, where the women are secure from
molestation, they bear glad and cheerful testi-
mony to the power of Christ to save from sin.
They receive abuse, accept ostracism, endure
cruel mockings and even bonds and imprison-
ments, in order to obtain a good report through
faith.
A High “From the early days of the mission there
Standard
has prevailed among the Korean converts a
very high conception of the privileges and
responsibilities of Church-membership. A
Korean Christian is always more than a mere
Church-member; he is a worker giving his
services freely and gladly to extend the knowl-
edge of Christ among his neighbors. It has
not been an unusual thing for a pastor of a
local church to have not less than one third of
the entire membership of his church on the
f





THE RESPONSE OF KOREA I93
streets on a Sunday afternoon engaged in
house to house visitation and personal work
among their unconverted neighbors.”
Thus has the work gone on and on. The
native Christian has proved himself a master
hand at passing on the divine message. No
fiery cross of ancient Scotland ever circled the
hills with more persistent rapidity than the
Good News has gone throughout Korea.
Each has heard from a brother, from a sister,
and like propagates like; oats, oats; barley,
barley, never wheat, pumpkins; nor goose-
berries, pomelos. One of the matters to fear
and pray over on the mission field is that a
defective Christian will lead others to the faith
who will be similarly defective. Still, although
Korea has her share of imperfect saints, there
are among them a wonderful group of single-
hearted, simple-minded, earnest, faithful Chris-
tians.
“The Korean not only memorizes Scripture;
he puts it into practise. One day there came
into one of the mission stations a sturdy Chris-
tian from the north. After the usual greet-
ings, he was asked the purpose of his visit.
His reply was: “I have been memorizing some
verses in the Bible, and have come to recite
The Work
Extends
Doers of the
word


I94 KOREA IN TRANSITION
Ideal for the
Native Church
them to you.’ He lived a hundred miles away,
and had walked all that distance, traveling four
nights—a long stroll to recite some verses of
Scripture to his pastor, but he was listened to
as he recited in Korean, without a verbal error,
the entire Sermon on the Mount. He was told
that if he simply memorized it, it would be a
feat of memory and nothing more; he must
practise its teachings. His face lighted up
with a smile as he promptly replied: “That is
the way I learned it. I tried to memorize it,
but it wouldn't stick, so I hit on this plan. I
would memorize a verse, and then find a
heathen neighbor of mine and practise the
verse on him. Then I found it would stick.’
Imagine this humble Korean Christian in a
heathen city, amid the hills of the peninsula,
taking that matchless moral code and, precept
by precept, putting it into practise in his life
with his neighbors. Is it any wonder that the
Korean Church grows?”
The ideal for the native Church toward
which all missionary agencies are striving has
been that of a body which shall be self-propa-
gating and self-governing and self-supporting.
A striking testimony as to the way in which the
Korean Church is realizing this ideal comes





-
-
-
|
METHoDIST CHURCH, Wonsan
-


THE RESPONSE OF KOREA I95
from the report of Dr. Sharrocks, of Syen
chun, written in 1906:
“Last year in our station of Syen chun we
had 6,507 adherents; this year there are
II,943. From whence the 5,436 conversions
during the twelve months?—an average of
453 per month. Could this be the result of
our small band of missionaries? Could it be
from the $72 spent on local evangelists during
the year? The Koreans have 15 native evan-
gelists giving their whole time to the work and
receiving their support from the native Church.
The Christians themselves have pledged a
certain number of days of voluntary preach-
ing or special definite evangelistic effort, the
sum of which has exceeded 8,000 days. There
have been 1,164 baptisms during the year,
almost one hundred per month, an average
of 22 every Sunday. Nor is that all, these one
thousand one hundred and sixty-four people
were Christians for over a year before they
were baptized. At the end of a few months
from conversion they were examined and at
the expiration of twelve months more they
were again examined. If the examination was
good, and if the past year's history was what
a Christian's ought to be, they were baptized.
Self-propagation


198 KOREA IN TRANSITION
A True
*Yoke-fellow”
it is the work that tells, and if a heathen is
found to give better service than a Christian
the latter is dismissed and the former retained.
So careful have we been along these lines that
no one thinks of coming into the Church for
mercenary motives.”
Another testimony comes from Dr. George
Heber Jones: “From the earliest years of the
mission, the Koreans have been taught that
the final and complete evangelization of their
people rests with them, and that the purpose
of the foreign missionary is to inaugurate the
work and then coöperate with Korean Chris-
tians in extending it. This position has been
accepted by the Korean Christians and the
Korean type is that of a man who places all
his posessions in the hands of the Lord for
his work. A happy illustration of this occurred
in our work in the north district. Dr. W.
Arthur Noble led to Christ a sturdy specimen
of the northern Korean. He was the first con-
vert in his village, and his house was the first
meeting-place. After awhile the village church
grew too large for its quarters and put up a
chapel of its own. Then there was a debt
which had to be paid. There was no money
with which to pay it, as the little group had


THE RESPONSE OF KoREA I99
exhausted their resources. This leader, how-
ever, had one thing he could sell—his ox with
which he did his plowing. One day he led it
off to the market-place, sold it, and paid the
debt on the church. The next spring when the
missionary visited this village he inquired for
the leader and was told he was out in the field
plowing. He walked down the road to the
field, and this is what he saw: holding the
handles of the plow was the old, gray-haired
father of the family, and hitched in the traces
where the ox should have been were this Ko-
rean Christian and his brother, dragging his
plow through the fields that year themselves!
Doubtless also there was another whom mortal
eye could not see, with form like unto the Son
of God, hitched in the yoke with these humble
Korean Christians, making their burdens light
and the yoke easy that year.”
The Korean is a preacher of the gospel by
a kind of spiritual instinct; he knows and does
this one thing only; he provides for his Church
schools without a cent from the homelands;
he writes now and publishes his own books;
he gives up tobacco and other useless expend-
iture to save for the gospel's sake; he gives
of his means a tenth or more; sometimes he
Self-denying
Giving
ſ


2OO KoREA IN TRANSITION
Donation of
Time
º
! gives all he has over a bare living. Last year,
to give an example, the membership of Yun-
mot-kol Church, Seoul, with income not one
tenth of the ordinary city church at home,
gave over ten dollars gold a member, or $3,850
for 350 members.
And what an example the Koreans have set
the Christian Church all over the world in their
donations of time for the Lord’s work! Their
evangelistic effort has been systematic as well
as eager. Opportunity is given at meetings
for Christians to pledge a specified number of
days during the coming year for work among
their unconverted neighbors. This is in addi-
tion to what is done on the Sabbath. Individ-
uals have sometimes pledged several weeks
during a single year. Then campaigns are
mapped out, and in some cases whole regions
have been systematically evangelized. These
time donations are also much in evidence when
church buildings are to be erected. Not only
those in whose homes money is an infrequent
and hasty visitor are glad to contribute their
strength, but those more well-to-do, brought
up to consider manual labor a thing that no
gentleman would engage in, have put their
hands to the saw and the shovel. It is not


THE RESPONSE OF KOREA 2OI
remarkable that such a Church should expe-
rience a wonderful revival.
It was in 1906 that the native Christians
joined heart with the foreign missionaries in
an earnest prayer that God in heaven would
look down in mercy and give what the heart
longed for, what the hungry soul needed, what
the spirit craved for in its thirsty land. What
did they want that they were in such unrest
over? They had health, and peace, and com-
fortable homes. They had friends, they had
every evidence of blessing. A great Church
had been gathered, what was the matter with
them that they were in such an agony of
distress? -
It was in August that Dr. Hardie of Won-
san came to Pingyang, and in telling of the
work of grace that God had wrought in his
own soul, he aroused more intense and deeper
longing than ever. Mr. Lee writes: “He came
and helped us greatly. . . . . There was
born of these meetings the desire that God's
Spirit would take complete control of our lives,
and use us mightily in his service.”
The old walls that had heard all the devil
noises, that had seen the blasted hopes of east
Asia for fifty centuries, heard now prayers
Longings for
Revival
Deepening of
the Movement
Accumulating
Power


2O2 KoREA IN TRANSITION
daily that knew no cessation. But it was like
praying into space, for there was no wonderful
manifestation, nor any special answer. Things
were as they had always been. The same sun
shone, the same gray earth and brown hills
mocked them, the same birds made light of it.
Why should they pray? Give it up and be
happy. Thank God for his good gifts and
blessings. Thank him for forgiveness. Thank
him for a promised home in heaven. Be
reasonable! It may in the end reach fanaticism
if we be not careful. But you may not reason
with the swell of the ocean or the tidal wave.
Some hidden power unseen lifts the mighty
weight of water, and to try to stem it with
our feeble words would be as wise as such
reasonings with these praying souls. The
months of autumn dragged by, the last of
1906. Into 1907 the year was launched, and
still daily groups gathered for prayer. From
all points of the north land, too, came Chris-
tians to the study class, seven hundred of them!
'What had they come for? To study the Bible,
of course; to get hold of who Matthew was,
and John, and the rest of them; to find what
were the leading thoughts of Paul's Epistles,
and perhaps the Book of Revelation. They


THE RESPONSE of KoREA 2O3
had walked, some of them, a hundred miles,
some more, some less, carrying their rice on
the back which was to serve as board while
attending. It was quite the thing this going
to Pingyang to study. They would sing
hymns, and hear sermons, and rejoice and be
glad, and go home and tell others about it.
Now they are gathered, and when the evening
meetings commence the great church is filled;
fifteen hundred people. Little did these
country folk dream of what was before them.
Had they seen all, doubtless many would have
turned back, flying for their lives in fear and
consternation.
For several days the ordinary meetings were
held, till at last came Sunday night to which
all had looked forward with great hope and
expectation. Dr. Baird took the service.
Under his leadership they expected to win
what they hoped for, but instead it was a dry
tasteless meeting. All the powers of Satan
seemed to be against them. “Dead?” said
The Crisis
Keel, “Oh you never experienced anything :
like it, the whole place was just whing with
nothingness. Some tried to confess, some tried
to pray. It would not do, and the meeting dis-
persed and went home.” Intensified in their


2O4 KoREA IN TRANSITION
Coming of the
Spirit
All Enlisted
longings by this defeat, the missionaries and
the native leaders gathered with redoubled
earnestness in prayer. Something was needed,
something within the possibility of attain-
ment, something that must be won at all
costs, this answer that would respond to
the accumulated longings of the past months
must come. There was nothing else in life,
no other objective point, just this and this
only. It was God's to give, and the time
had come. They would keep on. To stop
was impossible. Let everything be for-
gotten but just to pray. Let heart and soul
and mind enter, for the stake is none less than
God himself, and the conditions involved are
all the eternities.
That night they met again, Jan. I4, 1907.
It was a great meeting and a wonderful Pres-
ence seemed imminent. “We all felt that
something was coming,” said Mr. Lee. Under
a canopy of united audible prayer the whole
meeting became electrified; “the Spirit of God
seemed to descend.” Man after man arose,
confessed his sins, broke down, and wept.
. Until 2.00 A. M. the meeting continued with
confession, weeping, and praying.
Into this marvelous experience moved the


THE RESPONSE OF KOREA 205
whole community, native as well as foreign.
Hereafter at the noon prayer gatherings new
hope had come, but also fear, awe, and wonder
at the mighty mystery overshadowing them.
It was the next night, and Keel was on hand
to speak. “From the first it was not Keel's
face”, said Elder Cheung In-no to me. Keel
was once stone-blind, is partially blind still,
but here was a face of great majesty and
power; a face on fire with purity and holiness.
It was Jesus, it was not Keel. He spoke of
John the Baptist, and how he called on men
to repent and confess. There were no fashion-
able church joys in this gathering, but strange
intimations of death and terror. The flash-
ings of Sinai were over and about them.
“There was no escape,” said Cheung, “God
was calling. An awful fear of sin inex-
perienced before settled over us. How to
shake it off and escape was the question.
Some did run away but only to come back in
more intense distress than ever, with death in
the soul and written deep-lined on the face.
“O God, what shall I do? If I make my bed
in hell, thou art there; if I take the wings of
the morning and flee, even there dost thou
follow me.’” Thus these hundreds gathered
Message
Through Keel is
**Confess”


208 KoREA IN TRANSITION
Surrender for
Punishment
gold). He did not know to whom it belonged,
and no one came to claim it, so he had used
the money. But now it was upon him like all
the fiends of Buddha. Out it came, and
restoration had to be made, while those con-
gregated, with eyes starting out of their heads,
listened.
Another, years before, had been, like Barab-
bas, a robber. All the dark deeds of that time
were on him, and now, like the rending of his
soul, out they came. Immediately he gave
himself up to the police and was locked up in
jail.
One of my best friends, an elder in the Pres-
byterian Church, was there. He said that the
solemnity of the meetings was beyond words
to describe, something terrible, and yet one
was impressed by the fact that it was right
and true and holy. Years before he said he
had paid off a debt and received a clear receipt,
but in the paying he had not met all the
requirements. He had taken advantage of
one of the interested parties being dead to
have it settled easier for himself. Said he:
“This came back on me like a whirlwind, and
the awfulness of the deed was like a lost
eternity. I could not escape, so in tears and





BIBLE TRAINING INSTITUTE, PING YANG
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, PING YANG


THE RESPONSE OF KoREA 209
contrition I had to rise and tell it to my
shame and resolve to make restitution. Then
a peace, a strange, sweet, indescribable peace,
such a feeling as the heart had never known
before, seemed to possess me.”
Another friend whom I had long known,
who had fallen into sin, fallen after being a
Christian, had covered it up and hidden it
away, was there. He had resolved never
to fall again, and no man would know. He
loathed himself for having done so badly,
and had told others that he was a miser-
able sinner. He attended the meetings and
sat through several, his face strained and
deathly, his heart within him appalled at
the prospect. At last it was confess or
die, and with one superhuman effort he was
upon the platform before those hundreds
of people. He told all. “Was there ever
such a sinner as I? My God! My God!
Have mercy on my soul!” For a time it
seemed as though he would die. He beat the
hard wooden flooring till his hands bled, he
shrieked and begged for mercy. “Is this what
sin is P” said the awe-stricken multitudes.
“We never knew it was so awful. We had
thought it a trifle, but, behold, here is what
Making Bare the
Deepest Sin


2IO KoREA IN TRANSITION
Missionary
Rededication
Unspeakable
Joy
A New
Ping yang
God thinks.” This friend came out of the
fiery trial cleansed and purified. So was the
whole church lifted up into the third heaven
to hear words that no man might utter.
Missionaries were alike caught in the power
of it, and what a solemn rededication of life's
service to the Highest took place no outsider
will ever know.
One of the striking services was illustrated
by Keel's being tied by a rope and held. He
represented thus the bondage and power of
sin. How he struggled to get away, but the
rope held him! At last, at last, in his agony
it gave way, and he rushed forth free.
“Hallelujah, I am free!” This was the note
of it, and so after each confession there
followed joy, great joy, joy unspeakable, joy
that the possessor could not tell about, joy
that no man ever dreamed of.
This city of Ping yang used to be considered
the most hopeless part of Korea. It had been
a veritable cage of evil birds from all time.
Among spirit-worshiping, idolatrous Koreans
Ping yang was the vilest of the vile; and yet
now everywhere praying was heard, weeping,
singing. The world had gone mad over a
religion that the fathers had never heard of.


THE RESPONSE of KoREA 2II
High up on the heights of the city a church
bell marked, “Ring till Jesus comes,” was
calling attention to the business of the hour,
which was to repent, get right with God,
restore, live straight.
The boys in the middle school, modern-
day young men, who had spent years in
Western study, had filled up on politics and
were ready to sacrifice anything in behalf of
their nation, were hushed by this mystery.
Elder Kim Chan-sung, who led in their meet-
ings, told me that when they met there was
silence as if no man were present, but that
suddenly when the name of Jesus was men-
tioned the whole place was electrified by the
spirit of conviction. One can never tell it. It
is wrapped away, recorded on the sensitive
register that will come forth on the great day
when all accounts are settled.
Little children were in no wise exempt.
Something told them, wee tots though they
were, that God had a reckoning on hand with
sin. Many of them with the clearer eyesight
of the child saw wonderful visions up in the
heavenly places. Many wept over their little
wayward ways and went and told father and
mother, and asked forgiveness. Some children
Effect Among
Boys
Even Reaches
Little Children


2I2 KoREA IN 1 RANSITION
Joyful
Intercession
whose parents were unbelievers, went home
and in tears begged them to come to Jesus.
Helper Kim Ik-too of Sin chun, twenty-five
miles from Ping yang, told of children who,
when they asked their parents to give their
hearts to God, were soundly beaten. “What
rubbish is this you dare talk to us?” said the
irate father, but it only made the children all
the more earnest in their prayers. Beating
would not stop them; glaring at them. Orien-
tal fashion was of no use; threatening to kill
them only increased their zeal; in some cases
the parents said, “Well I’ll be smitten if this
doesn't beat everything,” put their fingers in
their ears, and ran. In other cases they yielded
and bowed down in a similar confession and
worship.
For two weeks school studies were laid
aside and the time given up to prayer. After
all the sins, from murder to small spites and
bickerings, had been confessed and put away,
some sweet angel seemed to come and clothe
the lads with quietness. In the ineffable
purity of the wake of this storm, prayers were
poured out for others. All day long was too
short to pray. Formerly it had been tiresome
to weather through a single prayer-meeting





UPPER CLASS, PING YANG THEOLOGICAL School, PING YANG


THE RESPONSE of KoREA 213
hour, now meals were forgotten in the joy of
intercession.
The range of the influence too was one of
the marvels. Old conservative Koreans who
had drunk deep of Confucius and had wor-
shiped every conceivable god, whose pride of
spirit made them unapproachable, were among
the broken-hearted and the contrite. Women
who had been victims of every vile circum-
stance of life, were given heavenly vision and
purity. Little children prayed the night
through and saw wonders that Joel said some
children were to see. Western missionaries,
trained in other lands and formed of other
human flesh, were likewise brought low down.
They do not say much about it to-day and
advertise it not at all, but they do emphatically
declare that it was one of God's great wonders,
and that they expect to see nothing like it till
the gates of paradise unfold and God himself
is with us.
Japanese too were blessed. Mr. Murata, a
Methodist pastor, who had seen actual hostil-
ities in the late war, and had been decorated
for distinguished service, was present, and in
the abundant blessing said in his broken Eng-
lish, “Oh tanks, tanks, tanks! Had I not
Japanese
Testimony—The
City Canvassed


THE RESPONSE of KoREA 2I5
by the hand, and never seemed to be tired.
His words were like a prophet's risen from the
dead, none could withstand them.” In Seoul
also many repented and flocked to the meet-
ings. To this day permanent and lasting
results go on and on.
Wider than Korea have the influences
extended. Sometimes we say, “Would that
some colossal force might lift China; would
that God might get under China and break her
up forever;” with her submerged millions,
alive and not alive, human and yet hardly
human, sane and yet insane, filled with all of
hell and almost none of heaven, dense as
armor-plate in the matter of conscience and
soul. What can save China? Can poor
humbled Korea count for anything in the lift-
ing of China's millions? In Mukden, Man-
churia, they had heard of great revivals in the
land of Korea. Two elders would come and
see. But they came too late, and the meetings
were over. Ping yang was quiet, there were
no special gatherings, and the old world had
returned. Why had they come so late?
What made their mission impossible was the
fact that they could not speak Korean, and no
one in Ping yang could speak Chinese. But
Chinese Seeking
Light


THE RESPONSE of KoREA 217
of English Literature for years, and a non-
christian. He says: “The Manchurian revi-
val began in Liaoyang on the return of two
elders from Korea, bringing news of the
spread of religion in that country. They and
Mr. Goforth, a Canadian missionary from
Ho-nan, who had also just visited Korea,
gave an account of the movement to the
church at Liaoyang. And at once similar
phenomena took place. They came to Muk-
den and the excitement began there in the
same way. It was here that Mr. Webster's
personal observation of the movement began.
He tells of the crowded church, and the sudden
emotional infection that seized it without
apparent cause; for the evangelist gave his
story in a quiet tone and unimpassioned way.
Twice a day the crowd came through the miry
streets (and there is nothing to surpass the
mire and ruts of Mukden) and the bitterly
cold winter air to listen to the story and the
appeal. Men and women broke into fervent
prayer who had never uttered a prayer in
public before. Strong men broke into sobs
and threw themselves on their faces and wept.
Others made wild confession of the sins of
their former life. All vied with each other in


218 KoREA IN TRANSITION
Words of
Missionaries
generous gifts to the cause of evangelism, and
in restitution to those whom they had
wronged. They offered land, houses, a tenth
or more of their incomes or salaries. Some
offered gifts in kind; like a Chinese, who said
he had received a great blessing, and had noth-
ing to offer by way of expressing his gratitude
“except a black calf with a white stripe' which
he offered. Then volunteers came forward
and went out to the villages all over the prov-
ince to tell of the strange thing that had
occurred, and to stir like enthusiasm.
“One or two extracts from the letters of
the missionaries will describe it better than
anything second-hand. ‘Even outsiders have
been drawn into the tempest of confes-
sion and prayer, and in some cases great fear
has fallen on the neighborhood. One man
who had been associated with highway rob-
bers, and had been submitted to torture dur-
ing six months to extort a confession from
him, but in vain, came forward at these meet-
ings and confessed his sins and writhed in
agony on the floor for a long time.” Dr.
Phillips of Newchwang writes that he had ‘a
strong temperamental prejudice against re-
vival hysteria in all its forms, yet he describes


22O KoREA IN TRANSITION
But One
Explanation
No Defense
Needed
Keel's
Conclusion
world; it is unprecedented and striking in
China.”
Thus from the sorrows of this old land, and
through the instrumentality of many praying
Christians, there has gone forth this light that
is flashing on and on through the palpable
darknesses of China. Who but the Spirit of
God was back of it? Who but he could so
unveil the mysteries of the soul? Who make
these sordid, cankered races appreciative of the
pure and beautiful?
There are no criticisms to offer. Why was
it thus and thus? Why such confessions?
Why not more order? Where were the Meth-
odist Manual and the Presbyterian Rules for
Worship? These are all vain and useless
questions. The whole revival was after the
order of persistent prayer; it was according
to the needs of the time and place; it was of
God, and so let all the earth be silent.
The writer was far away in America when
the revival took place. Keel wrote him a
letter on the 25th day of the first Moon, right
in the whirl of it, and among other things he
said: “If God had not manifested thus his
Spirit, the Church of Korea would have been
great only in appearance, but Satan would


THE RESPONSE of KoREA 22I
have ruled, and I fear few would have been
saved. No power can tell of the blessing, nor
can I write with pen all that God has done.
My prayer is that the Spirit may be poured
out on you as he has been manifested here.”
In all the wonders of the ages, that the
ancient walls of Ping yang have enclosed and
looked down upon—wonders that have in-
cluded the splendors of the Tangs, the Hans,
the Mings; wonders that are known nowhere
but in the tinted and highly-colored East—
the strangest, the most inexplicable, the most
awe-inspiring wonder has been the turning of
these long-lost races back to God.
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER VII
AIM : To APPRECIATE THE REsponse WHICH THE
KoREANs ARE MAKING To THE Gospel
I. Self-propagation by the Native Church.
I. Is it not the main business of the missionary
to preach the gospel?
2. Has he any right to surrender this work to
others?
3.* What advantages has the missionary as an
evangelist over the native Korean P
4.” What advantages has the native Korean over
the missionary?
Ping yang's
Supreme
Wonder


222 KoREA IN TRANSITION
II.
5. Do you think that the Roman Catholic Church
would succeed in Anglo-Saxon countries, if
it never employed any but Italian priests?
6. Criticise this policy, and apply your criticism
to the work of missionaries in Korea.
7. If you were a missionary, how would you try
to secure the coöperation of your converts in
evangelistic work?
8. When you had succeeded, what work would
you reserve for yourself?
9.* How would you guard against the spread of
false and superficial views by recent converts?
Io. To what extent do you think the Korean
principles of self-propagation could be profit-
ably applied in this country?
Self-government by the Native Church.
III.
II. What are the dangers in placing so much re-
sponsibility for self-government upon the
native Church?
12. What are the advantages of native self-gov-
ernment? -
13.” Sketch what you would consider an ideal plan
for the government of a native Church.
14. What effect would the patriarchal ideas of the
Koreans have upon self-government?
15.” How would you seek to develop initiative
among the native leaders?
16. How would you secure coöperation and self-
government among the laity?
Self-support by the Native Church.
17.* What are the arguments for a free use of
foreign money in building up the native
Church 2


GROWTH, PRESENT CONDI-
TIONS, AND OUTLOOK
225


Are Koreans capable of high attainment? This question
was asked the writer in April, 1903, by Captain "Crown,
commander of the Russian gunboat Mandjure. I replied,
“We are experimenting; not convinced as yet.” He went on
to say, “I have never been in Korea, but know something
of Koreans. It came about in this way: In 1870 my father
was governor of Eastern Siberia, and on a journey in the
winter from Vladivostok to Nikolaievsk, we passed many
Koreans who had come north over the border. "One evening,
on the side of the roadway, we saw some blankets heaped up
together and wrapped about something. My mother had
one of the Cossack guards dismount and find out. The quilts
covered two little Korean girls, who were almost perished.
They were taken into the sled, wrapped up warm, and
became members of our family. A month later we were
called to St. Petersburg, and they went too. They grew up
excellent students, both, one remarkably so, as she far outdid
me in mathematics and English. After graduation, one went
out to Vladivostok as a missionary of the Greek Church to
her own people and there died; the other is to-day governess
in the home of the Grand Duke of Constantine and has care
of his little daughter. She rides out in her fine carriage and
has her letters handed to her on a silver tray and is one of the
most cultured ladies I know.”
—%ames S. Gale
We are pressed on every side by men and women who want
us to teach them about Christ. We have a hundred more
invitations than we can accept., Last fall some Koreans
came in to see me and asked me if I could come out to their
village at once and teach them. When I told them that I
could not go they pulled out some bank notes and asked
me if I would go if I were paid. They were in earnest. So
it is all over this great district. I could keep six missionaries
busy all the time, and then have work for more. Korea
can be won for Christ, and in this generation. If the Church
will give us what we ask for now and strongly reinforce our
work in the next ten years, this old heathen nation will line
up with the other Christian nations of the world. It can be
made the first-fruits of the Church in the Orient. It must
be done quickly. Our opportunity is rapidly passing away.
New forces are at work which are making it more difficult
for us to work. What is done must be done now.
—E. M. Cable
226


VIII
GROWTH, PRESENT CONDITIONS,
AND OUTLOOK
Each new year's statistics from Korea
seems more remarkable than the last. The
first converts were baptized in the summer of
1886. By 1890 the number of converts con-
nected with all missions was somewhat over
IOO. As compared with many other fields,
this is a rapid growth. Dr. Beach's Geog-
raphy and Atlas of Protestant Missions
gives the figures at the end of the year 1900
as follows: “All Protestant missionaries in-
cluding wives, 141; stations, 26; outstations,
354; communicants, 8,288. The latest statis-
tics available read: missionaries, 248; stations,
37; outstations, I, I49; communicants, 50,089;
adherents, III,379. Some striking details of
growth in the number of communicants in two
denominations are as follows:
Methodist Episcopal Church
Remarkable “ . "
Progress


ºino as ‘Hohn H.O isiqoh la IN


230 KoREA IN TRANSITION
cate that this increase may continue for an
indefinite time. It is easy to work out marvel-
ous results with figures in connection with any
enterprise, but when one contemplates the
numerical growth of the Church in the Korean
field the result must be a great strengthening
of the faith of the Church in the complete suc-
cess of its mission to the world. In Korea we
have a field in which there is promise of the
rapid evangelization of the entire nation, and
whose very condition constitutes an imperative
call to the Church to concentrate her effort on
the great work of giving a people so ready for
it the gospel of Christ. The results reported
in Korea have been achieved in the midst of a
poverty of men and resources which might
well have daunted the best workers. The
Korean mission has had fourteen men, thirteen
wives, and thirteen Woman's Foreign Mis-
sionary Society workers, or a total of forty.
We are confident that if the Church had given
Korea five times the number of missionaries
the field now possesses, the results in converts
would have been many times what they are.
There has been in Korea only one native
worker for each 660 of the Church-member-
ship, and only one missionary (man) for each
y





CHR1st IAN MEN GAt HERed For Two WEEKs' BIBLE Study





GRowTH, CoNDITIONS, OUTLook 233
6,575 persons. The three city classes were
attended by about 1,500 persons.” “The mid-
winter Bible class for men in February had
an attendance of 800, a gain of 300 over last
year. The men came from all the churches
and remained for instruction ten days. After
effects appeared in a series of small classes
held by the Koreans themselves at various
places. The yearly growth of this midwinter
class, the interest of the students, and their
zealous though laborious efforts at note-tak-
ing attest the value that the Koreans them-
selves set upon them.”
“The largest class ever held in Korea was
held in February in the Syen chun church.
Five Bible study classes for men were con-
ducted by the men of the station during the
year, enrolling over 2,500. The classes for
women have been especially well attended.
The two classes held in Syen chun enrolled
660. Miss Samuels held sixteen classes dur-
ing the year, enrolling 2,458 women.”
An illustration of another type of Bible
classes, organized by native workers and held
in the villages for all members of the
Churches, has been given by the Rev. J. Z.
Moore. -
Large Classes
Native Workers'
Plan


GRowTH, CoNDITIONS, OUTLook 237
give you at least a faint idea of the workings
of this unique plan.
One man said, as his house was by the side
of the road, he preached to all who passed and
most of them received the word gladly. An-
other man during three weeks preached defi-
nitely from house to house to two hundred
people, fifty of whom believed. At one church
fifty women were gathered in as a result of
this preaching (for the women went from
house to house as well as the men), and they
now have started a night school, as they want
to learn to read the Bible and have no time to
study in the daytime. In all, new work has
sprung up in over forty towns as a result of
this preaching.
Those who justly lament the denominational
differences of Christian workers on the foreign
field can at least comfort themselves with the
thought that things are not so bad as they are at
home. There is in general closer fellowship
between missionaries of different boards on the
foreign field than between pastors of different
denominations in this country. Korea has been
especially favored in the cordiality of the rela-
tions that have always existed between the
various bodies of missionaries working there.
Fruitful Forms
of Effort
Comity





Mission ARIES AND NATIVE WoRKERS
YoUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN Association BUILDING, SEoul


242 KoREA IN TRANSITION
people are too obviously changed from hope-
lessness to vivid righteousness to admit of any
exception. Whenever the incessant wran-
gling and quarreling that goes on within the
dark, tiny walls of a mud house cease the
neighbors will say, ‘Why, so and so must have
become Christians, they're so quiet.” The dif-
ference in the cleanliness of the houses is
apparent to me, and even in four days I
learned to pick out a Christian woman by the
expression of her face. . . . You will be
astonished at my utterances, but it is the inev-
itable result of an open-minded view of Korean
conditions. The Korean is, as a result of
natural temperament and a deadening gov-
ernment, a singularly passive, childlike man,
with little ambition, no incentive, because every
cent of money made was inevitably squeezed
out of him by the Yang ban (officers-noble),
and yet with brilliant intellectual capacity.
He is far more of a scholar and far less a
man of action than the Japanese; he has far
more stability and a far more real sense of
honor than the Japanese. Of one thing I am
certain—of two things: that the Young Men's
Christian Association is one of the strongest
powers for righteous progress, that is, real


244 KoREA IN TRANSITION
young men and young women, who will guide
and conduct along the way of intellect and
spirit, till they arrive at a place that will meet
the demands of the soul. The nation was once
a vast prison, but is now being metamorphosed
into a school where thousands of pupils are on
hand. Each has brought his little note-book
and pencil; each has learned all within hail,
to make sure of entrance. They wait, wait,
for the teacher to come. To some he has
come, and thither crowd the students, but for
the multiplying majorities there is no teacher
as yet. Western knowledge, Western religion,
the secret of the West, is what the East is
calling for. “Woe betide us, if you give it
not,” echoes the eternal voice of all the ages.
Give it we must, and if you give it not some
one more highly favored will step in and
give it, but not for you. The discovery
of an unoccupied continent by Columbus was
not as great as this opening of territory on the
continent of Asia which has taken place and
is now going on in your day. Who are to be
the colonists to make the New Englands and
Virginias in this region of the intellect and
soul? You my reader, for you are here to
make your best impression on the world in


GRowTH, CoNDITIONs, OUTLook 245
the short space of time allotted. God grant
that you make it on Asia; it is the greatest
field open and Korea is one of the keys thereto.
She is in touch with both Japan and China.
She leads Japan's life and she thinks China's
thoughts. She writes and reads a language
known to both.
Another cause that leads her into this wider
way of service is the fact that Korea's old
narrow partitions are broken down, and home
is anywhere, wide as the horizon. But the
political situation is such that she cannot go
abroad, only to China and Japan. Other
doors are closed and she is not allowed free
exit. This too is a part of the great plan, and
contributes to the end in view.
Two weeks ago the writer heard for the
first time in twenty years' experience the
sound of a Chinese voice from the pulpit of
his church. Mr. S. K. Tsao, of Shanghai,
addressing a thousand Koreans or more said:
“My heart rejoices when I see the work of
God in this land. A great field lies before you,
not only in your own country but in China.
I expect the day to come when you will send
missionaries to my land and help evangelize
it.” It was a Macedonian call of the present
Providential
Lines of Destiny
A Voice from
China





A GROUP of KoREAN LEADERs
DELEGATEs to WoRLD’s CHR1st Ian STUDENT FEDERATIon, Tokyo


GROwTH, CoNDITIONS, OUTLook 247
no solution to the terrors of nature about
them; no confidence in the neighboring states
just over the way; no message from the under-
world as to whether it is peopled with half
beasts or only devils; in terror as to the acts
of sun, moon, and stars; scared by the sea with
its water-dragons and hungry beasts; in fear
of the hills full of disembodied spirits; cut off
from hope for spirit, soul, and body. Gaze
thou on them and think and ponder well, hadst
thou been born there, thou too wouldst have
had the vacant eye, the soul wild with weeds,
the mind shrunk, hopeless; thou too wouldst
be foul of body, begrimed with dirt; thou too
wouldst have had the little hovel in which to
huddle; thou too wouldst have crossed life's
stage a poor benighted heathen, to be laughed
at, and kicked, and cuffed, and spat on by the
world that thinks it sees; and in the end thy
body might be left unburied till it became a
terror to all living creatures.
Hadst thou two souls and one so lost as
this, how that twin soul of thine would rush
to earth's most distant boundary to rescue and
save the soul of thine that was lost. But
equally precious to any half soul of thine are
these multitudes to whom all the gateways of
Soul Service and
Coming Glory


252 KoREA IN TRANSITION
Ko Chan-ik
Ko of The Vanguard, the same who
labored and sorrowed and rejoiced and prayed
with a whole world of fellow pilgrims, even
the same Ko who now sleeps outside the
East Gate, would get the Nobel prize for
greatness. He would get it because he loved
most unselfishly and patiently the greatest
number of people at one and the same time;
because he could hold more of humanity in
his heart and plan for them, think about them,
pray for them, encourage them, gladden them,
and call on them, than any other mortal I
have ever known. The greatest heart I ever
knew—Ko Chan-ik. Thou, reader, be thou
likewise.
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER VIII
AIM : To APPRECIATE THE CALL of KoREA IN TRAN-
sition
I. The Future Prospects.
I. On the basis of the figures of 1890, 1900, and
the present, what may we expect to see in
Korea in 1920?
2. What rate of future increase is indicated by
the figures for 1902, 1905, and 1908?
3. In which decade of missionary work should
we expect the most rapid rate of increase, the
first, second, or third?


GRowTH, CoNDITIONs, OUTLook 253
II.
4.* Sum up the influences that tend to increase
the rate of progress in the evangelization of
a non-christian land as time goes on.
5. Mention circumstances that might check this
rate of increase.
6. What is the lesson to the Christian Church
of these possibilities?
III.
Korea an Object-lesson to Asia.
7.* What would be the special value to the Far
East of having an entire nation in Asia accept
Christianity?
8. Why is Korea more likely than any other
nation to become such an object-lesson?
9. What will be the effect on the Far East if
the Christianity of Korea is of only a super-
ficial type?
Io.” What things that Korea lacks do you think
she needs most to fit her to serve as an object-
lesson of Christianity?
II. What lines of work do you think missionaries
should especially emphasize at present?
Korea an Object-lesson to the World.
12. Contrast the opportunities presented to Bible
class leaders in Korea and in other lands.
13. How would it affect your own locality if such
comity prevailed between Christian denomina-
tions as in Korea?
14. To what extent does the argument for a united
Christian Church in Korea apply to Chris-
tianity in this country?
15.” Compare the present awakening of the Far
East in its extent and scope with the Renais-
sance and the Reformation.


254 KoREA IN TRANSITION
IV. The Present Appeal.
16.” Sum up the call of Korea to-day in view of
the needs.
17.* Sum up the call of Korea to-day in view of
the achievements.
18.* Sum up the call of Korea to-day in view of
the opportunities.
19.” Defend the investment of $100,000 of mission-
ary money in some form of work in Korea.
20.* Present missionary service in Korea as the
most profitable investment of a life-work.
REFERENCES FOR FURTHER STUDY.
CHAPTER VIII
I. The Outlook.
Underwood: The Call of Korea, pp. 136-150.
Hulbert: The Passing of Korea, ch. XXXV.
Supplement with denominational literature and
recent magazine articles.


APPENDIX A
DIVISION OF TERRITORY, PopULATION,
DISTRIBUTION OF MISSIONARIES'
------- Responsibility
PROVINCE Population Missionaries for each
Chulla §: 597,393 20 30,000
Chulla (South)... 850,635 12 70,000
Chung chong (Eas 491,717 7 70,000
Chung chong (West) - - 649,756 8 81,000
Hamkyung (North)........... 390,055 3. 133,000
Hamkyung (South)........... 582,463 23 ,000
Kangwun................... 627,832 *2 313,000
Kyungkui................... 9,020 82 10,000
Kyung sang (North).......... 1,062,991 13. 81,000
Kyung sang (South)........... 1,270,214 79,000
Pyengan { orth)............. 600,119 16. 37,000
§: South).............. 689,017 37 18,600
hanghai.................... - 8 112,000
1 Issued by the Financial Adviser's Office and published in The Christian Move-
ment in Japan, 1907 37
z/7




257


APPEN
STATISTICs of PROTESTANT MISSIONS IN KoREA CoMPILED
Fortreign Mission-
s ARIES, IncLUDING
# +4 Physicians
B | # 5
•c c. i - +
NAME OF SOCIETIES -3 É # :: * # =
º **: 3 |3 ||35
*: +; 3 || 5 || 3 |: 5
5g | ##| # #|##|º
##| #|#|#|##.
:: $5 || 5 || 5 |EE|3:
AMERICAN SocIETIES
American Bible Society...... . . . . . . . . . . . . ......... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1907 1882, 1] .. - -
Board of Foreign Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church 1... 1908, 1885 21, 2, 18 21
Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in U. S. A. ... 1908, 1884; 30 1. 37: 10
Board of Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. . . . . . . . . . . 1907–8, 1895. 11 5, 12! ..
Executive Committee of Foreign Missions, Presbyterian Church in U. S..]1906–7] 1896. 9] 4 9; 4
Foreign Department, Y. M. C. A. of North America.................... 1909) 1901, 3] . . . . . . . .
Foreign Mission Committee, Presbyterian Church, Canada .............. 1907 1898; 6 4 4
Woman's Board of Foreign Missions, Methodist Episcopal Church, South.|1908–9, 1897] ... ..] ... 11
Total American Societies, 8................................ 81| 12 80) 50
BRITISH SocIETIES
British and Foreign Bible Society................................... 1908, 1885. 2 .. 2: ..
Foreign Mission Committee, Presbyterian Church of Australia. ... 1908, 1889. 3. .. 3| 5
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts............. 1907 1896 4|| 3: .. 3
Total British Societies, 3.................................. 9. 3. 5. 8
Grand Total, 11 Societies.................................. 90) 15: 85, 58
1Includes statistics of Woman's Foreign Missionary Society.
2797 Churches entirely self-supporting.
*Includes higher educational schools.


258


DIX B
BY DIRECT CorresponDENCE WITH MISSION BOARDS
STATIONS coºker IEDucational, MEDICAL
: I .# I - go c
º Hº -3 -> … º #3
3 ||3: ..] § .9 3 || 8 -
§ {#| || 3 || 3 # # |# |# # als = |gºal:#|#
P =#|33 || 3 | #5 ca # | = | #|g #.[g ºff. Hä| Fä
£ gº|| 33 #3, 3 | ##| 3 || | |##|#. |}##.gift|##|##
#|###| | |##| #|##| || # #|#########|#
# ####| 3 |###| #|##|#| # #|############|##
282 7, 19| 24,246) 19,820, 167|14,417. 144|| 4,407 5 545 4|| 4 4 17,007
837, 8, 2809. 19,654. 73,844. 798 61,454. 457|11,480 9| 763 8|| 4 12 47,664
72] 4 ..] 3,545 2,536|| 45 3,049| 3 82] 1 225 5] ..] 3| 2,000
75 4 140 1,051. 8,410 22 1,390 18, 381 .. 6] .. 4] 2 ..
42 4 56 gill ió4| 45| 3,034 siil 305] ..] ..] .. iſ 'il 'i
10| 3: ...! ....! ....] ..] ....! 4! 150 .. 1, 20. . . . . . . 2 ....
1,334 30 1,024. 49,310|| 104,804|1,077|83,344 643 16,805 15ſ 1,539| 2 20 22 11] 22 66,971
85! ...! ...! ....! ....! ...! ....! ...! ....! ..
30, 2 ..] 385| 3,219 6 500 8, 200 . . . . . . . . . . . . 1] ... 1] ....
º 5| 125| 394 3,356. ..] ....| 3| 31|| 1 || 32 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...
IIS 7|125||75|| 3:575 & 500||11|z1|1|32 || || ||. 1|.
º 37|1,149, 50,089. 111,379| 1,083|83,844 654|17,036 16, 1,571] 2 20 23: 11 23 66,971

259





266
INDEx
Crowds and lack of privacy,
trying to missionaries,
167, 168
Custom rules, Ioo, IoI
Customs of Bible times and
lands prevail, 147, 149–
Is I
clims, the, now admin-
istered by aliens, 58
Cutler, Dr., 181
D
Death, heathen and Chris-
tian associations, 17o,
I? I
Debt, universality of, Io9
Demons, belief in, 82–86,
I52
Doctrine of the Mean, The,
I4I
Donations of time, 200, 236,
237
Dragons,
Sea, 3
Dress, 18–20, 113, 149
58, 87; of the
Early marriages, 76
Edison, IoI, 145
Edmunds, Dr., 181
Education, 45–47, 57, 117,
140–146; former customs,
45–47, I4I, I42; new
methods, 57, 58, 117,
142-146
Educational mission work,
143, 181, 182, 238
Emperor, the retired, 34–
38, 43, 44, 182
Ernsburger, Dr., 181
Esson Third, quoted, 9, 16,
36, 53, II 5
Evangelistic work, 171—173,
191-200, see also Revival
Exorcists, 5.5, 86
F
“Face” defined, 52–56
Fakumen, Manchuria, 219
Family, the, IoI-Ioé
Five Elements, 96, 98
Five Laws, 95, 97
Five Virtues, 95, 97
Food, lack of familiar, try-
ing to missionaries, 167
Foreign visitors to Korea,
I31
Funeral customs, 70–72
Fusan, 8, 179
G
Geography and Atlas of
Protestant Missions, 227
God, Korean's idea of, 78,
79, 118
Goforth, Mr., 216, 217
Grave, the, 7o, 73, 74
H
Hague, The, 38
#...”
2 I
Hardie, Dr., 201
Hart, Sir Robert, 58
Heated stone floor, sitting
and sleeping on, trying
to missionaries, 166, 167
Hermit tendency, 127-129
Heron, Dr., 163, 180
Hirst, Dr., 180
Historical sketch, 3o
Homes lack privacy, Io?
Hospitals, 179–181
Hulbert, omer B., 38;
quoted, 2, 66
Hygiene, 112
Hymns, 176
I
Idolatry, 152
Ito, #: 18o, 239
Manchuria,


INDEx
267
Japan, a dominant power,
134; disliked, ; has
less freedom in her lan-
gº than Korea, 136;
er influence on Korea's
life, 245; in 1889 known
only by name, 129; Resi-
dency-General in Korea,
Japanese currency in use,
I2
Jesus Christ, 44, 5o, 51, 59,
6o, 88, 94, I2O, 126, 133,
138, I53, 154, 161, 162,
172, 173, 205, 216
Jones, Dr. George Heber,
quoted, 83, 94, 126, 182,
198
Kamok Prison, remarkable
men converted in, 182–184
Kanghwa, Island of, 162
Keel, 82, 203–220
Ki, Viscount, 45
Kim, Mr., 19; quoted, 6,
41, 44, 55
Kim Ik-too, 212
Kim In, 183, 184
Kim Chan-sung, 211
Kim Chung-sik, 183, 184
Ko Chan-ik, 249-252
Korea, a quiet land, 17;
area, 4, 132; divisions, 5;
general a spect, 18;
houses, 18, 19; location,
3, 4; minerals, Io, II;
money, 11, 12; moun-
tains, 6; names, 4; popu-
lation, 5, 6; products, 8–
Io; public utilities, 146;
rivers, 7; roads, 17, 18;
size, 4, 132; soil, 7, 8;
transportation, 12, 146;
weather, 13–15
Korean characteristics, 47.
53, IIo, III, II4, II5,
I 18, 196, 242
Korean Christians, see Na-
tive Christians
Korean people, diseases, 15,
#: 169; dress, see Dress;
ood, 20, 21, 167; lan-
#. see Language;
ove of literature, 44, 45,
140–142; medical prac-
tise, Io8; religion, see
Religion; thirst for knowl-
edge, 144, 145; their
world a world of fear,
87, 88, 117
Korea's day of reckoning,
6; desolation,...42, 56;
xed social condition, 99;
hermit life, 128, 129; po-
sition in the East, 134,
I3
Kóš. dynasty, cause of
fall, 8o
Lacquer, odor of, 16
Language, 21, 22, 136-14o;
mistakes in using, trying
to missionaries, 171
Lee, Mr., quoted, 201, 204
Life of Martin Luther, 174
Literary work, 173–177,238
Literature highly esteemed
By Koreans, 14o-142
Lowell, Percival, 13, 69
Manchurian revival, 215-
22 o
Marriage and divorce, 94,
98, 99, Io2-IoS
Medical work, 163, 177–
181; great indirect serv-
ice, 178
Mencius, 141


INDEx
269
Rice, 8
Rivers, 7
Rockhill, Hon. W. W., 9
Roman Catholics, 161, 164
Ross, John, 161
Russia's power in the East,
I35
Sacrifice for sin, 148; for
the dead, 72, 73
Sakyamuni, 81
Salutations, 136, 147
Sam Guk Sa, the, quoted,
178
Samuels, Miss, 23
“School-man” defined, 46
Scranton, Dr., 163
Seoul, 5, 13, 14, 37, 8o, 130,
#: 16o, 164, 179, 181,
I84, 200, 2I4, 25I
Seoul Press, quoted, Io9,
IIo, I 18
Severance Hospital, 180
Shamanism, see Demons
Sharrocks, Dr., quoted, 195
Shin, Mrs., 31, 32, 39
Sickness and äää. their
pagan associations trying
to missionaries, 169–171
Sickness caused by evil
spirits, 153
Smallpox patient at a meet-
ing, 169, 17o
Smoking, 9, Io
Social upheaval, causes of,
II9
Society becoming conscious,
II3
Song chin, 179
Soul, belief concerning, 72,
späts of the dead, 84, 85
Spirit worship, 66,82–88
Subscriptions of time, 200,
236, 237
Superstition, 68, 178
Syen chun, 179, 195, 228,
233
Taoism, 68, 81, 82
Taxation,#:
Taylor, Hudson, quoted,
I3 i -
Theological schools, 181,
182
Thousand C h a r a c t e r
Classic, the, 141
Tobacco, 9, Io
Tong-mong Son-seup, the,
I4 I
Tract Society, 174
Tracts, Mr. Moody's, 183
Tokgabi, 68,86
Treaties with Japan, 37, 38
Tsao, Mr. S. K., quoted,
245 ...
Tumen River, 7, 8, 191
U
Underwood, Dr. H. G., 161,
163; quoted, 2, 13, 16o
V
Vanguard, The, 252
Verbeck, Dr. Guido F., 4o,
42
Vermin, trying to mission-
aries, 168, 169
W
War, the great, 13o
Woman, emancipation, 48,
49, 195; ext in c ti on
through ancestral wor-
ship, 77; her only hope,
5o; medical work for, 180,
181; new perils, 49; social
status, Ioa-Iod, 181
Wonderful, T. J., 56


27o INDEX
Y Yi Won-gung, 183, 184
Yalu River, 7, 8 Yi Wung-geung, quoted, 95
Yee, Madam, 52 Yo-sun, 34
Yellow Hell, 77 Young Men's Christian As-
Yi and the mummy, 112 sociation, 128, 184, 238,
Yi Chang-jik, 214 239, 242
Yi-king, the, 141 Yun, Hon. T. H., quoted,
Yi Sang-jai, 128, 183, 184 II9, 239
Yi Seung-man, 183, 184 Yu Song-jun, 183, 184


Forward Mission Study Courses
“Anywhere, provided it be FORward.”—David Living-
stone.”
Prepared under the direction of the
YOUNG PEOPLE'S MISSIONARY MOVEMENT
OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA
EDITORIAL CoMMITTEE: T. H. P. Sailer, Chairman,
A. E. Armstrong, T. B. Ray, H. B. Grose, S. Earl Tay-
lor, J. E. McAfee, C. R. Watson, John W. Wood, L. B.
Wolf.
The forward mission study courses are an outgrowth of
a conference of leaders in young people's mission work,
held in New York City, December, 1901. To meet the
need that was manifested at that conference for mission
study text-books suitable for young people, two of the
delegates, Professor Amos R. Wells, of the United Society
of Christian Endeavor, and Mr. S. Earl Taylor, Chairman
of the General Missionary Committee of the Epworth
League, projected the Forward Mission Study Courses.
These courses have been officially adopted by the Young
People's Missionary Movement, and are now under the
immediate direction of the Editorial Committee of the
Movement. The books of the Movement are now being
used by more than forty home and foreign mission boards
and societies of the United States and Canada.
The aim is to publish a series of text-books covering
the various home and foreign mission fields aud written


by leading authorities. The entire series when completed
will comprise perhaps as many as forty text-books.
The following text-books having a sale of nearly
600,000 have been published:
1. The Price of Africa. (Biographical.) By S. Earl
Taylor.
2. Into All the World. A general survey of missions.
By Amos R. Wells.
3. Princely Men in the Heavenly Kingdom. (Bio-
graphical.) By Harlan P. Beach.
4. Sunrise in the Sunrise Kingdom. A study of
Japan. By John H. De Forest.
5. Heroes of the Cross in America. Home Missions.
(Biographical.) By Don O. Shelton.
6. Daybreak in the Dark Continent. A study of Af-
rica. By Wilson S. Naylor.
7. The Christian Conquest of India. A study of
India. By James M. Thoburn.
8. Aliens or Americans? A study of Immigration.
By Howard B. Grose.
9. The Uplift of China. A study of China. By
Arthur H. Smith.
10. The Challenge of the City. A study of the City.
By Josiah Strong.
11. The Why and How of Foreign Missions. A
study of the relation of the home Church to the foreign
missionary enterprise. By Arthur J. Brown.
12. The Moslem World. A study of the Moham-
medan World. By Samuel M. Zwemer.
13. The Frontier. A study of the New West. By
Ward Platt.
14. South America: Its Missionary Problems. A
study of South America. By Thomas B. Neely.
15. The Upward Path: The Evolution of a Race. A
study of the Negro. By Mary Helm.
16. Korea in Transition. A study of Korea. By
James S. Gale.





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