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 CHARLES WILLIAM WASON 
 
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 CHINA AND THE CHINESE 
 
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 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924023520525 
 
QUAINT KOREA 
 
QUAINT KOREA 
 
 LOUISE JORDAN MILN 
 
 AUTHOR OF "WH^WE WERE STROLLING PLAYERS IN THE EAST" 
 
 LONDON 
 OSGOOD, McILVAINE & CO. 
 
 45 Albemarle Street, W. 
 
 1895, 
 
 t [All rigAis reserved'] 
 

I DEDICATE THIS VOLUME 
 TO MY DEAR CHUM AND SON 
 
 CRICHTON 
 
A Jew oftkejhllowing pages have appeared in 
 '* The London Times" " The Pall Mall Gazette" 
 " The Daily Chronicle," " The Pall Mall 
 Btedget" *' The Queen," " The St. fames' 
 Budget," "St. Paul's," "Black and White," 
 and " The Lady." The Editors of these papers 
 kindly allow me to include those pages in this 
 volume, 
 
 L.y.M. 
 
 London, 1895. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 A Few Words about Hamel i 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Some Curious Korean Customs . . . . 20 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Soul from the City Wall 34 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Korea's King 58 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Korean Women 75 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Korean Women {continued) 122 
 
viii Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Korean Architecture i6i 
 
 CHAPTER VIII; 
 
 How THE Chinese, the Japanese, and the 
 Koreans Amuse Themselves . . . .189 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 A Glance at Korean Art 209 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Korea's Irreligion 226 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 Korea's History in a Nutshell . . -245 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 The Scourges of China 266 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 Japan's Ingratitude. . .... 278 
 
 Glossary 
 
 305 
 
QUAINT KOREA. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A FEW WORDS ABOUT HAMEL. 
 
 A SPOILED woman, an extremely cross English- 
 man, who was her husband, and a smiling 
 mandarin, who was their host, sat on the prow 
 of a Chinese junk. They were rather a silent 
 trio. The mandarin knew, or pretended he knew, 
 no English, The Englishman pretended to know 
 considerable Chinese, but, as a matter of fact, 
 knew almost none. The two men were about 
 equally fluent in rather bad French, and were 
 wont to use it as the medium for a good deal of 
 conversation, when they were alone. But to- 
 night, with the spoiled woman sitting between 
 them, neither seemed to have, a word to say. Per- 
 haps they both felt embarrassed by what to both 
 of them must have seemed the ridiculousness of 
 the situation. 
 
 B 
 
2 Quaint Korea. 
 
 The junk had left Shanghai a few days before. 
 It was bound for Korea, where the mandarin was 
 going on business — on business for the Emperor 
 of China. The party on the boat, not to mention 
 servants and such, included the mandarin, the 
 mandarin's wife, the Englishman, the Englishman's 
 wife, and a young man named John Stewart- 
 Leigh. 
 
 As I have said, his excellency the mandarin 
 was going to Korea on business. The spoiled 
 woman was going for pleasure ; her husband 
 was going because he thought he ought to, and 
 the mandarin's wife was going because she had 
 to. Stewart-Leigh would probably have found it 
 very hard to tell even himself just why he was on 
 board. " It's as good a way of spending my leave 
 as another, since I am too poor to go home just 
 now," he had said to a brother subaltern in Hong 
 Kong, " and it will be a perfect charity to Q." 
 
 Mr. Q., the spoiled woman's husband, had 
 been stopped by a friend a few weeks before 
 as he came down the steps of the Shanghai 
 club. 
 
 " I say, Q.," cried the other, " what is this ? 
 I hear that you are going to Korea, and in his 
 junk, with Ja Hong Ting. I say, it isn't true, is 
 it?" 
 
 " Of course it's true," Q. had replied gloomily. 
 
A Few Words About Hamel. 3 
 
 " That mad wife of mine has inveigled the poor 
 old mandarin into inviting her. She insists upon 
 going, and I am going along to chaperon her." 
 
 The Q's. had been living in China for almost 
 a year. They had known Ja Hong Ting when 
 he had been the Chinese minister at one of the 
 European capitals. Indeed, an uncle of Mrs. Q.'s 
 (she was not unmixedly English) had been the 
 European secretary of the legation of which Ja 
 Hong Ting had been the head. The acquaintance 
 that had begun on the continent of Europe 
 (and which between the then-girl and the China- 
 man had been rather a friendly acquaintance) 
 had developed in Pekin, as friendships between 
 Chinese and Europeans don't often develop. 
 Mr. Q., who alternately laughed and grumbled at 
 his wife's odd tastes, secretly shared them. He 
 was a grave, quiet man ; as a rule, almost 
 taciturn. He was a deal of a philosopher, though 
 no one but his wife ever suspected it, and he had 
 become very much interested in Ja Hong Ting 
 and the glimpses of real China and of real Chinese 
 life which had been afforded him through his 
 acquaintance with the mandarin. 
 
 When Ja Hong Ting and the Q's. had first met 
 in the drawing-room of one of the European 
 Legations at Pekin, Ja Hong Ting had exclaimed, 
 as he bowed over and over Mrs. Q.'s hand, 
 
 B 2 
 
4 Quaint Korea, 
 
 " I am so glad you are here. Now you shall 
 know my wife." (His wife had not been 
 with him in Europe.) " You shall teach her 
 English, and she shall teach you Chinese. I 
 entreat you and your husband to come to my 
 yamun to-morrow, and there you and she shall be 
 made great friends." 
 
 Ja Hong Ting had not spoken in English, of 
 course. 
 
 The Q's. had gone to the yamun the next day, 
 but Ja Hong Ting's programme had not been 
 altogether carried out. His wife had been 
 obedient, as most Chinese wives are, but she had 
 taken a dislike to the Englishman, and a most 
 violent dislike to the Englishwoman. She was 
 civil then and afterwards (at least, in the man- 
 darin's presence), but she never warmed to her 
 husband's European friends, most especially not 
 to the lady. She taught Mrs. Q. no Chinese, at 
 least not voluntarily; and from Mrs. Q. she 
 learned no English. 
 
 Some months after, Ja Hong Ting had called 
 upon the Q's. in Shanghai. He stayed to dinner, 
 and as they sat down, said to Mrs. Q., " Do you 
 know where Korea is ? " 
 
 " Of course I know where Korea is," replied his 
 hostess. 
 
 "Yes," interrupted Q., "so do I. It is one 
 
A Few Words About Hamel. 5 
 
 of the few places that my wife has not dragged 
 me to yet." 
 
 " Ah, yes ! I forgot," said the mandarin, turn- 
 ing again to his hostess. " Yes, I remember, you 
 are a great geographer and a traveller. But I do 
 not suppose you will ever go to Korea. I should 
 think it the last place pleasant for you to visit. I 
 have been there a number of times, and I am 
 going next month. The Emperor is sending me 
 with a message to the King of Korea." 
 
 Mrs. Q. pushed her plate of untasted soup 
 from her, and cried, "Oh!" Mr. Q. knitted 
 his brows and sighed. He saw trouble in the 
 distance. 
 
 " You pity me," said the mandarin. 
 
 " Pity you ! " said the woman. " Ah ! don't 
 you think the Emperor would send me in your 
 place ? " 
 
 The Chinaman laughed. " I am sure his 
 Majesty would not care to give you so much hard 
 work to do." 
 
 " How do you get there, how are you going ? " 
 said Q., trying in a blind, groping way to turn the 
 conversational tide, 
 
 " In my junk," said Ja Hong Ting. " It is one 
 of the biggest junks in China — a comfortable 
 boat, quite like a floating home, as madame here 
 would call it, and I always enjoy my sails over to 
 
6 Quaint Korea. 
 
 Korea and back very much more than I enjoy my 
 stay in Korea." 
 
 " Will any of your ladies go with you ? " asked 
 Mrs. Q. 
 
 The mandarin laughed and shook his head. 
 And then something seemed to occur to him. 
 He f)ut down the spoon that had been almost to 
 his mouth, and after a moment's pause, said, " I 
 could take one or two of them. There's room, 
 and there's comfort in the boat. Would you " 
 — turning to Q. — " like to come and bring your 
 wife ? " 
 
 Q. groaned, and said hastily, " Thanks awfully, 
 but I shall have to go to Calcutta next month." 
 But as he spoke he knew that he was like a drown- 
 ing man catching at a straw. The mandarin's 
 suggestion was, of all suggestions in the world, 
 the one to fire Mrs. Q.'s easily fired imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 And so it came about that a month or more 
 afterwards Ja Hong Ting's junk had pushed off 
 from Shanghai with " us five in family," as Mrs. 
 Q. delightedly called the mandarin, his wife, and 
 their three guests. 
 
 The West has conquered the East. Chris- 
 tianity has triumphed. Heathenism is mangled, 
 and, led us hope, dying. Across the fair, flower- 
 dimpled back of Asia we have laid the un- 
 
A Few Words About Hamel. 7 
 
 picturesque blessing of railroads, and thoroughly 
 well-made, thoroughly well-kept paths for the 
 men who consider life a succession of journeys, 
 and the animals who enable such men to per- 
 petually journey. 
 
 Second-sight seems to be, and to have always 
 been, a genuine possession with the Asiatic 
 peoples. We in the West have, I think, never 
 possessed second-sight; but that does, not al- 
 together prove that there is no such thing as 
 second - sight. I remember an iEolian harp 
 that used to hang upon one of the crumbling, 
 wild-flower-wreathed walls of the old castle at' 
 Heidelberg. I remember the love songs that the 
 wind used to sing to that harp ; the love songs 
 with which the harp accepted the wooing of the 
 wind. If a nice new organ, a parlour organ, 
 bought on time-payment, were placed beside that 
 iEolian harp (for I suppose the harp is still 
 where I, in my girlhood, years ago, saw it), the 
 wind would have nothing to say to that organ. 
 If the wind had, the organ would not hear. I do 
 not for a moment rank an ^olian harp above a 
 nice, new parlour organ, but I may, perhaps, 
 prefer the harp to the organ. We all have our 
 secrets. 
 
 The Korean mind is, if I at all understand it, an 
 ^olian harp. Compared with the Oriental mind. 
 
8 Quaint Korea. 
 
 the Occidental mind — in many instances at least — 
 partakes somewhat of the character of the parlour 
 organ. The peoples of Asia do less than we, but I 
 think that they foresee more. The wind of pro- 
 phecy, the wind that prophesied the unavoidable 
 future, swept the nerve-strung heart of Asiatic 
 sensibility, swept it very many, many years ago. 
 And Asia, having ears to hear, and, perhaps, eyes 
 to see into the future, realized that her only safety 
 lay in seclusion. It seems to me that the sensi- 
 tive Asiatic mind, the exquisitely-strung .Slolian 
 harp of Oriental existence, sings one eminently, 
 practicable, sensible song into the moon-lit, star- 
 gemmed Asiatic midnight, and the refrain of the 
 song is this : " Asia for the Asians. Mangoes 
 for the Chinese and the Bengalese. Mogree 
 flowers for the nautch-girls ; and the Taj Mahal 
 for the wife who was loved with a love exceeding 
 the love of European men." It has, I think, 
 been an instinct, a second-sight, an inspiration, 
 with the Asiatic peoples to keep our feet from off 
 the flower-made brilliance of their native sod. 
 But we have conquered Asia, as surely as the 
 music pumped by the thick, red fingers of the 
 Board-School-taught girl — pumped from out the 
 well-manufactured depths of the time-payment- 
 bought parlour organ — would drown the inde- 
 finable, soft, methodless, nameless music of the 
 
A Few Words About Hamel. 9 
 
 iEolian harp. Just so well have we subdued 
 Asia, hushed her music, quenched her light, torn 
 her flowers petal from petal. 
 
 I am speaking from the sentimental standpoint, 
 of course. But, in this utilitarian age of ours, 
 isn't it worth while to look at things sentiment- 
 ally, once in a way, if only for variety ? We have 
 conferred the greatest practical blessings upon 
 Asia ; that I admit and maintain. But we have 
 blurred the picture a bit, and I can't help being 
 sorry. Only one country in Asia has, until lately, 
 entirely escaped the blight and the blessing of 
 our civilizing touch — Korea! Korea has not 
 seemed worth our shot and powder. And many 
 of us have not really known that there was such 
 a place as Korea. But the war that is raging in 
 farther Asia now has quickened our interest in 
 the quaint kingdom of the morning calm. 
 
 The following chapters have been largely 
 written from notes that Mrs. Q. made during the 
 pleasant months she spent in Korea, and from 
 her memories of those months. But Choson is 
 too interesting and, to us, too new a theme to 
 need the fillip of any petty personality ; and so, 
 after these few pages of introduction and of ex- 
 planation, we may excuse Mrs. Q., or at least her 
 personality, from our service, and leave her in her 
 privacy, to congratulate herself upon her good 
 
lo Quaint Korea. 
 
 luck in having had the unique experience of seeing 
 Korea, and of seeing it in company with one of 
 the best-informed of Tartars, and one of the most 
 intelligent of Europeans. 
 
 I felt impelled to write this explanation of how 
 the material for the book was gathered, and the 
 manner of woman who gathered it. Helen Q. lays 
 as little claim to being profound as do I myself, 
 and this is no volume for those who gloat on sta- 
 tistics, on accurate tables, and insist upon having 
 over-exact information or no information at all. 
 It is a peep at Korea as a very average woman saw 
 it, a woman who enjoyed herself in Korea, and 
 who there jotted down some of her impressions 
 that they might serve her and another for ' sweet 
 discourses in their time to come' — ^jotted them 
 down with no dream of future publication, I 
 sometimes think that the half-gossip of such 
 travellers, the honest, unstudied report of their 
 observations, gives, to the generality of readers, a 
 more vivid, concrete picture of a strange land than 
 do the more elaborate, more careful volumes of 
 more accomplished writers, more professional 
 makers of books. 
 
 These pages have had the advantage of being 
 revised both by Mr. Q. and Ja Hong Ting, both of 
 whom are acute observers, exact thinkers, and 
 happen to be in Europe now. 
 
A Few Words About Hamel. ii 
 
 The inclusion here of the chapters on China 
 and Japan needs, I think, no apology. The his- 
 tories of the three countries have been so interknit 
 socially, artistically, and scientifically ; the people 
 of Korea are so like the people of Japan, so like 
 the people of China — though so unlike both — ^that 
 we shall only even partially see Korea, by keeping 
 one of our mental eyes on the rival countries 
 between which she lies. 
 
 The island of Quelpaert is barely fifty miles 
 long and only half so wide ; but it is big with 
 history, huge with interest, and great with special 
 claim upon European attention. 
 
 In 1653 a Dutch boat was wrecked on the shore 
 of Quelpaert. To that shipwreck Europe owed 
 her most vivid, if not her first photograph of 
 Korea ; for on the Sparrow-hawk was not only 
 Min Heer Cornelius Lessen, the governor-elect of 
 Tai-wan, but also a man of genius, a sailor who had 
 a great gift for narrative writing. That man's name 
 was Hendrik Hamel. It is two hundred years and 
 more since he wrote his simple, straightforward, 
 convincing record of the years he perforce spent 
 in Korea. Since then some score of books have 
 been written about Korea and things Korean. 
 None of them are more readable than Hamel's 
 "Narrative of an Unlucky Voyage," and only one 
 of them compares, at all to its author's credit, with 
 
12 Quaint Korea. 
 
 the quaint old book, written two centuries ago by 
 the Dutch seaman. 
 
 I should like to quote a great deal of Hamel's 
 own record of the thirteen years he spent in 
 Korea, and it has been done very much at 
 length by several eminent writers. Moreover, it 
 would be an entirely safe thing to do, for the 
 copyright must have long since run out, if the 
 book ever had a copyright. But I will content 
 myself with a very few words about this wonderful 
 man and his stay in Choson, and a few brief 
 quotations from one of the most interesting books 
 of travel that has ever been written ; a book as 
 fresh and readably to-day as if it had just come 
 smoking from the printer's press. 
 
 More than half the souls on board the Sparrow- 
 hawk (that is thirty-six) reached the shore of 
 Korea. They were taken prisoners, and were 
 held so for thirteen years and more. The history 
 of their captivity is the history of varying kind- 
 nesses and unkindnesses. But, when we remem- 
 ber the then conditions of Korean life, and when 
 we remember how little the hermit people of the 
 hilly peninsula desired colonists, when we remem- 
 ber how they regarded foreigners, and what cause 
 they had to so regard foreigners, it is more the 
 history of kindness than of unkindness. Certainly 
 the Hollanders had more to be thankful for than 
 
A Few Words About Hamel. 13 
 
 to complain of during their first years in Choson 
 — barring, of course, the facts that there they were 
 and there they had to stay. 
 
 Hamel and his fellows were not the first 
 Europeans, not even the first Hollanders to land, 
 or rather be thrown, upon Korea. But, for all that, 
 they were enough of rarities to be regarded by 
 the populace as strangely interesting wild beasts. 
 They were given rice-water to drink. They were 
 fed. When the need came they were clad. They 
 were sheltered. They suifered no indignity, and 
 only comparative hardship ; and, little as they 
 dreamed it, the King of Korea was sending to 
 them an interpreter ; a man whose blood was 
 their blood, whose tongue was their tongue. 
 
 "The first known entrance of any number of 
 Europeans into Korea," writes Grifiis, " was that 
 of Hollanders, belonging to the crew of the Dutch 
 ship Hollandra, which was driven ashore in 1627. 
 ... A big, blue-eyed, red-bearded, robust Dutch- 
 man, named John Wetteree, whose native town 
 was Rip, in North Holland, volunteered on board 
 the Dutch ship Hollandra in 1626, in order to get 
 to Japan." 
 
 Now one fine day, when the Hollandra was 
 coasting along Korea, Wetteree and two of his 
 mates went ashore for fresh water. The natives 
 caught them, and, as was the custom of the 
 
14 Quaint Korea. 
 
 country, detained them. They were treated with 
 respect, with honour even, attained to positions 
 of responsibiHty and trust, and became great 
 among the great men of Korea. Two of them 
 died in 1635, died fighting for the country of their 
 enforced adoption when she was invaded by the 
 Manchius. But Wetteree lived on, and, twenty- 
 seven years after his own capture, he was sent to 
 interpret between his shipwrecked countrymen 
 and their captors. Alas ! his tongue had forgot 
 its mother cunning, and refused to utter the 
 language that he had not used for twenty-seven 
 years. Wetteree remembered but a few words of 
 Dutch. But the mother-tongue, which more than 
 a quarter of a century had not served to make him 
 quite absolutely forget, he regained in a month's 
 intercourse with his countrymen. 
 
 Hamel and his comrades experienced many ups 
 and downs. They were treated with considera- 
 tion, they were treated with cruelty. They held 
 many offices. They were set many tasks — that 
 of begging amongst them. They plied many 
 trades. They lived in many places. They saw 
 the interior of Korea, the inside of Korean life, 
 as Europeans never saw it before, and, I fancy, as 
 Europeans have never seen it since. 
 
 Once an enterprising governor set them to 
 making pottery with a probable view of intro- 
 
A Few Words About Hamel. 15 
 
 ducing European improvements into Korea's own 
 wonderful ceramic art methods. The experiment 
 was a failure. Whether the Dutch fingers were 
 ill-adapted to the pursuit of Korea's favourite 
 art-industry, or whether, as Griffis remarks, it 
 was " inanifestly against the national policy of 
 making no improvements on anything," history 
 does not authoritatively tell us. I incline to the 
 first opinion. But the bulk of the learned Euro- 
 peans, who have studied Korea, certainly side with 
 Mr. Griffis. At all events, Hamel and his fellows 
 were not kept long at the moulding of Korean 
 clay. The Governor was deposed and physically 
 punished; and the Dutchmen were put to the 
 pulling of grass from the door-yard of the palace. 
 
 Hamel and his comrades did not remain long 
 in Quelpaert. The king sent for them and they 
 were taken to Soul. 
 
 Two paragraphs in Hamel's long account of 
 their stay are indicative of a good deal that is 
 to-day as characteristic of two types of Korean 
 character as it doubtless was two hundred years 
 ago. 
 
 " On the 2ist, a few days after the shipwreck " 
 (writes Hamel), " the commander made us under- 
 stand by signs that he wished to see all we had 
 saved from our wreck, and that we were to bring 
 it from our tent and lay it before him. Then he 
 
i6 Quaint Korea. 
 
 gave orders that it should be sealed up, and it 
 was so sealed in our presence. While this was 
 being done, some people were brought before him 
 who had taken iron, hides, and other things that 
 had drifted ashore from our boat. They were at 
 once punished, and before our eyes, which showed 
 us that the Korean officials did not mean us to be 
 robbed of any of our goods. Each thief had 
 thirty or more blows given him on the soles of 
 his feet with a cudgel thick as a man's arm and 
 tall as a man. The punishment was so severe 
 that the toes dropped off the feet of more than 
 one thief." 
 
 Hamel and his fellows were under the super- 
 vision of more than one governor. They were 
 highly pleased with some, and as highly dis- 
 pleased with others. Here is Hamel's description 
 of one: — "It seemed to us that he was a very 
 sensible man, and we were afterward sure that 
 we had not been deceived in our first opinion. 
 He was seventy years old, had been born in Soul, 
 and was greatly esteemed at the court. When 
 we left his presence he signed to us that he should 
 write to the king and ask what was to be done 
 with us. It would be some time before the king's 
 answer could come, because the distance was 
 great. We begged him that we might have flesh 
 sometimes, and other things to eat. This he 
 
A Few Words About Hamel. 17 
 
 granted, and he gave us leave that six of us might 
 go abroad every day, to breathe the air, and wash 
 our linen. This satisfied us greatly, for it was 
 hard and weary to be shut up, and to subsist on 
 bread and water. He also sent for us often, and 
 made us write both in Dutch and in Korean, So 
 did we first begin to understand some words of 
 Korean ; and he speaking with us sometimes and 
 being pleased to provide a little entertainment or 
 amusement for us, we began to hope that some day 
 we might escape to Japan. He also," adds Hamel, 
 " took such care of us when we were sick, that we 
 may affirm we were better treated by that idolater 
 than we should have been among Christians." 
 
 Lest the reader should think that Hamel had 
 become a Buddhist or a Confucist, or had 
 adopted some other shameful form of heathenism ; 
 lest the reader may think that Hamel was alto- 
 gether partial to the people among whom he had 
 been thrown, I will add what he wrote of two 
 other governors. After complaining of one in 
 detail, he adds, " But, God be praised, an 
 apopletic fit delivered us from him in September 
 following, which nobody was sorry for, so little 
 was he liked." 
 
 And of another unsatisfactory governor he 
 writes, " He put many more hardships upon us, 
 but God gave us our revenge." 
 
 c 
 
i8 Quaint Korea. 
 
 These last two quotations ought, I think, to 
 establish Hamel as a highly civilized, and by no 
 means gushing, historian. 
 
 Hamel's narrative proves two things most con- 
 clusively. It proves that of all the civilized 
 countries the centuries have wrought the least 
 change upon Korea. Indeed, the geological 
 changes in the peninsula have scarcely been slower 
 than the changes in the social customs of the 
 Koreans. It is even more interesting to me that 
 Hamel's book proves him one of, the most 
 truthful men who ever put pen to paper. He 
 wrote with a brilliant, vivid pen, but he dipped it 
 in no false colour. And yet in his own time 
 Hamel was, to put it mildly, called a liar of liars ; 
 and until comparatively recent days his state- 
 ments have been doubted, and " exaggerated " has 
 been the least abusive adjective applied to them. 
 But travellers of our own time, missionaries and 
 statesmen, men whose word is beyond impugn- 
 ment, testify that Hamel wrote well within the 
 mark, that he created nothing, imagined nothing, 
 distorted nothing. It is much to be regretted that a 
 man who wrote of Korea so simply, so charmingly, 
 so truthfully, and from so splendidly inside a point 
 of view, did not write far more about a country of 
 which the fairly well-informed of us until yester- 
 day knew almost literally nothing; and yet a 
 
A Few Words About Hamel. 19 
 
 country a-teem with interest for all who feel 
 keen interest in humanity, in art, and in high 
 civilization, a country which threatens to dis- 
 appear, if not as a country, why then, as a country 
 apart, and whose magnificent personality may 
 soon be lost amid the neutral generality of modern 
 civilization, and the brotherhood (such brother- 
 hood !) of all nations. 
 
 The history of Korea we may have always with 
 us; but Korea — Korea of the lotus ponds and the 
 red-arrow gates — Korea of the big hats and the 
 devil-traps — Korea of the geisha girls and the 
 omnipotent, red-clad king ! — that we may not have 
 so long. Civilization and war are on the march, 
 and if * smooth success be strewed before their 
 gentle feet,' why then, the twentieth century in 
 her youth may see the matrons of Choson walk 
 abroad unveilfed, and night on the streets of Soul 
 turned into day by electric light. 
 
 C 3 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 SOME CURIOUS KOREAN CUSTOMS. 
 
 It is difficult to decide how to attack the study of 
 a people of whom one knows practically nothing, 
 and to whom one cannot have personal access. 
 
 There are two classes of travellers — of people 
 who travel for self-gratification, and not on busi- 
 ness or of necessity. 
 
 The traveller belonging to the first class dili- 
 gently studies a whole library of guide books and 
 other volumes of more or less tabulated, and more 
 or less reliable information. He learns the 
 country to which he intends journeying as he 
 might learn his catechism or his " twelve times 
 twelve." He buys a ticket for the land of his 
 destination. He knows where he is going, and 
 he goes there. He sees everything he expected to 
 see, all he intended to see, which is all he wishes 
 to see, and, on my word of honour, he sees no 
 more ! I know, for I have travelled with him 
 often, oh, so often ! Having worked out his own 
 
Some Curious Korean Customs. 21 
 
 petty educational salvation, he goes home again 
 almost as wise as when he started for abroad : just 
 a little hazed, perhaps (unless he be a globe-trotter 
 of the ultra rigidly-minded, blind-eyed type), for 
 things as they really are often give in so pro- 
 nounced a way the lie to things as we have read 
 of them, that the difference between fact and 
 fiction must shock all but the densest of tourists. 
 The traveller belonging to the second class 
 starts with a not too definite intention of seeing' 
 Venezuela. He arrives there ; unless en route he 
 stumbles upon the borders of some, to him, even 
 more interesting country, and turns aside like the 
 free man he is. He rambles from town to village, 
 and with a mind not so crammed with information 
 that it has room for no more. He learns his new 
 country on the spot. He sees the people. He 
 eats their food. He drinks their wine. He 
 watches them at work, and at play. He learns 
 their language, and some of the thousand secrets 
 which only language can teach. He looks into 
 their eyes, and perchance he gets some passing 
 glimpse into their souls. He goes home. Then 
 he begins to read his guide books. Then he be- 
 gins to study the history and the ancient literature 
 of the people among whom he has been. And 
 then, and not till then, is he fit to study that 
 history : for we can only read a history with full 
 
22 Quaint Korea. 
 
 intelligence if we are familiar with the people of 
 whose ancestors it is written. 
 
 I trust that no one will think that I am decry- 
 ing the study of history in our school-days, or the 
 life-long study of those places we may not visit. 
 I am not that mad. The study of history is in- 
 valuable as a means of mental discipline and of 
 personal culture. But we can only get the utmost 
 of delight, the utmost mental nourishment from 
 history, when we are more or less (and the more 
 the better) en rapport with the race whose past it 
 chronicles. 
 
 ' Let us then go into Korea after the method of 
 the second traveller, the happy-go-lucky, seem- 
 ingly systemless fellow. Let us look at the 
 Koreans of to-day. Let us peep into their houses, 
 watch their amusements, ponder over the most 
 characteristic of their many curious customs, and 
 study their institutions. Then we may spend 
 an hour or more over Korea's history, not as a 
 duty, but a treat. Our appetites will be keen, 
 and we shall relish what would, I am thinking, 
 seem to us but a boredom of incomprehensible 
 dumb dates and endless iteration of meaningless 
 facts, were we to, after the approved style, plunge 
 into it now 1 
 
 The Koreans are, in all probability, the children 
 of Japanese stock, but China has been for cen- 
 
Some Curious Korean Customs. 23 
 
 turies their wet nurse, and their school-mistress. 
 No two Oriental peoples are more essentially 
 unlike than are the Chinese and the Japanese. 
 And the Koreans, a race of Japanese, or kindred 
 blood, living under conditions largely Chinese, 
 and deeply imbued with Chinese ideas, present a 
 picture peculiarly quaint, even in the quaintest 
 part of the world. 
 
 They have Japanese faces, Chinese customs, 
 and a manner of their own. But into their 
 Chinese-like customs some little Japanese habit 
 has crept now and again. And the Koreans have 
 even ventured, once in a while, to invent a custom 
 of their own. 
 
 Every Korean house has a cellar ; not for the 
 storing of wine, but for the storing of heat. The 
 cellar is called a khan — its mouth, through 
 which it is fed, is some distance from the house. 
 On a cold night you will see one or more seem- 
 ingly white-clad figures cramming the khan's 
 mouth, as fast as they can, with twigs, branches, 
 and other combustible food. But once well fed, 
 the furnace burns for hours, and keeps the house 
 warm all night. So the attendants of the fire are 
 not kept out in the Cold over long; and while 
 they are there, their hands are full of work that 
 suffices to keep their blood at a decided tingle. 
 A Korean house heated at sunset keeps warm all 
 
24 Quaint Korea. 
 
 night, because the fire built is invariably huge, 
 because the floors through which the heat per- 
 meates are made of oil-paper, and because the 
 furnace itself is largely a mass of wooden and of 
 stone intestines, pipes, and flues that retain and give 
 out heat. With almost no exceptions the houses 
 in Korea are one-storied. So simple a scheme of 
 domestic architecture enables so simple a scheme 
 of house-heating to be thoroughly efficacious. 
 
 Europeans sleeping for the first time in a Korean 
 house, usually complain that in the middle of the 
 night the heat is too intense, the atmosphere in- 
 supportable, and that toward the chill hours of 
 early morning, when the fire has died, and the 
 pipes at last grown cold, the room is most dis- 
 agreeably cold. But these are minor matters, and 
 far too trivial to disturb Korean slumber. 
 
 Next to the Eskimos, the Koreans are the 
 heartiest eaters in the world. So, naturally enough, 
 they sleep profoundly. They seem to be always 
 eating. And nothing short of a royal edict, or a 
 bursting bomb-shell, will interrupt a Korean feast. 
 I regret to say that the flesh of young dogs is their 
 favourite viand. Japanese beer is their favourite 
 beverage. And for this let me commend them. 
 For never in Milwaukee, never in Vienna, have 
 I drank beer so good as that which is made at 
 the Imperial brewery in Tokio. Like all other 
 
Some Curious Korean Customs. 25 
 
 Orientals, they devour incredible quantities of 
 fish ; herrings for a first choice. The herrings 
 are caught in December, and are not eaten until 
 March. Water-melons are the fruit most plentiful 
 and most perfect in Korea. They are superb. 
 
 Potatoes were in disgrace, under the ban of a 
 royal edict, when Ja Hong Ting took Helen to 
 Korea. They had been introduced into the 
 country shortly before the Q's. themselves. And 
 their general use might have done much to alle- 
 viate the horrible famines which visit Korea with 
 a horrible regularity. But their use and their 
 culture were forbidden. Only in the less disciplined 
 outskirts of the peninsula were they to be had. 
 The mandarin used to send many miles for pota- 
 toes, and then they ate them in safety, only 
 because of the flag that sheltered their house from 
 the too scorching rays of the Korean sun. And it 
 was so at all the legations. 
 
 But about the sign-posts in Korea. They are 
 quaint, if you like ! Each sign-post is shaped 
 like an old-fashioned English coffin, and it is 
 topped by a face ; a very grotesquely painted, a 
 very Korean, a very grinning, but for all that, a 
 very human face. They used to rather startle 
 Helen at first when she came round the corner 
 of a country road, and found them smirking at 
 her in the gruesome moonlight. But she grew 
 
26 Quaint Korea. 
 
 used to them. For they were all alike. They all 
 wore the countenance of Chang Sun, a great 
 Korean soldier. Chang Sun lived one thousand, 
 more or less, years ago. His life was devoted to 
 the opening up of his country to the feet of his 
 countrymen. He intersected the hills of Korea 
 with pathways, and to-day he beams upon every 
 Korean wayfarer from every sign-post. Beneath 
 his beaming face you may (if you are learned 
 enough) read his name. Beneath his name you 
 may read to where the road or roads lead ; how 
 far the next settlement, or the next rest-house is, 
 and one or two other items that are presumably 
 of general interest to the Korean travelling 
 public. 
 
 There are no inns nor hotels in Korea. But 
 the rest-houses are neither few nor far between. 
 A Korean rest-house is a species of dak bungalow. 
 It does not fill our jaded European ideas of 
 luxury. But it answers the purpose of the Korean 
 traveller fairly well. He can cook there; he 
 can eat there ; he can sleep there ; he can buy 
 Japanese beer there. The average Korean is a 
 sensible fellow, and wants nothing more. No, I 
 am wrong ; he wants two things more : he wants 
 to compose poetry, and to paint pictures. The 
 Koreans are a nation of poets, and of painters. 
 Every fairly educated Korean writes poems and 
 
Some Curious Korean Customs, 27 
 
 paints pictures. But there is nothing to prevent 
 him from doing either, or both, inside or outside 
 the Korean rest-house. The majority of well-to- 
 do Koreans are highly educated, as Korean 
 education goes ; and in many ways it goes very 
 far indeed. 
 
 In Korea, as in China, a man's social position 
 depends upon the prestige he can establish for 
 himself at competitive examinations. In Korea, 
 as in every other normal quarter of the globe, a 
 woman's social position depends upon the social 
 position of her husband. 
 
 The results of the' Korean competitive examina- 
 tions are said to be bribable and corruptible. 
 Very possibly. Most human institutions are 
 fallible. Even Achilles, you know, had a heel. 
 But certainly Korea has been for centuries and 
 centuries a country where scholarship took pre- 
 cedence of everything but kingship ; a country 
 where education was esteemed above common- 
 sense. 
 
 All the Korean animals are very strong, but 
 very strange. The peninsula abounds in tigers, 
 bears, cows, horses, swine, deer, dogs, cats, wild 
 boars, alligators, crocodiles, snakes, swans, geese, 
 eagles, pheasants, lapwings, storks, herons, 
 falcons, ducks, pigeons, kites, magpies, wood- 
 cocks, and larks. Hens are plentiful, and the 
 
28 Quaint Korea. 
 
 eggs are delicious. But the natives do not make 
 half the use one would expect of all this feathered 
 plenty. 
 
 Goats may be reared by no one but the king, 
 and are exclusively used for religious sacrificial 
 purposes. 
 
 The Koreans are good to their children, and to 
 all animals. Snakes and serpents are, perhaps, 
 treated by them with more veneration and tender- 
 ness than any other form of animal life. No 
 Korean ever kills a snake. He feeds it, and does 
 everything else he can to conduce to its comfort. 
 The poorest and hungriest Korean will share his 
 evening meal with the reptiles that sneak and 
 crawl about the rocks that bound his garden. 
 
 Ancestral fire is a very important thing in 
 Korea. In every Korean house burns a perpetual 
 fire, which is sacred to the dead ancestors of the 
 household. To tend that fire, to see that it never 
 runs the least risk of going out, is the first, the 
 most important duty of every Korean housewife. 
 In Korea, as in China, ancestor-worship is the 
 real religion. Confucianism is the avowed re- 
 ligion of the country. But, like the Chinese, the 
 Koreans hold dogmatic religions in considerable, 
 good-natured contenipt. 
 
 Fortune-tellers and astrologers are as many 
 and as prosperous in Korea as in China. 
 
Some Curious Korean Customs. 29 
 
 Like the Japanese, the Koreans have found a 
 special and profitable vocation for their blind. 
 In Japan, the needy blind invariably practise 
 shampooing. In Korea, the blind exorcise devils, 
 and, in analogous ways, make themselves 
 generally useful. Their dealings vi^ith evil spirits 
 are summary and thorough. The gifted blind 
 man frightens the devil to death by means of 
 noise more diabolical than any Satan ever heard, 
 or catches the devil in a bottle, and carries it in 
 triumph to a place of safety, where devils cease 
 from troubling, and- afflicted Koreans are at 
 rest. 
 
 The laws of Korea are explicit concerning high 
 treason. They smite it hip and thigh. They 
 exterminate it root and branch. If a Korean is 
 found guilty of high treason he dies, and his 
 entire family dies with him. In this custom the 
 Koreans are again Chinese and not altogether un- 
 Japanese. 
 
 The constitution of the Korean Home OfSce is 
 based upon the Japanese system. The Foreign 
 Office is modelled on the Chinese Foreign Office. 
 At the head of the War Office is the Pan So, or 
 decisive signature, an official of very great power. 
 Under him are several lesser officials called 
 Cham Pan, or help to decide. Under these are 
 men called Cham Wi, or help to discuss, and 
 
30 Quaint Korea. 
 
 again under these are a number of secretaries. 
 But alas! in the present Oriental imbroglio 
 (although Korea is nomiijially the causa belli), the 
 Korean War Department is playing a part so 
 insignificant, that we do not even hear of it. 
 
 The Korean army, as estimated by the Korean 
 War Office, represents a goodly number of men, 
 and European writers of note have put down the 
 militant force of the country at a million and more. 
 But even, numerically speaking, this statement 
 should be taken with a whole cellar of salt, and 
 martially speaking, exaggeration could not de- 
 cently go farther. The Korean army is but the 
 shadow of an army, the harmless phantom of a 
 force that once drove the invading Japanese armies 
 from the shores of Choson, and made the warriors 
 of an American iron-clad pay dearly for their in- 
 trusion. 
 
 But if the prowess of the Korean soldiery is 
 gone, its picturesqueness remains, and in its 
 very inefficiency it speaks to us of the days— now 
 probably gone for ever — ^when weapons at which 
 we smile to-day were formidable indeed, the days 
 when warfare which would excite the scorn of our 
 school-boys was warfare grim and earnest. And 
 as we watch that martial mockery — ^the army of 
 Korea— we may realize that the yesterday of 
 Choson was midway between the copiously 
 
Some Curious Korean Customs. 31 
 
 equipped to-day of our modern, European civiliza- 
 tion, and that primeval time when there virere no 
 implements, the days when women used thorns 
 for needles, and men used thorns for fish-hooks. 
 
 Korea deals with crime as rigorously as China 
 does, but her methods of punishment — especially 
 the most cruel ones — have been borrowed from 
 Japan, or borrowed by Japan from Korea. In 
 China, Japan, and Korea we constantly find the 
 same ideas, the same methods of life, with only 
 the slightest local differentiations, but more often 
 than not it is impossible for the most erudite 
 scholar — not to mention the casual European 
 wayfarer — ^to determine in which of the three 
 countries the common idea or custom was born. 
 
 Some of the customary Korean punishments 
 would make, I think, too painful reading : this, I 
 am sure, they would make too painful writing. I 
 must refer the reader who is curious to Hamel ; 
 for Hamel details them with considerable gusto, 
 even the most horrible : the punishment that used 
 to be meted out to Korean murderers. Happily, 
 even in Korea, time cures some ills, and of later 
 years, particularly under the rule of the present 
 king, a good, wise, and gentle man, the Korean 
 criminal code, if it has not assimilated some frac- 
 tion of that quality which " is an attribute to God 
 Himself," has at least ceased to be the thing of 
 
33 Quaint Korea. 
 
 horrid cruelty it was ; and if the laws of Choson 
 are more pitiless than the laws of Draco, still they 
 disgrace the humanity of Korea far less than they 
 did two thousand years ago. I know of no other 
 respect in which Korea has changed more. 
 
 Here are two examples of Korean law — two 
 laws that for centuries were so rigidly carried 
 out] that their enforcement became national cus- 
 toms. 
 
 " If a woman murder her husband she is to be 
 taken to a highway on which many people pass, 
 and she shall be buried up to her shoulders. 
 Beside her an axe shall be laid, and with that 
 axe all who pass by her, unless they be noble, must 
 strike her on the head, and this none, save the 
 noble, must fail to do, until she be dead." 
 
 There are no bankruptcy courts in Korea. A 
 Korean who once contracts a debt can never 
 escape from it. Here is the law : — 
 
 " One who owes money, and at the promised 
 time fails to pay it, whether the debt be to his 
 Majesty the King, or to another person or other 
 persons, shall be beaten two or three times a 
 month on the shin, and this punishment shall be 
 continued until the debt is discharged. If a man 
 die in debt, his relations must pay that debt, or 
 be beaten two or three times a month on the 
 shin." 
 
Some Curious Korean Customs. 33 
 
 This old law, slightly modified, still holds in 
 Korea, I believe. Of course it works both ways. 
 It makes it very hard for the debtor to escape 
 payment ; it makes it almost impossible for 
 the creditor to lose any part of his substance. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 SOUL FROM THE CITY WALL. 
 
 Seen from the wall (a most wonderful wall which 
 describes a circuit of 9975 paces), Soul looks like 
 a bed of thriving mushrooms, mushrooms planted 
 between the surrounding high hills, but grown in 
 many places up on to those hills. Yes ; they look 
 very much like mushrooms, those low, one-storied 
 houses, with their sloping, Chinese-like roofs, 
 some tiled, some turfed, and all neutral tinted. 
 The houses of Soul are as alike as mushrooms are, 
 and as thickly planted. 
 
 The wall defines the city with a strange out- 
 line. Now it dips into the tiny valley, now it 
 pulls itself up on to the top of some high hill. 
 
 Korea is a most distressingly hilly country. If 
 you elect to go for a decent stroll, it is a matter 
 of climbing a hill, and when you reach the 
 summit of the hill it is a matter of tumbling down 
 the other side, to scramble up another hill, and 
 your path will be just such a succession of ups 
 
Soul from the City Wall. 35 
 
 and downs, even though you go north until you 
 reach the "Ever White Mountain," and, in 
 reaching it, reach the "River of the Duck's 
 Green," which, flowing towards the south, divides 
 Korea from China; reach the Tu Man Kang 
 which, flowing towards the north-east, divides 
 Korea from the territory of the Tsar. Up and 
 down it will be, even though you push east until 
 you reach the purple " Sea of Japan." Still up 
 and down you will find it, although you go as far 
 south, or as far west, as Korea goes, and find 
 yourself on the shores of China's " Yellow Sea." 
 Korea looks like a stage storm-at-sea. Its hills 
 are so many that they lose their grandeur, as 
 individuality is lost in multitude. 
 
 But we must get back on to the wall, the wall 
 of Soul. 
 
 The wall, which is purely Chinese in character, 
 is punctuated by eight gates. All of them have 
 significant names. Several of them are strictly re- 
 served for very special purposes. The south gate 
 is called " The Gate of Everlasting Ceremony." 
 The west gate is " The Gate of Amiability." The 
 eastgateis "The Gate of Elevated Humanity." The 
 south-west gate is " The Gate of the Criminals." 
 The majority of Korean criminals, who are con- 
 demned to death, are beheaded. But this may 
 not be within the city walls. The procession of 
 D 2 
 
36 Quaint Korea. 
 
 the man about to die passes through the 
 " Criminals' Gate." And that gate is never 
 opened save on the occasions of such gruesome 
 functions. The south-east gate is " The Gate of 
 the Dead." No corpse is interred within the city 
 walls. And no corpse, save only the corpse of a 
 king, may pass through any other gate than the 
 " Gate of the Dead." Any corpse (but the 
 monarch's) would deiile the gates through which 
 Soul's humanity is wont to ebb and flow. The 
 " Gate of the Dead " has another name. It is 
 often called " The Gate of Drainage," for by its side 
 the River Hanyang flows out to the Yellow Sea. 
 The northern gate stands high upon the summit 
 of a peculiarly shaped hill, which the French 
 missionaries aptly named " Cock's Comb." This 
 gate is never opened save to facilitate the flight of 
 a Korean king. 
 
 The gates differ greatly in size, which adds to 
 the unusual picturesqueness of the wall. 
 
 The Cock's Comb, up to whose highest ridge 
 the wall of Soul runs, is at once the most distinct 
 and the most interesting bit of Soul's background. 
 It is, among the mountains of the world, so 
 uniquely shaped that no one who has ever seen it 
 can ever forget it. And it is the altar of the most 
 sacred of Korea's national ceremonies. 
 
 Although a large portion of this hill is enclosed 
 
Soul from the City Wall. 37 
 
 within Soul's wall, Soul itself, climbing city though 
 it is, has not climbed far up the hill. The summit 
 of the Cock's Comb is an uninhabited, high suburb 
 of Soul. 
 
 When the night has well fallen, when the 
 " white " clad masses in Soul's market-place can 
 no longer see the outlines of the hill, four great 
 hghts break out upon that hill's crest. To all in 
 Soul those lights cry out, " All's well. In all 
 Korea, all's well." Each light represents two of 
 the eight provinces into which Korea is divided. 
 If in any Korean province or county there is war, 
 or threatening of war, a supplementary light burns 
 near the light that indicates that province. If 
 the war-light is placed on the left, war or invasion 
 threatens one province, if the war light is placed 
 on the right, war or worse threatens another 
 province. 
 
 The bonfire signal service of the Korean War 
 Office is complicated and elaborated. One extra 
 fire means that an enemy has been sighted off 
 some part of the sandy Korean coast. Two lights 
 mean that the enemy have landed ; three mean 
 the enemy are moving inland ; four mean they are 
 pushing toward the capital ; five — ! Well, when 
 five such fires flare up, the citizens of Soul can 
 only pray — or run and drown themselves in the 
 rapid rushing river that leaves Soul as the con- 
 
38 Quaint Korea. 
 
 demned leave it — because those five bonfires mean 
 that the enemy draw near the city's gate. 
 
 Telegraphy — as Edison knows it — is unknown in 
 Korea. But the Koreans have a weird but vivid 
 telegraphy of their own. 
 
 At short intervals upon their rocky, sandy coast 
 huge cranes are built. Each crane is tended by 
 a trusted official of the Korean king. When dusk 
 begins to fall, the attendant of the crane lights in 
 it a great bonfire, if all is well. That bonfire's 
 light is seen by the attendant of a fire some miles 
 more inland — some miles nearer Soul — and so 
 from every pace of Korea's boundary, the faithful 
 servants of Korea's king flash to Korea's capital 
 the message, " All is well." A hundred lines of 
 message-light meet upon that queer hill, the 
 " Cock's Comb " of Soul. 
 
 Many a night of late, unless the wires have lied 
 to us, there must have been a great confusion 
 among those signal fires, and vast confusion in 
 poor frightened Soul. 
 
 A certain light will mean " China has pounced 
 upon us." Another light will mean " Japan has 
 stabbed us." And a score of other lights will 
 mean a score of dire facts which only the heads 
 of the Korean War Department could translate 
 for us, if they would. 
 
 Curfew shall not ring to-night. "Ah! how 
 
Soul from the City Wall. 39 
 
 often," said Helen, when this Chino-Japanese 
 war was first declared, " I have seen those four 
 placid bonfires tell the gentle Koreans that no 
 Lion of England nor of India had roared, that no 
 Eagle of Russia (not to needlessly mention Austria 
 or America) had swooped, no dragon of China or 
 Japan had belched destroying fire ! To-night, if 
 those fires burn, they flash a message of dire dis- 
 tress to Soul's shrinking, blue-robed men, and 
 hidden, unseen women, unless happily they are 
 unconscious what an excuse for war their isolated 
 peninsula has become." 
 
 Poor Korea ! what has she done ? Nothing 
 unwomanly. But womanlike she has been un- 
 fortunately situated. 
 
 China has just suffered a plague. 
 
 Japan has just suffered an earthquake. For 
 very many years China and Japan have thought 
 it expedient to soothe national heart-ache (result- 
 ant upon national disaster) with the potent 
 rtustard plaster of war. 
 
 The Chinese hate the Japanese. The Japanese 
 hate the Chinese. The Koreans hate the 
 Japanese and the Chinese, and are hated by both. 
 An Oriental imbroglio is not hard of conception. 
 
 The worst of it is that Korea seems doomed. 
 And Korea, with all her faults, is one of the few 
 remaining widows of the dead (but not childless) 
 
40 Quaint Korea. 
 
 old world. And she, good purdah-woman that 
 she is, is lying down with considerable wifely 
 dignity upon the funeral pile, which civilization 
 has lit to cremate the false, old notions of the 
 past. 
 
 One who has lived in Korea can but think it 
 rather a pity that Korea should cease to be, or be 
 too much remodelled, whoever's in the wrong — 
 Japan or China. 
 
 Nature has found Korea so nearly perfect, that 
 it seems almost profane for man (or those com- 
 binations of men called nations) to find fault with 
 her. In Korea there are snows that never melt. 
 In Korea there are flowers that never cease to 
 bloom. 
 
 The land of the morning calm ! Poor little 
 peninsula (only twice and a half the size of Scot- 
 land), the soft, rosy Oriental haze is going to 
 be ripped off of you, and in the cold, clear, 
 brilliant light of Westernized day you are going 
 to fade away into nothing ! But before you quite 
 fade away let us have a peep at you. You are 
 superior in many ways to our land. For one 
 thing, you begin your year more sensibly. You 
 ring the new year in with the birth of the year's 
 first flowers. 
 
 The Korean new year is a month later than ours. 
 The snow is still upon the ground there in 
 
Soul from the City Wall. 41 
 
 February. But even so, the fruitless, plum-trees 
 open their myriad buds, and long before the cold 
 snow has melted from their feet, their heads are 
 covered with a warm, tinted, perfumed snow of 
 bloom. A few weeks later, and the cherry trees 
 are white with a magnificence of blossom that no- 
 where in this world cherry-trees can excel, not 
 even in Japan. Before the cherry blossoms fall 
 the wisteria breaks into ten thousand clusters 
 of purple loveliness. Then the peonies flaunt in 
 every fertile and half fertile spot, and mock, like 
 the impudents they are, the splendour of the sun. 
 But- their proud heads fall ere long, and all Korea 
 is lovely with the iris. 
 
 Autumn is the most delightful of the Korean 
 seasons. It is matchless. Not even on the banks 
 of the Hudson does summer die so splendid a 
 death as she dies in Korea. The Korean summer, 
 superb and perfumed as she is, is very like that 
 false Cawdor of whom Malcolm said to Duncan : 
 
 " Nothing in his life 
 Became him like the leaving it." 
 
 Winter in Korea is unqualifiedly cold. The 
 hills are white with snow, and the rivers are grey 
 with ice. The people huddle into their over- 
 heated houses. And I believe that the entire 
 nation does not own a pair of skates. The only 
 sleds, or sleighs, belong to the fishermen who 
 
42 Quaint Korea. 
 
 crack through the ice to catch their finny prey. 
 The fisherman sits upon the sled as he plies his 
 noiseless industry, and when his day's work is 
 done he piles his scaly plunder upon the sled, and 
 so drags it to the market-place. 
 
 But it was summer when Helen first stood upon 
 the wall of Soul. A parapet crenulates the outer 
 edge of that old wall. It is broken with loop- 
 holes, and notched with embrasures. And every 
 few yards its broken outline is broken again by 
 the overhanging branches of flower-heavy trees, 
 or by the bright blossoms of some vine that has 
 found root in one of the old wall's mossy 
 niches. 
 
 And within this picturesque wall huddles super- 
 latively picturesque Soul. 
 
 The royal palaces are noticeable for their 
 gardens and their size. Big as they are, and they 
 are very big, they are none too big for the vast 
 harem that forms a most important part of their 
 household. 
 
 Far from the houses of the king stands " The 
 South set Apart Palace." The resident Chinese 
 Commissioner lived there. In front of this build- 
 ing stands one of Soul's two remarkable " Red 
 Arrow Gates." Near is the United States lega- 
 tion. 
 
 One of the most interesting features of Soul is 
 
Soul from the City Wall. 43 
 
 its little Japanese colony. The following descrip- 
 tion of it was written a few years ago by a talented 
 American, who was for some months the guest of 
 the king of Korea :— 
 
 " With its back up against the South Mountain 
 stands the building of the Japanese legation. From 
 a flagstaff above it floats the Japanese ensign, the 
 red ball on the white field. Here lives the little 
 Japanese colony, a true bit of transplanted Japan, 
 all alive in an alien land. Some of the legation 
 have with them their wives, and many children 
 play about the courtyard. 
 
 " It has its own force of soldiers, kept constantly 
 recruited from home ; its doctors, its policeman — 
 all it can need to be sufficient to itself. The 
 minister is as much a governor as a represen- 
 tative at a foreign court. Day and night the 
 soldiers stand before the gateway of the legation 
 building and change guard as if it were a camp ; 
 and whenever the minister goes abroad a certain 
 number of them accompany him as escort. The 
 soldiers are needed. Twice the legation has had 
 to fight its way from Soul to the sea." 
 
 In Korea when one dynasty gives way to an- 
 other (and that is a fairly frequent occurrence) the 
 newly-throned dynasty abandons the capital of 
 the old dynasty and establishes for itself, and its 
 heirs for ever, a new capital. So was Soul estab- 
 
44 Quaint Korea. 
 
 lished five hundred years ago by the first crowned 
 ancestor of Korea's present king. 
 
 The city wall was thrown about a very con- 
 siderable area. And according to rigid Korean 
 custom, that wall must for ever mark the city's 
 limits. But the actual city, the city of the people, 
 has surged far beyond that wall. 
 
 One class of Soul's inhabitants — a most impor- 
 tant class — lives almost in its entirety outside the 
 city's gates. The fishermen of Soul live in the 
 river suburbs. There they ply their trade winter 
 and summer ; and, I might almost add, day and 
 night. They live upon the banks of the river from 
 which they draw their livelihood. Their quaint 
 low houses fringe the edge of the land, and their 
 boats fringe the edge of the water. 
 
 Fish and rice are the staple foods of the 
 Koreans, save in the north of the peninsula, where 
 rice will not grow. There fish and millet are the 
 general food. Fish is the great staple through- 
 out the country. And no class of men, perhaps, 
 are so important to Soul's general welfare as 
 the fishermen who .live just beyond the walls, 
 and daily come into her market-places to sell 
 their slippery spoil. Meat is scarcely eaten in 
 Korea. Korea is a land of fearful famines. 
 The rice fails. The millet fails. Everything 
 fails except the fish. Yes ; I think that I 
 
Soul from the City Wall. 45 
 
 may unqualifiedly say, that to Korea no class is 
 so important as the fishermen — to the very life of 
 the Koreans no class so necessary, so indispen- 
 sable. 
 
 The women of position are carried through the 
 streets in the closest of closed palanquins. A 
 woman of the middle class, if obliged to walk 
 abroad, invariably wraps an ordinary dress about 
 her head and shoulders. And very far from 
 seductive does she look. The long loose sleeves 
 of the dress hang from her head like great, un- 
 gainly, shapeless ears. And the folds of the un- 
 graceful garment are held tightly in front of her 
 face by one determined hand — a hand that never 
 does, and for nothing in the world would, relax its 
 hold. The women of the very poorest class, the 
 hewers of wood and drawers of water, are indeed 
 compelled to, with uncovered heads and unveiled 
 faces, go about the streets. But they move 
 rapidly. They look neither to the right nor to 
 the left. And they slink by men with downcast 
 eyes. And men never look at them. Indeed a 
 Korean gentleman will not, by one single glance, 
 betray that he is aware of the presence in public 
 of any woman ; unless indeed she belong to the 
 geisha, or " accomplished class." The geisha 
 girls go about the streets frankly, and un- 
 hiddenly enough. But they are a class aside. 
 
46 Quaint Korea. 
 
 In Korean wifehood, in Korean motherhood, they 
 have no part. 
 
 The Koreans take a great deal of medicine 
 — those that can afford, it — and it never seems to 
 do them any harm. For the rich, pills of incre- 
 dible size are richly gilded and placed in elaborate 
 boxes. The poor take smaller pills ungilded, and 
 omit the boxes altogether. Very many Koreans take 
 medicine at regular intervals without the slightest 
 reference to their then state of health. These 
 systematic persons do not take medicine when 
 they are ill, unless the illness has the good taste 
 to fall upon their duly appointed medicine-day. 
 This is how an old Korean explained to Helen the 
 philosophy of the medicine-regularly-taken theory. 
 " On every seventh day you rest whether you are 
 tired or not. And on all the other days you work, 
 whether you are tired or not. So do we take our 
 medicine, once in so many weeks, because it is 
 well to observe system : to be regular." The old 
 man's eye twinkled finely as he spoke, as who 
 should say, " What are you answered now ? " 
 And Helen rather felt that he had her on the hip. 
 
 Mr. Percival Lowell says : " In Korea, medi- 
 cine is an heirloom from hoary antiquity. An 
 apothecary's shop there needs not to adorn itself 
 with external and irrelevant charms, like the 
 beautiful purple jar that so deceived poor little 
 
Soul from the City Wall. 47 
 
 Rosamond. Upon eminent respectability alone 
 it bases its claim to custom ; and its traditions 
 are certainly convincing. Painted upon suitable 
 spots along the front of the building runs the 
 legend, " Sin Nong Yu Op" — that is, " the pro- 
 fession left behind by Sin Nong." This eminent 
 person was a " spiritual agriculturist," the dis- 
 coverer of both agriculture and medicine ; and the 
 pills sold in the shops to-day are supposed to 
 be the counterparts of those invented by him. 
 Worthily to render the legend, we ought to trans- 
 late it, " Jones, successor to iEsculapius." 
 
 There are two distinct Koreas, distinct though 
 having much in common : the Korea of the upper 
 classes, and the Korea of the populace. We have 
 of late been hearing quite a good deal about the 
 history of Korea, about the topography of Korea, 
 about the King of Korea, and about the Korea of 
 the upper classes. But about the lower classes 
 we have heard comparatively little. The 
 literature at our disposal concerning Korea is 
 more than meagre. Very little of this literature 
 deals with the people — the common people of 
 Korea. 
 
 The streets of Soul — the streets upon whose 
 edges the people of Soul live, the streets through 
 which the people of Soul surge — are very wide. 
 Most of them have, however, the appearance of 
 
48 Quaint Korea. 
 
 being very narrow. Wide streets seem to the 
 Korean mind unnecessary luxuries. The people 
 of Soul utilize the streets of their city by erecting 
 temporary booths outside their houses', and beyond 
 the booths they spread their trays and mats of 
 merchandise. Inch by inch the street disappears 
 beneath the extemporized shops of the people, 
 until at last just enough room is left for the in- 
 terminable procession pf humanity to squeeze 
 through. This encroachment is taken good- 
 naturedly enough by everyone. The people 
 positively pick their slow way between trays of 
 nuts and mats of grain, booths of hats and sleds 
 of fish. When the king wishes to take a pro- 
 menade or ride through any of the streets of 
 Soul, all the booths are taken from those streets, 
 and with the trays and mats are tucked out of 
 sight. The streets are swept and garnished. 
 The next day, or, if it is not too late, when his 
 Majesty has returned to his palace, the booths are 
 re-erected, the mats and trays are re-arranged, 
 and the every-day life of Soul goes placidly on 
 until the sovereign elects to take another airing. 
 
 It is a common blunder to speak of the people 
 of Soul as wearing white garments; a blunder, 
 or rather a laziness to which I must plead guilty. 
 Korean garments are invariably of a peculiar, 
 delicate blue, unless the wearer be a person of 
 
Soul from the City Wall. 49 
 
 much importance : then, indeed, may his garments 
 brighten into deeper blue, flush into soft and lovely 
 pink, or, if they chance to be the vestments of 
 the King, blush into proudest scarlet. Seen from 
 a distance an ordinary Korean appears to be 
 clad in white, the blue of his dress is so pale ; and 
 so, many careless writers — I among them — have 
 made the mistake of saying that white is the hue 
 of the dress of the Korean populace. 
 
 The Koreans have a passion for rugged scenery 
 — ^but then, indeed, they have a passion for every 
 manner of scenery. They call the rocks the 
 earth's bones. They call the soil the earth's 
 flesh. The flowers and the trees they call her 
 hair. There is no more rugged bit of scenery 
 near Soul than the Valley of Clothes ; and in it 
 stands a picturesque little temple, which was built, 
 so the Koreans say, to commemorate a battle, 
 that they once won. It is a very beautiful 
 specimen of Korean architecture. Indeed, I 
 know no lovelier example of what the architecture 
 of older Korea has become under the influence 
 of Chinese thought and Chinese art. 
 
 Through the Valley of Clothes runs a long, 
 clear stream, on whose banks are innumerable 
 large, smooth-topped rocks. Altogether it is an 
 admirable place for Oriental washing. In the 
 winter every Korean garment is ripped into all its 
 
50 Quaint Korea. 
 
 component parts before it is washed. In summer 
 the garments are washed each in its entirety. 
 This ripping up of the clothes before washing 
 them is one of the comparatively few customs 
 which the Koreans have borrowed from the 
 Japanese. In Japan, however, all clothes about to 
 be washed are taken to pieces, whether it be 
 winter or summer. 
 
 Nothing could well be simpler than the modus 
 operandi of the Korean washermen and washer- 
 women. The clothes are well soaked in the 
 stream. Then they are well beaten with smooth, 
 heavy, edgeless sticks. Then they are spread upon 
 the ground or on the rocks, as much in the sun as 
 possible, and left to dry indefinitely. No one ever 
 steals them ! Think of it ! And even the gentle 
 winds of the Asiatic heavens scorn to blow them 
 away. If there seems the slightest chance of such 
 a catastrophe, a few smooth pebbles are laid upon 
 the garments' edges. 
 
 The qualities which the upper classes of Korea 
 have most in common are — love of art and litera- 
 ture, reverence for law, kindness of disposition, and 
 love of nature. The point upon which they most 
 differ is religion. Korea is really a country with- 
 out religion. The upper classes are intellectual 
 to a degree, but their intellectuality is invariably 
 of the agnostic order. Rationalism and agnosticism 
 
Soul from the City Wall. 51 
 
 are the only recognized religions in upper Korean 
 circles. 
 
 The Korean popul ace also profess agnosticism, 
 but do not practise it ; at least they do not prac- 
 tise rationalism ; for if they believe in no gods, 
 most of them believe in countless devils. 
 
 The sacred devil-trees are supposed to be (after 
 the blind) most efficacious in ridding the land 
 of the spirits of evil. A writer — one of the best 
 writers on Korea — thus describes a devil-tree upon 
 which he came one bleak autumn day: — "An 
 ancient tree, around whose base lies piled a heap of 
 stones. The tree is sacred ; superstition has pre- 
 served it, where most of its fellows have gone to 
 feed the subterranean ovens. It is not usually 
 very large, nor does it look extremely venerable, 
 so that it is at least open to suspicion that its 
 sanctity is an honour which is passed along from 
 oak to acorn or from pine to seed : however, it 
 is usually a fair specimen of a tree, and, where there 
 are few others to vie with it, comes out finely by 
 comparison : otherwise there is nothing distinc- 
 tive about the tree, except that it exists, — that it 
 is not cut down and borne off to the city on the 
 back of some bull, there to vanish in the smoke. 
 On its branches hang, commonly, a few old rags, 
 evidently once of brilliantly-coloured cloth ; they 
 look to be shreds of the garments of such unwary 
 E 3 
 
52 Quaint Korea. 
 
 travellers as approached too close ; but a nearer 
 inspection shows them to be tied on designedly. 
 The heap of small stones piled around the base of 
 the tree gives one the impression at first that the 
 road is about to undergo repairs, which it sadly 
 needs, and that the stones have been collected for 
 the purpose. This, however, is a fallacy : no 
 Korean road ever is repaired. 
 
 The spot is called Son Wang Don, or " The 
 Home of the King of the Fairies," The stones 
 help to form what was once a fairy temple, now a 
 devil-jail ; and the strips of cloth are pieces of 
 garments from those who believed themselves 
 possessed of devils, or feared lest they might be- 
 come so. A man caught by an evil spirit exiles s- 
 part of his clothing to the branches of one of these 
 trees, so as to delude the demon into attaching 
 there." 
 
 We have tried to peep at Soul — the Soul of the 
 people. But not all Soul is plebeian. It has a 
 most decided aristocracy, both architectural and 
 human. 
 
 Soul has no temples. None may be built with- 
 in her walls. Of all civilized countries, Korea is 
 the one country without a religion. Religion or 
 its analogous superstitions are there, of course ; 
 but that religion is in Korea, not part of Korea. 
 In Korea, religion is under a ban of official dis- 
 
Soul from the City Wall. 53 
 
 countenance, or national discredence. Such 
 temples as do exist in Korea dwell (like archi-, 
 tectural lepers) without the city's walls. But 
 Soul has her official buildings, and the dwellings 
 of her rich. Above all, she has her palaces. 
 
 But hold ! there is one temple within the walls 
 of Soul ; but it is there on sufferance, there against 
 the law. And it is just inside the walls. It is on 
 a high, lonely mountain place, and far remote 
 from the actual city — the throbbing, breathing, 
 human city. 
 
 And Soul has also what was once a temple. 
 It is as interesting as anything in Soul. In the 
 first place it is the only pagoda in Soul — almost, 
 if not quite, the only pagoda in Korea. In the 
 second place, it is extremely beautiful. In the 
 third place, it, more than any building I know, 
 accents the decay of all things human, even of 
 (those perhaps greatest of all human things) great 
 thought-systems. 
 
 Yesterday — the yesterday of five hundred years 
 ago — this. Soul's one pagoda, was a Buddhist 
 temple. To-day it is a neglected, unconsidered, 
 tolerated, rather than admired, ornament, in a 
 middle-class Korean's back yard. 
 
 The pagoda of Soul owes its solitary, but not 
 honoured, old age to the fact that unlike most 
 pagodas of its period and kind, it' was built of 
 
54 Quaint Korea. 
 
 stone. It has eight stories (representative of eight 
 stages or degrees of the Buddhist heaven) ; but it 
 is entirely composed of two pieces of stone. In 
 idea it is Chinese ; but its form is a modifica- 
 tion or a local adaptation of its idea ; and it is 
 peculiarly rich in most exquisite Korean carvings. 
 After the pagoda — perhaps before the pagoda — 
 there are in Soul three buildings, more than 
 any others indicative of the diiference between 
 Soul the old and conservative, and Soul the new 
 and iconoclastic — I mean the Foreign Office, the 
 War Office, and the Home Office. They are all 
 of recent date, all concessions to a cosmopoli- 
 tanism, with which Korea, the old, had no sym- 
 pathy, and into which (though ever so little) 
 Korea, the new, has been forced by that most 
 brutal of all forces — the force of circumstances — 
 forced by the irresistible might of the gigantic 
 disproportion, to her own, of alien numbers. A 
 few years ago Korea had never had a Foreign 
 Office, because Korea had never deigned to be 
 cognizant of the existence of any foreign power. 
 True she has, for many years, paid a lazy tribute 
 to China, and plied a lazier trade with Japan ; 
 but until a short time ago she has been essenti- 
 ally, and indeed, a hermit nation. Yes, it was 
 verily the land of the morning calm. No reveil 
 broke its early morning plumber ; no drum woke 
 
Soul from the City Wall. 55 
 
 its night to alarm. It was a heaven of earthly 
 peace, a heaven in which there was neither fight- 
 ing nor dying in battle. 
 
 But that is changed. So far as outside turmoil 
 can ripple the placid waters, upon which the lotus- 
 flower blooms and bends, in a luxury of perfumed 
 sleep, as it does nowhere else — the lakes and 
 ponds of Korea ! 
 
 Korea admitted, gracefully, if enforcedly, 
 foreigners to her shores — admitted them for 
 purposes of commerce and of peace. Alas, she 
 has had to recognize them as ambassadors of 
 war, introducers of bloodshed. 
 
 Korea's army has for many years been very 
 purely artistic, ornamentally belligerent — nothing 
 more. It has been found impossible to evolve it 
 into anything more brutal, nineteenth-centuryish, 
 effective, and up-to-date. 
 
 Korea's War Office is an unhappy, if seemingly 
 necessary, farce. It has existed for centuries. 
 But only the conjunction, or rather the juxta- 
 position, of Korea with other nations has made it 
 ridiculous. 
 
 Korea's Home Office sprang up — as it must 
 have done in any self-respecting soil — as soon as 
 a Foreign Office became a regrettable fait 
 accompli. Until Korea had a Foreign Office, 
 Korea's War Office was by no means the sad 
 
56 Quaint Korea. 
 
 burlesque that it is now. Until Korea had a 
 Foreign Office, she had not the filmiest need of a 
 Home Office. Korea was all in all to Korea. 
 Every effort of her being was undivertedly 
 directed to the welfare of herself and her own. 
 She had no need of, no excuse for, a Home 
 Office, because all was home, everything for home. 
 But when she was physically forced to admit 
 the existence of other peoples, she was morally 
 forced to insistently emphasize the existence of 
 her own people. 
 
 Soul is rich in palaces ; very rich in their quality, 
 if not in their quantity. Each palace is, like every 
 considerable Korean dwelling, a collection of 
 houses. And every Korean palace — like every 
 Korean dwelling of any distinction — is more 
 remarkable, more admirable because of its sur- 
 roundings — its garden — than because of itself. 
 
 There are four nations pre-eminent for land- 
 scape gardening — pre-eminent in this order: — 
 the Japanese, the Koreans, the Chinese, the 
 Italians. 
 
 Korea is, by her climate, held behind Japan in 
 landscape gardening. Most of the flowers that 
 in Japan bloom all the year round, can in Kbrea 
 only bloom for a few months. 
 
 But in one phase of landscape gardening — (the 
 art of bringing Nature into a garden, and there 
 
Soul from the City Wall. 57 
 
 ornamenting her, without insulting her)— the 
 Koreans quite equal the Japanese. 
 
 Water, in the form of miniature lakes, is the 
 crown — ^the centre of every far-eastern garden. 
 Nowhere in the world are artificial lakes or ponds 
 so perfected, so ablush with bloom, so aquiver 
 with perfume, as they are in Korea. Sometimes 
 they dot great green swards. Sometimes they 
 softly ripple against the very foundations of a 
 palace ; oftenest they are the one blessed detail 
 of a middle-class man's dwelling. But they are 
 almost always emerald with lotus-leaves, and in 
 season, brilliant with the bloom, and fragrant 
 with the breath of the lotus-flowers. Marble 
 bridges span them, if they are in the king's 
 gardens ; a unique island centres them wherever 
 they are — a wee island that is shaded by its one 
 drooping tree. There the master of the garden 
 spends the long summer days, basking in the 
 surrounding beauty, smoking, drinking tea, and 
 fishing. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Korea's king. 
 
 It has been with genuine indignation that I have 
 recently read that the King of Korea is weak of 
 mind and weak of character. 
 
 Statements could scarcely have less foundation. 
 Journalism is indeed an exacting profession, and 
 the pressman who would wield an up-to-date pen 
 must, once in a way, write glibly upon a subject 
 of which he knows nothing, or less than nothing. 
 But surely, if one chooses for one's theme a per- 
 son whom one has never seen, and of whom one 
 knows nothing authentically, the least one can, 
 in common decency, do is to speak good, not evil 
 of that person. If it is necessary to clothe per- 
 sons of momentary interest with attributes that 
 are wholly a fabric of guess-work, it seems to me 
 that the most reckless scribbler is in honour bound 
 to clothe the involuntary human lay-figure with 
 whole, clean, garments of praise, and not with 
 grimy rags of fantastic criticism. 
 
Korea's King. 59 
 
 As a matter of simple fact, Li-Hsi, the King of 
 Korea, is an admirable man. He has most of the 
 good qualities, and very few undesirable ones. 
 
 He has an exceptionally sweet nature. He has 
 a heart of gold. He is patient, forgiving, per- 
 severing and hard-working. He is a man of 
 decided mental strength, and of most considerable 
 learning. The welfare of his people has been his 
 unintermittent aim ; and to-day he is staunchly 
 enthroned in the hearts of those people. 
 
 It has been said that his Korean Majesty is a 
 man of contemptible personal habits. And, worst 
 of all, it has been said that he is entirely under 
 his wife's thumb. There is in all Christendom 
 no monarch more sober, more unselfish than Li- 
 Hsi, As for the last accusation, it is the one in 
 which there is, I fear, a grain of truth. But what 
 of it ? The same thing was said of Frederick the 
 Good. Was he weak-minded, morally corrupt ? 
 The same thing is said to-day (and not without 
 some show of truth) of the Emperor of Germany, 
 the King of Italy, and was said of the late Tsar of 
 Russia. They are rather a wholesome, brainy, 
 manly trio, aren't they ? 
 
 Unquestionably the Queen of Korea has great 
 influence over the King. But surely even a king 
 might commit a graver crime than that of being 
 fond of his wife. For instance, he might be fond 
 
6o Quaint Korea. 
 
 of someone else's wife. Now that strikes me as 
 rather worse form than the other. And certainly 
 it is the more apt to lead to deeply dire results. 
 On the whole, I think the King of Korea might 
 almost be forgiven his one weakness — a weakness 
 for his own wife. 
 
 Of civilized sovereigns, the King of Korea is 
 rather uniquely placed. No monarch could have 
 more absolute power in his own kingdom, no 
 monarch could well have less influence abroad. 
 Indeed even the King's power at home seems 
 rather tottery just now. But it has been shaken 
 by the rough hands of alien invaders, not by the 
 disloyal hands of his own subjects. To-day, when 
 in Korea all is confusion and dismay, Li-Hsi is as 
 absolutely king over the Koreans as he was when 
 he ascended the throne thirty years ago. 
 
 His Majesty is rather under the average of 
 Korean height, and is about forty years of age. 
 The Queen, contrary to the usual custom in Korea, 
 is much younger. 
 
 He wears a dress somewhat resembhng the 
 ordinary Korean court dress ; but his dress is of 
 brilliant scarlet. The dresses of his nobles are of 
 pale blue or pink. The King wears the usual 
 white Korean collar, and a plastron, and shoulder 
 pieces (or epaulettes) of gold and jewels. 
 
 All Korean hats are wonderful. A Korean 
 
Korea's King. 6i 
 
 court hat is simply marvellous. It is most notice- 
 able for its wings or ears, which project sharply 
 out from either side. They typify human ears, 
 and signify that the wearer has his ears wide 
 spread to catch the most whispered command of 
 his Majesty. Even'Li-Hsi wears a court hat. But 
 his ears (I mean his hat's ears) stand erect, or are 
 at the tips caught together at the top of the hat. 
 This is because the Emperor of China is too far 
 away for his actual voice to be heard by the Korean 
 King, and no other human being but the Chinese 
 Emperor may speak to Li-Hsi with anything even 
 approaching insistent emphasis. To no other voice 
 need the King of Korea listen, unless he like. So 
 at least it was until a few months ago. 
 
 The King of Korea has a gracious but dignified 
 bearing. His face is fine and beautiful, and his 
 smile is peculiarly sweet and winning. 
 
 There are two great palaces in Soul : the Old 
 Palace and the New Palace. The New Palace is 
 four hundred years old and more. The old palace 
 is as old as Soul. The present King of Korea 
 lives in the New Palace. His Majesty deserted 
 the Old Palace, or, to be more exact, upon his 
 accession to the throne, declined to adopt it as his 
 residence, because it was full of, to him, painful 
 family reminiscences. 
 
 The Old Palace is one of the few Architectural 
 
62 Quaint Korea. 
 
 wonders of Soul. It is deserted now, and in 
 parts decaying. It is surrounded by an admir- 
 able wall. Its principal gate is guarded by two 
 gigantic stone monsters. The Koreans call them 
 Chinese Lions, and the Japanese call them Korean 
 dogs. They look as much like one as the other. 
 They are of Chinese descent. The Koreans 
 copied them from the Chinese. In Korea they 
 caught the quick Japanese fancy. From that day 
 they have played a conspicuous part in Japanese 
 art, and have even become familiar to European 
 eyes, because they grin at us from so many thou- 
 sands of the cheaper (so called) Satsuma vases. 
 
 The Old Palace is a vast collection of buildings, 
 of court-yards, of landscape gardens, of parks and 
 of lotus-ponds. In its centre stands the famous 
 Audience Hall, which I am almost tempted to call 
 one of the architectural wonders of the world. I 
 may safely call it one of the architectural and 
 artistic wonders of Korea. Many steps lead up to 
 the entrance of the Audience Hall. This alone is 
 in Korea a great distinction. Save the King only, 
 no Korean may build or own a building outside 
 of which there are more than three steps. Four 
 steps would be high treason, and would cost their 
 owner a traitor's death. 
 
 In the background of the Old Palace is Nam San, 
 the mountain upon which signal-fires burn every 
 nightfall, telling the inhabitants of Soul that all 
 
Korea's King. 63 
 
 goes well throughout the kingdom. Or if, as 
 now, aught goes ill, the fires tell that — tell it with 
 considerable detail. It is a curious signal-code, 
 as complicated as ingenious ; but it is beautifully 
 vivid and altogether effective. 
 
 The New Palace is in a collection of palaces. 
 Like Soul its grounds are surrounded by an elabo- 
 rate wall. Those grounds cover over a hundred 
 acres, every rod of which is beautiful. They are 
 carefully laid out, but not with foolish elaborate- 
 ness. Nature is accented in those palace grounds, 
 but never interfered with. Wherever an excep- 
 tionally pretty bit of view is to be seen, there is a 
 quaint Korean summer-house. And as the pretty 
 bits tread upon each other's heels, the grounds are 
 rather thick with odd summer-houses, and still 
 odder pavilions. The Koreans are intensely fond 
 of Nature ; but they are not fond of exercise. 
 They like to sit, even when they look upon the 
 trees, the flowers, the hills, the sky, the lotus- 
 ponds that they so love. Therefore the grounds 
 of a king's house would be most incomplete, 
 were not rest and shelter available at every few 
 yards. 
 
 A summer-house in the grounds of the New 
 Palace is a favourite haunt of the present king. 
 On a drowsy summer afternoon his Majesty sits 
 there for hours, sipping tea and watching the 
 changeless loveliness of the view. 
 
64 Quaint Korea. 
 
 The Koreans drink tea almost as perpetually as 
 the Siamese do, and, like the Siamese, they are 
 greatly addicted to drinking it out of doors. But 
 this must be with them a comparatively new 
 fashion, for Hamel and many other old historians 
 tell us that tea is seldom drunk in Korea. 
 
 To one versed in Korean architecture, it is a 
 simple thing to distinguish the house of a king 
 from that of a subject. The columns of the 
 monarchs' houses are round, and their rafters are 
 square. Only a king may use the round column 
 or the square rafter. Only a king might, until 
 recent years, paint his house. Only a king 
 may wear a coat of brilliant red. Of all men, 
 only the king may look upon the faces of the 
 Queen's hundreds of attendant ladies. On occa- 
 sions of ceremony when the King is present, only 
 he may face the south. 
 
 The Korean soldiers are clad in dark blue re- 
 lieved with crimson, and fantastically decorated 
 with ribbons. The Chinese character which 
 signifies valour is elaborately embroidered over 
 their hearts. They're rather fine-looking fellows, 
 but their manners are mild, and they impress the 
 impartial European observer as staunch lovers of 
 peace. They wear no helmets, but their head- 
 gear is most distinguished. 
 
 There is no other inanimate thing so important 
 
Korea's King. 63 
 
 to the Korean mind as are hats. The hat of the 
 King is his crown. The hat of the soldier is his 
 helmet. And no Korean owns any other chattel 
 so valuable, so indicative of his station, state, 
 and worth, so indispensable, so cherished as his 
 hat ; no, not even his children, never to mention 
 his wife. 
 
 Black is the Korean hat colour. But even 
 Korean rules have their eKceptions. The hats of 
 the Korean army officers are vivid of hue, and 
 heavy with feathers and ribbons ; and the hats of 
 the private soldiers have at least a band or border 
 of red to show that the wearers are men of blood- 
 shed and fearless. 
 
 In Soul there are military hat stores galore ; 
 and naturally enough, for his hat is the most 
 important item of the Korean soldier's uniform. 
 As for his accoutrements, they are so com- 
 pletely overshadowed by the brim of his mighty 
 hat that they shrink into unconsidered insignifi- 
 cance. 
 
 But in years gone by Korea's army was far less 
 a force of straw and of plumage. The Korean 
 eagle could shriek once — now she seems to have 
 become metamorphosed into a military owl ; blind 
 at day, timid at night. 
 
 The military force of Korea was at an early 
 period divided into three distinct branches : the 
 
 F 
 
66 Quaint Korea. 
 
 navy, the secular army, and the armed or military 
 monks. 
 
 The armed monks garrisoned castles and 
 fortresses which were usually inaccessibly placed, 
 or, as we should say to-day, built on command- 
 ing positions. They, as a rule, hung frowningly 
 on the rough side of some steep mountain, or 
 punctuated menacingly some narrow and difficult 
 or treacherous pathway. 
 
 These religious warriors did not go far upon the 
 war-path. They defended the strongholds, which 
 were also their monasteries, and they engaged 
 valiantly enough in local warfare. These were 
 the most efficient and most esteemed of old 
 Korea's soldiers. Each town furnished a required 
 number of these holy militaries. They were 
 officered by men of their own order. When they 
 reached the age of sixty they retired from active 
 service, and their sons filled up their vacant places ; 
 for they were not celibates, these warrior priests 
 of old Choson. 
 
 Each Korean province is under arms one year 
 out of seven. The selected soldiers of the province 
 (in Korea, warriorship is a matter of the king's se- 
 lection, not of the soldier's election) are equipped, 
 robed, drilled, paraded, and made generally pre- 
 sentable upon the picturesque, flower-dotted, and 
 bloodless battle-fields of Korea's martial pageantries. 
 
Korea's King. 67 
 
 They take their turns in going up to Soul, these 
 impromptu, but for all that, well-rehearsed fighting 
 men. When they get to Soul they there invari- 
 ably act well their parts. The beginning and the 
 end of their duty are included in ceremonial func- 
 tions ; and the breath of ceremony is the only air 
 that can fully inflate the lungs of any self-respect- 
 ing Asian. " No man is a hero to his own yalet," 
 we say lightly. But the peoples of the Orient 
 take the great truth of this adage very seri- 
 ously, almost grimly. They realize that the only 
 divinity that can really hedge a king from the 
 degrading familiarity of his subjects is the divinity 
 of purple and fine linen, the blare of trumpets. 
 In brief, the people (in Asia or in Europe) love a 
 show, and the king who would sit staunchly en- 
 throned upon the hearts, not to mention the 
 intellects, of his people, must be followed by a 
 train of supers as long, and as splendidly clad, as 
 well-trained — and perhaps as meaningless — as 
 those who make the pit of a London theatre 
 appreciate the more clearly the regal glory of 
 Henry the Eighth, of Arthur the deceived, and of 
 that other Henry with whom Becket quarrelled. 
 
 But in Korea's martial comedy there are actors 
 
 who are never out of the bill. Over each province 
 
 a general presides, who has under him from three 
 
 to six colonels; each colonel is the military 
 
 F 2 
 
68 Quaint Korea. 
 
 master of several captains; each captain is the 
 Mars of a city, a castle, a town, or some other 
 fortified place. Even the Korean villages are pro- 
 tected (Japan and China, save the mark !) by a 
 corporal. Under the corporal are petty officers ; 
 under the petty of&cers are soldiers, so-called. 
 
 There is one admirable thing about the Korean 
 army. Its books are well kept, and the King of 
 Korea can always tell to the moment how many 
 fighting men are at his disposal. If only they 
 could fight ! Or, if only they had no need to 
 fight! 
 
 Bows and arrows are conspicuous among the 
 implements of the Korean army. They make 
 little or no impression upon the cannon of civili- 
 zation, but they serve to remind us of the days 
 when man needed to contend but against nature, 
 to slaughter only birds and four-footed mam- 
 mals. 
 
 The Korean infantry and the Korean cavalry 
 are very similarly equipped. They wear brilliant, 
 if vulnerable, breast-plates. They carry swords 
 nice of shape, if dull of edge, and they used, in 
 battles of great moment, to replace their crimson- 
 decked hats with head-pieces of cotton-batting and 
 tinsel. 
 
 There is a unique branch of the king's imme- 
 diate servitors. We should bluntly call them 
 
Korea's King. 69 
 
 spies. The Koreans picturesquely call them 
 " messengers on the dark path." The King of 
 Korea does not hang about the doorways, nor prowl 
 into the back-yards of his subjects, but in every 
 Korean city he has several, and in every Korean 
 village at least one appointed listener. European 
 history tells us that more than one European 
 monarch has disguised himself at night, and held 
 up his thirsty ears to the nectar or the gall of his 
 subjects' candid opinions of himself. Whether 
 eaves-dropping is more admirable when performed 
 in person or when deputed to the hireling, is a 
 nice question for those who would judge between 
 East and West. It seems to me that the King of 
 Korea does a dirty thing with rather more dignity 
 than did Napoleon or Nero. At all events, the 
 plebeian spies of Korea are an acknowledged 
 branch of Korean oflficialism, and every Korean 
 knows that his house, and all it contains, is very 
 possibly under the espionnage of the million eyes 
 of the king. 
 
 Korea is as netted day and night with the spies 
 of the king as she is at night netted with signal 
 fires. Just such a system of official espionnage 
 used to exist in Japan. Did Japan copy Korea ? 
 Did Korea copy Japan ? Again we ask the 
 question, and again Asia declines to answer. 
 
 The spies of Li-Hsi are the father confessors of 
 
70 Quaint Korea. 
 
 the Koreans, and the custom is so old, so authentic, 
 so much a matter of course in Korea, that the 
 Korean caught in the utterance of treason, or 
 relating some petty offence, cries " mea culpa " 
 rather devoutly. 
 
 Not very many years ago there were in Asia 
 three absolute monarchs with comparatively small 
 kingdoms. Those kingdoms were Burmah, Siam, 
 and Korea. Theebaw, the master of many 
 wooden cannon, the monarch of Mandalay, the 
 master of Burmah, has accepted his defeat with 
 a good deal of dignity, and Burmah the old, 
 Burmah the real, is fast passing off of the face of 
 our earth. 
 
 Siam, when Sir Harry Parkes first went there, 
 was possibly the most picturesque kingdom in 
 Asia ; but the King of Siam is a man so wise in 
 his generation, that we may almost venture to call 
 him a monarch up-to-date. ' Since he cannot 
 die at the head of his elephant-cavalried army ; 
 since he cannot see that army victorious in the 
 land of its birth and its training, he lays bits of 
 his sword (in the form of goodly scraps of his 
 kingdom) at the feet of French democracy, I mean 
 republicanism.' 
 
 Theebaw is banished, and Chulalongkorn com- 
 promises. And what of Li-Hsi ? This, at least, 
 he has made the longest and most hopeless fight 
 
Korea's King. 71 
 
 of them all against the inroads ofWestern civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 There is no high office in Korea, civil or mili- 
 tary, that can be bestowed without the king's 
 sanction, or that cannot be revoked at the king's 
 pleasure. 
 
 Unfortunately, Li-Hsi has to take the word of 
 the men whom he trusts, as to the efficiency of the 
 majority of the men whom he appoints to posi- 
 tions of power. Were Korean officials fewer in 
 number, then might Li-Hsi know each and all 
 persona:lly ; and then might his servants, civil and 
 military, be less complete nonentities on the one 
 hand, and more invariably worthy on the other, in 
 the great pageant of Asia's Western civilization- 
 ship. 
 
 The Chinese call their Emperor " The Son of 
 Heaven." The Japanese used to regard their 
 Mikado with as much veneration, and even now 
 speak of him vnth no less reverence. The Koreans 
 seem to have caught, from China or Japan, the 
 convenient idea of mediation. According to the 
 religious law of Korea, which is seldom marked, 
 and less often respected, only the king is fit to 
 worship the gods. The subjects of the king must 
 content themselves with worshipping him. To 
 venture to pray to the king is as near heaven as 
 an orthodox Korean may dare to come. And the 
 
72 Quaint Korea. 
 
 king, if he be in gracious mood, will pass the 
 prayer on to the god who is no more above him 
 than he is above his people. 
 
 It seems a Jacob's ladder sort of religion — the 
 religion to which the Koreans pretend (for, as a 
 matter of fact, as I shall try to prove later, they 
 have no religion at all). The peasant throws his 
 paper prayer at the feet of his king; the king, if 
 to him it so seems fit, throws that paper prayer 
 at the feet of the god ; and perhaps none of the 
 kingly prerogatives more clearly define the high 
 position of the king than the fact that of all 
 Koreans, he alone is fit to speak to the Korean god. 
 
 The royal house of Korea emphatically believes 
 that it is descended from divine and royal spirits. 
 If Li-Hsi cannot prove his descent from the 
 denizens of the Korean heaven, we certainly 
 cannot disprove it ; and he has the courage of his 
 convictions, for neither he nor any prince of his 
 blood will wed with a maiden who cannot claim as 
 exceptional, as divine, and as ethereal an ancestry. 
 This keeps the royal family of Korea almost as 
 narrowly blooded as the royal family of Siam. 
 
 Tinsel has not yet gone off the market even in 
 Europe. Newsboys and Eton boys jostle each 
 other on the curb-stones of Northumberland 
 Avenue in their boyish desire to see a modern 
 Lord Mayor's Show. In the Orient tinsel is 
 
Korea's King. 73 
 
 almost as common a commodity, as necessary an 
 adjunct of daily life as is rice itself. When the 
 King of Korea goes forth from his palace grounds 
 he is followed by, preceded by, a glittering 
 throng. Nobles, soldiers, secretaries, and servants 
 arrayed in barbaric splendour, and carrying a 
 hundred symbols of Asiatic majesty, attend upon 
 him ; and over him is carried a canopy rich with 
 gold and jewels. Music, unless the king forbid, 
 sounds his approach. But no other sound is 
 heard. No one may speak. The procession 
 moves slowly, silently. The very horses step 
 softly, and would sooner think of cantering back- 
 wards than of neighing. The horsemen are 
 followed by footmen. Both carry banners and 
 insignia. 
 
 Immediately before the king walks a secretary 
 of state. He carries an elaborate box. I have 
 heard Koreans speak of it as " the mercy-box." 
 The king's ear is open to the meanest of his 
 subjects, in theory at least. When the king goes 
 forth his route is probably strewn with papers, 
 papers are thrown from over walls, papers hang by 
 strings from windows and roofs, sticks are placed 
 along the roadside, and in their notched or forked 
 ends are more papers. All these papers are 
 scrupulously gathered up and put into the " mercy- 
 box." Each paper contains a petition or the 
 
74 Quaint Korea. 
 
 story of a wrong for which the sufferer beseeches 
 the king's redress. These papers are opened by 
 the king in person, after he has returned to the 
 palace. He and he alone decides which of the 
 petitions shall be granted and how ; which shall 
 be refused. Often only he ever knows by whom 
 they have been written. 
 
 Such is the outing of a Korean king, or rather 
 such it was until a very few years ago. Within 
 six or seven years the ceremonial has been slightly 
 altered. Until then it had remained almost un- 
 changed for centuries. Whether Li-Hsi will ever 
 again go forth in like state I question. It's more 
 likely that, if he lives and reigns, he will be sending 
 to London or Calcutta for a brougham. But of 
 this I feel sure : while he continues to sit in power 
 upon Korea's throne, his ears will be keen to hear 
 the cries of his people, and his heart hot to serve 
 them. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 KOREAN WOMEN. 
 
 It has been very often said that the position of 
 woman is more deplorable in Korea than in any 
 other civilized or semi-civilized country. And I 
 have comparatively little to urge against the state- 
 ment. Certainly woman's life seems narrower in 
 Korea than in either China or Japan, or in 
 Burmah, or Siam, or in India. Socially and 
 politically, in Korea, woman simply does not 
 exist. She has not even a name. After marriage 
 she is called by her husband's name with the 
 prefix of Mrs. Before marriage she has not even 
 this pretence to a name. There is one exception, 
 and, I think, one only to this rule. The geisha 
 girls have names of their own, but then the geisha 
 girls have individuality ; live lives, if not moral, 
 why still, not colourless, and mix with men, if 
 not on an equality, at least with a good deal of 
 familiarity ; and it would be rather awkward if 
 the men who are dependent upon them for female 
 
76 Quaint Korea. 
 
 society in anything approaching a Western sense, 
 had no name by which to call them. The 
 " Fragrant Iris " was the name of a geisha girl 
 whose acquaintance Mr. Lowell tells us he made 
 in Korea, and four of her companions were called 
 " Peach Blossom," " Plum Flower," " Rose," and 
 " Moonbeam." 
 
 Korean girls, long before they reach a marriage- 
 able age, live in the seclusion of the women's 
 quarters. After her betrothal a girl belongs not 
 to her father but to her mother-in-law. Upon 
 marriage she becomes the property of her 
 lyisband, and is, in most cases, immediately 
 taken to his dwelling. As in China, married sons 
 live with their fathers. Sometimes three or four 
 generations of one family occupy one home. 
 But, unlike Chinese wives, each Korean wife has 
 a room or rooms of her own. The only man 
 who (in most families) ever enters them is her 
 husband. Unlike the wives of China, she may 
 not, as a rule, be visited by her husband's father, 
 her husband's brother, or her husband's grand- 
 father. But should his father or his grandfather 
 fall ill, it is not only her privilege, but her duty, 
 to leave the women's quarters, and, going to his 
 bedside, nurse him until he dies or recovers. 
 
 There are one or two advantages in being a 
 woman in Korea. There are very few crimes for 
 
Korean Women. 77 
 
 which a Korean woman can be punished. Her 
 husband is answerable for her conduct, and must 
 suffer in her stead if she breaks any ordinary 
 law. 
 
 Korean women are not uneducated, though they 
 never go to schools; and books and materials 
 for writing and painting are freely at their dis- 
 posal. 
 
 The dress of Korean women is very much more 
 like the dress of European women than is that 
 of the women of almost any other Oriental race. 
 They wear petticoats made very much in Western 
 fashion, but stiffly starched into crinoline-like un- 
 gracefulness. The women of the poorer classes 
 wear these skirts above their ankles. The 
 women of wealth or of rank wear skirts touching 
 the ground. They wear a jacket or belt shaped 
 very much like, and answering the purpose of, a 
 corset, and a shorter jacket which is at best but 
 an inadequate neckerchief And under their 
 petticoat they wear three pairs of wide trousers. 
 Except among the very poorest class, respectable 
 Korean women muffle themselves in a garment 
 like a dress or great-coat whenever they go 
 abroad. Boys and girls are dressed alike until 
 they are five years old. 
 
 Among the poor all the household work is done 
 by women, but among the rich the women have 
 
78 Quaint Korea. 
 
 no domestic duties except those of nursing and 
 sewing. All the garments of a Korean family 
 are made by the women of the family. The pur- 
 chase of a ready-made garment, or to hire it 
 made, would be considered a disgrace to the 
 family, and a deeper disgrace to its women 
 Korean ladies sew as exquisitely as French nuns, 
 and embroider as deftly as those Japanese men 
 whose profession embroidery is. 
 
 Korean girls are usually married between the 
 ages of seventeen and twenty-two ; and if married 
 to a bachelor, he is almost invariably three or 
 five, and often even eight, years their junior. 
 But when a widower marries, or a man takes a 
 second, or third, or fourth wife, he invariably 
 selects a woman younger than himself. 
 
 Among the mandarin classes polygamy is a 
 duty, and every mandarin is expected to keep at 
 least several concubines or second-class wives in 
 his yamun. 
 
 In Soul, and in one other large city, children 
 are commonly betrothed when the boy is seven or 
 eight, but it is not so in the other parts of Korea. 
 Korean widows must remain unmarried, or marry 
 men who are the social inferiors of their dead 
 husbands. And in Korea, as in China, a widow 
 who re-marries is disgraced, and becomes more 
 or less of a social outcast. 
 
Korean Women. 79 
 
 The customs preliminary to marriage are in 
 Korea very like those same customs in China and 
 in Japan. The father of a marriageable daughter 
 or a marriageable son looks about for a suitable 
 parti. If a husband is desired, then the girl's 
 father usually interviews a number of eligible 
 youths, widowers, or married men until he finds 
 what he wants. Then a middle-man is sent to 
 discover whether an offer of marriage would be 
 favourably received, and on what terms. If the 
 bridegroom selected is unmarried he has, unless 
 he is an orphan and the head of his family, no 
 voice whatever in the matter, the only people 
 really consulted being the respective fathers. If 
 a father is on the look-out for a daughter-in-law, 
 he sends his wife to interview and report upon 
 the girl whom he has been told is suitable in age, 
 dower, etc. Now comes in another of the few 
 advantages of being a woman in Korea. She has 
 very largely the selection of her own daughters- 
 in-law, and if the daughter-in-law proves unsatis- 
 factory she has only herself to blame. When the 
 middle-man has ascertained that the proposal of 
 marriage will be acceptable, the father who has 
 negotiated the proceedings writes an elaborate 
 letter to the other father, and makes a formal 
 proposal for the hand of his son or daughter. 
 But this letter is not binding upon the writer 
 
8o ' QuAiNT Korea. 
 
 until he receives one in return accepting the 
 proposal. 
 
 After that there is no drawing back, and should 
 the betrothed man die before the marriage day the 
 girl is regarded as a widow, and must remain un- 
 married all her life, or else marry an inferior and 
 with disgrace. The man, on the other hand — 
 should she die — is entirely free to marry, and at 
 once. 
 
 When a lucky day has been selected for the 
 wedding, the bridegroom sends to the bride 
 presents in the Japanese fashion. Female cloth- 
 ing, bits of stuff, and sweets are the most impor- 
 tant items among these presents. When they 
 have been sent and received, the marriage 
 ceremony has been half performed. Then the 
 bridegrdom is allowed to knot up his hair in manly 
 fashion, but not until the day of marriage is he 
 allowed to assume the garb of a man — be dressed 
 as a man. A Korean bachelor of seventy is re- 
 garded as a child, treated as a child, and dressed 
 as a child. 
 
 A prospective bridegroom pays visits of respect 
 not to the relations of his bride, but to the kins- 
 folk of his own father. The kinsfolk of his mother 
 do not count ; indeed, a Korean wife is supposed 
 to have no kindred but the kindred of her hus- 
 band. The bridegroom's father gives a great 
 
Korean Women. 8i 
 
 feast upon the night of the day on which the 
 presents are sent. The feast lasts all night, and 
 the quantity of food eaten, and the quantity of 
 wine drunk, would sound almost incredible to 
 European ears. 
 
 Korea is the country of bachelors. There are 
 two reasons for this. The majority of the people 
 are very poor and cannot afford the expense of 
 daughters-in-law. Then, too, polygamy is so ex- 
 tensively practised among the rich that the supply 
 of girls in the marriage market is never equal to 
 the demand, and the average Korean would far 
 rather see his daughtej^ become the second, or 
 the seventh, or the eighth wife, or concubine of 
 a rich or powerful man, than the one wife of a 
 labourer or low-class man. Marriage usually 
 takes place three days after the presents are sent. 
 These three days are very busy ones to the Korean 
 bride, for out of one of the pieces of stuff sent her 
 by the bridegroom, she must herself, and without 
 assistance, fashion the elaborate robe which he 
 assumes on the marriage night, and which is his 
 first garment made after adult fashion. Thus the 
 three days before marriage are spent by a Korean 
 girl in performing her first duty as a wife. And 
 the sending of the garment signifies that she, with 
 the assistance of whatever wives he may after- 
 wards marry, will, so long as they both live, make 
 
 G 
 
§2 Quaint Korea. 
 
 all the clothing required by him, his children, and 
 his women. 
 
 When the marriage day arrives the lucky hour 
 is chosen, and the bridegroom departs for the house 
 of the bride. The bridegroom's procession is as 
 long and as splendid as his purse, or the purse 
 of his father, can possibly permit. Everyone in 
 that procession rides on horseback, and in single 
 file. First comes a servant-man on a horse richly 
 caparisoned ; this servant carries a life-sized 
 image of a wild goose. It is covered by a red 
 scarf, and the servant must hold it with both 
 hands — a circumstance which makes his horse- 
 back riding interesting, if not perilous. After him 
 comes the bridegroom, splendidly arrayed, and 
 followed by a groom and all his other servants. 
 After them rides the bridegroom's father, and he, 
 too, is followed by all the servants he possesses or 
 has been able to borrow. Relatives and friends 
 in great quantity of persons and great quality of 
 garments bring up the splendid rear. 
 
 In a marriage procession, or at a marriage, the 
 poorest and lowliest man in Korea is allowed to 
 wear robes and hats as rich as those ordinarily 
 worn by the highest dignitary in the land, if he 
 can manage to get them, and of the same distinc- 
 tive style and shape. 
 
 When the girl's house is reached, the servant 
 
Korean Women. 83 
 
 who has carried the goose dismounts, the others 
 remain on horseback. He goes into the house 
 and lays the goose upon a bowl of rice that is 
 standing in a convenient place. Then, without 
 speaking, he leaves the house. The bridegroom's 
 father dismounts next, then the bridegroom, then 
 all the others. Before entering the house they 
 take off their boots and their hats, and their outer 
 robes. The bride's father now comes out of his 
 house, bids them welcome, and leads them in. 
 He is immediately followed by the bridegroom, 
 and then by the bridegroom's father and the 
 others. They all sit solemnly down, and then 
 ensues a scene not to be beaten for noise, no, not 
 even in all Asia, which, I assure you, is saying a 
 good deal. 
 
 The bridegroom has been accompanied, as far 
 as practicable, by all the youths or men who are, or 
 were, his fellow-students, or who belonged to the 
 same literary degree as himself. These seize 
 upon him with shrieking, and laughter, and sing- 
 ing, carrying him off to some distant part of the 
 house or compound, and refuse, under any circum- 
 stances, to give him up, or to allow the marriage 
 to proceed. The girl's father, after some time, 
 offers them a present of money to depart, and 
 leave the chief actor in the proposed function free 
 to play his part. After a good deal of hagghng, 
 G 2 
 
84 Quaint Korea. 
 
 and when the bribe has reached as high a point 
 as the rollickers think it probably will, they accept 
 the money and depart with it, to spend it in a day 
 and a night of roystering and banqueting. 
 
 A feast elaborate, and to European notions 
 tedious, is then offered to the bridegroom, his 
 father and their attendants. After the feast the 
 bridegroom's father and all the servants depart. 
 The bride's father leads the bridegroom to the 
 room in which the ancestral tablets of the family 
 are enshrined ; for ancestral worship is as universal 
 and as sincere in Korea as in China. Before 
 these tablets the prospective husband must pay 
 homage long and earnest. 
 
 Late in the evening the bridegroom is taken 
 into the room of the bride, whom he has not as 
 yet seen. The room is empty, and he is imme- 
 diately left there alone ; but the room is fragrant 
 with iris, or sweet with great bowls and branches 
 of cherry-blossom, and splendid with wisteria or 
 magnificent bunches of the Korean peony. Two 
 great bowls are there heaped with rice, and in 
 the centre of each bowl stands a brilliantly 
 yellow candlestick, holding a taper that is per- 
 fumed and lit. After a time, the bride comes 
 into the room, led by her mother, and surrounded 
 by all her kinswomen. No one speaks ; the 
 mother and the relatives go out, as soon as they 
 
Korean Women. 85 
 
 have fairly come in. The door is closed, and the 
 bride lifts her veil. On the following day, the 
 young wife divides into two the hair which 
 hitherto hung down her back in one long plait. 
 She twists one part of it on to the left side of her 
 head, and one on to the right, and so she wears 
 her hair for the rest of her life, taking it down 
 only to dress it or have it dressed, or to dishevel 
 it about her shoulders as a sign of mourning, on 
 the death of her husband, or one of his relatives. 
 On the third day after the marriage the young 
 couple repair to the house of the bridegroom or 
 the bridegroom's father. They may, however, 
 elect to remain a little longer in the home of the 
 bride's people, but unless they leave on the third 
 day they are compelled to remain where they are 
 for an entire year. 
 
 Thirty years before Christ it was customary 
 for a bridegroom to dwell under the roof of his 
 father-in-law until the first son had been born, and 
 attained to years of manhood. This is still the 
 custom in some parts of Korea, and among some 
 Korean families. Whether the husband and wife go 
 to the home of his family three days, one year, or 
 many years after marriage, they must, upon entering 
 the door, at once go to the tablets of his ancestors, 
 bend before them innumerable times, and repeat 
 to them innumerable prayers and benedictions. 
 
86 Quaint Korea. 
 
 Korean marriage certificates are rather quaint. 
 They are on red paper, of course, for red is the 
 colour of happiness, and is used throughout China 
 and Korea for the records of births, marriages, 
 for caUing cards, and all such things. These 
 marriage certificates are inscribed with the usual 
 Chinese characters, but what makes them pecu- 
 liarly interesting is the fact that during the 
 marriage ceremony they are equally divided, one 
 half is given to the husband, and one to the wife. 
 It is the only instance I know of a country in 
 which it is thought necessary to provide the 
 bridegroom with a certificate of the marriage. 
 But in Korea marriage is even of more import- 
 ance to men than to women. Marriage makes 
 all the difference possible in the life of a Korean 
 man^it does not alter so very much the life of a 
 Korean woman. He passes from boyhood to 
 manhood in the twinkling of an eye ; he takes 
 precedence of all bachelors whatever their age ; 
 can insult them or jostle them in the streets with 
 perfect impunity. Marriage alters the daily life 
 of the woman very little. It opens to her all the 
 possibilities of maternity, and secures her the 
 occasional society of her husband, and, as I have 
 said, it puts up her hair. But I can think of no 
 other material way in which it affects her. She 
 passes from one Korean house to another Korean 
 
Korean Women. 87 
 
 house, and the two are probably identical in their 
 interior arrangements, furnishings, and decora- 
 tions, at least, so far as the women's premises are 
 concerned. She eats the. same food that she ate 
 with her own mother and sisters. She reads the 
 same books, does the same needlework. If her 
 husband be poor, she performs the same drudgery- 
 She hears the same talk, thinks the same thoughts, 
 and has, or lacks, the same amusements that she 
 has all her life. To be sure she sees about her the 
 faces of, for a time, strange women, but their lives 
 and their minds are so similar to those of the 
 women she has always lived with, that their com- 
 panionship cannot possibly make any violent 
 difference in her or in her existence. 
 
 There is one very important reason why his 
 half of the marriage certificate should be, and is, 
 zealously preserved by the husband : without it 
 he cannot procure another wife should his first 
 die, or be divorced, or prove inadequate. Her 
 half of the brilliant paper is no such talisman to 
 the wife. Divorced, she can never re-marry ; 
 widowed, she can only re-wed with degradation. 
 
 The marriage ceremony differs somewhat in 
 different parts of Korea, among different classes of 
 people, and among different families. Often the 
 noisy students take no part in the function, and 
 the bride is present at the marriage feast. The 
 
88 Quaint Korea. 
 
 bride in this case remains veiled, eats nothing and 
 says nothing, until the repast is over. Indeed, in 
 many parts of Korea the bride must not speak 
 during her wedding day. At the end of the feast 
 the bride and groom bow to each other three times, 
 and then the bride throws back her veil, and they 
 are man and wife. 
 
 In an antique paper or essay on the moral and 
 domestic condition of Korea, a paper written by 
 one of the old French missionaries who penetrated 
 into Korea long before European commerce, 
 or European politics, had dared to do so, or at 
 least, succeeded in doing so, I found a description 
 of a wedding ceremony differing somewhat from 
 either of the above. And yet so the marriage 
 ceremony often is even to-day in parts of Korea. 
 The translation is very free : — 
 
 ' On the nuptial day both bride and groom cease 
 to wear their hair as children wear it. Her hair 
 is arranged by some maiden of her kindred — his 
 arranged by some bachelor of his blood. These 
 two amateur hair-dressers are called " hands of 
 honour," and after the bride and groom, and their 
 respective fathers, are the most important person- 
 ages at a Korean marriage. 
 
 ' The bridegroom, accompanied by all his male 
 relatives and all his male friends, on the morning 
 of the marriage day, goes to the bride's house. 
 
Korean Women. 89 
 
 There she is given to him, and he carries her off 
 to his house, or to the house of his father. In the 
 best room of that house a platform or marriage 
 altar has been arranged. It is very rich with 
 embroidered cloths, carved pieces, vessels of metal, 
 jewelled ornaments, and as many of the wonder- 
 ful Korean flowers as are in season. Platters of 
 rice and fruits, and of sweetmeats and nuts, are 
 usually there too, and incense-sticks ; and candles 
 must by no means be absent. The bride and the 
 bridegroom step up on to the platform from 
 opposite sides ; both are elaborately dressed, per- 
 fumed, and be-jewelled, and the bride is heavily 
 painted. She wears a veil and innumerable odd 
 ornaments at her throat, about her neck, at her 
 girdle, on her breast, and on her back. The bride- 
 groom wears a marriage hat, for in this strange 
 peninsula, not only every rank, and every age, and 
 every season, but almost every event calls for a 
 hat of special shape and material. The couple 
 bow to each other profoundly a number of times, 
 and then leave the platform — she going to the 
 home of her new seclusion, the women's quarters 
 of her husband's house, and he going to his own 
 rooms or to those of his father. All the women 
 present follow her ; all the men follow him. For 
 a week or longer, if the father of the groom or 
 the groom be a man of wealth, a great feast is held 
 
go Quaint Korea. 
 
 both in the women's quarters and in the reception 
 rooms of the men. Often the guests remain 
 throughout this period, or if they go home occa- 
 sionally to sleep, they are sure to return in a very 
 few hours for more to eat, and more to drink. 
 During the ceremony, and during the week of re- 
 joicing, the bridesmaids are busy filling " the cup 
 of mutual joy " with nuptial wine. From this cup 
 the bride and the bridegroom drink together during 
 the ceremony, but afterwards it is sent from the 
 apartments of the one to the apartments of the 
 other, and vice versa. At the marriage feast there 
 must be a goose, a dried pheasant, emblems of 
 braided or twisted straw, arrack, and gourds, and 
 other fruits tied with tinselled and crimson rib- 
 bons : for these are the Korean symbols of marital 
 felicity.' 
 
 Often the girl of eight who is betrothed to a boy 
 of five, or a girl of twelve who is betrothed to a 
 boy of eight, goes at once to her father-in-law's 
 house, and is then and there lost to her own 
 family. So entirely does a Korean woman become 
 a member of her husband's family, that after 
 marriage she wears mourning for him and his 
 relatives only, and gives no sign of grief at the 
 death of her own relatives, should she chance to 
 be informed of it. During the period of betrothal 
 the bride and bridegroom must each mourn for 
 
Korean Women. 91, 
 
 the death of any of their kindred, and the marriage 
 cannot take place while either of the parties are 
 in mourning. Korean mourning is as long, or 
 longer than Chinese mourning. Parents are 
 mourned for three years or more, and other 
 relatives for shorter, but not short periods. It 
 will be readily seen that a goodly number of 
 deaths in both families delay a marriage far 
 beyond the limits of all human patience, save that 
 which characterizes the Far East. It is not 
 unusual for a marriage to be delayed for ten years 
 in such a way, and betrothed couples have been 
 kept waiting thirty, and even thirty-five years, 
 before one or the other, or both of them, could lay 
 aside the robes of mourning for the brilliant vest- 
 ments of marriage. This is the reason, I believe 
 the chief reason, why for hundreds of years the 
 population of Korea has not increased. Other 
 reasons are the fearful infant mortality, and the 
 horrible and periodical recurrence of epidemics., 
 
 Next to being a woman, perhaps the most un- 
 fortunate thing that can happen to anyone in 
 Korea is to be poor. But if there are several 
 advantages in being a woman even there, there is, 
 at least, one in being poor. Among the poor it is 
 often the custom for the bride and bridegroom to 
 meet a month or more before the marriage, and if 
 
92 Quaint Korea. 
 
 either of them is dissatisfied they cannot be forced 
 to fulfil the engagement. 
 
 Korean wives have one rather desirable preroga- 
 tive — a prerogative which the wives of China do not 
 share with them, nor I fancy, do the wives of Japan. 
 A Korean man cannot house his concubines or 
 second-class wives under the roof that shelters 
 his true or first wife, without her permission. 
 Strangely enough, the first wife very rarely objects 
 to living in rather close companionship with the 
 other women of her husband's household. Per- 
 haps the longing for human companionship is 
 stronger than jealousy in woman's breast. And 
 perhaps it is because the companionship of men 
 is forbidden her, that a Korean wife comes to not 
 only tolerate, but to enjoy the companionship of 
 the women who share with her her husband's 
 affection, attention, and support. 
 
 Korean women have not always lived in the 
 strict seclusion in which they live now. Some of 
 the older historians, Chinese and others, describe 
 the appearance of the women and their manners 
 without any hint that seeing them and knowing 
 of them was anything unusual. And Hamel 
 boasts that his blonde beard and that of his 
 fellows, and their blue eyes, found great favour 
 with the women of Quelpaert. In the days of 
 Hamel, as , now, the inhabitants of Quelpaert were 
 
Korean Women. 93 
 
 purely Korean. Almost ever since Korea obtained 
 Quelpaert from Japan, the island has been used 
 as a sort of penal settlement ; a place of confine- 
 ment for foreigners who are unfortunate or un- 
 wise enough to land upon the shores of the 
 peninsula, and for grave Korean miscreants who 
 escape the death penalty. But it has also had 
 always a goodly number of inhabitants, of the 
 freemen and the official classes, and all of these, 
 as well as the great bulk of prisoners, have been 
 unmixedly Korean. And the freedom and publicity 
 enjoyed by the women of the island, in Hamel's 
 time, was doubtless also enjoyed by the women 
 of the peninsula. On the other hand, Hamel 
 may have written only of the women of the 
 labouring class. But even so his testimony — and 
 when has Hamel been proved untruthful ? — proves 
 that during the last two hundred years times 
 have greatly changed for Korean women. To-day 
 no Korean woman, however lowly, would look up 
 at a strange man long enough to like him ; much 
 less " look to like, if looking liking move." 
 
 In every Korean house of any pretension the 
 women's apartments are in the most secluded 
 part of the building. They open on to a garden, 
 and never on to a street. The compound is 
 walled, and no two families ever live upon the 
 same compound. And no Korean may go upon 
 
94 Quaint Korea. 
 
 the roof of his own house without legal permis- 
 sion, and without giving due notice to all his 
 neighbours. The roof may leak, and the roof 
 may crack in the middle, but before the owner of 
 the house or any mechanic in his employ may go 
 up to see what the matter is, and to remedy it, 
 the occupiers of every house, the garden of which 
 can be seen from his roof, must be notified, and 
 ample time given for the ladies of those various 
 establishments to leave the gardens. So a 
 Korean woman is as hidden from the world, in 
 her husband's garden or summer-house, as is a 
 nun in her cell. 
 
 The wives and daughters of well-to-do Koreans 
 spend a great deal of time in their gardens, 
 sharing naturally enough the intense love of their 
 menkind for nature, and probably finding their 
 peculiar lives more endurable among the trees 
 and the birds and the lotus ponds, than they do 
 in their queer little rooms, through the paper 
 windows of which they cannot look unless they 
 poke a hole with their fingers first — rooms in 
 which there is little space and less furniture. 
 
 After the curfew rings it is illegal for a Korean 
 man to leave his own house, unless under circum- 
 stances which I have stated in a previous chapter ; 
 then it becomes legal for Korean women to slip 
 out and take the air and gossip freely. But both 
 
Korean Women. 95 
 
 the law and the privilege have fallen somewhat 
 into abeyance, especially in Soul. There are now 
 so many foreigners in Soul, members of lega- 
 tions, and servants connected with legations, that 
 it has been found impossible to keep the streets 
 of Soul free from men after curfew, and so the 
 women of Soul have very greatly lost that which 
 was, a few years ago, one of their few, and one of 
 their most dearly prized privileges. 
 
 If the dramatis persontz in Korean society are 
 all men, not so the dramatis persona in Korea's 
 history. As in China, and as in Japan, important 
 parts have been played by women in the great 
 historical drama of Korea — a drama that began 
 centuries and centuries ago, and that is not ended 
 yet, or only now ending. Korea has had many 
 remarkable women who have left their as yet inde- 
 lible stamp upon the customs and the laws of their 
 country, and upon the thought of their country- 
 men. Korea has had at least three great queens. 
 Korea has had her Boadicea. The present King 
 of Korea owes his kingship, in large part at least, 
 to his great-grandmother. Dowager Queen Cho, 
 who adopted him, and in 1864 was largely instru- 
 mental in securing for him the throne to which 
 the royal consul had elected him. 
 
 The most powerful women of whom we can 
 read in the history of India, from the time of the 
 
96 Quaint Korea. 
 
 Rock Temples to the time of the Indian Mutiny, 
 were purdah-women ; and the woman who has 
 perhaps had more influence and more power 
 over her own husband than ever other woman 
 had over other husband — the woman who was 
 perhaps at her death the most sincerely mourned, 
 and the woman who was entombed as no other 
 woman has ever yet been entombed, and probably 
 as no other woman will ever be entombed — the 
 beautiful Arjamand Banu — lived in the strictest 
 purdah. And until the breaking out of the 
 Chino-Japanese war, the most powerful person 
 in Korea was, and for twenty years had been, a 
 woman, the king's wife. Queen Min, for even 
 she has no name, and is known only by the name 
 of the race from which she has sprung, comes of 
 one of the two great intellectual families of 
 Korea; and the great family of Min has pro- 
 duced no cleverer woman or man than the wife 
 of Li-Hsi. 
 
 A very large proportion of the literature at our 
 disposal, which treats in any dignified way of 
 Korea, has been written by missionaries. This is 
 inevitably so of any Asiatic country whose first 
 Western invaders have been soldiers of the Cross. 
 Fortunately for ^the interested student of Korea, 
 the missionaries who have gone to Korea seem 
 almost from the first to have been mentally, 
 
Korean Women. g7 
 
 socially, and in culture, equipped above the 
 missionary average in other parts of heathendom. 
 Whether they have had a corresponding moral 
 superiority it would be interesting to know, but I 
 am the last person in the world competent to 
 judge the moral status of a missionary. This of 
 the European missionaries in Korea — from the 
 Jesuit fathers old France sent there to the 
 Presbyterian brethren recently sent from the 
 United States — a surprising number of them had 
 the gift not of writing (for scribbling seems to 
 come as naturally to the average missionary as to 
 the average nineteenth-century woman), but of 
 writing well, and with great discretion. If we 
 would learn the history of Korea, we must learn it 
 very largely from the writings of European mission- 
 aries, unless, indeed, we are able to read Chinese, 
 and have access to the fuller, more ably written, 
 and probably more authentic histories of Korea, 
 written by Chinese littirateurs. It is a matter of 
 course that the Chinese, .who are akin to the 
 Koreans, and who may almost be said to have 
 brought them up, should make fewer blunders in 
 writing of Choson than men of utterly dissimilar 
 race and thought habits. Then, too, the writing 
 of the Chinese histories of Korea has been largely 
 contemporaneous with the enactment of that 
 history. And no man can write with entire 
 
 H 
 
gS Quaint Korea. 
 
 breadth of a people to whose religion he is 
 bitterly antagonistic. 
 
 One blunder is conspicuous in most of the 
 valuable books written by Europeans — written 
 on Korea. They state almost to a volume that 
 the women are uneducated and never pretty. 
 
 Educated after European methods they cer- 
 tainly are not. But why should they be ? And 
 that they are not — does that prove that they are 
 not educated at all ? There are more systems 
 of education than one. 
 
 Let us take the poor women of Soul, and com- 
 pare them with the poor women of Liverpool or 
 of London, and with the women of many tongues, 
 who flock into New York through the portals of 
 Castle Garden. The Korean women can read and 
 write, the large majority of them. They cook well, 
 cleanly, and economically. Out of a few simple 
 ingredients (which her Western sister would 
 scorn), and with a few simple implements (that 
 that sister would not understand) — often almost 
 without implements and with little fire — fire that 
 must be coaxed and humoured, and humoured and 
 coaxed, the poorest Korean woman will prepare a 
 meal which no hungry European, prince or peasant, 
 need scorn to eat. It will be savoury, whole- 
 some, clean to daintiness, and pleasantly served. 
 They can sew, make all that they, their husbands 
 
Korean Women. 99 
 
 and their children wear, can these poor, ignorant, 
 heathen women. They are expert washerwomen. 
 Most of them can make pictures with sharp sticks, 
 or with brush, and almost all of them are more 
 or less skilled in midwifery, in the care of the 
 sick, in sick-room cookery, and in the care of 
 children. They know how to keep their tempers, 
 hold their tongues, control their appetites, to 
 make much of little, and to enjoy to the full and 
 with thanksgiving any small pleasure that falls to 
 their scantily pleasured lot. Now let us turn to 
 the Seven Dials, or to the Five Points — No, on 
 second thought let us not ! 
 
 As for Korean gentlewomen, they are skilled in 
 Korean music, in Chinese and Korean literature. 
 They are unsurpassed mistresses of the needle, 
 more than able with the brush, and thoroughly 
 acquainted with every detail of the complicated 
 Korean etiquette. They are deft in the nice 
 ceremonies of the toilet. They know the histories 
 of Korea, of China, and perhaps of Japan. They 
 are familiar with their own folk-lore, and can 
 repeat it glibly and picturesquely. They are 
 nurses and mothers and wives by nature, and 
 wives, mothers, nurses, and accoucheuses by 
 training. Above all, they are taught (and they 
 learn) to be amiable. They are instructed in 
 the art of charming, and in the grace of being 
 
 H 2 
 
100 Quaint Korea. 
 
 gentle, as soon as they are taught to walk. I 
 have known advanced women in Europe who 
 could scarcely boast of being more highly 
 educated. And the happiest women I have 
 known have not always been the most learned. 
 I think that we are apt to underrate the education 
 of women in the East because it differs so essen- 
 tially from ours : but then so do their physique 
 and the country in which they live ; its flora, its 
 climate, and its sociology. A Korean once told 
 me (he was a kinsman of Queen Min, a traveller, 
 a linguist, and a man of — cosmopolitanly speak- 
 ing — most considerable attainments) that his wife 
 was more widely and more throughly versed in 
 Chinese literature, modern and classic, than he. 
 And Chinese literature is indisputably the greatest 
 literature that Asia has ever produced. 
 
 The Queen of Korea is, with the possible- ex- 
 ception of the Dowager Empress of China, as 
 well educated as any royal lady in Asia. 
 
 As to the national lack of beauty among the 
 women of Korea — why, it is neither more nor less 
 than nonsense, ignorant, and rather stupid non- 
 sense. I know no race in which the women who 
 earn their individual slice, and a goodly share of 
 the family loaf, in the sweat of their brows retain 
 their beauty long. The women seen on the 
 streets of Soul and in the fields, and on the 
 
Korean Women. ioi 
 
 mountain slopes of Korea, belong — if I may for 
 the sake of emphasis repeat myself — belong to the 
 hardest-worked, the most weather-beaten, burden- 
 bent, and ill-fed class in Korea. Their personal 
 appearance is no indication of the real type of 
 Korean womanhood. They are painted by the 
 sun and the wind, disfigured with trouble and 
 back-ache, and their' once pretty faces have been 
 profaned by many tears, and they are hideous. 
 But the women of the Korean leisure class are, as 
 a rule (a rule with only just enough exceptions 
 to prove it), undeniably pretty — pretty with a 
 prettiness that is closely akin to the prettiness of 
 the women of Japan and Burmah. The Queen 
 of Korea is quaintly pretty, and among the three 
 hundred women who are, nominally at least, the 
 concubines of the king, and among the very 
 many female attendants of their two Majesties, 
 there is scarcely a plain face.' Of course many 
 Europeans who have been resident in Korea, and 
 have written of their residence, have not had ac- 
 cess to the court, much less to the Queen and her 
 ladies. But surely any wide-eyed man who has 
 spent some time in Korea has seen and seen again 
 the geisha girls. Who that has lived in Korea 
 denies their beauty ? And would it not occur to 
 an observer of somewhat less than abnormal 
 reasoning power that since the only female 
 
102 Quaint Korea. 
 
 members he had ever seen of the Korean leisure 
 class were beautiful, that it was fairly presumable 
 that the Korean women who worked even less, 
 and lived in greater luxury, and under , more 
 healthy conditions, were at least as beautiful ? 
 
 Korean women (those of them who have not 
 been scarred by over-toil, nor deformed by priva- 
 tion) have remarkably small, and remarkably 
 pretty hands and feet, and of nothing are they 
 prouder than of their dimpled fingers, and their 
 shapely, delicate feet. But the feet of a Korean 
 woman are small by nature, never by art. They 
 have lovely eyes — these women — musical voices, 
 and are graceful of motion. 
 
 The Queen is pale and delicate-looking. She 
 has a remarkable forehead, low but strong, and a 
 mouth charming in its colouring, in its outlines, 
 in its femininity, in the pearls it discloses, and sweet 
 with the music that slips through it when she 
 speaks. She dresses plainly as a rule, and in 
 dark but rich materials. In this she resembles 
 the high-born matrons of Japan. And in cut her 
 garments are more Japanese than those of other 
 Korean women : she wears her hair parted in the 
 middle, and drawn softly into a simple knot or 
 coil of braid. She wears diamonds most often ; 
 not many, but of much price. They are her 
 favourite gems. In this one particular she is 
 
Korean Women. 103 
 
 almost alone among the women of the East ; for 
 pearls are the beloved jewels of almost every 
 woman and girl-child that is born in the Orient. 
 
 Queen Min has been as assiduous as she has 
 been powerful in advancing the interests of her 
 family — the family of her birth I mean, for her 
 marriage — unlike the marriages of other Korean 
 women — has no whit divorced her from the people 
 of her blood. All the desirable offices in Korea 
 were held for years by her kinsmen. 
 
 Queen Min has not only been the power behind 
 the Korean throne, but she has been, even more 
 than the King, the all-seeing eye of Korea. Her 
 spies have been ever5nvhere, seen everything, 
 reported everything. 
 
 Two things that are true of the Queen are 
 peculiarly significant of the grip that Oriental 
 customs have upon the most autocratic of Oriental 
 minds. She — the most powerful Korean in Korea 
 — is content to be nameless ; a sovereign with 
 almost unlimited power, but without a nominal 
 individuality ; and to be called merely by the 
 family name of her forefathers, and to be desig- 
 nated only as the daughter of her fathers, the wife 
 of her husband, and the mother of her son. 
 
 It strikes an Occidental as even more strange 
 that a woman so supremely powerful with her 
 husband and king should be so graciously tolerant 
 
104 Quaint Korea. 
 
 of the women of his harem. She not only tolerates 
 them, she seems to like them, to take pride in 
 them, and she is on the friendliest terms with Li- 
 Hsi's eldest son, who is also the son of a concubine. 
 True her own son is the crown prince, but it is 
 probable that his elder brother and not he will be 
 Korea's next king, if the present dynasty be 
 destined to have another king. Li Hsia — Queen 
 Min's son — is not the imbecile he has been 
 reported, but he has not the greatest mental 
 strength, and less strength of body. 
 
 Queen Min is admirable and affable in her home 
 circle. She is a woman of no great physical 
 strength. But she has considerable courage, 
 moral and physical, and both have been well 
 tried. 
 
 Queen Min has always advocated the opening 
 of Korea to foreigners, and the establishing of 
 relations with foreign Powers. Whether this 
 shows her wisdom or her folly it is too soon to 
 say : but it certainly proves her — woman of the 
 Far East that she is — to have a mind of her own, 
 even though she lacks a personal name. 
 
 No one man or woman who wishes to have a 
 part in the solving of the great and complicated 
 woman-question should fail to make an, as far as 
 possible, exhaustive study of the women of Asia. 
 The women of the East differ from the women of 
 
) 
 
 Korean Women. 105 
 
 the West, chiefly in being more secluded from 
 public places, public duties, and public influence ; 
 in being more confined to, and more absorbed in 
 their own firesides ; in being less on a nominal 
 equality with man, and in being more definitely, 
 if less happily and less highly placed in the State 
 and in the family. They differ from the women 
 of the West in the manner of their education, and 
 in the aims of their education. 
 
 Before we consider whether these differences 
 are to the advantage or disadvantage of Eastern 
 women, it is only fair that we (we Western women 
 who are interested in working out, not only our 
 own salvation, but the salvation of mankind) 
 should consider very carefully how the position of 
 woman in the East has affected man in the East, 
 and the Eastern races in their entireties. Does 
 the absence of woman from the general daily life 
 of a race render that daily life less refined, and 
 more brutal ? One might, at first thought, have 
 concluded so. We may assume for a premise that 
 women are more refined, more gentle of heart, 
 and more graceful of manner than men, and it is, 
 I believe, commonly thought among the great mass 
 of people in the West, who are almost altogether 
 uninformed and altogether ill-informed about the 
 East, that the men of the East are brawlers, half- 
 savage, and uncouth. No grosser mistake could 
 
io6 Quaint Korea. 
 
 be made. Probably the two most brutalizing 
 passions are envy and jealousy. There have been 
 in the history of the world, I think, no two other 
 causes of so much bloodshed, so much brutality, 
 so much infinite cruelty, and so much horrible 
 vulgarity. The wrangling over women, the 
 rivalry for women, and the suspicions and the 
 enormous heartburns occasioned by these rivalries 
 have, in the lands where, the women mingled 
 freely with the men, more than counterbalanced 
 the refining effect produced by the fact that the 
 men of these countries have wished to appear at 
 their best before the women, and have been on 
 the whole inspired to civility and gentle behaviour 
 in the presence of women. Because an Oriental's 
 wife is his property, unquestionably so, she is 
 the cause of no bloodshed, no jealousy, and her 
 refining influence is more proved in the breach 
 than in the observance. The Korean gentleman, 
 the Chinese mandarin, or the husband of a high- 
 caste Hindoo woman who goes to a dinner-party, 
 has the soothing consciousness that his wife is 
 safe at home. Under lock and key, perhaps : 
 certainly debarred, by the strong prejudices of 
 centuries, from going abroad, or showing her face 
 to men. He can devote himself with placid heart 
 and undiverted mind to the meat and drink set 
 before him and the men sitting about him. No 
 
Korean Women. 107 
 
 torturing wonder as to which of his wife's platonic 
 friends has dropped in to have an after-dinner 
 cup of coffee with her can come to destroy his 
 appreciation of the fine flavour of his soup. He 
 can glance around that dinner table with eyes 
 fearless and proud, for they will not encounter his 
 wife flirting, ever so harmlessly, with someone 
 else's husband : a sight calculated to make any 
 man whose heart is not made of dough, and his 
 brain of pulp, choke over his cutlets, and end his 
 dinner miserably in a fit of ill-humour and indiges- 
 tion. True, on the other hand, he is not able 
 to flirt with his neighbour's wife. The social 
 arrangements are such, in the East, that no fairly 
 well-to-do man need lack ample female society 
 both at home and abroad. But the female society 
 which is open to him outside of his own house is 
 not the society of wives, mothers, nor of maidens. 
 And moreover, the majority of men enjoy a good 
 stag-dinner very much more than they do an 
 equally good feast which is shared with them by 
 a number of women. When a party of gentlemen 
 dine together, in the East, or in the West, I very 
 much fear that their table-talk is far more intel- 
 lectual, entertaining, and altogether worth while 
 than the table-talk of women who dine with each 
 other, or of men and women who dine together. 
 And I am sure that it is quite as refined, free from 
 
io8 Quaint Korea. 
 
 undesirable insinuations, coarse witticisms, and 
 imbecile pleasantries. I am not speaking, of 
 course, of dinners tete-a-tete, nor would anything 
 I have said apply to them. I have been an un- 
 seen spectator of many stag-dinners in the East, 
 and I was once an unseen, but all-seeing, guest at 
 a stag-dinner in the West. And in my salad days 
 I have often broken bread with women, women, 
 only women. It is my conclusion that the Euro- 
 pean men who dine at their clubs, and the Asiatic 
 men who dine with their fellows, gain almost as 
 much as they lose, and I can partly understand 
 man's preference for the table companionship of 
 men. I believe that good digestion waits on 
 appetite more often in dinner parties of the East 
 than in dinner parties of the Occident. 
 
 The Eastern man rarely or never commits the 
 sin of coveting his neighbour's wife, because he 
 rarely or never sees her, and so, at least, we can- 
 not say that the unrighteous laws governing the 
 relative positions of the sexes in the Orient, lead 
 the men of the Orient into the worst of all 
 temptations. Among the very poorest classes in 
 Korea the men invariably see more or less of the 
 women ; but those men are too poor, too hard 
 worked, too absorbed, body, brain, and heart, in a 
 struggle for existence to covet other men's wives, 
 or, often indeed, to have wives of their own. 
 
Korean Women. 109 
 
 Oriental polygamy seems so delicate a subject, 
 such thin conversational ice to the average 
 Western mind, that the best informed writers are 
 rather in the habit of skating about its edges and 
 of speaking loosely and indefinitely, and with the 
 greatest confusion about the wives and. the con- 
 cubines of the East. I have spoken of the well- 
 to-do Korean as having a plurality of wives. 
 This is not so. And that such a mis-statement 
 has been made by writers of eminence, and 
 ordinarily of great exactness, is no excuse for 
 me. A Korean can have but one wife, one true 
 and absolute wife, but (and here comes in the 
 fact which is hard, very hard, of comprehension 
 even to intelligent Europeans, who have not lived 
 in the Orient) he may have as many concubines 
 as he can afford, and their position, though not 
 so high of rank, is as honourable, and as respect- 
 able as that of his wife. The word concubine, 
 in the sense given it by our English dictionaries, 
 can no more justly be applied to the women of a 
 Korean's seraglio than it can be applied to 
 Hagar. I use the word, because it is the word 
 used by all European scholars to indicate the 
 women of whom I am writing, and is also the 
 word used to designate them in the countries of 
 the East. As I have said, they are not on a social 
 equality with the wife, but they are, to the best 
 
no Quaint Korea. 
 
 of my belief, on a moral equality with her, both 
 in the eyes of Oriental law and in the eyes 
 of morality itself. I see no difference ethically 
 between the woman who consents to marry (as 
 every well-born Korean woman does consent to 
 marry) a man who she knows has, or will have, a 
 well filled harem — I see no difference between her 
 and the woman who consents to make that harem 
 her home. 
 
 A Korean's concubines are almost as absolutely 
 the handmaidens of his wife as of himself. They 
 must serve her and do her bidding, and can only 
 escape from this in the rare instance when one 
 rises in the man's eyes to higher favour than the 
 wife. 
 
 The children of a concubine do not as a rule 
 rank with the children of a wife, but they are 
 neither despised nor shamed. They are born to 
 a slightly lower rank, it is true, but that signifies 
 little, for in Korea every man must carve out his 
 own niche in the social rock, and they, the chil- 
 dren of the handmaidens, have as fair a start in 
 life, and as clean a name, as the children of the 
 wife. In this, at least, Korean civihzation puts 
 us to the blush. 
 
 I am not advocating polygamy. It seems to 
 me an evil only less than the evil which makes 
 innocent children nameless, and unfortunate 
 
Korean Women. m 
 
 women homeless and hopeless. It is an evil, I 
 am convinced, that can never work in the West, 
 never be endured by the women of the West. But 
 it does work in the East — works fairly well. And 
 I think it just possible that with the Orientals, 
 with their quickly developed bodies, and their 
 slowly developed minds, it is, under existing cir- 
 cumstances, the lesser of two evils, one of which 
 would be inevitable. In Utah I have known a 
 great many Mormons. I knew Brigham Young 
 when I was a child, and I have since known 
 several of his wives, and many of his children. 
 With the exception of Brigham Young himself 
 and one woman, who was, in the most brazen 
 sense of the word, an adventuress, I have never 
 known a Mormon of even average intellect. Yet, 
 even so, I never knew the wives of a Mormon man 
 to live in peace together. The men were degraded 
 and brainless ; the women degraded, almost 
 imbecile and discontented. But it is not so in 
 the Orient ; high caste or high class men are 
 refined, gentlemanly, clean of person, and keen of 
 intellect, and the women in their lesser and 
 feminine way are very fit mates of those men. 
 The women of a Korean household are, as an 
 almost invariable rule, happy together. There is 
 less differentiation between the personalities of an 
 Eastern race than between those of a Western, 
 
112 Quaint Korea. 
 
 and this is especially true of the women, I think. 
 The wife and all the concubines of a Korean have 
 tastes in common, habits in common, likes and 
 dislikes and accomplishments in corrimon. It is 
 a matter of course to them to live under the same 
 roof, and at the disposal of the same man, and it 
 never occurs to them to question either its fitness 
 or its desirability. All must yield unquestioning 
 obedience to the husband, and, in his absence, all 
 the concubines must yield and do yield as implicit 
 obedience to the wife. She in return is very apt 
 to make them her playfellows and her bosom 
 friends. The Sarahs of the East are far more just, 
 far more kind to the Hagars of the East than 
 Sarah of old was to the mother of Ishmael. 
 Would that the women of the West, who are 
 secure in their sole wifehood — secure at least in 
 the sole legality of their position, had more 
 humanity for the less fortunately placed women 
 of the West. Whatever the social conditions of 
 the West, the women of the West are, in part 
 at least, responsible for them ; not the outcast 
 women, not the women who have made a public 
 failure of life, but the women of assured positions, 
 of intellect, and of moral weight. Whatever the 
 position of woman is in Korea, however low the 
 standard of morality in Korea, the women of 
 Korea, to-day at least, are in no way responsible 
 
Korean Women. 113 
 
 for it, in no way — in no direct way at least — able 
 to alter it, and I think it greatly to the credit of 
 Korean wives that they treat with no pharisaical 
 contempt, with no feminine injustice, and with no 
 inhumanity, the women who like themselves are, 
 comparatively speaking, moral and social puppets 
 in the hands of a social system in the regulating 
 of which they have no direct voice. ' 
 
 I think I have said repeatedly, and I am going 
 to again say in a succeeding chapter, that Korea 
 has no religion. Whether the facts I shall be able 
 to give will prove my statement to the majority of 
 readers, I am not quite prepared to say. At all 
 events, there is certainly no civilized country, not 
 excepting China, in which religion counts for so 
 little, and in which the professors of religion are 
 under so positive a social ban as they are in 
 Korea. Yet, strangely enough, in Korea there are 
 not only monks and monasteries, but nuns and 
 nunneries. Both monasteries and nunneries seem 
 to have existed almost as long as Korea has 
 existed in anything like its present social condi- 
 tion. Hamel speaks of two nunneries in Soul, 
 and says that the nuns in one were exclusively 
 women of high birth ; that the nuns in the other 
 were maids born of the common people. Their 
 hair was shorn as was the hair of monks, and they 
 performed the same duties, obeyed the same rules 
 
 I 
 
114 Quaint Korea. 
 
 as did the monks. There were then, and have been 
 since, a number of other nunneries seal :ered 
 throughout Korea. But it is certainly si i^eral 
 hundred years since any body of nuns deft aded 
 their house from an invading army, or too any 
 part in Korean warfare, local or otherwiser^nd I 
 very much doubt if they evar did so. » t it is 
 probable that in every other Way their-*- ;s re- 
 sembled, as indeed they now r^semHe, the lives 
 of the religious men. In the day? of Hamel the 
 nunneries were maintainec^ l^Tie bounty of the 
 king and some of his v^:^c'p3i subjects. The 
 king who was reignirifc iyXorea a. little over two 
 hundred years, ago Fthe same of whom Hamel 
 speaks), gave the^, nun^ of Soul permission to 
 marry. There are now no nunneries in Soul, but 
 there are still several in Korea. Besides the nun 
 who is shaven and shorn, there is a female devoUe 
 called Po-sal, who does not cut her hair, and whose 
 vows are less binding than those of other nuns. 
 
 I merely mention the fact that there are nuns 
 in Korea, while on the subject of Korean women, 
 because it is a curious item of what I have been 
 able to learn about the women of Choson, and is 
 uniquely in contrast to almost all the other items 
 that I have been able to gather. 
 
 And now almost last, a few words more about 
 the dress of Choson's women-folk. As I have 
 
Korean Women. 115 
 
 said, it is less Oriental-looking than the dress of 
 the women of any other Eastern race, and this is 
 remarkable, if not surprising, because the women 
 of Korea to-day dress exactly as the women of 
 China dressed before the present Chinese dynasty 
 came into power, and the race from which it 
 sprang conquered China. In dress, at least, in- 
 deed in many other ways, the Koreans have 
 strictly maintained the habits and the fashions 
 that they adopted from, or that were forced upon 
 them by old China. This is why the men wear 
 no queues and the women do not pinch their feet. 
 In dress and in toilet habits the Koreans of to-day 
 . are probably an exact replica of the inhabitants of 
 China, before China became dominated by the 
 Tartars. 
 
 The women of Korea's poor almost invariably 
 wear the same colour as do the men of the same 
 class : a blue so pale, so indefinite, and, from a 
 short distance, so imperceptible, that it has gene- 
 rally been called white. Even so exact an 
 observer and so careful a chronicler as Mr, Curzon 
 speaks of " the white-clad Koreans." Mr. Curzon 
 may, by-the-bye, have made several mistakes in 
 writing of the East ; but, with the best intentions 
 in the world, I have not been able to discover 
 another of his making. One may differ occasion, 
 ally from his opinions ; one may not always share 
 I 2 
 
ii6 Quaint Korea. 
 
 his likes or his dislikes ; but I assure the student 
 of things Eastern that he can depend absolutely 
 upon the truth of Mr. Curzon's statements of 
 facts, and their exactness. 
 
 Korean women of position wear almost every 
 conceivable colour. In China, pink and green are 
 set aside for women, and are sacred to their wear- 
 ing. I do not think that the women of Korea 
 have the sole right to wear any colour, but they 
 certainly have the right to wear, and the habit of 
 wearing, almost every conceivable colour. Pur- 
 ples and greens are their high favourites, and 
 green is almost invariably the hue — and a bright, 
 deep green at that — of the generously-sleeved 
 dress which the middle-class Korean woman (or 
 on rare occasions, a lady) throws about her head 
 and shoulders when she walks abroad. This 
 green dress, which is used as a cloak, is almost ex- 
 clusively the garment of the women of the middle 
 class — the women who are not so poor that they 
 are obliged to draw water, or to engage in any 
 other forms of hard labour which would make the 
 covering of their faces impossible — but who, at 
 the same time, are occasionally obliged to go 
 abroad on some matter of household business. 
 Wives and concubines and daughters of mandarins 
 and of men of wealth do not often leave their own 
 (by courtesy) house and gardens. When they do, 
 
Korean Women. 117 
 
 they go in palanquins. They enter the palan- 
 quin in their own court-yard ; the blinds or 
 curtains are tightly closed. The chair is borne 
 away on the shoulders of coolies, and is usually 
 followed by one or more female servants or wait- 
 ing women, who run closely behind it, looking on 
 the ground, and carrying a fan, which indicates the 
 rank of the palanquined mistress. 
 
 In some parts of Korea, among some classes of 
 the poor, the women wear a very short white 
 jacket which barely covers the upper part of the 
 bosom. This jacket looks like an exaggerated 
 caricature of the pretty white jacket worn by the 
 Singalese women. 
 
 The dress of a Korean lady is as elaborate as 
 the dress of a Korean working-woman is plain. 
 The example of simplicity set by Queen Min is 
 followed by almost none of the Korean women 
 who can afford to do otherwise. The wardrobe 
 of a Korean lady contains garments of silk, 
 surprising in quantity, and covetable in quality, 
 but satins are unknown, and the glimmer and 
 glitter, which is so dear to the eye of every Oriental, 
 must be made alone by the lustre of silk, and 
 enhanced by as much tinsel, as many jewels and 
 ornaments as the wearer can possibly afford. 
 
 I have spoken of the brown interspace which is 
 often seen between the jacket and the skirt of a 
 
ii8 Quaint KoRfiA. 
 
 Korean woman, but it is only seen among the 
 very poorest, and I believe is a lack of material, 
 and a matter of indifference, rather than an 
 intentional exposure of person. I have never 
 seen a Korean lady — I have never seen a gentle- 
 woman of any Eastern race — decollete, except 
 Japanese ladies in European dress. It seems 
 strange, at first thought, that races, whose 
 standards of sexual morality seem to us so far 
 beneath our own, should be so universally modest 
 in their covering of their persons. I am inclined 
 to think that it is not modesty at all, but rather a 
 peculiar phase of Oriental dignity which causes 
 the people of the East to drape themselves as 
 entirely as possible. Mr. Lowell, whose in- 
 imitable book on Korea must be a source of 
 almost endless enjoyment to anyone who has 
 known and delighted in the quaint peninsula, 
 says so exactly what I think we ought to under- 
 stand about the standpoint from which the 
 Orientals regard dress, and how they have 
 come to so regard it, that I take the liberty of 
 borrowing a page from his volume ; one of those 
 books which constantly tempt one to quote them 
 from cover to cover. In discussing the manner 
 in which dress in Eastern Asia has been in- 
 fluenced by woman, Mr. Lowell writes : — 
 "Her absence has been as potent a force there 
 
Korean Women. iig 
 
 as her presence has been elsewhere ; for I think 
 we must admit that to her indirectly is due the 
 following singular feature of Asiatic thought. 
 
 " The way in which the far Oriental regards 
 dress is somewhat peculiar. I can think of no 
 simile so descriptive as the connection we tacitly 
 assume between spirit and body. We hardly, in 
 ordiijary life, think of the one as devoid of the 
 other, and we regard the latter as at least the 
 sense- impression to us of the person within. So 
 do they with dress. To their eyes it forms an 
 essential part of their conception of the man. 
 Somewhat in like manner we are ourselves 
 impressed by dress, in the customary take-at- 
 what-we-see estimate of our fellows. They differ 
 from us in carrying the real into the ideal. 
 
 " This is very strikingly seen in the matter of 
 painting. Perhaps one of the most notable 
 features about far Eastern paintings is its utter 
 ignoring of the human figure. There is a com- 
 plete void in that branch which among Europeans 
 has always claimed attention — the study of the 
 nude. To them artistically man is nothing but a 
 bundle of habits in the sartorial sense. The 
 practice is not due to an excess of what we call 
 modesty. We may, perhaps, define modesty as 
 the veiling from public gaze of all of ourselves, in 
 person or in mind, except so much as is sane- 
 
120 Quaint Korea. 
 
 tioned to exposure by conventionality. Substitute 
 ' necessity ' for ' conventionality,' and you have 
 the far Eastern definition. Convenience, not 
 convention, is the touchstone of propriety. They 
 have not the smallest objection to being seen in a 
 state of nature where occasion demands it ; and, 
 on the other hand, nothing would induce them 
 to exhibit any portion of their persons for the 
 purpose of display. To them to be clothed or 
 naked is a matter of indifference ; it is merely a 
 question of temporary comfort. The reason 
 why they disregard the body is other than this. 
 It is simply that they have never been led to 
 regard the body as beautiful. That this is so, is 
 due to the low position of woman. She has 
 never risen high enough in their estimation to 
 attain even to that poor level of admiration — that 
 of being an object of beauty. All that should 
 be her birthright they heap as a dowry upon 
 Nature. 
 
 " The study of drapery has benefited at the 
 expense of what it encases, and plays a certain 
 part even in the expression of the emotions." 
 
 I must pause right here, much as I admire his 
 work, and much as I owe him, to quarrel with 
 Mr. Lowell, who says that the people of the East, 
 of the Far East at leasts have never been led to 
 regard the body as beautiful. 
 
Korean Women. 121 
 
 Is it possible that Mr. Lowell is unfamiliar 
 with, or unappreciative of, the literature of Hin- 
 dostan, the dramas of China, and the poems of 
 Japan ? 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 KOREAN WOMEN — {continued). 
 
 Slight as is the visible part played by woman 
 in Korea, yet there are an almost endless number 
 of facts concerning her which are either signi- 
 ficant or in themselves interesting. To me at 
 least, woman, and the conditions of her life, 
 together form the most interesting branch of the 
 study of Koreai And even to those who take no 
 deep interest in burning social questions, and 
 whose interest in far-away lands scarcely exceeds 
 an intelligent curiosity, any facts about Korean 
 women must be especially interesting, I fancy, 
 because those facts are les^ generally known, 
 less easily known than almost any other facts 
 connected with this wonderful peninsula, and its 
 wonderful people. So I do not hesitate to devote 
 another of my very limited number of chapters 
 to the women of Korea. 
 
 Cosmetics are not, it is gratifying to say, a 
 product of our Western civilization. They are 
 
Korean Women. 123 
 
 greatly used all over the Orient. But in two 
 particulars there is less to be said against the face- 
 painting of Eastern women than there is to be 
 said against the face-painting of the women of 
 the West. In Asia, hair-oil, rouge, powder, khol 
 for the eyes and eyebrows, and brilliant pigments 
 for the lips, are put on frankly, and are as 
 avowedly, and as sincerely, a seemly and decent 
 adornment, and as much an item of being 
 " dressed up," as is a silken petticoat or a 
 jewelled necklet. Ladies of Asia "make up" 
 more brazenly than the ladies of Europe, and 
 their ugly, painted imitation is still less like th6 
 loveliness of nature than is the painted ugliness 
 of ourselves when we do not feel that we have 
 sufficient beauty of face to leave it unadorned. 
 But the Eastern woman who " makes up " her 
 face has no thought of deceiving anyone, or of 
 obtaining masculine admiration or feminine envy 
 under false pretences. Her painting is as much 
 a matter of convention as is the Chinaman's 
 wearing of his queue ; and she lays on the thick 
 layers of brilliant red and ghastly white as 
 devoutly and as dutifully as she says her prayers. 
 The other good word I have to say for the 
 cosmetics of the Orient is this— they are infinitely 
 less harmful than the cosmetics we are wont to 
 
124 Quaint Korea. 
 
 use in Europe. I know that. For, on the stage 
 I have tried both very thoroughly. 
 
 A well-to-do Korean woman usually has a 
 very interesting collection of hair-pins. They are 
 long, heavily ornamented, made of silver, of gold, 
 or of copper; more usually of silver. Some of 
 them are very beautiful, and some that I have 
 seen reminded me very much of the long silver 
 pins that are thrust through the braids of Italian 
 peasant women. 
 
 The well-to-do women, especially in the capital, 
 now very generally wear European under-cloth- 
 ing. They invariably wear a pouch which is 
 fastened by cords to their girdle. This is their 
 pocket, the only pocket they have, except their 
 sleeves, and in it they carry a tiger's claw for 
 luck, a small cushion of sachet, or a bottle of 
 thick, rich perfume, some of their favourite pieces 
 of jewellery, scissors usually, or a knife, two or 
 three of their most frequently used toilet imple- 
 ments, and almost invariably a small Korean 
 chess-board and chess-men. The board and the 
 pieces are often made of silver or even of gold. 
 Chess is, perhaps, the most popular of all Korea's 
 many games, and the Korean women of the 
 leisure class play it incessantly. The pocket also 
 contains, more likely than not, the official book 
 of female politeness ; a book which every Korean 
 
Korean Women. 125 
 
 lady studies assiduously. But whatever this 
 pocket contains or does not contain, it must by 
 no means be without several charms, charms for 
 good luck, charms for health, charms for wealth, 
 and for any or every other good desirable under 
 the Korean sun. Of its charms the most valuable 
 is the tiger's claw. Mr. Griffis says, " Nor can 
 the hardy mountaineer put into the hand of his 
 bride a more eloquent proof of his valour than 
 one of those weapons of a man-eater. It means 
 even more than the edelweiss of other mountain 
 lands." The tiger is probably the most dreaded 
 foe of the Koreans. They fear it more than they 
 fear China ; hate it more than they hate Japan. 
 The Chinese have a saying which so vividly 
 pictures the tiger-Korean situation that I must 
 quote it, though it has, I believe, already been 
 quoted by every other European and the 
 majority of Orientals who have ever written on 
 Korea. It is this : " The Korean spends one half 
 of the year hunting the tiger, and the other half 
 in being hunted by him." 
 
 The hands of a Korean lady are always 
 exquisitely kept, and usually loaded with rings, 
 often with rings of very great value. 
 
 Among some classes of Korean women the 
 dressing of their hair is the most important item 
 of their toilet, and one skilled in way§ Korean, 
 
126 Quaint Korea. 
 
 and in signs of Korean rank, can very readily 
 determine, from a glance at her coiffure, who and 
 what a Korean woman is. The ladies of the 
 court wear their hair in different prescribed ways. 
 The geisha girls have an artistic fashion of their 
 own, and a Korean woman servant, one part of 
 whose duty is to fetch and to carry, makes out of 
 the braids of her own hair an enormous cushion 
 upon which she can carry with the greatest 
 security a huge bundle, or a vast dish of food. 
 
 The men of no other race are so amply dowered 
 with hats as are the men of Korea. Probably 
 the women of no other civilized country are so 
 badly off for head-gear as are the women of 
 Choson, and this is not, though we might easily 
 fancy it to be, because those women are not 
 supposed to walk or ride abroad. For innumer- 
 able years Korea has taken her fashions from 
 China, changing them with the change of dynasty 
 at Pekin. But for five hundred years the Koreans 
 have failed to change the fashion of their hats, 
 and they remain true to the style of head-gear 
 which was in vogue when the present Korean 
 dynasty came into power. When the present 
 fashion in hats was imported from Pekin, just 
 about five hundred years ago, the Koreans 
 neglected to .learn, or were unable to learn, what 
 the women of China were wearing on their heads 
 
Korean -Women. 127 
 
 or else the women of China were going bare- 
 headed. The resiilt was that Korean women, 
 having discarded their previous head coverings, 
 and receiving no authority from Pekin for the 
 fashion of new ones," became hatless, and have 
 been hatless ever since. The only hat the Korean 
 women wear now is the folded dress which I have 
 described before. There is indeed a jaunty, little 
 embroidered cap not unlike a modiiied Turkish 
 fez, or the glorious capote of a French vivandikre, 
 which is supposed to be at the disposal of any 
 Korean woman who cares to assume it, but it has 
 been adopted by the geisha girls, and so, of 
 course, discarded by Korean ladies. Korean 
 women used to wear a huge hat not unlike a 
 small, flat, Chinese parasol. It was perched well 
 up on and well to the back of their heads, and 
 was surrounded by a rather fascinating silk fringe, 
 through which they could see and be seen — a 
 fringe that was, perhaps, as becoming to them as 
 our white spotted veils are to us. 
 
 A few words here about divorce in Korea, for 
 divorce is always a matter of more importance to 
 a woman than to her husband. This is so in 
 every country, because as yet in every country 
 woman is more confined to her home, more 
 dependent upon her home, and less free to go 
 abroad at all seasons and under all circumstances 
 
128 Quaint Korea. 
 
 than man is, and therefore less able to escape 
 the daily torment of married unhappiness. In the 
 United States, and in most European countries 
 whose laws I have at all studied, the divorce laws 
 are very much more in favour of woman than 
 of man. In Korea the direct opposite is true. 
 There is little or nothing for which a Korean 
 woman can obtain a divorce, and there is little or 
 nothing for which a Korean man cannot. Whether 
 it is more to the credit of Korean woman or to the 
 credit of Korean man far be it for me to say ; but 
 it is a very rare occurrence for a Koirean husband 
 to put aside his wife. The sanctity of the home 
 circle, the inviolate maintenance of that home 
 circle is more than a religion, more than an 
 instinct with nine-tenths of the people of Asia. 
 Their idea of a home circle may be more elastic 
 than ours, but, as a rule, they abide by it 
 almost with the courage of martyrs. The women 
 must, and the men do. In one respect the 
 divorce laws of Korea are more radical than the 
 divorce laws of the West. Incompatibility of 
 temper justifies divorce in Korea, and is the 
 cause of most Korean divorces. Truly nothing 
 could be more sensible, more humane — provided 
 one has no religious scruples — for even children 
 lose more than they gain by living in an unhappy 
 home. Incompatibility of temper may not be a 
 
Korean Women. 129 
 
 sin, but it is the one difficulty in the path of 
 married happiness, in Asia or in Europe, which 
 can never be smoothed away. It is insurmount- 
 able, nor can you go around it. It seems to me 
 that the only decent thing to do when you come 
 upon it, again provided your conscience will let 
 you, is to turn round and go back. A harsh word, 
 a quick gesture, and many things that are many 
 times worse can be forgiven readily enough, and 
 almost forgotten, by people who have the common 
 justice to judge not lest they be judged. But 
 incompatibility of temper, that strange something 
 which makes it impossible for me to teach my 
 pet cat to eat or drink with my pet dog, ah ! 
 that is the marital thorn, the marriage plague, 
 " past cure, past help, past hope." And I con- 
 gratulate the law makers of Korea for recognizing 
 it for what it is, and dealing with it as it should 
 be dealt with. To be sure, if a Korean man and 
 wife fail to get along, perpetually fail, the woman 
 has no direct voice in the matter ; but if she and 
 her husband agree together to untie the mis- 
 takenly-tied knot, he can very easily do so. And 
 even in Korea a woman of average wit does not 
 probably find it too difficult a task to make herself 
 so very disagreeable that the husband may be 
 brought to propose the separation which she 
 secretly desires. 
 
 K 
 
130 Quaint Korea. 
 
 But where the Korean law seems to me very 
 inconsistent is in not punishing, when the mar- 
 riage is a failure, the geomancer who selected 
 the wedding day. The method of this sage is 
 so simple that it ought to be infallible. He 
 adds the age of the bride to the age of the 
 groom, and after determining which star rules 
 the destiny of their united ages, he decrees that 
 the wedding shall take place upon the day sacred 
 to that star. How a day so chosen can ever fail 
 to be auspicious, and to be the beginning of many 
 days of uninterrupted happiness it is hard for a 
 simple Western mind to understand. To do the 
 geomancer justice, it is perhaps because of his 
 occult wisdom that divorce plays so minor a part 
 in Korean life. 
 
 One Korean law concerning women seems to me 
 uniquely cruel. A woman may not die in the 
 arms of a man, nor may a woman hold in her 
 arms a man who is dying. Husbands and wives 
 love each other sometimes — even in Korea. 
 Mothers love their sons, the wide world over, and 
 sons their mothers. Korean fathers yearn over 
 their daughters, and are loved tenderly by those 
 daughters in return. What a barbarous law ! how 
 infamous ; how unworthy of the East or of the 
 West ! what a reflection upon humanity ; what a 
 stain upon Korea ! That inferiority of sex (sex — 
 
Korean Women. 131 
 
 that unexplained accident of our physical exist- 
 ence), inferiority, real or imagined, should separate 
 man from wife, father from daughter, son from 
 mother, even by a hair's breadth, at the moment 
 when Death, the merciless, the relentless, pro- 
 nounces the great, and perhaps eternal separa- 
 tion! 
 
 Though a Korean woman nominally counts for 
 nothing in the ruling of her own household, and, 
 as far as the workings of the State go, does not 
 exist, she is invariably treated with the man- 
 ner of respect ; she is always addressed in what 
 is called " honoriiic language ; " to her the 
 phraseology is used which is used to superiors, 
 people of age, or of literary eminence. A Korean 
 nobleman will step aside to let a Korean peasant 
 woman pass him on the street. The rooms of a 
 Korean woman are as sacred to her as a shrine 
 is to its image. Indeed, the rooms of his wife or of 
 his mother are the sanctuary of any Korean man 
 who breaks the law. Unless for treason or for 
 one other crime, he cannot be forced to leave those 
 rooms, and so long as he remains under the pro- 
 tection of his wife, and his wife's apartments, he 
 is secure from the officers of the law, and from the 
 penalties of his own misdemeanours. 
 
 It is often said that the men of the East regard 
 women not only as their inferiors, but as burdens, 
 K 2 
 
132 Quaint Korea. 
 
 as superfluous, useless, and despicable. This is a 
 mistake, as large a mistake in speaking of Koreans 
 as of any other Oriental race. The potence of 
 sex, the impotence of either sex alone, is the great 
 underlying thought of all Eastern philosophy, I 
 had almost said, of all Oriental ethics. Which of 
 the great Eastern religions ignores it, or passes it 
 by lightly ? Study the symbols in the old caves 
 of India : read Confucius. Every educated 
 Oriental believes that without women life would 
 not only be impossible but worthless. They 
 regard her sphere of usefulness as important 
 as their own. An Oriental mother is almost an 
 Oriental deity. This is as true in Korea as in 
 China, in Japan, in Persia, in Hindostan, and in 
 Burmah. The thinkers of Asia differ from us in 
 what they regard as the most appropriate and the 
 most essential spheres of women's usefulness, but 
 they never ignore, nor do I think they underrate, 
 the importance of woman's work. Mr. Griffis, 
 who is not over partial to the Koreans (perhaps 
 if he had ever lived among them he might have 
 liked them better), himself says : — 
 
 "With the ethics of the Chinese came their 
 philosophy, which is based on the dual system of 
 the universe, and of which in Korean, yum-yang 
 (positive and negative, active and passive, or male 
 and female) is the expression. All things in 
 
Korean Women. 133 
 
 heaven, earth, and man are the result of the inter- 
 action of the yum (male or active principle), and 
 the yan£ (female or passive principle). Even the 
 metals and minerals in the earth are believed 
 to be produced through the yum-yang, and to 
 grow like plants or animals." 
 
 Even so clear, so cool, so sympathetic, so cul- 
 tured, and best of all, so unbigoted an observer, a 
 thinker, and a writer as Percival Lowell, seems 
 to me to have blundered a little in his summing 
 up of the position of woman in the East. He 
 says : — 
 
 " The lower man's place in the scale of nations, 
 the lower, relatively to his own, has always been 
 that of woman. Woman, being physically less 
 strong, naturally suffers where physical strength 
 is made the basis of esteem. But as men have 
 advanced in civilization, gradually a chivalrous 
 regard has been paid the weaker, but fairer sex. 
 Now, though the countries of the Far East have 
 had their age of feudalism, in a general parallelism 
 to those of the West, loyalty took the place of 
 chivalry as one of its attendant feelings. At the 
 point where woman elsewhere made her dibut 
 upon the social stage, here she failed to appear ; 
 and she has not done so since. The history of 
 these races has been a history of man apart from 
 any help from woman. To all social intents and 
 
134 Quaint Korea. 
 
 purposes, woman has remained as she was when 
 she followed as a slave in her Lord's wanderings. 
 She is better fed now, better clothed, cleaner and 
 more comfortable than she was ; but, relatively 
 to the position of the people, no higher. She 
 counts for nothing in the life of the race at the 
 present time, as she has counted for nothing in 
 it from the beginning." 
 
 That the history of the races of the Far East has 
 been a history of man apart from any help of 
 woman, I cannot understand Mr. Lowell's saying. 
 He is evidently a man of very wide education, and 
 he has lived in the Far East. Undoubtedly he 
 has read the history of the Far East, and I cannot 
 imagine the author of " Choson, the Land of the 
 Morning Calm," reading anything unintelligently. 
 " That wonian counts for nothing in the life of the 
 race at the present time, as she has counted as 
 nothing in it from the beginning ! " Ah ! yes, Mr. 
 Lowell. She counts for a great deal. The tally 
 of her influence may not be kept in the market- 
 place, nor her power blazoned on the house-tops, 
 but influence and power are there. She counts 
 for a hundred things, and will count in every part 
 of the globe, civilized or uncivilized, until Nature 
 adopts a very different modtis operandi from her 
 present one. And in Korea, in China and Japan, 
 woman counts above all for motherhood, and for 
 
Korean Women. 135 
 
 the perpetuation of the race. And that she so 
 counts must give her really great power among any 
 race of men whose one eradicable religion is the 
 worship of their ancestors, whose universal and 
 insatiable ambition is to beget sons who may in 
 turn worship them, and secure them a prosperous 
 and a happy eternity. 
 
 There is much, very much that I deplore in 
 the condition of woman in Korea. But once in a 
 while woman gets the whip hand, and once in a 
 very great while she has the wit to use it — and 
 the nerve — even in Korea. 
 
 If it must be a canon of European literary good 
 form to say very little, and to say it gingerly about 
 Oriental polygamy, it has been a more than 
 general custom among European writers to say 
 nothing, nothing at least of any significance about 
 the large class of Oriental women who stand out- 
 side the pale even of polygamy. There are some 
 things that I think ought to be said about them ; 
 said now, when we are so very earnestly trying to 
 understand the East, and, I hope, honestly striv- 
 ing to help the East. These things would come 
 with more convention I know from the pen of a 
 man, but I think they would come more appropri- 
 ately from the pen of a woman, and I take upon 
 myself the saying of them, in so far as I am able. 
 I feel impelled to explain, as well as I can, the 
 
136 Quaint Korea. 
 
 exact social position, and the exact personally 
 mental attitude of the yoshiwara women of Japan, 
 the flower girls of China, and the geisha girls of 
 Korea. These three are sisters. They are 
 cousins, more or less close of kin, to the nautch 
 girls of India, and the posture girls of Burmah 
 and of Siam. But these three were born of one 
 father, and of one mother, and are the result of 
 one bringing up. What shall I call them ? I 
 have no wish to use a harsh word that would offend 
 select European ears, nor will I use a harsh word 
 that would wrong and mis-describe them. I might 
 almost call them the understudies of the happier 
 women of the East ; for in Asia's social life they 
 take the parts which ought, perhaps, to be played 
 by the harem-hidden wives and mothers of the 
 Orient. Those women, whose profession is pub- 
 licity, are an important part of the social structure 
 of every Asiatic race I have known, except only 
 the Parsi race. To ignore their existence, when 
 travelling through Asia in person, or with pen, is 
 stupid. To slink by the strong position that they 
 hold in the East, the big significance of their firm 
 placement in the East, and the several lessons 
 they will not fail to teach us, if we do not fear to 
 learn, is prudish. To pass them by with a cry of 
 horror, and to condemn them as being what they 
 are not, is un-Christian and unjust. 
 
Korean Women. 137 
 
 For the men that mocked His agony and spat 
 upon Him, Jesus claimed forgiveness, because 
 " they knew not what they did." And certainly 
 the professionally unfortunate women of the East 
 have as little consciousness of degradation and of 
 sin as they have of shame. There are many 
 reasons why this is so, and I will try to state them. 
 I am only less sorry for the homeless, nameless 
 women of Asia, than I am for the homeless, name- 
 less women of Europe. Perhaps this is the best 
 place for me to say that I am making no plea for 
 the profession of which I am writing. For the 
 women who through folly, through ignorance, or 
 who beneath the lash of that hardest of all task- 
 masters, circumstance, follow this nameless pro- 
 fession, I could easily find it in my heart to plead, 
 and to plead, and to plead ; but not now nor here. 
 What I wish to do now is to write frankly, freely, 
 and truthfully of the women who make the seclu- 
 sion and the sanctity of gentlewomen possible in 
 the Far East. 
 
 After all's said and done, the social scales must 
 balance or break, weight them as you will. And 
 as the women of the Korean gentry are more 
 secluded than those of any other Oriental gentry, 
 so are the geisha girls of Choson more interesting, 
 more fascinating even than the yoshiwara women 
 of Japan, and infinitely more so than the flower 
 
138 Quaint Korea. 
 
 girls of China. Men living in the Far East, 
 superior as they find the society of men to the 
 society of men and women, tire of the perpetual 
 society of men, and long to let down its intellec- 
 tual average a bit by the introduction into it of 
 women. Now the men of the East cannot pos- 
 sibly, from their point of view, bring their wives 
 and daughters out from the safe shelter of home 
 seclusion. But still they long for the mental, 
 not to speak of the moral relaxation of woman's 
 companionship, and so in the East a class of 
 women has sprung up which is only very slightly 
 analogous to the class of Western women from 
 whom respectable Western women draw their 
 skirts aside as they pass them in the Western 
 streets. 
 
 Women seem to be an indispensable element of 
 society after all. Social enjoyment without them 
 is more or less a failure, at least in any very pro- 
 longed form. And in those countries where wives 
 and mothers must veil their faces, a class has 
 sprung into existence — a class whose exact social 
 position is almost, if not quite, outside the pale of 
 modern European comprehension. 
 
 The geisha of Korea, like the yoshiwara women 
 of Japan, are sweetly pretty, soft-voiced, and 
 charmingly mannered. And, like their sisters of 
 Japan, they seem almost happy and quite dignified. 
 
Korean Women. 139 
 
 Perhaps indeed, they feel that they fulfil a national 
 want — perform a national duty. 
 
 Companionship is the first and the chief thing 
 required by an Oriental man from the women he 
 pays to share some of the hours that he spends 
 away from home. If the Hindoo, or Chinaman, 
 or the Japanese, or the Korean man be poor, he 
 has no leisure hours, and certainly cannot afford 
 the illicit companionship which comes dear, and 
 becomes dearer in the long run, all the world over. 
 If he be well-to-do, the chances are that he has a 
 bungalow or yamun running over with wives. 
 Therefore, it is not for a common bestial satis- 
 faction, but altogether for natural human com- 
 panionship, that the men of the Far East so largely 
 employ and so generously pay those Eastern 
 women who have broken through the closed 
 curtains and out of the sure safety of Oriental 
 home-life, into the turmoil and the promiscuous- 
 ness of society. Here, I must emphatically say, 
 and it should be most emphatically remembered 
 by anyone who is trying to understand the 
 East : the nameless women of the East sin, but 
 sin is neither their sole nor their chief occupation. 
 To please, to amuse, to understand, and to com- 
 panion men, mentally and socially, is their chief 
 duty, their chief occupation, and their most earnest 
 study. Sin follows, as sin has the grievous habit 
 
140 Quaint Korea. 
 
 of following wherever people are human. But sin 
 is neither the beginning nor the end, and I who 
 can see no difference between a Korean wife and 
 a Korean concubine, can see little or none between 
 a Korean coiicubine and a Korean geisha. I am 
 speaking of their morals, of course. The geisha 
 girl is, as a rule, rather better educated than the 
 concubine, better educated, quite possibly, than the 
 wife ; for the geisha must make her way, and hold 
 any position she gains, solely by personal talent, 
 personal attractiveness, and personal attainments. 
 Not for her to lay at the man's feet a son who may 
 worship him into the most desirable corner of the 
 Korean heaven ; only for her to please him while 
 she is with him, to touch for him odd instruments 
 and sing to them soft, weird songs, to shake the 
 soft perfume of her hair across his cheek and 
 the perfume of the flowers she wears upon the 
 bowl of food, or of fish, or fruit she humbly 
 places before him ; only for her to laugh at his 
 humour, flat howsoever it may be ; only for her 
 to applaud his ambitions, urge on his hopes, 
 charm away his fears ; only for her to please ; 
 never for her, save by accident, to be pleased. 
 And that is the state of their sad fate in Europe, 
 in Asia, in America, or in Africa : the women who 
 give an everlasting all for a momentary nothing. 
 Feminine unchastity is less degrading in the East 
 
Korean Women. 141 
 
 than in the West, and the unfortunate women of 
 the East are far less degraded than the unfortu- 
 nate women of the West. There are three reasons 
 why this is so. In the Orient no woman is born 
 to immorality. In the Orient professional un- 
 chastity is not considered altogether immoral. 
 And immorality is not the only accomplishment 
 necessary for the professional success of an Asiatic 
 unfortunate. 
 
 In the Orient no woman is born to immorality. 
 The ranks of the immoral profession are recruited 
 from homes and from family circles that are 
 quite up to the Asiatic average, and an immoral 
 method of life is usually adopted by an Eastern 
 girl not from impulse, not from caprice, but from 
 a conviction that it is the surest and the most 
 sensible way for her to earn her living, and assist 
 in earning the living of her family. Her parents, 
 in all probability, share this conviction with her, 
 and nine times out of ten she makes her dibtit in 
 the profession of sin after the elders of her family 
 have consulted earnestly together, and sifted, as 
 best they can, the probabilities and the possi- 
 bilities of her future. So she starts into her 
 sad pilgrimage froni a clean home, from clean 
 associations, and her instincts and herself are 
 clean and normal. She adopts sin gravely and 
 as a business ; nor does it ever occur to her t"^ 
 
142 Quaint Korea. 
 
 regard it as a self-indulgence; rather is it a 
 penance, or an act of filial self-sacrifice. 
 
 In the East the life of a young girl is seldom 
 wrecked by the misfortune which overtakes so 
 many of our own girls. The social arrangements 
 in the East prevent that, prevent it very effectu- 
 ally. When an Eastern girl takes upon herself 
 a long martyrdom of public service she is at 
 least of normal mind and whole of heart. Her 
 nature, mental and moral, however it may be 
 debased by her future life, is as yet unvitiated 
 by any accumulation of ancestral wrong-doing. 
 She may adopt sin for reasons that seem good and 
 sufficient to herself and her parents, but she has no 
 appetite for sin, no appetite inherited from her 
 mother at least, so she has a fairer start than have 
 the majority of unfortunate women in the Occident. 
 
 In the Orient professional unchastity is not 
 considered altogether immoral. "There is no- 
 thing good or bad, but thinking makes it so." 
 This may not be altogether true, but certainly 
 there is a good deal of truth in it. The unfortunate 
 women of the East have vastly more self-respect 
 than have the unfortunate women of the West. 
 They are not despised, and therefore they do not 
 despise themselves ; nor are they driven by the 
 merciless scourges of public opinion to lower and 
 coarser methods of life than those unavoidably 
 
Korean Women. 143 
 
 entailed by the profession they follow. Their 
 profession is not considered an honourable, an 
 elevating, nor an enviable one ; but it is con- 
 sidered, by the people among whom they live, 
 as a useful and necessary and, within certain loose 
 limits, an honest one. This makes it possible 
 for them to lead lives of comparative respect- 
 ability, and to enjoy frankly, fearlessly, and purely 
 some of the best things of life. The flowers that 
 grow about their houses, and the wonderful skies 
 that canopy their countries, convey to them no word 
 of reproach. They gather the blossoms as inno- 
 cently, and they smile back at the smiling heavens 
 as unshamedly as does any maiden in the East. 
 
 If one gives a dog a sufficiently bad name it 
 becomes almost righteous to hang him. The 
 peoples of the Orient spare their unfortunate 
 women unnecessary contumely. And this is the 
 second reason why those women are better, less 
 deplorable, individually and collectively, than are 
 such women in Europe or America. This seems 
 to me another instance of Asiatic justice and 
 good sense. Why such women, and such women 
 alone, should be blamed for an existing state of 
 general immorality I cannot imagine. They are 
 not responsible for it, though, of course, they 
 help to perpetuate it. They take to life's sad 
 market-place wares for which they know there 
 
144 Quaint Korea. 
 
 is a demand. They supply the demand ; but they 
 do not create it. 
 
 Immorality is not the only accomplishment 
 necessary for the professional success of an 
 Asiatic unfortunate. As I have .said, companion- 
 ship is the chief return an Eastern man expects 
 and exacts for the coin that he throws into the 
 lap of a light woman. The loose women of the 
 East must be educated, and that they are 
 educated makes it possible for them to spend 
 many hours of each day in wholesome, refining 
 occupations — occupations which are closed to 
 the great mass of European unfortunates. 
 
 To recapitulate, the women of whom I am 
 writing are of a better grade than are such 
 women in the West, because in the East those 
 women come from respectable homes and have 
 memories of innocent and happy childhoods. 
 Secondly, because they are so regarded in the 
 East that they need not altogether part with 
 self-respect; and lastly, because education and 
 refinement are not only possible to them, but 
 necessary to them, and because the majority of 
 their professional hours are passed in conversa- 
 tion or with music, and are altogether free from 
 coarseness. 
 
 I have spoken of these women as being out of 
 the pale of matrimony. This is true, I believe, 
 
Korean Women. 145 
 
 in China and in Korea, and in most other Oriental 
 countries ; but it is hot at all true in Japan. It 
 used to be in Japan an ordinary occurrence, and 
 even now it is not, I think, unusual for a girl to 
 sell herself for a stated period of time into the 
 horrible slavery of a tea-house, or become for 
 some definite number of years the mistress of a 
 well-to-do man. This is often done to earn 
 enough money to pay some debt of family honour, 
 to redeem the pledged word of a father or of a 
 brother. The girl who does it is considered any- 
 thing and everything rather than a bad woman. 
 She returns to her native village, or to her father's 
 house, when the time of her servitude has expired, 
 and she is received with every possible sign of 
 honourable welcome, and is pointed out then and 
 thereafter as an example of daughterly perfection, 
 and of virtuous womanhood. She marries as 
 readily and as well as any of her girl friends, and 
 her past is not regarded as to her detriment either 
 by her husband or his family. This practice is 
 more common among the poor than among the 
 rich. But there are women of very high position 
 in Japan who have had this terrible experience, 
 and who have survived it, mentally and morally. 
 
 There is, of course, in Japan a large number of 
 women who adopt immorality when they are very 
 young, and who never put it aside. They are 
 
 L 
 
146 Quaint Korea. 
 
 called yoshiwara women. In the old times they 
 lived apart, not only in quarters of the town set 
 aside for them, but in quarters that were enwalled, 
 and through the gateways of which they could not 
 pass without permission — permission that was 
 not too readily granted. Even now there are 
 streets set apart in almost every Oriental city — 
 set apart for the occupancy of unfortunate women. 
 The roads and the byways of Japan are sprinkled 
 with tea-houses, and in almost every tea-house 
 there are two or more yoshiwara women. These 
 tea-houses are models of cleanliness, are usually 
 pretty in situation, and always artistically fur- 
 nished. The tea, cakes, and sweets sold in them 
 are almost invariably delicious. The girls who 
 are supposed to be the chief attraction of the tea- 
 houses are rather brazen as a rule, far more so 
 than the flower-girls of China, or the geisha girls 
 of Korea, but it is a very butterfly sort of brazen- 
 ness. Their manners are so pretty, their move- 
 ments so bird-like, and their voices so tinkling 
 and silvery, that it seems rather unfair to criticize 
 them for being somewhat over-emphatic in what 
 they say and do, and in how they say and do it. 
 
 I remember one warm afternoon in Kobe, I was 
 in my jinrickshaw and several miles from home. 
 I was tired, very thirsty, and my four-year-old boy, 
 who was with me, assured me that he could not 
 
Korean Women. 147 
 
 live much longer unless he had something to eat. 
 I stopped at a tea-house — a pretty, carved, 
 lantern-hung place that was perched on the hill- 
 side, not very far from the marvellous waterfall. 
 I had not been very long in Japan, and had no 
 idea that I was making a social blunder, but I 
 noticed that my jinrickskaw coolie looked dis- 
 turbed and dubious. Two Japanese girls sat on 
 the verandah ; one was smoking a long silver pipe, 
 and the other was picking whispered music from 
 a diminutive white guitar. One girl wore a 
 kimono of pale green cr^pe, brocaded with pink 
 apple-blossoms ; the other girl's kimono was of 
 dark, bright blue, but it was almost covered with 
 huge yellow roses. Both girls wore the ordinary 
 Japanese sash, had their hair elaborately dressed, 
 and were rather loaded with jewellery. Through 
 the openings of their kimonos peeped the edges of 
 sundry other garments, all of cr6pe or of silk, and 
 all brilliantly coloured. They laughed and nodded 
 as I came up the steps, and when I said that my 
 boy and I were hungry and thirsty, one of them 
 rose and led me into the house. We passed 
 through a fair-sized room in which half a dozen 
 European men, one of whom I happened to know, 
 and as many Japanese girls were feasting rather 
 merrily. The girls looked at me with consider- 
 able good-natured amusement; the European 
 
 L 2 
 
148 Quaint Korea. 
 
 men looked at me in most considerable surprise. 
 Baby and I were taken into a dainty little room 
 which really was not big enough for more than 
 two, and there were given quite a delightful 
 luncheon. The girl who had showed us in waited 
 upon us gravely and most attentively, and with 
 admirable patience, for we were both hungry, very 
 hungry, and thirsty, very thirsty. I found out 
 afterwards that it was the first time she had 
 poured afternoon tea for one of her own sex, and 
 that I had made a most unfortunate mistake in 
 going into the tea-house at all. But the girl who 
 served us treated me and herself with perfect 
 respect. 
 
 Respectable Japanese women wear the quietest 
 of colours, in public at least. Bright flowers, 
 glittering jewellery, and gaudy garments are the 
 avowed livery of the yoshiwara women. They are 
 pretty as a rule — these women — prettier even than 
 the run of Japanese women ; for in Japan personal 
 beauty is considered one of the indispensable attri- 
 butes of women who would lead a life of remunera- 
 tive idleness. 
 
 The flower-girls of China are in most ways 
 more to be pitied than the yoshiwara women of 
 Japan. They are not as a rule so well educated, 
 nor so comfortably housed, and though treated 
 with a good deal of allowance, and collectively 
 
Korean Women. 149 
 
 taken, as a matter of course, their position is 
 neither so assured, nor the circumstances of their 
 lives so endurable as are those of the Japanese 
 girls. The breaking of the seventh command- 
 ment may be as common in China as it is in 
 Korea or Japan,' but it is not so lightly regarded, 
 and the flower-girls are almost without excep- 
 tion the children of extreme poverty. And a 
 Chinese woman who has once lived in a house of 
 ill-fame can never go back to even apparent re- 
 spectability. This is not so in the Straits Settle- 
 ments, where there are very many Chinamen and 
 very few Chinese women. In Singapore and in 
 Penang Chinese girls who have been sent from 
 China for immoral purposes very frequently marry 
 well, and pass the rest of their lives in security 
 and comfort. But in China I fancy that this 
 never happens. 
 
 The Chinaman is the most domesticated of the 
 men of the East, and the least fond of general 
 society. He does not go to the houses of the 
 flower-girls for society, for companionship, not at 
 least in any quiet and unobjectionable sense, nor 
 so commonly as do Korean and Japanese men. 
 The Chinese flower-girl, except the very lowest 
 type, is taught to sing, to play on several instru- 
 ments, to heat wine and to spice it, to prepare 
 delicacies and table dainties, and to serve a feast. 
 
150 Quaint Korea. 
 
 She is taught to keep herself as good-looking from 
 a Chinese standpoint as possible. But this is 
 usually the list of her accomplishments, the limit 
 of her education, and she is vastly ignorant com- 
 pared to the women who dwell in the house of 
 the man who patronizes her. Many of these 
 Chinese women live outside the gates of Chinese 
 cities. Thousands of them live in little boats 
 that are called " flower-boats " and off of which 
 they seldom go. The " flower-boats " of Canton 
 are a most distinctive feature of that most dis- 
 tinctly quaint place. Shortly before the declara- 
 tion of war between China and Japan, the following 
 telegram was sent from Hong Kong : — 
 
 " A terrible fire has occurred on the Canton 
 river among the flower-boats which crowd the 
 surface and form the permanent dwelling of a 
 large number of the population. Hundreds of 
 the flower-boats were destroyed, and fully one 
 thousand natives must have perished. 
 
 "The boats were moored stem and stern in 
 rows, and the flames spread with such rapidity 
 that many of the craft were fully alight and their 
 occupants overcome before they could cut the 
 boats from their moorings and push them out 
 into the open water." 
 
 As if poor China were not in trouble enough 
 just then, with a terrible plague still in rather 
 
Korean Women. 151 
 
 full swing, and with war and with rumours of war, 
 but must needs go and set herself on fire ! 
 
 I don't in the least doubt that there was a 
 terrible fire on the Canton river, and that over a 
 thousand human creatures perished in the flames. 
 Such a catastrophe is by no means unprecedented 
 in China, and most especially in Canton. But I 
 do doubt that the fire broke out among the 
 flower-boats. In the first place the flower-boats 
 do not crowd the surface of the Canton river. 
 In the second place they do not form the per- 
 manent dwelling of a large number of the popula- 
 tion. I think that the sender of the dispatch, or 
 one of the operators through whose hands it 
 passed, must have confused flower-boats, sampans 
 and Chinese cargo-boats. 
 
 The flower-boats are not in a crowded part of 
 the river. They are moored quite by themselves 
 at the wide mouth of the river and some little 
 distance from the city. They are together, but 
 not painfully near. No families dwell upon them. 
 They are occupied solely by the flower-girls and 
 their servants, and at night their decks and 
 cabins swarm with rich and dissipated Chinamen. 
 Then their windows are brilliant with light, their 
 decks are bright with fanciful lanterns, and they 
 are noisy with laughter and the tinkling of strange 
 stringed instruments, and they smell of hot 
 
152 Quaint Korea. 
 
 samshu. Not the sort of place in which one 
 would expect flowers to thrive ! Alas ! the 
 flowers on those boats are human flowers. They 
 are painted with brilliant colours, but not by the 
 hand of nature. 
 
 The girls who live there are not vendors of buds 
 and blossoms. " Flower-girl " is the name by 
 which the over chivalrous Chinamen designate a 
 woman who is professionally unchaste. 
 
 On the opposite side of the river's mouth, but 
 still farther from the city, are moored the miser- 
 able boats of the lepers. The saddest of sins and 
 the saddest of diseases are within sight of each 
 other. Both are outside the pale of Chinese 
 society. Both are excluded from Cantonese 
 citizenship. 
 
 Because of their isolation, I doubt that the 
 recent fire occurred among the flower-boats. But 
 among the small cargo-boats, among the thickly 
 huddled sampans ! Yes ; likely enough there. 
 
 Surely it is horrible enough to live all one's life 
 in a Chinese sampan or in a small junk, without 
 being burnt to death into the bargain. Drowning, 
 now, is a very common occurrence on a Chinese 
 river. No one takes much notice of that in 
 Canton. To be sure the mothers put crude, 
 home-made life preservers on their babies, or tie 
 a long rope about their little yellow waists, 
 
Korean Women. 153 
 
 fastening the other end firmly to the boat. So if 
 a Chinese baby falls overboard (as it usually does 
 two or three times a day), it has a very fair chance 
 of floating or being hauled back. But the adults 
 must take their chances, and extraordinary num- 
 bers of them manage to tumble into a watery 
 grave. Hundreds of Chinese are born in sampans, 
 live in sampans, die in sampans. Yet almost none 
 of them can swim. 
 
 For one thing the canals and rivers are too 
 crowded. There is no room for them to swim in. 
 For another thing they have no time to learn how 
 to swim. It's all work and no play to most of 
 the sampan dwellers. 
 
 Think of a family of ten or twelve, or even 
 more, who live in a one-roomed boat, a boat not 
 many times the size of a big row-boat. Think 
 what their family life must be. And they are 
 only one of myriad families. They live in a 
 quarter denser than the densest of the crowded 
 city streets. Think of the stench ! Think of the 
 din ! Small wonder that they take drowning 
 almost tranquilly. But to be burnt to death! 
 That's another matter. Even stolid Chinese 
 philosophy may be expected to shrink from that. 
 Think of being burned to death in a boat, on a 
 river, and yet not being able to drown one's 
 death agony in the cooling water, because every 
 
154 Quaint Korea. 
 
 inch of the water's surface was covered with 
 hundreds of other burning humans ! 
 
 Such things happen not infrequently in China, 
 and yet hundreds and hundreds of thousands of 
 Chinese continue to live in the sampans and in 
 the cargo-boats. They must live there. There 
 is no place else for them to live ; unless they 
 leave China, and few of them have the wish to do 
 that : none of them have the means. Their dire 
 poverty drives them into the wretched boats and 
 imprisons them there, and there they must remain 
 until they die of old age, of overwork, of starva- 
 tion, or die by drowning or fire, as the case may 
 be. And the children born and bred on those 
 boats ! No wonder that when the boys are grown 
 to manhood many of them are only fit to hide 
 themselves within the leper-boats ; that when the 
 girls are grown to womanhood very many elect to 
 have the comparative luxury of the flower-boats ! 
 
 The Korean geisha probably gets more enjoy- 
 ment out of life and is less conscious of wrong- 
 doing than is the woman of any other race who 
 follows the same profession. It follows naturally 
 enough that the race whose standard of sexual 
 morality is lowest, regards women of unchaste 
 lives more leniently than does any other race. 
 Then, too, the seclusion of Korean ladies is more 
 rigid than the seclusion of the gentlewomen of any 
 
Korean Women. 155 
 
 other Asiatic country. This makes the men of 
 Korea entirely dependent upon the geisha girls 
 for any outside female companionship, and the 
 Korean man is very sociable, very fond of good 
 times, and if he can afford it, apt to make not 
 only a plaything, but rather a friend out of the 
 girl whose profession it is to be amusing, enter- 
 taining and cheerful, at so much an hour. 
 
 The word geisha is a Japanese word, and it 
 signifies " accomplished person." The Korean 
 word for the class of women of whom I am 
 writing is ki-saing ; but they are generally called 
 geisha. The Japanese yoshiwara women are 
 called geisha, as often as anything else. 
 
 In proportion to the populations of the two 
 countries there are far fewer geisha in Korea than 
 in Japan, but this is solely, I think, because Korea 
 is so much poorer than Japan ; for nowhere are 
 women of their profession more appreciated, more 
 esteemed, and treated by men more on an equality 
 than they are in Choson. The Korean geisha is 
 systematically and carefully trained for her in- 
 tended profession. Several years are occupied by 
 her education, and not until she is proficient in 
 singing, in dancing, in reciting, in the playing of 
 many instruments, in repartee, in the pouring of 
 wine, in the filling and lighting of pipes, in making 
 herself generally useful at feasts and festivals, and 
 
156 Quaint Korea. 
 
 above all, in being good-natured, is she allowed to 
 ply her trade. In or near every large Korean city 
 are picturesque little buildings called " pleasure- 
 houses." They are very like the tea-houses of 
 Japan. They are usually built in some secluded 
 spot, and are surrounded by the brilliance of 
 flowers, and half hidden beneath the shadow of 
 trees. They are scantily but artistically furnished, 
 and are running over with tea and sweetmeats 
 and girls. 
 
 The geisha of the King are, of course, the flower 
 of the profession, and are dressed even more 
 elaborately than the ordinary- geisha, which is quite 
 superfluous. They remind one very much, both 
 in manner and in habit, of the posture girls of 
 Burmah, and the European who was a looker-on 
 at a festival in Li Hsi's palace might easily fancy 
 that when Thebaw was dethroned, his posture 
 girls, whose occupation was of course then gone, 
 had fled en masse to the court at Soul. Most 
 Asiatic dances are slow. Probably the slowest of 
 them all is the dance of the Korean geisha. Like 
 all the dances of the Far East, with which I am at 
 all familiar, it is absolutely free from vulgarity, or 
 from suggested coarseness. The geisha herself is 
 covered and covered from throat to ankle. It 
 would be imprudent to say how many dresses she 
 usually wears at once. She dresses in silk and in 
 
Korean Women. 157 
 
 glimmering tissues. Before dancing she usually 
 takes off two or three of her gowns, and tucks up 
 the trains of the robes she still wears, but even so 
 she is very much dressed, and a thoroughly well- 
 clad person. In winter she wears bands of costly 
 fur on her jaunty little cap, and an edge of the 
 same fur about her delightful little jacket of fine 
 cashmere, or of silk. She wears most brilliant 
 colours, and all her garments are perfumed and 
 exquisitely clean. Indeed, cleanliness must be 
 her ideal of godliness. At least, it is the only 
 godliness she knows, and, save the virtue of amia- 
 bility, the only virtue she would be ashamed to 
 lack. Her parents are poor, always very poor, 
 and she is pretty, always very pretty. It is this 
 prettiness which causes her almost from her baby- 
 hood to be destined for the amusement profession. 
 It makes her suitable for that profession, and 
 ensures her probable success in it. Her parents 
 gladly set her aside from the toilers of the family, 
 and she is given every possible advantage of mind 
 and person. So she is insured a life of ease, and 
 even of comparative luxury. She is a blooming, 
 gladsome thing, with gleaming eyes, and laughing 
 lips, and happy dancing feet. She looks like some 
 marvellous human flower when you meet her in 
 the streets of Soul, and forms an indescribable 
 contrast to the draggled crowds that draw apart 
 
158 Quaint Korea. 
 
 to let her pass as she goes on her laughing way to 
 her well-paid work. 
 
 The geisha girls are greatly in demand for 
 picnics, and in the summer often spend days in 
 the cool, fragrant woods, playing for, reciting to, 
 and feasting with some merry party of pleasure- 
 makers. If their services are required at a Korean 
 feast they usually slip in one by one when the 
 meal is more than half done. The host and his 
 guests make room for them, and each girl seats 
 herself near to a man whose attendant she thus 
 becomes for the entire evening. They pour wine 
 for the men, and see that all their wants and 
 creature comforts are well looked after. They do 
 not eat unless the men voluntarily feed them. To 
 feed them is to give them a great mark of favour, 
 and it would be the worst of bad form for them 
 to refuse any morsel so offered. After the feast 
 they sing and dance in turn and together. They 
 recite love stories and ballads, and strum indus- 
 triously away upon funny Korean instruments. 
 Their singing is very plaintive : as sad as any 
 earthly music, but it is not sweet nor pleasing to 
 European ears. The geisha are often employed 
 to perform before private families, and not unfre- 
 quently before the harems of rich men or 
 mandarins. To introduce them for an evening 
 into the most respectable family circle is regarded 
 
Korean Women. 159 
 
 as the best of good taste. Some of these girls live 
 together, many of them live, nominally at least, 
 in the homes of their own childhood. They form 
 strange contrasts to their sisters of approximately 
 the same age, whose lives have been lives of virtue 
 and incessant work. 
 
 The geisha never by any chance become familiar 
 with, or are treated familiarly by the women of the 
 harems into which they are occasionally intro- 
 duced, and yet some of them are not unchaste in 
 their personal lives. This, however, is of course 
 very exceptional. Occasionally the geisha be- 
 comes the concubine of a man of position, or the 
 personal attendant of a man of wealth. When 
 old age, that dread foe of woman the wide world 
 over, creeps upon them, they become the teachers 
 of the girls who are ambitious to become geisha. 
 
 No geisha girl expects to be entertained. It is her 
 business to entertain. The moment she enters the 
 presence of her employer or employers, she takes 
 unobtrusively the thorough charge of the social 
 side of the function. She makes herself useful and 
 amusing, and agreeable in every possible way, and 
 apparently has no thought of self. Often a large 
 party of Korean gentlemen will go for a stay of 
 some days to one of the monasteries that still dot 
 the Korean hillsides. They usually take with 
 them an incredible train of servants, and a number 
 
i6o Quaint Korea. 
 
 of geisha. Rare times they have on these excur- 
 sions, and rare welcome do the monks give them. 
 The monks and the servants and the geisha devote 
 themselves to the lords of the situation. And the 
 Korean man who goes picnicking to a Korean 
 monastery probably has as good a time as any 
 reveller in the East. 
 
 Such are the Magdalenes of the far Orient ! To 
 be pitied, to be deeply pitied, but to be less pitied 
 than the Magdalenes of the West, for they are 
 better housed, better treated, and less conscious 
 of their misfortune. There is, I think, a good 
 deal worth pondering over in the way the peoples 
 of Asia deal with the great social sin — a sin from 
 which our human race can scarcely hope for 
 redemption, unless indeed, — 
 
 " Heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, 
 To cry. Hold, hold ! " 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 KOREAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 What her dress is to woman, his dwelling is to 
 man. I am speaking, of course, of average man 
 and of average woman. What she wears indicates 
 what she is, and is the most natural, the most un- 
 conscious, and the most common expression of 
 her individuality, and of her character. She, her 
 very self, peeps from beneath the laces at her 
 neck. The house in which he lives shelters his 
 women and his young; the buildings which he 
 erects, or helps to erect, indicate who and what 
 he is, and are the most natural, the most un- 
 conscious, and the most common expression of 
 his individuality, and of his character; and we 
 may see him as he really is, in his roof, his door- 
 step, and, in brief, in the exterior and the interior 
 of his home. 
 
 It is this, its revelation of mankind, which 
 makes architecture so intensely interesting a 
 study, the most interesting, I often think, of all 
 
 M 
 
i62 Quaint Korea. 
 
 the studies of the inanimate. Not for their grace 
 of outline, not for their beauty of colour, not for 
 their artistic consistency, not for their happy 
 placement, are the great buildings of this world 
 supremely interesting to us ; but for the glimpses 
 they give us into the souls, the lives of the men 
 who have reared them. 
 
 Of more recent years records have been made 
 and preserved of the doings of most of the civil- 
 ized peoples, but, beyond a doubt, many such 
 records made in olden times have been irretriev- 
 ably lost, and many a page of history— a page 
 clear and convincing to us to-day — would have 
 been lost to us for ever were it not for the silent 
 but indisputable testimony of old buildings : ruined 
 houses, scraps of temples, broken bridges, crumb- 
 ling towers, and grotesque caves. 
 
 It is impossible to speak of Korean architecture 
 without speaking of Chinese architecture, and of 
 Japanese architecture. And it is so impossible to 
 separate the architecture of Korea from either the 
 architecture of China, or the architecture of Japan, 
 that one has a very convenient excuse for writing 
 of the architecture of Korea as it visibly is, and 
 for writing little or nothing of what it means. 
 Korean architecture, in all its best phases, is purely 
 Tartar. Chinese architecture is largely Tartar. 
 But China, in architecture, as in ethics, and as 
 
Korean Architecture. 163 
 
 in sociology, is at heart more or less Mongolian. 
 China has been ridden under, not exterminated, 
 by Tartar supremacy. Japanese architecture is 
 Tartar, but it is very many other things, and 
 the charitable mantle of Japanese art is so all- 
 covering, and her artists have graciously adopted 
 the art-methods of so many different peoples, that 
 it is quite impossible to say whether Tartar in- 
 fluence is the parent or the powerful adopted child 
 of Japanese art. 
 
 For convenience, I will divide Korean architec- 
 ture into the architecture of the poor and the 
 architecture of the rich. Korean hovels are like 
 most other hovels. Extreme poverty goes rather 
 naked the wide world over, and the Korean poor 
 live in houses of mud, roofed with leaves ; and if 
 the leaves and the mud give out they have holes 
 in their roofs instead of chimneys. 
 
 Korean hovels, Korean houses, and Korean 
 palaces have many characteristics in common, 
 characteristics which are climatic and racial. Let 
 us peep first at the homes of the Korean poor. 
 The home of a poor Korean, dwell he in a Korean 
 city, dwell he in a Korean village, or dwell he 
 desperately perched upon the rocky side of a 
 Korean mountain, is a house of one story — that 
 is, of one story in which people live. , Above is a 
 thin sort of attic in which grains and other pro- 
 lyl z 
 
164 Quaint Korea. 
 
 visions are stored, and beneath is a fairly thick 
 sort of basement in which heat is bred, from 
 which heat is generated. Like all other Korean 
 houses the interior of this house is lined with 
 paper. It has a paper roof, paper floor, or floor- 
 cloth, and paper walls. The walls slide back or 
 lift up, or are in one of several other ways got rid 
 of, in the summer ; but they are walls for all that, 
 no less walls because they are also windows and 
 doors. Paper is the chief feature of every ordinary 
 Korean house ; and to say that is to say a great 
 deal for paper: because the cold of a Korean 
 winter is excessive, is far beyond the cold of the 
 winter in which I write. In every Korean house, 
 be it the house of prince or of pauper, there is 
 what seems to be at first sight, to European eyes, 
 a paucity of furniture. There is nothing more 
 significant of the difference between the simple 
 artisticness of the East and the elaborate inart- 
 isticness of the West than the way in which 
 Western rooms are crowded with inanimate 
 unnecessaries, and the way in which Eastern 
 rooms are sparsely supplemented with inanimate 
 necessaries. 
 
 I had afternoon tea yesterday with a friend 
 who loves me so well, and whom I so well love, 
 that I am sure she will forgive me for drawing, to 
 her disadvantage, a comparison between her 
 
Korean Architecture. 165 
 
 drawing-room and the drawing-room of a Korean 
 man, or the boudoir of a Korean woman. I 
 never go into my friend's drawing-room without 
 feeling a thrill of admiration for the nice way in 
 which her butler avoids knocking over one of a 
 pair of priceless vases, which were stolen from 
 Pekin about the time that Sir Harry Parkes and 
 Sir Henry Loch were rather inconveniently 
 imprisoned there. I creep in, as gracefully as I 
 can, between the butler and the two priceless 
 blue things. I cross a bit to the left, to avoid a 
 malachite table crowded with silver pigs (some of 
 them so little that they would look lost on a 
 threepenny-bit, some of them a foot or more long) ; 
 then I cross to the right, to avoid a wonderful 
 teak-wood cabinet of no particular style, that 
 looks very staggery beneath a multitude of tea- 
 pots — tea-pots most of which are not interesting 
 in themselves, and none of which are interesting 
 in their common conglomeration. Then I almost 
 trip over the wool of a slaughtered Persian lamb, 
 and I just save myself from tumbling into a 
 Louis Quinze chair, and so I work my way 
 through the ages — through the races, until I 
 reach my hostess, who, like myself and everyone 
 else there, is in nice, new, nineteenth-century, 
 ugly raiment. There may be space in this 
 London drawing-room for her, for me, and for all 
 
i66 Quaint Korea. 
 
 the other ordinary folk which are gathered 
 together, because we are very much ahke, but 
 there is not room for all the chairs, and the 
 tables, and half the other pieces of furniture, 
 because no two of them are alike. We humans 
 are used to fashionable crushes, but I think 
 it is a shame not to give the furniture room to 
 breathe; 
 
 Let us peep into a Korean drawing-room. A 
 long cool place. There is a padded quilt, 
 probably covered with silk, in one corner. The 
 host sits on that, and any guests that come to 
 him. If the weather be cold, and the host be 
 rich, a brazier of charcoal usually stands in 
 another corner. There is a small table, or 
 perhaps there are two, with writing and painting 
 materials. Unless the house be one of dire 
 poverty there is, at one end of the room, a chest of 
 drawers or a buffet, or a sideboard, or something 
 of that sort : a huge piece of furniture made out 
 of more or less costly woods, fitted with drawers 
 and doors, and embellished with metal handles. 
 The handles, or the clasps, or the locks are made 
 in the shape of butterflies, for the butterfly is a 
 very favourite expression of Korean artistic 
 outline. When it is time to eat, a table is 
 brought in for the host and one for each of his 
 guests — a table a foot or two high, and just about 
 
Korean Architecture. 167 
 
 as square as high. Upon this, small dishes of 
 food are placed, and small but often-filled cups of 
 drink. When the meal is over, the tables and 
 the dishes and the remnants of meat and of 
 liquor (but there are not often many of either) are 
 taken away. 
 
 In an ordinary Korean house there is little or no 
 other furniture. A screen perhaps, precious for 
 its decorations, and for the carvings of its frame,* 
 and three or four pictures — pictures distinctly 
 Korean, but I assure you by no means inartistic. 
 I can think of nothing else that ordinarily 
 furnishes a Korean room, except the quaintly 
 clad people, and the sunshine that comes in 
 almost iridescently — it shines through windows 
 of so many different colours : windows of 
 paper. The colour of the light depends 
 entirely upon the colour and the texture of the 
 paper through which it comes. A Korean bed- 
 room is very like a Korean sitting-room. The 
 quilt upon which a Korean sits through the day 
 is the same as, or very like, the quilt upon which 
 he sleeps at night. Tiger skins are also greatly 
 used for floor rugs and bed coverings. 
 
 To stray a moment from the exact subject of 
 architecture. The Koreans wear, I believe, very 
 much the same clothes in day as in night. 
 Indeed, I believe that the Korean changes his or 
 
i68 Quaint Korea.' 
 
 her garments for five reasons only : to eat, to 
 put on new clothes when the old ones are worn 
 out, to have the clothes she or he is wearing 
 washed, to put on his or her best clothes in 
 celebration of some festival or other ceremonial, 
 and to go into mourning. Firstly and foremost, 
 a Korean undresses to eat. They are not civilized 
 enough, the people of Choson, to array them- 
 selves for feeding time. They do not deny their 
 relationship with other hungry mammals. When 
 they are hungry they eat. When they are thirsty 
 they drink, and to be truthful, their hunger and 
 their thirst is usually enormous, and of long endur- 
 ance. They are neither ashamed of their hunger 
 nor of their thirst, for they appease neither before 
 going to a feast. Indeed, to gorge oneself is 
 considered the acme of Korean elegance, and it is 
 the one elegance in which all Koreans, rich and 
 poor, young and old, male and female, prince and 
 peasant, indulge themselves on every possible 
 or semi-possible occasion. And that they may 
 eat the utmost possible morsel, they loosen their 
 garments before they sit down to the feast. 
 
 But I was speaking of the houses of the Korean 
 poor. Perhaps it is rather inappropriate to speak 
 of banquets in connection with them ; yet, except 
 among the most abjectly poverty-stricken, ban- 
 quets are held sometimes (at marriages, on 
 
Korean Architecture. 169 
 
 birthdays, on feast-days, and on lucky-days, if 
 possible) in every Korean home. 
 
 Only Koreans of certain position are allowed to 
 cover their roofs with tiles. A peasant's roof is 
 almost invariably thatched with straw or grass. 
 Every Korean house contains but one room, 
 or, to state it differently, every Korean room, ex- 
 cepting for a door opening into another house 
 or room, is in itself a complete house. It has 
 a roof of its own, and four walls of its own, and 
 is in every way independent of any other rooms 
 or houses, which may form other parts of its 
 owner's dwelling. When inside a Korean dwell- 
 ing one may fancy oneself in a suite of apart- 
 ments opening into each other, that is, of course, 
 if a certain number of the paper walls are 
 opened. From the outside of a Korean dwelling, 
 one seems to be looking at a collection of more 
 or less closely built, but entirely independent 
 houses. The position of woman being what it 
 is, even the poorest Korean house has, or ought 
 to have, more than one room. This peculiarity ; 
 this similarity between exteriors and interiors, 
 makes Korean architecture uniquely picturesque, 
 and public buildings and the dwellings of the rich 
 supremely so. Indeed, the better class of houses 
 often have not only a roof to each room, but two 
 or three roofs to each room. Now a Korean roof, 
 
170 Quaint Korea. 
 
 to my mind, is the most beautiful roof in the 
 world. It is Chinese in general character, and 
 slopes from the ridge pole in graceful concave 
 curves. Except in the houses of the poor it is 
 tiled. The tiles overlap each other, are unevenly 
 curved, and rest upon a foundation of earth. In 
 the course of a few seasons a Korean roof breaks 
 into bud, and into blossom. Perhaps a great 
 patch of odd blue flowers covers one-half of the 
 roof, perfuming the air for many yards. Perhaps 
 quaint crimson tulips lift their happy heads be- 
 tween every few tiles. Wild pinks, forget- 
 me-nots, and orchids mingle on one roof, and 
 another roof glitters in the sunshine like gold 
 because it is the bed of a thousand yellow sun- 
 lilies. 
 
 Imagine an old Korean monastery which is 
 backgrounded by hills, some of them covered 
 with verdure, and some of them naked rocks, 
 rocks that are broken here and there by patches 
 and cracks of hardy flowers. In the distance, we 
 hear the melodious drip of some gentle waterfall. 
 Nearer we hear the full-throated soprano of the 
 larks. And a dozen other birds, green and blue, 
 and purple, and grey with breasts of yellow, fly 
 from their nests in the teak-wood trees, to drink 
 the sweet blood of the blooming iris. The mon- 
 astery has a score or more of houses, each 
 rambling from some other. The monastery is 
 
Korean Architecture. 171 
 
 low and porticoed, and the doors, which are also 
 its windows and its walls, are slid back in the 
 grooves, and our view of each of the many in- 
 teriors is only obstructed by the eight square 
 posts which are the only permanent walls of a 
 Korean building. Inside we catch a glimmer of 
 metallic Buddhas, and hear the careless Sanskrit 
 sing-song of the monks. In the courtyard stands 
 a great brass Korean bell or gong, and the stick 
 with which it is struck lies beside it. A huge 
 glimmering gong is this ; to call the brethren to 
 prayer and to rice. Around the edges of the mon- 
 astery's roofs runs a peculiar shell-like beading, 
 which is a distinction of a sacred or religious 
 edifice. The roof was a dark brown once, but 
 the tiles, those that have not been broken away, 
 have grown purple and blue, softened by time and 
 blighted by weather. Where the tiles have 
 crumbled away, and over many tiles that have 
 not yet succumbed to decay, honey-suckles, 
 yellow and buff, and white and rose-coloured, are 
 creeping and tangling themselves with great, 
 green ropes that are heavy with gourds — gourds 
 that are little and pale, and gourds that are big 
 and golden and speckled. 
 
 Or let us look at some one of the king's many 
 houses. Its round columns and its square 
 rafters are lacquered and crimson. Its paper 
 walls are as fine and as polished as silk. Innu- 
 
172 Quaint Korea. 
 
 merable steps lead up to it, and it is almost heavy 
 with carvings. Three roofs shelter it, and look 
 like a tent with an awning above an awning. 
 Each roof is a bed of flowers that are brilliant and 
 fragrant — flowers among which birds that are 
 splendid of feather, and sweet of throat, make 
 their nests. But the birds and the flowers are 
 not the only denizens of the typical Korean roof. 
 Effigies in mud, in bronze, or in wood squat on 
 the ridges. They look a little like monkeys, very 
 little like men, and some of them very much like 
 pigs. They are absurd and impossible to a degree, 
 and yet, for all that, they are rather life-like, and, 
 on a weird moonlight night, decidedly startling. 
 These are the protectors of the houses ; and what 
 the scarecrow which the European or American 
 farmer manufactures out of his oldest trousers, 
 his most ragged coat, and his most disreputable 
 hat, is to the blackbirds and the crows of the 
 Occident, these grotesque figures are to the evil 
 spirits of Korea. They frighten away the devils, 
 the gods of misfortune, and the demons of disease 
 that would fain light upon the roofs, and curse 
 the dwellers of the houses. Socially they belong 
 with the demons and the imps and the witches, 
 with the monks and the nuns, and the hundred 
 other personages of Korea's queer religious or 
 irreligious spiritualistic community. But physic- 
 
Korean Architecture. 173 
 
 ally they are a striking and a fascinating detail of 
 Korea's remarkable architecture. 
 
 I have spoken of the khans, which are the 
 furnaces of the Korean houses. They are not 
 altogether underground, and so every Korean 
 house rests, as it were, upon a pedestal — a 
 pedestal of stone or of earth. But the house is 
 almost never built of stone. Wood and paper 
 are its only materials, and few of the countries in 
 the world are richer in woods, and no country is 
 so rich in paper as Korea. 
 
 The fame of Korea's paper is more world-wide 
 than the fame of any other Korean product. But 
 admirable as it is, superior for many purposes as 
 it is to all other papers, it is really for her woods, 
 and for their quality, that Korea should be noted 
 more than for any other thing which she grows 
 or manufactures. Bamboo is there, of course, in 
 abundance, and abundantly used. Find me the 
 country in Asia where bamboo does not grow, 
 and I'll vow to you that that country has been 
 an iceberg and in some strange way become 
 detached from its anchorage at the North Pole, 
 drifted down to the southern seas, and after 
 centuries become overgrown with all sorts of 
 green and gay things, and so come to think itself, 
 and to be thought, a part of the Orient. When I 
 say that bamboo grows in Korea I am saying 
 
174 Quaint Korea. 
 
 that Korea is in Asia, and I am saying no more. 
 The temples, the palaces, the shrines, and the 
 lumber-yards of China and Japan were for many 
 years, and now largely are, dependent for the 
 most choice of their woods upon the forests of 
 Korea. And many of the most valued of the tree 
 species in Japan have sprung up from seeds that 
 were gathered in Choson. In the palaces, and 
 in the joss-houses of Pekin, and in the famous 
 temples of Tokio and Kioto, columns and ceilings 
 of especial beauty and of great value, com- 
 mercially and artistically, have been hewn from 
 trees that grew in Korea. Korea is rich in 
 willow, in fur, in persimmon, in chestnut, and in 
 pine — pine which the Chinese prefer above all 
 other woods for many of the parts of waggons, 
 boats, and ships. Korea is rich in ash, in horn- 
 beam, in elm, and in a dozen other hard, very 
 hard, enduring timbers. The flag that flies above 
 the yamun of a Chinese mandarin is in all pro- 
 bability attached to a pole of Korean wood, and, 
 beyond doubt, the white flags that so recently 
 fluttered upon the ill-fated ships outside the forts 
 of Wei-Hai-Wei, had not those ships been built 
 in Europe, would have made their signals of 
 defeat from the top of what once had been trees 
 in Chei-chel-sang or in Hoang-hai. Korea is 
 splendid with oaks, and with maples, and is 
 
Korean Architecture. 175 
 
 well supplied with larch and with holly. And 
 at one season of the year many of her hill- 
 slopes are purple with mulberries. The juniper- 
 tree grows there in vast numbers ; the cork- 
 tree and the Korean varnish-tree, from the 
 sap of which comes the golden-hued lacquer, 
 which is one of the important materials of 
 Korean art. This sap is poisonous, so poisonous 
 that the men who work with it are paid above 
 the rates usually received by Korean art-artisans. 
 There is another tree in Korea which has so 
 disagreeable a name that I won't name it, but 
 from it a very fine white wax is extracted. And 
 there are trees that are pricked for the oil that 
 gushes from them — oil from which one of the 
 great 'national drinks — a hot, peppery drink — is 
 made, and which is almost the only oil used in the 
 toilet of a Korean woman. 
 
 So the Korean architect and the Korean builder 
 have the choice of many woods in the erecting 
 of Korean edifices. A marvellous species of oak 
 grows plentifully in Korea — oak whose timbers 
 have been known, and proved to have been, under 
 water for a century at least, and without decay- 
 ing. But perhaps the most famous of the woods 
 of Korea are the wonderful red and black wopds 
 that grow on the island of Quelpaert. 
 
 Paper forms a larger part, and is almost as in- 
 
176 Quaint Korea. 
 
 destructible a part of the Korean house as is 
 wood. This paper is made from cotton — cotton 
 whose fibre is exceptionally long, soft, satiny, 
 and fine. Most Korean papers are beautiful to 
 look at, delightful to touch, and incredibly strong. 
 It is almost impossible to tear them, especially 
 when they are oiled as they are for all archi- 
 tectural purposes. The varieties of Korean papers 
 are almost endless. One kind is an excellent 
 substitute for cloth, and is used for the making 
 of garments, and for linings, and in many ways 
 it takes the place of leather, of woods, and of 
 metals, and of all sorts of woollen things. There 
 is a very thick paper which is made from the 
 bark of the mulberry-tree. It is soft and pliable, 
 and is as glazed as satin. It is almost, if not 
 quite, the most easily washed substance I have 
 ever seen, and is par excellence the Korean choice 
 for table-cloths. 
 
 Glass is almost unknown in Korea, and until 
 recent years was quite unknown there. And as 
 we are all very apt to prize most that with which 
 we are least familiar, and the use of which we least 
 understand, so Koreans set great value upon 
 glass. Old bottles, washed ashore from some 
 European shipwreck, often form the most prized 
 bric-a-brac in a mandarin's dwelling, and any 
 Korean who can get a square foot or two of glass 
 
Korean Architecture. 177 
 
 to insert in one of the paper windows of his house 
 is a very proud householder indeed. 
 
 In the house of a noble the front or outer apart- 
 ment is used as a reception-room. Here his 
 friends and acquaintances (indeed, all whose rank 
 entitle them to mingle with him) gather night 
 after night for gossip, for tobacco, and for drink. 
 These rooms take the place of clubs, of bar-rooms, 
 and of the smoking-rooms of hotels, all of which 
 are unknown in Korea. 
 
 Background and environments are so studied 
 by every architect in the Far East that landscape- 
 gardening may almost be said to be a part of 
 Korean architecture. No Korean building of any 
 importance lacks courtyards, lotus ponds, groves 
 of trees, and tangles of flowers, through all of 
 which are scattered elaborate little summer- 
 houses. And what the rich Korean does for the 
 surroundings of his house and his city, nature 
 almost invariably does for the surroundings of the 
 house of the poor Korean, who does not live in 
 one of the crowded cities. The Korean hut is 
 sometimes half covered with vines, and is alto- 
 gether cool and delightful from the shade and the 
 perfume of trees that are heavy with flowers, with 
 fruits, and with nuts. No Korean need be roofless. 
 If a house be burned down, or be blown down, 
 the entire community are more than ready to 
 
 N 
 
178 Quaint Korea. 
 
 assist at its re-erection, and the poorest man in 
 the village, the hardest-worked, will spare some 
 fraction of his time to help in the re-building. If 
 a new-comer appear in a Korean village, the 
 inhabitants go to work to help him build, or, if 
 necessary, build for him a where-to-lay-his-head. 
 
 Such are a few of the characteristics, the most 
 vivid characteristics, I think, of the architecture 
 of Choson, — an architecture which is even more 
 significant than architecture usually is. Korean 
 architecture is significant of Korean artisticness. 
 It is significant of Korean good sense ; for the 
 architecture of Choson is invariably well-adapted 
 to the climate of the peninsula. But far beyond 
 this, Korean architecture is significant of the 
 Korean love of seclusion, and of the Korean 
 faith in the efficacy of appearances. The Koreans, 
 more perhaps than any other people, realize that 
 fine feathers make fine birds, and the most studied, 
 the most elaborated, and architecturally the most 
 important part of a Korean house is its fence; 
 which of course is not a part of the house at all. 
 This fence may be a hedge, it may be a wall 
 encircling the domains of a magistrate, or engird- 
 ling the city. It may be a series of hedges, of 
 moats, of walls, and of gates. The Koreans are 
 exclusive and seclusive to a degree. This should 
 command for them the sympathy of English 
 
Korean Architecture. 179 
 
 people. All Koreans strive heroically to put their 
 best feet forward, personally, financially, and 
 architecturally. This should command them the 
 sympathy of Americans. The Korean farmer 
 screens his house inside a quadrangle of hedges, 
 hedges as sweet as are the hedges of North Wales 
 in the month of July. A Korean king hides his 
 palace behind an externity of many walls that are 
 splendid in height, in colour, in detail, in outline, 
 and in material. Walls between which a score of 
 flowers fight each other for the glory of killing every 
 inch of the grass, — walls between which marble- 
 outlined ponds sleep cosily beneath their green 
 and pink and white coverlets of lilies, and of lotus. 
 And the Koreans who are neither princes nor 
 peasants, but who stand between the two, spend 
 a world of thought, and a good deal of money 
 upon the fences — floral or stone — thrown about 
 their homes. Only the poorest of Korean houses 
 — of which there are many — and only the shops — 
 of which there are few — lack some sort of a wall, 
 some manner of a barrier between the private 
 family life, and the public life of the going and 
 coming community. 
 
 Korean walls (I mean the walls of masonry 
 which mark the boundaries of a city or the limits 
 of a gentleman's grounds, and not the paper walls 
 of a Korean house) are, without exception, 
 
 N 2 
 
i8o Quaint Korea. 
 
 Chinese in character. But even more important 
 than these walls are the gateways with which 
 they are broken, and above all, the gateways or 
 gates that stand some distance outside the walls. 
 In Far Asia gates have a significance which they 
 never have had, even in our own old Norman 
 days, and never can have, in Europe. Gates are 
 the architectural ceremonies of the East. They 
 frame many of the most ceremonial ceremonies of 
 the East, and it necessarily follows that they are 
 big and georgeous. For never did a picture 
 justify more lavish framing than does the picture 
 of Eastern ceremony. There are three great 
 classes of gates in the Far East : the torii of 
 Japan, the red-arrow gates of Korea, and the 
 pailow of China. But before I try to say some- 
 thing of these three gates, there are two or three 
 pleasant things to be said of the gates that 
 ordinarily pierce the wall of a Korean city. The 
 gates themselves are heavily built of wood, are 
 elaborately ornamented with metal, and slowly 
 swing in a rusty sort of way at sunrise, and at 
 sunset — swing at sunrise to let the people of the 
 city out, and the people of the country in ; swing 
 at sunset to let the people of the country out, and 
 the people of the city in. Korea not being a land 
 of machinery, it becomes necessary for a certain 
 number of officials to tend these gates. They are 
 
Korean Architecture. i8i 
 
 not called gate-keepers, but are officers, rather 
 important officers, if I remember, of the Korean 
 army. Now, an army officer, all the world over, 
 does not mind where he lies, what he eats, or 
 how he suifers — ^when he is on active service : 
 but when debarred from fighting, the soldier, all 
 the world over, and especially the officer-soldier, 
 wants to be well-housed, well-roomed, well-fed, 
 and above all, well-amused. This seems to be 
 the one military trait which Korea has not yet for- 
 gotten. Above the gates that open into Soul, and 
 into every other walled Korean city, are built 
 very cosy little stone houses. In these the 
 soldiers on guard — the gate keepers — play cards, 
 eat rice, munch sweetmeats, and sip arrack. 
 Above the gateways that lead into the houses of 
 Korean magistrates, Korean nobles, and of Korean 
 millionaires, just such houses are built. They are 
 the concert halls of Korea. In them the band of 
 the Korean magistrate, the Korean noble, or the 
 Korean millionaire discourses more or less discord- 
 ant music, and at delightfully respectful distance 
 from its employer's house. They never play in 
 the cold weather. It has been said that this is so, 
 not because the Korean in whose service they are 
 cares a whit whether their fingers freeze to their 
 instruments or not, but because he is unwilling to 
 open the paper walls of his house wide enough to 
 
i82 Quaint Korea. 
 
 hear the music that is being played in the gate- 
 houses of his outer walls. I doubt this. A rich 
 Korean, who is covered with layers and layers of 
 silk and wadding, and who sits upon a khan in 
 full iire, and who is surrounded by braziers of 
 charcoal, and whose house is deplorably lacking 
 in ventilation, does not, I think, as a rule, shrink 
 from having his front door or his side wall opened 
 once in a while. Beneath the guard-house build- 
 ing, above the gate of a Korean wall ; there can be 
 no khan, for the guard-house is above the gate, 
 and many feet from the ground in which the Khan 
 must be embedded. And so I put it down to the 
 humanity of the average well-to-do Korean that he 
 never makes his band play, on his walls, save in 
 fairly warm weather. 
 
 These rooms, these little houses built above the 
 gates of a Korean walled city or the gates of a 
 great man's domain, have been in years past the 
 scenes of many a Korean romance, and even now 
 they are often the favourite retreats or lounging 
 places of Korean poets and philosophers. They 
 are usually furnished with considerable comfort. 
 They are cosy in the autumn and in the spring, 
 and delightfully cool in the summer. They're 
 well above the city's sights, and high above any 
 unpleasant intrusion of the city's sounds, and so 
 are fit resting-places for one who wants to meditate 
 
Korean Architecture. 183 
 
 or dream or write poetry, or be at rest, or escape 
 from the hundred nagging vexations of daily 
 life. 
 
 Korean walls are adjuncts to Korean gates, and 
 not, as with us, the gates adjuncts to the walls. 
 The walls are built to emphasize the importance 
 of the gates, to supplement them, and to attract 
 attention to them. To the Korean mind the walls 
 are so much less important than the gates that 
 the gates are often built and the walls omitted 
 altogether. Such gates are the torii of Japan, 
 the pailow of China, and the red-arrow gates of 
 Choson. Every Korean gate has a name, a 
 name that is meant to be impressive and poetical, 
 symbolical of beauty and of good. And doubtless 
 these names are so to Korean ears, but they are apt 
 to strike the European mind of average stolidity 
 as amusing or silly. In Korea, indeed, every 
 edifice of any pretension has a name. The people 
 of the Far East personify their buildings to a great 
 extent, and endue them with individuality, and 
 with human attributes. Royal gateways are 
 often flanked by two immense Chinese lions, or, 
 as they are more generally called, Korean dogs. 
 These dogs are but one of the many most universal 
 expressions of Korean art. They are the one ex- 
 pression of Korean art with which we, in Europe, 
 are very familiar. 
 
i84 Quaint Korea. 
 
 There is nothing else in picturesque Korea so 
 picturesque as the red-arrow gates. I wish I might 
 devote a chapter to them, and I am rather ap- 
 palled at undertaking to at all clearly describe 
 them in a few paragraphs. A dozen or more of 
 the most eminent European authorities on Korea 
 unanimously declare the red-arrow gates to have 
 either been copied from, or to have been the 
 originals of the Japanese torii. Why, in the bulk 
 of literature that has been written about these 
 strange gates of the Far East, little or no 
 mention has been made of the Chinese pailow 
 puzzles me. There can, I think, be no doubt that 
 the three gates are three generations of one archi- 
 tectural family, or that they have had a common 
 origin. The pailow of China are memorial arches, 
 erected, as a rule, to commemorate the virtue and 
 the character of women who have slaughtered 
 themselves that they might follow their husbands 
 to the grave. These arches are heavier than the 
 Japanese torii, or the Korean red-arrow gates, but 
 they are like both in their general outlines and in 
 situation. And all Chinese architecture is very 
 much heavier than the architecture of Korea or 
 of Japan. The torii of Japan marks the approach 
 to a temple, or to some sacred place. It is formed 
 of two upright columris or pillars which lean 
 slightly toward each other at the top, and are 
 
Korean Architecture. 185 
 
 crossed by two or three graceful bars ; the upper 
 of which is slightly, but very beautifully curved. 
 The word " torii " is most usually translated 
 " birds' rest," from " tori " a " bird," and " I " 
 " to be," or " rest." And the theory has been that 
 they were originally built as convenient resting- 
 places for birds : as birds, with all other animals, 
 were sacred in the eyes of the Buddhists. This 
 translation is unsatisfactory. The etymology of 
 the word itself, like that ofso many other Japanese 
 words, is hidden in a good deal of mystery, and 
 though to-day we find the torii outside of every 
 Buddhist temple in Japan, we also find one out- 
 side every Shinto temple in Japan, and it is easily 
 proved that they were first reared outside the 
 Shinto, and not outside the Buddhist temples. 
 Long before Buddhism was introduced into Japan, 
 the torii stood outside numerous Shinto temples. 
 The most plausible translation of the word " torii," 
 though it is not a translation altogether convinc- 
 ing, is " a place of passing through." It is Mr. 
 Chamberlain, I believe, who gives this translation, 
 but his book is not at my hand, and I am not 
 positive. Certainly both in Korea and in Japan 
 the birds make a very general resting-place of the 
 torii, and of the red-arrow gates. But then so do 
 they in China of the pailow, and so do they in 
 America and Europe of the telegraph wires. It is 
 
i86 Quaint Korea. 
 
 very possible that from this habit of theirs " torii " 
 has come to mean, or has been thought to mean, 
 " birds' rest." The red-arrow gates of Korea are 
 taller and narrower than the torii of Japan. The 
 red-arrow gate never stands outside a temple, but 
 outside a palace or some high magistracy, and it 
 denotes the approach to a house of the king, or to 
 the house of one of almost kingly authority. So 
 in Soul we find a red-arrow gate standing outside 
 the yamun of the Chinese Resident, one of the 
 many silent, but clearly legible proofs that Korea 
 has long regarded herself as a vassal of China. 
 These gates are painted a most brilliant red, which 
 is the Korean royal colour. The upright columns 
 of a red-arrow gate are crossed by two horizontal 
 bars. These bars are quite straight, and unlike 
 the cross-bars of the torii, the upper one does not 
 extend quite to the top of the perpendicular 
 column. These gates are called arrow-gates 
 because of twenty or more speared- shaped bits of 
 wood that are embedded in the lower of the two 
 horizontal bars, pierce through the upper bar, and 
 extend a little higher than the shaped ends of the 
 perpendicular columns. They are simplicity itself, 
 these red-arrow gates, except for their gorgeous 
 colouring, and altogether lack the elaboration of 
 the Japanese torii. They are thirty feet high at 
 least, often much higher. But however simple in 
 
Korean Architecture. 187 
 
 themselves they make wonderful frames for won- 
 derful bits of Korean landscape. On the exact 
 centre of the upper cross-bar rests a peculiar 
 design which represents the positive and negative 
 essences — the male and female essences of 
 Chinese philosophy. This again is surmounted 
 by tongue-shaped or flame- shaped bits of wood, 
 which are supposed to, in some way, represent 
 the power of the king. The two symbols to- 
 gether signify Korea's king as omnipotent, since 
 he is under the protection of China, and has 
 espoused the religion of Confucius. It is notice- 
 able that the torii of Japan invariably marks the 
 vicinity of a temple, or of some building, or some 
 place sacred to one or more of the Japanese 
 deities ; while in Korea the red-arrow gate in- 
 variably signifies the proximity of the dwelling of 
 temporal power. I am inclined to think that the 
 Koreans borrowed the idea of their red-arrow gates 
 from the Chinese, and that the Japanese seeing 
 them, translated them into torii. If this is so, it 
 is presumable that in both instances the borrowers 
 erected the gates in front of what was to them the 
 most important places in their own countries. 
 The Emperor of Japan is the nominal head of the 
 Shinto religion. In the days when the torii was 
 introduced into Japan, religion was probably a 
 great force in the three islands, and the temples 
 
i88 Quaint Korea. 
 
 seemed to the Japanese the most appropriate 
 places to be honoured by this arched sign of im- 
 portance. In Korea, on the other hand, religion 
 is, and for many years has been, under a social 
 and governmental ban. In Korea the king is all, 
 and the gods are naught, so — as a matter of 
 course — the red gates reared their graceful, arrow- 
 crowned heads outside the house of a king, or of 
 a deputed representative of the Chinese emperor. 
 The bridges of Korea, the big bell at Soul, and 
 a dozen other characteristic details of Korea's rich 
 architecture, all rise up before me and seem to 
 reproach me for passing them by without a word. 
 To touch upon them with anything approaching 
 adequacy would require pages and not words, and 
 the pages at my disposal are growing few. But I 
 can heartily recommend their study and the study 
 of Korean architecture in general to all who are 
 interested in the East, and in architecture, and 
 who are fascinated by the quaint and the sym- 
 bolical. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 HOW THE CHINESE, THE JAPANESE, AND THE 
 KOREANS AMUSE THEMSELVES. 
 
 There is nothing else, I think, that so positively 
 proves the intimate relationship of China, Japan, 
 and Korea, as does the great similarity between 
 their games and their amusements — a similarity 
 which almost amounts to identicalness. If it is 
 true that " in vino Veritas," it must be equally 
 true that men are most natural when they are 
 happiest, freest from care, and have neither 
 business nor duties beyond recreating themselves. 
 So when we study the Chinese, the Japanese, and 
 the Koreans at play, and find that they all play 
 very much alike, appreciate the same or kindred 
 amusements, have the same methods of feasting, 
 of resting, and of enjoyment, we are justified in 
 concluding that these three peoples are very 
 near of kin. But if they be children of the same 
 parents, they are not the children of one birth, 
 and this to me, at least, is proved by the. few 
 
igo Quaint Korea. 
 
 but sharp differences between each of their three 
 ways of amusing themselves. 
 
 China, Korea, and Japan ! And the greatest of 
 these is China. Let us watch them, beginning 
 with China, at their recreations, and then let 
 us note how in those recreations they differ. 
 
 Feasts naturally form an important part of the 
 happiness of a people, the majority of whom 
 commonly go hungry. A Chinese dinner is in 
 more than one way startling — to the average 
 European mind. But it is a very good dinner 
 for all that. 
 
 I have been at many a Chinese dinner. Some- 
 times I have sat with the quaint Chinese women, 
 behind the shelter of the lattice. Sometimes I 
 have feasted brazenly with the men ; and more 
 than once the women of a Chinese household 
 have, out of courtesy to me, come forth from the 
 prized seclusion of their lattice-screened coign 
 of vantage, and joined me in eating with the 
 commoner faction of th^ family herd ; in breaking 
 bread with men. 
 
 Chinese festivals ! The subject is so intricate 
 and so interesting that I have not the impertinence 
 to dismiss it in a sentence. But, in passing, I 
 may say that no people enjoy festivals more, no 
 people indulge in them more discreetly, less 
 frequently than do the Chinese. 
 
How THE Koreans Amuse Themselves, igi 
 
 Chinese ceremonials ! Funerals, weddings, 
 and a hundred others ! I know, in all the East, 
 nothing more incomprehensible to the average, 
 well educated European mind ; nothing more 
 philosophically pregnant to minds that are 
 exceptionally industrious and exceptionally open. 
 
 Chinese recreations are almost myriad. 
 They fly kites ; they let go perfumed, brightly- 
 lit balloons of silk and of silk-like paper; they 
 light their fire-fly-lit land with a hundred thou- 
 sand lanterns, and in honour of those lanterns, 
 in indulgence of themselves, they hold a feast. 
 
 The dramatic is the chief of all arts. In China 
 dramatic performances take the precedence of all 
 entertainments. A Chinese theatre, at the best, is 
 a barn-like place. It is devoid of scenery. Only 
 men take part in Chinese theatrical performances. 
 
 In China, actors are looked down upon as 
 social pariahs, and their sons may not enter 
 for the competitive examinations which are the 
 birthright of almost every Chinaman. 
 
 But nevertheless the Chinese have a god of 
 play-acting, and they pay him no small homage. 
 Indeed, all the Chinese deities are supposed to 
 be great theatre-goers ; and for their benefit 
 theatrical performances are frequently held in the 
 courtyards of the temples. The people (who 
 have a free entree) flock to these performances and 
 
192 Quaint Korea. 
 
 enjoy them as much or even more than the gods 
 are supposed to do. 
 
 To almost no Chinese dramatic performance 
 is admission charged. A number of people club 
 together, hire the actors, engage the musicians, 
 put up a shed — on the street, in a field, anywhere, 
 anyhow — invite the entire community — which 
 needs no urging — and the performance begins. 
 Or a rich man is the momentary impresario. But 
 even then the people expect to be admitted, and 
 usually are. 
 
 The Emperor of China is a great devotee of the 
 drama. He often commands a play at eight in 
 the morning. Indeed, the day is the more usual 
 hour for all theatrical performances in China. 
 
 But the most well worth seeing of Chinese 
 Thespian entertainments are those that take 
 place in the temple courtyards. No need of 
 scenery there! Behind the bamboo stage rise 
 the not unimpressive walls of the queerly-archi- 
 tectured Chinese temple. Where we are wont 
 to have glaring footlights there is a soft, rosy 
 glow, for there great rhododendrons lift their 
 proud and heavy heads. The courtyard is partly 
 surrounded by a wall so old and broken that it 
 might be the veritable old wall of China. From 
 its sides lean double-flowering apricots and the 
 sweet yu-lan, with its thousand blooms of pale 
 
How THE Koreans Amuse Themselves. 193 
 
 peach colour. From the wall's top strange 
 Chinese grasses nod and flower-heavy vines hang. 
 Among the vines and grasses primroses nestle 
 cosily. Beside the wall tulips flaunt, and great 
 clumps of mignonette grow among the hibiscus 
 flowers. The actors are very fine with their 
 crowns of tinsel and their robes of silk. The 
 audience, too, is well worth watching, with their 
 intelligent yellow faces, and their glittering black 
 eyes. They are tense with interest, those Mon- 
 golian play-goers. And the Chinese orchestra ! 
 Ah ! that is droll indeed. 
 
 We are apt to think of Chinese music as being 
 noise pure and simple. Certainly very much 
 Chinese music is superlatively noisy. But even 
 Chinese music has its softer side, its refined 
 moments. I remember a little band in Canton 
 that used to make very pleasant lullaby music, 
 and to handle their odd instruments with most 
 considerable taste. 
 
 When Noah was learning something of boat- 
 building, the Chinese were, in their Chinese way, 
 expert musicians. Their principal instrument 
 was made of twelve tubes of bamboo. Six 
 tubes were for the sharps, and six for the flats. 
 
 To-day the Chinese have over fifty musical in- 
 struments — instruments made of stone, of metal, 
 and of wood. 
 
 o 
 
194 Quaint Korea. 
 
 Chinese dramatic literature is unusually in- 
 teresting. To study it is no mean mental tonic, 
 and it is, I believe, the best way to study the 
 Chinese people, unless one can live among them 
 with some little intimacy. 
 
 But I miist not linger too long by the wayside 
 of my pleasant subject. Yet I must touch — if 
 only with a sentence — upon four or five of the 
 many other ways in which the Chinese recuperate 
 their overburdened bodies and their jaded minds. 
 
 They take great joy in Nature. Picnics are a 
 most Chinese institution. They are invariably 
 planned to be at some spot where there is an 
 exceptional view. And the picnic party will sit 
 for hours, and watch the hills, or masses of fruit 
 trees in bloom, or the sunset — sit silently too ; for 
 the Chinese, though the noisiest nation on earth, 
 are apt to be hushed in the presence of nature, 
 however much they chatter in the presence of 
 their gods. 
 
 The Chinese are intensely fond of gardening. 
 Every Chinaman that can aiford it has a flower 
 garden, and in nothing, save the graves of his 
 ancestors, does he take more pride. In the 
 garden's centre there will be a lake — a very 
 round, funny lake — and on its rippleless bosom 
 great drowsy lien-hoas will sleep away their 
 perfumed lives. 
 
How THE Koreans Amuse Themselves. 195 
 
 The lien-hoa is the Chinese water-lily. There 
 are many varieties. They are single and double. 
 They are red, they are rose, they are white. 
 And some are of an indescribably lovely pale red, 
 delicately streaked with white. 
 
 In almost every Chinese garden you will find a 
 summer-house, its roof heavy with festoons of 
 the wistaria. And there will be a pansy bed, a , 
 bosque of bamboo, a grove of camellias, a field of 
 chrysanthemums, a world of peonies, trees of 
 peaches, of plums, and of apricots, parallelo- 
 grams planted with hydrangeas, and clumps of 
 azaleas. 
 
 There are two other Chinese pleasures that I 
 must at least mention — opium-smoking and 
 gambling. Both are ineradicable characteristics 
 of the Chinese. 
 
 The poppy gives the Chinese masses inestim- 
 able alleviation, and does them, I believe, the 
 veriest minimum of harm. 
 
 Gambling, I fear, has a more baneful effect 
 upon them. But it is their most positive and 
 commonest diversion, and it will, I fancy, always 
 be their national habit. 
 
 I have spoken of Chinese amusements, and 
 
 now my trouble begins. I am at an entire loss 
 
 to know how to speak of Korean amusements 
 
 without repeating myself almost word for word. 
 
 o 2 
 
 «- 
 
196 Quaint Korea. 
 
 I can think of but two Chinese amusements 
 which are not as general in Choson as in Cathay 
 — card-playing and theatre-going. In Korea it 
 is not good form to play cards, and they are not 
 played openly, except by the soldiers, and the 
 lowest grades of society. Soldiers are allowed to 
 play cards as much as they like, and for a very 
 quaint reason. A soldier is often called upon for 
 night duty. Now after eating, the thing dearest 
 to the average Korean is sleeping, and the 
 Korean government, which is not, from the Far 
 Asiatic point of view, so merciless after all, has 
 decreed that, as the playing of games of chance 
 is more likely than any other thing to keep a man 
 from being sleepy, the Korean soldiers may 
 indulge in any and every game of chance, 
 including those that are played with cards. 
 
 Korea is not without theatrical performances, no 
 Eastern land is ; but the theatrical performances 
 of Korea are very different from the theatrical 
 performances of China and of Japan. Indeed, in 
 no branch of amusements do the three countries 
 so differ as they do in the branch dramatic. 
 With the possible exception of the Hindoo and 
 the Mohammedan, the Japanese dramatic school 
 approaches our own more than that of any other 
 Oriental country. I have seen performances in 
 Yeddo that seemed to me to quite merit classifi- 
 
How THE Koreans Amuse Themselves. 197 
 
 cation with London productions at the Lyceum, 
 and at the Savoy. Chinese dramatic art is a 
 thing apart, and a law unto itself. It makes 
 little or no appeal to European intelligence, or 
 to European imagination. It is for the Chinese, 
 and takes as little concern as the Chinese them- 
 selves voluntarily do of other peoples. 
 
 Korean dramatic art, if it is at all akin with the 
 dramatic art of Europe, approaches most nearly 
 the art methods of the high-class music halls, and 
 the best French variety theatres. Every Korean 
 actor is a, star, superior to, indifferent to, and 
 independent of scenery. 
 
 More often than not, the Korean actor is not 
 only the star, but the entire company. He plays 
 everything — old men, juveniles, low comedians 
 and high tragedians, leading ladies, ing^nueux, and 
 rough soubrettes — plays them with little or no 
 change of costume, plays them in quick suc- 
 cession, and wholly without aid of scenery. And 
 very clever, indeed, he is to do it. Closely allied 
 as all the three great peoples of the far Orient are 
 in their amusements, the amusements of the 
 Koreans resemble the amusements of China very 
 much more than they do the amusements of Japan ; 
 and yet Korean acting is very much more like 
 Japanese than like Chinese acting. This is 
 especially worthy of note, I think, because in 
 
igS Quaint Korea. 
 
 every nation in the world, the theatrical is the 
 highest form of amusement. 
 
 Korean acting would come, perhaps, more 
 properly under the heading of Korean art than 
 under the head of Korean amusements, or quite 
 as appropriately, perhaps, under the head of 
 Korean religion. For in Korea, as in every other 
 country, acting is not only an exquisite, and one 
 of the highest expressions of a nation's intellec- 
 tuality, but is the child, almost the first-born 
 child, of that country's religion. It is, perhaps, 
 because Korea has ceased to have a religion that 
 Korea has no theatre, at least, no permanent 
 theatre. The Korean actor gives his perform- 
 ance on the bare paper floor of some rich man's 
 banqueting hall, or at the street corner. The 
 actors of Japan are surrounded with every 
 possible accessory, and with the perfection 
 of accessories. The most faultless stage setting 
 I ever saw, the utmost nicety of properties that 
 I ever saw, and the best trained supers I 
 ever saw, I saw on the stage of a Tokio 
 theatre. The Korean actor has no stage 
 setting, he has no properties, and he never 
 heard of supernumeraries. His theatre — for, after 
 all, I am inclined to withdraw what I said, and 
 to maintain that wherever an artist acts there is 
 a theatre — his theatre consists of a mat beneath 
 
How THE Koreans Amuse Themselves. 199 
 
 his feet, and a mat over his head, and four per- 
 pendicular poles separating the two mats. And 
 yet the Korean actor shares very largely the 
 polish, the definiteness of method, and the con- 
 vincing artisticness of the Japanese actor. If 
 religion had flourished in Korea as it has flourished 
 in Japan, it is probable that, under the sheltering 
 patronage of religion, Korean acting would now 
 equal, if not excel, the best acting of Japan. As 
 it is, the Korean actor is remarkable for his 
 versatility, for his mastery of his own voice, his 
 mastery pf facial expression, and his comprehen- 
 sion of, and his reproducing of, every human 
 emotion. A Korean actor will often give an un- 
 interrupted performance of some hours length. 
 He will recite page after page of vivid Korean 
 history ; he will chant folk-songs ; he will repeat 
 old legends and romances, and he will give Punch 
 and Judy-like exhibitions of connubial infelicity 
 and of all the other ills that Korean flesh is heir 
 to. And he will intersperse this dramatic 
 kaleidoscope with orchestral music of his own 
 producing. Perhaps he has pitched his theatre 
 of mats in the full heat of the noon-day sun, but 
 even so, he only pauses to take big, quick drinks 
 of peppery water, or of a very light, rice wine, in 
 which good-sized lumps of hot ginger float. If 
 the actor is performing at a feast of some man- 
 
200 Quaint Korea. 
 
 darin or other wealthy Korean, he is, of course, 
 paid by an individual employer ; and the audience 
 which has, in all probability, been amply dined 
 and amply wined, sit near him, sit at their ease, 
 and in an irregular semicircle. If the perform- 
 ance is given in the street, it is purely a speculation 
 on the part of the actor. The audience sit about 
 on queer little wooden benches, or squat on mats, 
 or stand. And when the actor knows (and this is 
 something which an actor always does know, the 
 acting- world over) that he has struck the high-water 
 mark of his momentary possible histrionic ability, 
 he pauses abruptly and collects such cash as his 
 audience can or will spare. The result is usually 
 very gratifying to the actor. The audience 
 want to see the play out, and the player won't 
 play on until he is paid. A street audience ap- 
 preciates the play highly, appreciates it none the 
 less, perhaps, because it — the audience — eats 
 and drinks from the first scene until the last. 
 It is an interesting sight to see in front of the 
 temporary temple of a Korean actor a con- 
 course of men with eyes a-stark with pleasure, and 
 faces a-bulge with refreshment, but it is a sight 
 which is not too open to the criticism of the people 
 in whose own theatres ices and coffees and sweet- 
 meats are hawked about between the acts. It 
 always seems to me that we insult art grossly 
 
How THE Koreans Amuse Themselves. 201 
 
 when we tacitly admit that we cannot sit through 
 a fine dramatic performance without the stimulant 
 of meat or of drink. The Japanese also eat between 
 the acts, but then they have the excuse of sitting 
 through performances that are sometimes twelve 
 hours long. We lack that excuse in Europe. And 
 though the Koreans munch and sip through the 
 intensest moments of a Korean theatrical exhibi- 
 tion, no dramatic performance in Korea lasts, 
 unless I mistake, for more than three, or at the 
 utmost, four hours. A Korean actor, to attain 
 to any eminence in his profession, must be able 
 to improvise, and probably in no Eastern country, 
 certainly in no Western country, is the art of 
 improvising carried to so high a degree of per- 
 fection as it is in Korea. The Korean actor also 
 approaches somewhat to the Anglo-Saxon clown. 
 He must be quick with cheap witticisms, glib 
 jests, and jokes that would be coarse if they were 
 not above all stupid. He must be ready with 
 topical quips, for the Korean crowd will have its 
 laugh, or it won't pay. This branch of his trade 
 he is seldom called upon to ply when he performs 
 at private entertainments. 
 
 The Chinese, the Japanese, and the Koreans 
 are all inveterate picnickers. They are all in- 
 tensely fond of Nature, and of feasting out of 
 doors. All three of these peoples take the 
 
202 Quaint Korea. 
 
 greatest delight in tobacco. Opium is smoked in 
 Korea more than in Japan, but far less than in 
 China. But all the Koreans, whatever their age, 
 whatever their station, whatever their sex, smoke 
 tobacco almost as perpetually as do the Burmese. 
 The Koreans use a|pipe, of which the bowl is so 
 small that it only holds a pinch or two of tobacco, 
 and the stem of which is so long that it is almost 
 impossible to light one's own pipe. When not in 
 use, a gentleman's pipe is carried in his sleeve, or 
 tucked into his girdle. The labouring man or the 
 coolie usually thrusts his down his neck between 
 his coat and his back. All three of these peoples 
 are great patrons of professional story-tellers, 
 and of magicians. The Japanese excel the others 
 in magic, and the Koreans excel in story-telling. 
 
 It is a favourite pastime both in Japan and 
 Korea to watch trained dancers. There is no 
 dancing in China. 
 
 In Korea fights are the occasions of great 
 national joy. In Japan skilful wrestlers and 
 fencers give really artistic exhibitions, but never 
 carry them to the point of brutality. But in 
 Korea a fight is a real fight. Blow follows blow ; 
 limbs are bruised, dislocated, and broken. During 
 the first month of the year it is legal, and is the 
 height of Korean good form, to indulge in as many 
 fights as possible. Antagonistic guilds, number- 
 
How THE Koreans Amuse Themselves. 203 
 
 ing hundreds of men, face each other at some 
 convenient and appointed spot, and in the sight of 
 thousands of enthusiastic spectators, fight out an 
 entire year's debt of envy and hatred. Men en- 
 gage in the roughest of personal combat; men 
 who during the other eleven months of the year 
 scarcely fight upon the gravest provocation. A 
 considerable fight between two Korean women of 
 the poorest class is not unknown, and some of 
 them fight extremely well. Mothers often devote 
 considerable time training their small sons in the 
 art of defence, and of fisty attack. Every Korean 
 town, almost every Korean village, has a champion 
 fighter. Prize-fights are to Korea what the race- 
 course is to Europe and to Anglo-Asia. The 
 spectators bet until they have nothing left to bet 
 with, and then very often start an amateur fight 
 of their own. Korean gentlemen do not as a rule 
 fight, nor are they apt to attend a public fight. 
 They often, however, go to very great expense in 
 engaging professionals to give private exhibitions 
 of their prowess. There is one rather comical 
 side to a Korean fight. Every Korean wears an 
 abundance of big clothing, and the antagonists 
 never dream of disrobing in the least. And so 
 two fighting Koreans, from a little distance, look 
 as much like two fighting feather beds as any- 
 thing else. Debt is said to be the cause of nine 
 
204 Quaint Korea. 
 
 out of ten of the fights that are not exhibitions of 
 skill. In Korea, as in China, it is a great dis- 
 grace not to pay all your debts on, or before the 
 New Year ; and any Korean who fails to do so is 
 very apt to find himself involved in a pugilistic 
 reckoning. Club fights and stone fights are very 
 common. When a stone fight is proposed the 
 friends or admirers of the combatants spend some 
 hours in collecting two mounds of small rough 
 stones. Then the battle begins, and it is a battle. 
 Sometimes it is a duel, and sometimes fifty or 
 even a hundred take an active part in it, pelting 
 each other as rapidly and as roughly as possible. 
 
 But the most important, and the most popular 
 of all amusements in Korea is that of eating and 
 drinking. Intemperance, I fear, is very common, 
 and is so little condemned by public opinion that 
 it is quite as much a national recreation as a 
 national vice, but it is seldom or never indulged 
 in by women, and even the geisha girls are sobriety 
 itself The Koreans drink everything and any- 
 thing of an intoxicating kind that they can get. 
 They are improving, however, in this respect, of 
 late years. Japanese beer is somewhat displacing 
 the heavier rice liquors, and among the very 
 wealthiest people both claret and champagne are 
 popular. But the Koreans eat as much as ever 
 they did, and no other people extract so much 
 
How THE Koreans Amuse Themselves. 205 
 
 genuine enjoyment from eating. The Koreans 
 season their food more highly, and use more 
 chillies, more mustard than any other people in 
 Asia. They are very fond of the taro, a smooth, 
 small, sweet potato. They devour sea-weed by 
 the pound, and eat lily-bulbs by the bushel. Here 
 is the minu of a very elegant Korean dinner : — 
 
 Boiled pork with rice wine. 
 
 Macaroni soup. 
 
 Chicken with millet wine. 
 
 Boiled eggs. 
 
 Pastry. 
 
 Flour. 
 
 Sesame and honey pudding. 
 
 Dried persimmons and roasted rice with honey. 
 
 Both the Koreans and the Chinese, at least 
 those who can afford it, use very much more meat 
 than do the Japanese. 
 
 Sleeping is another great national amusement 
 in Korea. I know no other people that seem to 
 take so much positive enjoyment in sleep, and 
 who go at it so deliberately and systematically. 
 They positively regard it as a pastime. 
 
 The Koreans are fond of music, and have many 
 concerts, but then so, too, do the Japanese and 
 the Chinese. Fishing is a popular sport in all 
 three countries. 
 
 The Koreans have many festivals, at which they 
 indulge themselves in as much pleasure as possible. 
 As in China, New Year's day is perhaps the most 
 
2o6 Quaint Korea. 
 
 important, and certainly the most generally 
 observed of the festivals. The Korean New Year 
 customs and the Chinese New Year customs are 
 almost identical. I won't describe the New Year 
 customs of Korea, because to do so, I should have 
 to say almost word for word what I recently 
 wrote about the Chinese New Year. Kite-ilying 
 and top-spinning occupy a good deal of the time 
 of old and young in China, in Korea, and in Japan. 
 Kite fights and top battles are of very frequent 
 occurrence, and are really very pretty to watch. 
 
 The Koreans are very fond of visiting, and of 
 being visited, but in this again, they in no way 
 differ from the other peoples of the further Orient. 
 
 Besides fishing, there are three manly sports in 
 vogue in Korea, and I believe, three only ; all 
 others being considered undignified and ungentle- 
 manly. The three are archery, falconry, and 
 hunting. Indeed, I scarcely know if I am right 
 in including hunting in the list. It is so very 
 generally pursued as a business, and not as a 
 pleasure. I beheve that a few Koreans do some- 
 times hunt for sport, and very good sport they 
 usually get. Deer, tigers, leopards, badgers, bears, 
 martens, otters, sables, wolves, and foxes are abun- 
 dant, and the peninsula is full of feathered life. 
 Pheasants are as plentiful, as beautiful, and as 
 toothsome in Korea as they are in China. And 
 
How THE Koreans Amuse Themselves. 207 
 
 they have wild geese, plover, snipe, varieties of 
 ducks, teal, water hens, turkeys and turkey- 
 bustards, herons, eagles, and cranes ; and the 
 woods are full of hares and of foxes. 
 
 Archery is considered in Korea the most dis- 
 tinguished of recreations. Every Korean gentle- 
 man, from the king down, is, or tries very hard to 
 be, expert at archery. They use a tight, short 
 bow, never over three feet long, and arrows of 
 bamboo. The Koreans are wonderful marksmen, 
 and professional archers are among the most 
 popular of public entertainers. 
 
 Falconry is almost as popular as archery, and 
 every nobleman has at least one falcon. The 
 falcon is invariably extensively and gaudily ward- 
 robed, and has usually a personal attendant. 
 Falcon competitions, both public and private, are 
 frequent, and among the nobility are often made 
 the occasion of elaborate entertainments. 
 
 The Koreans have a quaint little festival, called 
 " Crossing the Bridges." Soul abounds in queer 
 little stone bridges. A moonlight night is chosen 
 for the festival. Usually a man and a woman 
 walk to the centre of the bridge, and make a wish 
 for the ensuing year, or pray for good-luck, and 
 search the stars for some augury of prosperity. 
 They have- a number of peculiar, picturesque 
 customs in connection with " Crossing the 
 
2o8 Quaint Korea. 
 
 Bridges," but I fancy that with both men and 
 women it is more an excuse for a night out than 
 anything else. 
 
 The Koreans are even more impersonal than 
 the Chinese. The Japanese are intensely per- 
 sonal. The Korean is impersonal in business, 
 and impersonal in pleasure. He feasts with other 
 men, and mingles with other men in all his amuse- 
 ments, but his interest is absorbed by his surround- 
 ings, and not by his companions. Introspection, 
 and the study of other men, are seldom or never 
 methods of Korean self-entertainment. Nature is 
 after all the greatest entertainer of the Koreans ; 
 and to study Nature, to, watch her, and to fall 
 more and more deeply in love with her, is a 
 Korean's greatest amusement. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 A GLANCE AT KOREAN ART. 
 
 " Far Eastern art draws its inspiration from Nature, not 
 from man. It thus stands, in the objects of its endeavour, in 
 striking contrast to what has ever been the main admiration 
 and study of our own, the human figure. A flower, a face — 
 matter as it affects mind, mind as it affects matter — from such 
 opposite sources spring the two Art, or the desire to per- 
 petuate and reproduce the emotions, must, of course, depend 
 upon the character of those emotions. Now to a Far 
 Oriental Nature is more suggestive and man less so than 
 with us."— Percival Lowell. 
 
 The subject of Korean art is vast, intricate, and 
 difficult. It could not possibly be covered, even 
 in the most superficial way, in one chapter, or in 
 a series of several chapters. But it would be pre- 
 posterous to altogether exclude it from any book 
 whose pages are devoted to Korea generally. 
 For perhaps the most really interesting thing 
 about Korea, and certainly one of the most in- 
 teresting things to be said about Korea is this : — 
 Korea was the birthplace of a great deal that is 
 finest and highest in the art of that wonderful art 
 country — ^Japan. 
 
210 Quaint Korea. 
 
 A great deal that is most distinguished in 
 Korean art, past and present, is undeniably indi- 
 genous to Korea, but, on the other hand, the Korean 
 artists have borrowed or absorbed a good deal from 
 the arts of other countries. In the early days of 
 its prosperity Korean art seems to have owed a 
 great deal to China. But, even in its infancy, 
 through the long years of its magnificent splen- 
 dour, and in these days of its decay or of trance, 
 Korean art always has had, and has, a marked in- 
 dividuality, and bears the indubitable hall-mark 
 of genuine originality. 
 
 In the beginning, then, Korean art was prob- 
 ably a mingling of the national expression of an 
 intensely artistic people, and what was most 
 striking in the rich, but less graceful art of China. 
 Under the Sung dynasty, between the years 960 
 and 1333 A.D., lay the most brilliant period of 
 China's literary existence, and perhaps the most 
 brilliant period of her art life. And it was also 
 between these years that Korean art reached, and 
 for some time maintained, its highest perfection. 
 
 No careful art student who visits both countries, 
 or has access to typical collections of the art pro- 
 ductions of both countries, can fail to observe 
 that apparently either Persia has distinctly in- 
 fluenced the art of Korea, or Persia's art been 
 distinctly influenced by Korea. Probably both 
 
A Glance at Korean Art. 211 
 
 are true. Persian embassies and Korean em- 
 bassies were wont to meet in Pekin. Very 
 probably showed each other the presents sent by 
 their respective masters to the Chinese Emperor. 
 These presents were always largely made up of 
 works of art. And their inspection probably led 
 to an interchange of presents between the em- 
 bassies themselves, and later on, to reciprocal 
 studies, between Persia and Korea, of the art 
 methods of the two countries. Korea has excelled 
 in fret-work, in scroll-work, and in a great variety 
 of arabesque decorations, and in all of these has 
 very largely followed Persian lines. 
 
 The key-note of Korean art, as the key-note of 
 all Far Eastern and, indeed, of most Oriental art, 
 is the inferior place held in it by the study of the 
 human figure. Far Eastern art is a study of 
 nature and of decorations. This is even more 
 true of Korea than of China or Japan, though the 
 Koreans excel both the Chinese and the Japanese 
 in their drawing of animals. The chief character- 
 istic of Korean decorative art is its chastity. One 
 cannot fail to be reminded by it of the severe sim- 
 plicity of old Grecian art. A good specimen of 
 Korean pottery or porcelain is never heavily 
 covered with decoration. A Korean vase, or a 
 Korean bowl, is simple and elegant of outline, and 
 the surface is finely finished, but probably three- 
 
 p 2 
 
212 Quaint Korea. 
 
 fourths of that entire surface is undecorated. The 
 old specimens of Japanese Satsuma (the Koreans 
 taught the Japanese how to make Satsuma) are 
 usually distinguishable from the new and cheaper, 
 because the former are touched with decoration, 
 and the latter are hidden beneath it. The 
 Koreans use colour very lavishly when they use it 
 at all. But conventional design, conventionalized 
 decorations, and decorations which are more 
 exact copies of nature, whether in black Jand 
 white or in colour, they use very carefully, and 
 never crowd them together. Their porcelains are 
 not so glazed as those of Japan, and the usual, or 
 favourite colour is a creamy white. The dragon, 
 which is so conspicuous a personage in all Far 
 Eastern art, is perpetually drawn by Korean artists 
 in colour, and by Korean artists in black and 
 white, but is rather sparingly used on the Korean 
 pottery ; which in this differs from the potteries 
 of China and Japan. The mythical animals and 
 the symbolical animals, though they all figure 
 largely in Korean art, are not often found on 
 Korean porcelain. The Koreans value highly all 
 sorts of crackle ware, and have been excelled, I 
 fancy, in its manufacture by no other people. 
 
 Grif&s says : " Decoration is the passion of the 
 Orient, and for this, rather than for creative or 
 ideal art, must we look from this nation, to whose 
 
A Glance at Korean Art. 213 
 
 language gender is unknown, and in which per- 
 sonification is unthought of, though all nature is 
 animate with malignant or beneficent presences. 
 Abstract qualities embodied in human form are 
 unknown to the Korean, but his refined taste 
 enjoys whatever thought and labour have made 
 charming to the eye by its suggestion of pleasing 
 images to the imagination. His art is decorative, 
 not creative or ideal. His choice pieces of bric-a- 
 brac may be rougher and coarser than those of 
 Japan, but their individuality is as strongly 
 marked as that of the Chinese, while the taste 
 displayed is severer than that of the later 
 Japanese." 
 
 Perhaps the design that they most often employ, 
 in their decorative art, is the well-known " wave- 
 pattern." We find it on their porcelain, on their 
 bronzes, in the most conventional of their pictures, 
 and even on their coins. Some one has suggested 
 that it is perhaps used on the small copper coins 
 to symbolize their circulation and fluctuation in 
 value. The wave-pattern symbolizes successive 
 and interminable wave-motion. The love of the 
 Korean artist for water in nature, and for conven- 
 tionalized water effects in decoration, amounts to 
 a passion. Water in some form or phase is intro- 
 duced into almost every Korean picture, and on 
 to the majority of the porcelains, bronzes, the 
 
214 Quaint Korea. 
 
 lacquers, and into the carvings. We find the 
 wave-pattern beautifully executed on curtains and 
 panels, on armour and on weapons. It often 
 circles the columns of a building, and is conspicu- 
 ous in interior architectural decorations. A strand 
 of twisting, turning, curling waves is commonly 
 the handle of a fine Korean teapot, and many a 
 Korean dish, or vase, or bowl rests upon a porce- 
 lain or bronze bed of seemingly angry waves. The 
 Japanese have seized upon the wave-pattern, and 
 have vastly improved it. It is doubtless through 
 their much exported, and much copied wares that 
 we have become very familiar with it ; and I have 
 not infrequently seen it mingled with incongru- 
 ous European patterns, in fancy printing, both in 
 London, on the Continent, and in America — used 
 for the background of decorative initial letters, or 
 introduced into fancy tail-pieces. 
 
 The chrysanthemum was the favourite, the 
 most favoured, and the most studied flower in 
 Korea long before it became the imperial flower, 
 the badge of Japan. The Koreans have always 
 been, and are, wonderfully skilled in rearing it ; 
 and in reproducing it in colour, in black and white, 
 in relief, and in conventional designs. We find 
 it whenever we turn our eyes toward Korean 
 objects of art. We find it, or some design sug- 
 gestive of it, in Korean brocades, and in Korean 
 
A Glance at Korean Art. 215 
 
 carvings, and many of the most beautiful Korean 
 borders have been designed from ingenious 
 arrangements of its petals. In several ways 
 the chrysanthemum lends itself with pecu- 
 liar facility to Korean art ideals. It is rich, 
 splendid, and varied in colour, and the Koreans 
 have a passion for colour. It is interesting and 
 noble in shape, and comes out splendidly in relief, 
 or in half-relief. It is beautiful, but unique, and 
 sometimes even grotesque in outline, and all the 
 Eastern peoples admire the grotesque. Certainly 
 the artists of Korea and of Japan understand the 
 grotesque's usefulness in art above all other artists, 
 and employ it to relieve gentler, simpler forms of 
 beauty, which might grow monotonous if used 
 perpetually. Clouds and stars and the sun are 
 utilized in a variety of ways by the Korean 
 decorative artist. And a conventional pattern, 
 called " the dragon's tooth," is extremely striking, 
 and is nicely adaptable to vases or dishes that 
 are big at the base, and small at the top. 
 
 Lacquer has been for centuries as commonly 
 used in Korea as in Japan, but it has never 
 reached the perfection, the artisticness in the 
 former country that it has in the latter. 
 
 Korea was once the store-house of innumerable 
 and invaluable works of art ; art treasures of great 
 variety, fine in design, excellent in execution, and 
 
2i6 Quaint Korea. 
 
 rich in symbolism. To-day there are compara- 
 tively few art treasures in Korea. The nobles 
 and the rich men probably each have a few hidden 
 away. The king has a number. And some are 
 still to be found in the ostracized monasteries, in 
 the nunneries, and in other unexpected places. 
 But Choson is no longer the great art treasure- 
 house she once was. In the palaces and the 
 temples of China and Japan are to be seen many 
 of what were once Korea's most prized works of 
 art. And these have been taken as booty from 
 Korea, or sent by Korea as tribute. But the 
 peninsula has not continued in her old glory of 
 art production. Korean art has deteriorated in 
 quality, and in many of its branches shrunk to 
 something nominal in quantity, because great 
 bodies of her best artists and artisans have been 
 sent to Japan, or have gone there. Keenly ahve 
 to all that is beautiful in nature, and all that is 
 most exquisite in art, the Japanese readily ap- 
 preciated the high degree of excellence that had 
 been attained by the artists of Choson. Not 
 content with taking to Japan the most perfect 
 specimens of Korean art, the Japanese offered 
 every inducement to the best Korean artists to 
 settle in Japan, and spread throughout Japan their 
 superior knowledge of art, and skill in art work. 
 To the instructions of the Koreans the Japanese 
 
A Glance at Korean Art. 217 
 
 owed their unrivalled skill in making the beautiful 
 Satsuma faience, and the almost as beautiful 
 Imari porcelain. The Koreans taught the 
 Japanese how to carve wood, and then, apparently, 
 forgot how to do it themselves ; though there are 
 still in Korea some very beautiful specimens of 
 fine carving, especially in the royal palace at Soul. 
 The majority of Japanese patterns for brocades 
 and for stuffs, and many of their favourite designs 
 for embroidery, are purely and indisputably 
 Korean. 
 
 A scholar, who seems to me always anxious to 
 do Japan full justice, has written : — 
 
 "The existence of any special traits or 
 principles of decoration, or a peculiar set of 
 symbols in Korean art, has been thus far hardly 
 known. When fully studied these will greatly 
 modify our ideas of Oriental art, and especially 
 of the originality of the Japanese designers. 
 Korea was not only the road by which the art 
 of China reached Japan, but it is the original 
 home of many of the art-ideas which the world 
 believes to be purely Japanese." 
 
 The Japanese themselves, to be fair to them, 
 do not claim to- have a largely original art, and 
 my attention was first called to the magnitude of 
 Japan's art debt to Korea by a Japanese gentle- 
 man in Tokio. 
 
2i8 Quaint Korea. 
 
 Old Persian writers express the greatest ad- 
 miration for Korean porcelains, and for the 
 beautiful decorated saddles that were sent to 
 Persia from Choson. The Koreans still excel 
 in the making of gorgeous and (after once the 
 eyes grow accustomed to their gorgeousness) 
 really beautiful saddles. They are inlaid with 
 pearls, and are richly embroidered. Bows and 
 arms and fans are among the many things that 
 the Koreans used to, and still do, make. They 
 are beautiful with pearls, with jade, and with 
 gold and silver and iron inlaying. The Koreans 
 once made splendid and beautiful bells, and were 
 expert in all sorts of metal work, but they have 
 lost or laid aside these arts to a very great 
 extent. There are still some very fine bells in 
 the peninsula, and some beautiful Korean bells 
 in Japan, but their manufacture dates back a long 
 time. And this is also usually true of many of 
 the best specimens of all kinds of Korean art- 
 work that we find in Choson or in Japan. It is 
 true of most of the beautiful images found in the 
 temples, and many of the vases, the braziers, the 
 incense-burners, the trenchers, the kettles, the 
 bowls, the decanters, and the censjlrs, all of 
 which are exceedingly graceful in form, pure in 
 outline, and decorated with simplicity and 
 dignity. 
 
A Glance at Korean Art. 219 
 
 The throne in the palace of Soul is a very beau- 
 tiful example of well-controlled art. It is sim- 
 plicity itself, but it is as majestic as it is simple ; 
 perfect in every detail, royal in its proportions, 
 and in severe but perfect taste. 
 
 Among the minor arts that still flourish in 
 Korea is that of toy-making. The Korean toy- 
 makers really are artists, and the playthings of 
 the children of the well-to-do are so carefully 
 designed and so faithfully executed, that in their 
 little way they have every claim to be considered 
 works of art. Armour, palanquins — indeed, all the 
 impedimenta of Korean daily life, and of the daily 
 life of old Korea — are reproduced with minute 
 exactness, and very wonderful toys are made out 
 of bits of tiger skins and of the fur of the tiger 
 and other wild beasts. 
 
 The battle-flags and the banners of Korea 
 are interesting both to the student of history and 
 the student of art. The mysticism and the 
 symbolism that is so characteristic of all Korean 
 art is noticeable on almost every Korean flag. 
 
 The strange animals that we find in Korean 
 art, animals that are like none that ever lived, 
 are symbolical, and, to the Korean mind, typify a 
 great deal that the Koreans think it important 
 to remember. 
 
 A branch of art which is much thought of in 
 
220 Quaint Korea. 
 
 Chinese-Asia, and is there indeed a fine art, is 
 pen-work or brush-work. In this art the Koreans 
 are as adept to-day as they ever have been — as 
 adept as the Chinese or the Japanese. Fine 
 specimens of caligraphy are written with a brush 
 — written upon scrolls of silk or of soft paper, 
 and are either put away to be treasured, or are 
 hung upon the walls as ornaments of great in- 
 terest. The last time I was in Tokio the wife of 
 a Japanese official, whose home is very rich in 
 paintings, both European and Japanese, showed 
 me, with great pride, her collection of such 
 scrolls — scrolls, all of which were specimens of 
 fine writing. Very much such scrolls form the 
 principal wall decoration of the study of the 
 Chinese minister in London, and such scrolls are 
 among the most cherished household gods of 
 every well-to-do Korean. The Koreans write with 
 the greatest ease and elegance, and it is almost 
 as natural for them to draw and paint very 
 fairly well as it is for them to write. 
 
 The making of fine pottery is almost, if not 
 quite, a lost art in Korea, but they still know the 
 secret of, and still make and use, the exquisite 
 tints and the matchless colours that characterized 
 their glazes in the days when Korean art was at 
 its greatest height. The Korean potters are 
 among the nomads of the peninsula. A family, 
 
A Glance at Korean Art. 221 
 
 or several families, of potters choose some spot 
 where wood and clay are convenient, and there 
 they build their huts, and there they live till the 
 wood or the clay is exhausted. All Korean 
 pottery is fired in ovens that are heated with 
 wood. There are no great potteries in Korea 
 or in Japan. Each specimen of their art is the 
 individual work of an individual, and in this, 
 perhaps, lays one of the secrets of the fascination 
 of any genuine work of art from these countries. 
 The most beautiful piece of porcelain that has 
 ever been made in China, Japan, or in Korea, 
 has probably been made in some humble little 
 hut and fired by an insignificant-looking little 
 oven. 
 
 I have spoken elsewhere of the famous Chinese 
 lion, or Korean dog. It is more grotesque than 
 beautiful, and is chiefly interesting because it has 
 so strong a hold upon the affections of three so 
 different peoples. For a conservative Asian, he is 
 a very great traveller, is this Korean dog. He has 
 found his way into every fancy bazaar, and every 
 cheap notion shop in Europe and America ; and 
 we really feel quite as if we had met an old friend 
 when we stumble upon him in Yeddo, in Pekin, or 
 in quaint Soul. 
 
 It is being constantly urged against Far Eastern 
 art that it is artificial. Mr. Lowell refutes this so 
 
222 Quaint Korea. 
 
 clearly, so distinctly, with so much discernment, 
 and to my mind, so convincingly, that I feel it 
 would be a pity to refute it in any other words. 
 He says : — 
 
 " Far from being artificial. Far Eastern art is 
 emphatically natural. The reason that it does 
 not so appear to us at first is due to two causes. 
 The first is very simple — an absence with us of 
 what the Far Oriental sees around him at home. 
 A picture of snow-peaks would undoubtedly appear 
 conventional, in the sense used above, to a man 
 who had dwelt all his life on the plains, and never 
 heard of such things as white-headed mountains. 
 The second cause is that certain very salient 
 features of his landscapes have engrossed the Far 
 Oriental attention, to the partial neglect of other 
 less striking but, perhaps, even more common 
 scenes. 
 
 " Every traveller knows the effect of this in other 
 things beside art. Narrators insensibly, if not on 
 purpose, pick out the salient points of any land 
 to give an idea of it to those to whom it is an un- 
 discovered country. The result is, that on 
 acquaintance no country seems so odd as imagina- 
 tion, fed on a few startling facts, has pictured it 
 to be ; arid yet, for all that, the facts may be per- 
 fectly true. Now, what we do to give others an 
 idea of foreign lands, the Far Oriental does to give 
 
A Glance at Korean Art. 223 
 
 himself an idea of his own. His art, by reason of 
 this strong simplicity, is all the higher art." 
 
 Landscape gardening holds a prominent place 
 among the arts of Korea, and is as well under- 
 stood, and as generally practised to-day as it has 
 ever been in the history of the peninsula. Water 
 forms the principal, and the indispensable feature 
 of every Korean garden. Indeed, the pond, which 
 must be in the centre of the garden, often takes 
 up nine-tenths of the garden's entire area. This 
 pond is always called a " lotus pond." Usually 
 the lotus is there, but not always, and its absence 
 only emphasizes the title of the pond. It is inte- 
 resting to notice how indispensable the sight of 
 water is to the Koreans, and it speaks a great deal, 
 I think, for their genuine love of Nature. 
 
 Korea is so surrounded by water, so intersected 
 with rivers, and has so many high hills from which 
 water can be seen for some distance, and down 
 which rivulets and water-falls break, that every 
 Korean must be very familiar with water in all its 
 moods and tenses. But he does not tire of it. On 
 the contrary, a Korean who has his domain on the 
 very sea-shore, will dig up the larger part of his 
 garden for the sake of having an artificial lotus- 
 pond ; that he may sit on the artificial island in 
 its centre and fish and dream and watch the water. 
 Fantastic groups of strange rock work are put in 
 
224 Quaint Korea. 
 
 almost every Korean garden : groups to which 
 European eyes have to grow very used before they 
 can see any beauty in them, 
 
 Korean music, like almost all Asiatic music, 
 requires a great deal of study before we can at all 
 understand it or like it. Its scale differs entirely 
 from our gamut — differs even more than do 
 Korean instruments from ours. Japanese music 
 is of Korean origin, but has changed greatly of 
 later years. But all classical Japanese music is 
 still identical with Korean music, which has 
 changed little or not at all. Korean government 
 labourers are called to and released from their 
 day's work by music, and to music do the gates 
 of a Korean city close or open for the day. 
 
 When Korea was in its infancy she was thrown 
 into intimate contact with China. Korea had not 
 had time to develop a literature, and so she very 
 naively adopted the literature of China. Chinese 
 literature is the classical literature of Korea still. 
 The great majority of Korean books (and they are 
 not surprisingly many), are written and printed in 
 Chinese. The Koreans have neglected their own 
 language and its literary possibilities for centuries. 
 Still there is considerable poetry written in the 
 Korean tongue (but in the Chinese character 
 almost always), and we may consider the writing 
 of this poetry as one of Korea's national arts. 
 
A Glance at Korean Art. 225 
 
 " Poetry parties " are a popular form of Korean 
 picnics. A number of friends meet at some un- 
 usually beautiful spot. They have been preceded 
 by servants carrying Avriting materials and wine. 
 Very gravely the competitors (for such they are) 
 set to work. They sun and joy themselves in the 
 beauty of the scene, they sip the cup that cheers, 
 but alas ! intoxicates too ! and when they have 
 enough assimilated the beauty of the scene and 
 the gladness of the wine, then they write verses. 
 The verses take the form of songs, or are ballads 
 in praise of nature. They write of the bamboo, 
 of the stars, of the storm, of moonlight and of 
 sunrise, but never of woman ! 
 
 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 KOREA'S IRRELIGION. 
 
 Korea has no religion. This is a sweeping state- 
 ment, I know, and one that is susceptible of a 
 great deal of dispute, but I believe that in the 
 main it is true. The books that have been 
 written during the last hundred years about 
 Korea teem with thick chapters on Korea's 
 religion, but for all that, I believe that Korea is 
 without religion. There are without doubt 
 Koreans who are deeply and genuinely religious, 
 but they are so infinitesimal a fraction of the 
 population of the peninsula that they no more 
 justify us in crediting Korea with a religion than 
 the handful of Theosophists, who are probably in 
 England to-day, would justify a Korean in credit- 
 ing England with an at all large acceptance of 
 Theosophy. Buddhism, which was once as domi- 
 nant in Korea as ever it has been in China or 
 Japan, has been almost destroyed. Confucianism 
 
Korea's Irreligion. 227 
 
 is still a great power in Korea, as it must be in 
 every country where ancestor-worship and the 
 sanctity of the family are the backbone of the 
 nation's moral existence. But I maintain that 
 Confucianism is not, properly speaking, a religion. 
 It is a theory of ethics, a code of morals, admirable, 
 sublime even, but it is not, as I understand the 
 word religion, a religion. There are superstitions 
 in Korea and to spare. The common people are 
 as superstitious as the common people of any 
 other civilized country, which is saying a great 
 deal, and the upper classes are by no means free 
 from superstition. But who shall venture to call 
 superstition a religion ? Unless we call super- 
 stition and religion synonymous ; unless we 
 accept Confucianism as an individual and actual 
 religion ; or unless we say that a few scattered 
 monasteries, that must by law be built far beyond 
 the walls of a city — monasteries inhabited by 
 monks, who are looked down upon even by the 
 common people, and are not allowed within the 
 gates of any city ; monasteries that are resorted to 
 by the leisure classes for revel and for roystering, 
 and never for prayer or penitence — unless we say 
 that these constitute a national religion, we 
 must, I think, admit that Korea is distinctly irre- 
 ligious. 
 
 The real difficulty in deciding whether Korea is 
 Q 2 
 
228 Quaint Korea. 
 
 in any way religious or altogether irreligious lies 
 in the difficulty of distinguishing clearly between 
 religion and superstition. The dividing line 
 between the two is often indistinct — sometimes 
 missing altogether — so perhaps I am wrong in 
 saying that a country so amply dowered with 
 superstition is devoid of religion. 
 
 I base my statement that Korea has no religion 
 not upon the absence of religion from Korea, not 
 upon the paucity of religion in Korea, but upon 
 the fact that in Korea religion is neither respected 
 nor respectable. Of course, if we define religion 
 as broadly as do some of the most eminent 
 authorities (Rossiter Johnson, W. Smith, Bishop 
 Taylor, Macaulay, and a host of others), and admit 
 that atheism and superstition are forms of 
 religion — and I am far from sure that they are not 
 — my statement totters, if it does not altogether 
 tumble. 
 
 Buddhism was until three hundred years ago 
 strong in Korea, and Confucianism, which, if not 
 a religion, is the most elaborate, and one of the 
 most perfect systems of morality that the world 
 has ever known, and has served humanity better 
 than most religions, is strong in Korea still. A 
 study of these two is, as is the study of all the 
 higher Oriental doctrines, beliefs, and systems of 
 
Korea's Irreligion. 229 
 
 thought, intensely interesting, and the temptation 
 to dwell here upon Buddhism and Confucianism is 
 great. But I fancy that everyone who is inte- 
 rested in reading about so remote a part of the 
 East as Korea is more or less familiar with the 
 outlines at least of both Buddhism and Confucian- 
 ism, and so I will content myself with trying 
 to tell how the first was driven out of Choson, 
 and how the second is still the guardian angel of 
 such morality as the peninsula possesses. 
 
 Buddhism flourished there for centuries, and it 
 was at least tolerated until the Japanese invasion 
 in 1592. Indeed, up to that time Korea was not 
 only not without a religion, but she was not with- 
 out several. The religions of the Far East are as 
 easy-going as the peoples — they are modest as a 
 rule, the beliefs of further Asia — and rub along 
 together very amicably, no one of theni seeming 
 over-sure that it is better than its fellows. 
 
 Three hundred years ago, when two great 
 Japanese warriors, Konishi and Kato, with their 
 respective armies landed in Korea, each was so 
 anxious to have the glory of reaching and 
 conquering the capital before the other, that 
 neither dare pause to subdue the towns and the 
 fortresses (and many of these latter were monas- 
 teries) that lay along his route. Yet neither 
 
230 Quaint Korea. 
 
 dare leave behind him a long track of unsubdued 
 and, for those days, well-armed country. In this 
 dilemma they dressed themselves and their 
 followers in the garbs of Buddhist priests, and so 
 by strategy made their entrance into the walled 
 cities, and into the forts, and once in, put the 
 inhabitants, the unprepared soldiers and monks, 
 to death. About thirty years afterwards, when 
 Korea had shaken off, for the time at least, the 
 Japanese yoke, the Korean priests suffered for the 
 cupidity of the Japanese generals ; as the innocent 
 so generally do suffer for the guilty in this nice 
 world of ours. The royal decree went throughout 
 Korea that no Buddhist priest might dwell or 
 even pass within the gates of a walled city. The 
 priests fled to the mountains, and there erected 
 themselves such dwellings as they could. The 
 monasteries, in which they had lived within the 
 city's walls, crumbling away with time, and 
 decaying with disuse, ceased to be architectural 
 features of any Korean city. And this is why all 
 Korean cities are so monotonous in aspect. For 
 religion has been the patron of architecture as of 
 art, of music, of literature, and of drama the world 
 over, and more especially so in the Orient. The 
 priests of the temples of Buddha, having incurred 
 the disfavour of the government, rapidly lost what 
 hold they had had upon the people. And the 
 
Korea's Irreligion. 231 
 
 nation, which had always considered its king 
 almost mightier and more divine than its very 
 gods, soon ceased to pay tribute to, or ask the 
 services of, a body of men who had lost the royal 
 countenance. Then, too, the Koreans are great 
 dwellers in cities. They go far into the country 
 to look at Nature, to rest, and to amuse them- 
 selves, but it would never occur to the Korean 
 mind to journey far for prayer or sacrifice. So 
 the revenues of the monasteries fell off. Men 
 well-born and well-to-do ceased to join the order. 
 And little by little Korean Buddhism passed away, 
 until now it is but a wraith of its old self. 
 
 This at least is the most general account of 
 how Korea ceased to be Buddhist, but its authen- 
 ticity is disputed by several of the most reliable 
 historians, and by one, at least, who has written 
 in English. These historians claim that some 
 centuries ago all the powerful people in Korea 
 were divided into two factions — one Buddhist, 
 one Confucist — and great was the rivalry between 
 these two. Social war ensued, and the Buddhists, 
 who had become corrupt and enervated, were 
 terribly defeated. Buddhism was forbidden to 
 dwell within the capital or within the cities. True, 
 the monasteries that had always been important 
 features of the rural landscape were in no way 
 interfered with, but " banishment from the cities 
 
232 QuAiN'T Korea. 
 
 produced two results. First, desuetude rendered 
 the mass of the people quite oblivious to religious 
 matters ; and secondly, the withdrawal of religion 
 from the seats of power threw the profession into 
 disfavour with the aristocracy. . . . Here, then, 
 we have a community without a religion — for the 
 cities are to a peculiar degree the life of the land — 
 a community in which the morality of Confucius 
 for the upper classes, and the remains of old 
 superstitions for the lower, takes its place." 
 
 How, then, in Korea have the religiously mighty 
 fallen ! For Buddhist monks once formed a fourth 
 portion of the entire male population of Choson, 
 and there were tens of thousands of them in Soul 
 alone. At first thought it seems strange that now 
 any Korean should be found willing to embrace the 
 monastic life; but the Koreans are not indus- 
 trious, many of them are wretchedly poor, and 
 life in the monasteries affords the greatest oppor- 
 tunity for the indolent, dreamy, and meditative 
 life, and the proximity to Nature, which is so dear 
 to the Korean heart. No Korean monk is called 
 upon to do hard manual labour, and it is still 
 almost a religion with the Koreans, rich and poor, 
 to give something toward the sustenance, and 
 even toward the creature comforts of the 
 brothers. So laziness, and poverty, and misery 
 keep the Korean monasteries and the Korean 
 
Korea's Irreligion. 233 
 
 nunneries from falling into utter disuse. Strangely 
 enough, the monks of Korea rarely or never have 
 the brutal sinful-looking faces that characterize so 
 many of their brethren in China. 
 
 I should divide the religion, or the irreligion, 
 of Korea into rationalism : the religion of the 
 patricians ; and superstition : the religion of the 
 plebeians. Both rationalism and superstition are 
 well controlled by a system of morality which is 
 rooted in Confucianism, and impregnably enwalled 
 by ancestor-worship. 
 
 Rationalism and superstition have their points 
 of touch — points at which-the one is indistinguish- 
 able from the other — lost in the other — in Korea 
 as everywhere else. 
 
 I do not mean that reason and unreason ever 
 lose themselves in each other, though, like other 
 rival powers, the boundary line between them 
 may be narrower than any fraction of any 
 hair, and quite imperceptible to human eyes. 
 
 Korean rationalism is practically identical with 
 rationalism the world over. Korean superstitions 
 are unique in form if not in essence. It merits at 
 least passing notice that Reason expresses herself 
 in one way everywhere, and that Unreason in 
 different parts of the earth speaks in tongues as 
 differing as fantastic. 
 
 The expression of Korean superstition is 
 
234 Quaint Korea. 
 
 picturesque. The more picturesque a supersti- 
 tion is the more impregnable it is. 
 
 Korean demon-worship is positively fascinating. 
 Superstition has not always been the power in 
 Korea that it is now. In Korea religion and 
 superstition have played a long game of see-saw. 
 The Koreans outgrew their early superstitions, 
 discarded them, and embraced a highly civilized 
 and civilizing form of religion ; then they dis- 
 carded that religion. Now, the average human 
 mind must believe in something outside of its 
 own material ken, beyond its own demonstrating. 
 Quod erat demonstrandum forms no part of the 
 rituals and the creeds of most religions, so when 
 the time came that Buddha and his coterie of well- 
 bred and fairly rational deities had practically 
 been banished from Korea, the Koreans fell back 
 on their old superstitions, and to-day superstition 
 and its ridiculous rites are more rife in Korea 
 than in any other civilized country. 
 
 There are three classes of supernatural beings 
 in whom the people of Korea believe — the 
 demons who work' all manner of evil, the bene- 
 ficent spirits whose practice it is to do good 
 occasionally, and who semi-occasionally combat 
 the evil spirits, and an intermediate class of 
 spirits who dwell, as a rule, on the mountains, 
 and neither work good nor evil, but who, in them- 
 
Korea's Irreligion. 235 
 
 selves and in their lives, are the subjects of much 
 charming folk-lore. The Korean — the Korean of 
 the populace — the superstitious Korean attributes 
 all his ills to demons. He, being a Korean, 
 cannot conceive that Nature can be malignant, 
 nor cati he conceive that he is ever punished for 
 breaking laws of whose very existence he is 
 ignorant. So he peoples the air, the sea, and 
 the rocks with devils of earthquake, devils of 
 pestilence, devils of lightning, devils of hurricane, 
 and a thousand other devils of blight and of sorrow. 
 Having determined that they cause all his troubles, 
 he then sets about doing the best he can to propi- 
 tiate the spirits of evil. Korean demons are 
 supposed to be very small, and I have never heard 
 of one to whom much physical strength was 
 attributed ; and almost always when it comes to 
 a face-to-face contest between one of them and a 
 powerful man (and such contests occur very 
 often in Korean myths), the demon has the 
 worst of it. Still, the majority of the Korean 
 populace live in unceasing terror and dread of 
 these demons. Korean methods of circumventing 
 them are delightful, and delightfully simple. I 
 have already spoken of the beasts that sit on 
 guard on many Korean roofs. They are supposed 
 to be the most efficacious combatants of the 
 Korean devils ; but the privilege of having them 
 
236 Quaint Korea. 
 
 is rather monopolized by royalty and by the high 
 favourites of the royal family. On lintels of 
 the houses of well-to-do Koreans are usually hung 
 two oblong pieces of coloured paper upon which 
 are drawn in black, or two oblong pieces of white 
 paper on which are drawn in colours, terrible 
 enough portraits of two famous old generals. One 
 of these warriors was a Chinaman, the other was 
 a Korean, and both are renowned in the legends 
 of the peninsula as having waged highly success- 
 ful warfare against several evil spirits of Choson, 
 and their portraits are supposed to protect the 
 houses, outside of which they hang, from the in- 
 vasion of the imps of mischief and of misery. 
 Korean devils, for some unfathomable reason, are 
 supposed to be far more powerful indoors than 
 out, and so the Koreans are at special pains to 
 exclude their devilships from Korean interiors. 
 The Korean householder, who is debarred by 
 poverty or by his own social inferiority both 
 from using the roof-scarecrows, and from hanging 
 counterfeit presentments of the two old warriors 
 on his portals, fastens a strip of cloth and some 
 wisps of rice straw outside his door. He fastens the 
 rice straw there in the hope that the devil about 
 to enter may be hungry, and stop to gorge him- 
 self and then go away. He fastens the bit of cloth 
 (which must be torn from some old garment of 
 
Korea's Irreligion. 237 
 
 his own), because the Koreans have the nice taste 
 to consider their devils extremely stupid, and so 
 believe that any devil who is confronted with a 
 fragment of a man's garment will mistake it for 
 the man himself, and, in view of how often men 
 have defeated devils, fly and trouble that house 
 no more. 
 
 The evil spirits of Korea are also frightened 
 away by noise ; noise so . enormous, so metallic, 
 so discordant, so altogether diabolical, that it is 
 no wonder the devils rush from it, rush on their 
 wings of sulphurous flame, and the only wonder 
 is that any human person or persons can endure 
 to make it. This practice of frightening with 
 noise the evil ones of heaven (for mark you, the 
 peoples of the Far East, unlike the Greeks, have 
 no belief in Hades) is common to China, to Siam, 
 to Korea, and to Burmah. The devil-jails and 
 the devil-trees, and the professional devil-catchers, 
 of which I have spoken before, come in import- 
 ance next to the roof-beasts, and then, I think, 
 come the prayer-poles. A prayer-pole may be a 
 straight, symmetrical, polished piece of wood, or 
 it may be a carelessly cut branch of a tree. In 
 either case it is stuck in the earth a few feet from 
 the doorway, and on it are hung prayers to the 
 good spirits, and bits of rag, and bits of refresh- 
 ment to allure and deceive the evil spirits. Some- 
 
238 Quaint Korea. 
 
 times a bell is hung on the top of the branch to 
 attract the attention of both the cursers and the 
 blessers of the land. 
 
 The good spirits that inhabit the big kingdom 
 of Korean credulity are unfortunately lazy, and 
 have to be rather urgently supplicated when their 
 good services are needed. When their good 
 services are not needed they are left, to do the 
 Koreans justice, beautifully alone. But when the 
 evil-doers who dwell in the Korean heaven get 
 altogether unmanageable, the good spirits are 
 called upon with dance and with song, with 
 counting of rosaries and with ringing of bells, to 
 wage war against their wicked brethren. Often 
 the Korean angels, being Korean, go to sleep, 
 forget to wake up, and neglect to send rain. The 
 sending of rain is one of their few active offices. 
 If it does not rain in Korea the rice does not grow 
 in Korea, and then, indeed, are the Korean devils 
 to pay. When drought falls upon Korea all Korea 
 prays. The superstitious and the rational kneel 
 down together, and if their united invocations fail 
 to pierce the slumber of their well-meaning 
 deities, then the king goes beyond the city's 
 walls, and entering into a temple, or a sort of 
 rustic palace that is kept in readiness for the pur- 
 pose, throws himself upon the ground, and prays 
 that his people may be blessed with rain. The rain 
 
Korea's Irreligion. 239 
 
 may fall the next day, it may fall the next moon ; 
 but whenever it falls the loyal Koreans attribute 
 it altogether to the intercession of their king. It 
 is only when drought falls upon the land that the 
 ordinary Korean is allowed to pray directly to 
 most of the Korean gods. But every Korean has 
 a household spirit — a good guardian angel of his 
 own hearthside— to whom he may pray as often 
 as he likes. And best beloved, most god-like, 
 most fit to be worshipped, most fit to be prayed 
 to, most fit to be loved of the Korean gods, and 
 of all the Korean spirits, is one called " the blesser 
 of little children." He is the favourite vassal of the 
 great spirit: the phrase " great spirit " is as often 
 upon the tongue of a Korean as upon the tongue of 
 a North American Indian. "The blesser of little 
 children" has under his personal charge every 
 home in Korea. He journeys from house to house 
 scattering blessings upon the baby heads, and for- 
 bidding evil to approach the baby people. 
 
 The Koreans emphatically believe that Korea 
 was originally peopled by spirits and by fairies, 
 and this belief has developed a folk-lore that is 
 delightful and interesting in the extreme, and that 
 often reminds us of the Norwegian folk-lore. 
 
 " When a belief rational and pure enough to be 
 called a religion disappears, the stronger minds 
 among the community turn in self-reliance to a 
 
240 Quaint Korea. 
 
 belief in nothing; the weaker, in despair, to a 
 belief in anything. This happened here; and 
 the anything to which they turned in this case 
 was what had never quite died out, the old 
 aboriginal demon- worship." 
 
 And the stronger minds among the Korean com- 
 munity turned to the belief in nothing, which is so 
 often called rationalism. But in Korea rationalism 
 is tinged with, almost disguised by, that strange 
 phenomenon of Asiatic mentality, of Asiatic 
 belief, of Asiatic instinct called ancestor-worship. 
 
 Ancestor-worship in Korea, and ancestor-wor- 
 ship in China, are almost identical. The most 
 thorough-going, the most uncompromising agnostic 
 I ever knew was a Korean. The most thorough- 
 going, the most uncompromising atheist I ever 
 knew was a Chinaman, but both were staunch 
 and uncorruptible ancestor-worshippers. Korean 
 ancestor-worship is more than interesting, but it 
 is merely a vassal of Chinese ancestor-worship. 
 Like, and with Confucianism, it has come from 
 China to Korea, and like and with Confucianism 
 it is the mainstay of Korean morality. The wor- 
 ship of ancestors is an almost daily detail of 
 Korean life. The observances of ancestor- worship 
 are more rigidly carried out by the well-to-do 
 Korean rationalist than by the poor superstitious 
 Korean peasant. Death and burial mark the first, 
 
Korea's Irreligion. 241 
 
 the greatest, and the most picturesque of the func- 
 tions of ancestor-worship. Logically enough, the 
 death and the interment of a child or of any un- 
 married person involves almost no expense, and 
 demands no ceremonial. The infant (an un- 
 married man or woman of eighty is an infant in 
 Korea) is wrapt about with the mats, the tiger 
 skins, or the rugs upon which he died. These are 
 wrapt about with rice straw, and the bundle is 
 buried. That is the end of a Korean who leaves 
 no descendants. When the father of a family 
 dies his eldest son closes the eyes as the breath 
 leaves the body, and the family (men and women 
 gather together for once) let loose their hair, and 
 shriek and sob, and, if possible, weep. So long as 
 the dead remains in the house his relatives eat 
 the food they like least, and as little of that as 
 will sustain life. Indeed, the eldest son is sup- 
 posed to eat nothing. Four days after the death, 
 the members of the family redress their hair, and 
 put on their first mourning. In Korea, as in all 
 the Far East, mourning consists of coarse, un- 
 bleached fabrics that are commonly called, but are 
 not quite, white. On this fourth day the family, 
 friends, and acquaintances prostrate, prostrate, and 
 prostrate themselves before the dead, and an excep- 
 tionally good dinner is laid beside him. Huge 
 loaves of especially prepared bread also, and as 
 
 R 
 
242 Quaint Korea. 
 
 many kinds of fruit as the market affords — the rarer, 
 the more expensive, and the more hard to obtain, 
 the better. A dinner is also prepared for the 
 friends, but not for the family. About the body, and 
 throughout the house, candles and incense burn, 
 and wailing is incessant. The mourners and the 
 professional wallers take turns in sleeping, and 
 relieve each other in the audible grieving. Paper 
 money, that is, imitation money, and long paper 
 banners covered with the titles and the good 
 qualities of the dead, are burned. With the poor^ 
 burial takes place five, or at the most nine days 
 after death. With the rich the body remains un- 
 buried for at least three months. Korean coffins, 
 like Chinese coffins, are, or are supposed to be, 
 air-tight. But the Korean coffin is much smaller 
 than the Chinese coffin, and the spaces left be- 
 tween the outlines of the coffin and the outlines 
 of the body are, in Korea, filled up with the old 
 clothing of the dead. If the dead had not enough 
 clothing, pieces of linen or of silk are added to 
 it. The rich Koreans usually employ a geomancer 
 to indicate the most auspicious day for burial. 
 The coffin is covered with beautiful brocaded silk, 
 or with beautifully carved pieces of wood. 
 Prayers are said almost continuously, from the 
 hour of death until some time after the interment. 
 The coffin is borne on a death-car, a unique 
 
Korea's Irreligion. 243 
 
 Korean vehicle, or by men who are hired for a 
 small sum and who do nothing else. Beside 
 the coffin are carried the banners, recording the 
 rank and the virtues of the dead, and the lanterns 
 which in life he was entitled to use. His sons 
 follow him, in Korean mourning, and, Chinese-like, 
 leaning heavily upon sticks. Acquaintances and 
 friends bring up the rear, in sedan chairs and on 
 horseback. 
 
 Korean graves are usually on hill sides, and are 
 decorated at the utmost possible expense. Even 
 the graves of the Korean poor are well tended, 
 and covered with the gentle green grass, and with 
 the soft flowers of spring, if no monument or 
 temple is possible. But if it can be managed, a 
 miniature temple is erected near the grave — a 
 temple which is a shelter for those who come 
 periodically to mourn the dead — and the grave is 
 guarded with quaint stone images of men and 
 other animals. 
 
 If a Korean family is unlucky they are very apt to 
 think that one or more of their ancestors has 
 been buried in an uncongenial spot. Then, no 
 matter what the cost, no matter what the trouble, 
 the grave is, or the graves are, opened, and the 
 dead moved to some more desirable place. Korean 
 mourning is' as long or longer, as intricate or more 
 intricate, than Chinese mourning, but so similar 
 
 R 2 
 
244 Quaint Korea. 
 
 to Chinese mourning, which has been so often 
 and so fully described, that it would be superfluous 
 to here more than mention Korean mourning. 
 
 Such, then, is the religion or the irreligion of 
 Korea. Superstition for the people; ancestor- 
 worship for the people, the princes, and for those 
 who are between. Strange that a nation that has 
 driven from its midst one of the great religions of 
 this earth, and has unrelentingly persecuted the 
 religion of Christ, should be so devoted in its 
 ancestor-worship. But which of us that has ever 
 lain awake through the wordless watches of the 
 lonely night and longed in vain — 
 
 " For the touch of a vanished hand 
 And the sound of a voice that is still," 
 
 shall blame the Koreans for their incessant, their 
 blind, filial devotion ? 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 KOREA'S HISTORY IN A NUTSHELL. 
 
 In the tenth century Korea assumed its present 
 boundaries, and for nine hundred years it has re- 
 mained unchanged in its coast Hne, and its 
 northern limits. Except on the north, Korea is 
 surrounded by the sea, and its northern boundary 
 is marked by the Yalu and the Tiumen rivers, that 
 almost meet at two of their sources. For conveni- 
 ence in the recapitulation of Korea's history — a 
 recapitulation in which everything else must be 
 sacrificed to brevity — the history of the peninsula 
 may be divided into three periods : First, the 
 period antecedent to the final settlement of Korea's 
 boundaries — a period whose history is in part at 
 least, conjectural ; second, a period reaching from 
 then until modern times ; and third, a period 
 covering Korea's recent history, and the compara- 
 tive opening up of Korea to foreign travellers, and 
 to foreign influence. We know as much and as 
 little of Korea's remotest ancestry as we do of the 
 ancestries of other countries. The Korean family 
 
246 Quaint Korea. 
 
 can trace its pedigree a long way, but at length 
 the pedigree becomes lost in the mists of remote 
 history and of prehistoric times, and we can form 
 no conclusive opinion as to who were the first 
 founders of the race. 
 
 Korean civilization came chiefly from China, 
 and the Koreans themselves from the highlands of 
 Manchuria and the Amoor valley. 
 
 The kingdom of Korea, and indeed the nation 
 of Korea, was founded by an ancestor of Confucius. 
 In Latin his name is Kicius, in Japanese it is 
 Ki-shi, and in Chinese Ki-tsze, which means 
 Viscount of Ki. He was a faithful vassal of the 
 Chow dynasty of old China, and when the 
 Chows were overthrown in 1122 B.C. he refused to 
 acknowledge the new power, and fled with, some • 
 say five some say ten thousand followers to the 
 north-east. Here he founded a kingdom which he 
 called Choson, and of which he made himself 
 king. He was welcomed by the people already 
 living there, and these aborigines and the 
 followers of Ki-tsze are among the remotest 
 ancestors to which Koreans can prove their 
 claim. Ki-tsze introduced into his kingdom the 
 study and the practice of medicine, agriculture, 
 literature, the fine arts, and a dozen other in- 
 dustries jn which China was then most proficient. 
 He founded his kingdom on the lines of Chinese 
 
Korea's History in a Nutshell. 247 
 
 feudalism, and very much as he founded it the king- 
 dom endured until the beginning of the Christian 
 era, and the Koreans to-day call Ki-tsze the father 
 of Choson, and because of him, and the quality 
 of his kingdom, claim that their civilization is 
 almost as ancient as the civilization of China, and 
 older than the civilization of Chaldea. 
 
 Just where this first kingdom of Choson 
 was nobody knows. Some authorities believe 
 that it lay exactly north-west of the Yalu river, 
 just beyond the present borders of Korea, and in 
 the present Chinese province of Shing-king. It 
 seems more probable that the first Choson was in 
 the valley of the Sungari river, and some 
 historians, with considerable show of reason, 
 locate it still further north, in the valley of the 
 Amoor. Certainly its borders shrank and ex- 
 tended almost continually, and its entire position 
 seems to have been more or less changed at 
 several times, and only for a few years was any 
 part of the Korea we know included within its 
 area. At one time old Choson certainly was 
 located north-east of Pekin. It became part of 
 China, politically and geographically, in the first 
 century. 
 
 In the territory taken from the kings of old 
 Choson, and annexed to China, lay the kingdom 
 of Kokorai. It lay east; as the old Chinese 
 
/ 
 
 / 
 
 248 Quaint Korea. I 
 
 / 
 historians state, directly east, and slightly north/ 
 
 of modern Mukden, and between the sources 
 
 of the Yalu and the Sungari rivers. The people 
 
 of Kokorai were warlike and able. They seem to 
 
 have been rather independent of China as early 
 
 as 9 A.D. ; to have begun in 70 a.d. a struggle 
 
 with China, which lasted until the seventh century. 
 
 During this long warfare — a warfare in which their 
 
 country was repeatedly invaded by the Chinese — 
 
 these warlike people, instead of being conquered 
 
 or exterminated by China, flourished and increased 
 
 until they had overrun the peninsula of the present 
 
 Korea as far as the Han river. 
 
 This, then, is the outline of the history of the 
 western and the northern parts of modern Korea, 
 but before turning to the history of southern and 
 eastern Korea, it will be interesting to glance a 
 little more particularly at the history of Kokorai. 
 
 Well, north of Kokorai, north of the Sungari 
 river, there existed in very ancient times (if we may 
 trust Chinese tradition) a little .kingdom called 
 To-li or Ko-rai. While one of the early kings of 
 To-li was out hunting, a favourite waiting-maid 
 "saw, floating in the atmosphere, a glistening 
 vapour which entered her bosom. This ray or 
 tiny cloud seemed to be about as big as an egg. 
 Under its influence she conceived. 
 
 "The king, on his return, discovered her condi- 
 
Korea's History in a Nutshell. 249 
 
 tion, and made up his mind to put her to death. 
 Upon her explanation, however, he agreed to spare 
 her life, but at once lodged her in prison. 
 
 " The child that was born proved to be a boy, 
 which the king promptly cast among the pigs. 
 But the swine breathed into his nostrils and the 
 baby lived. He was next put among the horses, 
 but they also nourished him with their breath, and 
 he lived. Struck by this evident will of Heaven, 
 that the child should live, the king hstened to its 
 mother's prayers, and permitted her to nourish 
 and train him in the palace. He grew up to be a 
 fair youth, full of energy, and skilful in archery. 
 He was named ' Light of the East,' and the king 
 appointed him mp-ster of his stables. 
 
 " One day, while out hunting, the king permitted 
 him to give an exhibition of his skill. This he did 
 drawing bow with such unerring aim that the 
 royal jealousy was kindled, and he thought of 
 nothing but how to compass the destruction of the 
 youth. Knowing that he would be killed if he 
 remained in the royal service, the young archer 
 fled the kingdom. He directed his course to the 
 south-east, and came to the borders of a vast and 
 impassable river, most probably the Sungari. 
 Knowing his pursuers were not far behind him, he 
 cried out, in a great strait, — 
 
 " 'Alas ! shall I, who am the child of the Sun, 
 
250 Quaint Korea. 
 
 and the grandson of the Yellow River, be stopped 
 here powerless by this stream ? ' 
 
 " So saying, he shot his arrows at the water. 
 
 " Immediately all the fishes of the river assem- 
 bled together in a thick shoal, making so dense a 
 mass that their bodies became a floating bridge. 
 On this the young prince (and according to the 
 Japanese version of the legend, three others with 
 him) crossed the stream and safely reached the 
 further side. No sooner did he set foot on land 
 than his pursuers appeared on the opposite shore, 
 when the bridge of fishes at once dissolved. His 
 three companions stood ready to act as his guides. 
 One of the three was dressed in a costume made 
 of seaweeds, a second in hempen garments, and a 
 third in embroidered robes. Arriving at their 
 city, he became the king of the tribe and kingdom 
 of Fuyu, which lay in the fertile and well-watered 
 region between the Sungari River and the Shan 
 Alyn, or Ever- White Mountains. It extended 
 several hundred miles east and west of a line 
 drawn southward through Kirin, the larger half 
 lying on the west." 
 
 Certainly as early as 25 B.C. To-li had attained 
 very considerable civilization. Millet, sorghum, 
 rice, beans, and wheat grew in abundance, and 
 were carefully cultivated. Spirits were distilled 
 from rice and grain, as they still are in Korea, 
 
Korea's History in a Nutshell. 251 
 
 Japan, and China.* The people ate from bowls 
 and with chop-sticks, as the people of modern 
 China eat. The men were strong, well-built, and 
 fearless. They were skilled in the manufacture 
 and the use of swords, and lances, and bows and 
 arrows. They were expert horsemen ; were fond 
 of dancing and music ; decked themselves with 
 pearls, and with gems of red jade. They had an 
 elaborate system of etiquette which was rigidly 
 observed. They had granaries, and well-built 
 houses of wood, and their cities were surrounded 
 by walls or palisades of stakes. They had a well- 
 developed and a civilized religion, freer from su- 
 perstition and from superstitious rites than many 
 of the religions of modern Asia. They had a king, 
 a well-defined feudal system, farms and farmers, 
 nobility and serfs. They had prisons, and their 
 system of justice was rigid. All this is surprising, 
 for at that time the people by whom they were 
 surrounded were barbarians, without literature, 
 without form of government, in brief, without 
 civilization. And yet these people of Fuyu, who 
 were then far beyond the reach of Chinese influ- 
 ence, were in the full enjoyment of a civilization 
 which was apparently of some maturity. From 
 this many historians have inferred that the old 
 kingdom of Fuyu was the exact site of the kingdom 
 of Ki-tsze. This may have been. At all events. 
 
252 Quaint Korea. 
 
 the people of Fuyu or their descendants peopled 
 the kingdom of Kokorai, whose people in their 
 turn populated the northern and the western parts 
 of modern Korea. 
 
 Undoubtedly, the peoples of old Ko-rai and of 
 Fuyu were the ancestors of the Koreans of our 
 time. Very probably they were also the ancestors 
 of the modern Japanese. 
 
 We know little or nothing, and we seem 
 unlikely ever to learn much more about the 
 early settlers of southern and eastern Korea. 
 
 Some time before the beginning of the 
 Christian era Chinese authorities mention three 
 independent kingdoms or nations that lay upon 
 the shores of the Japan Sea, and south of the 
 Han River. Early in the sixth century they had 
 become very considerably civilized. Their litera- 
 ture, their art, their forms of government, and 
 their social customs they had adopted from the 
 Chinese. They were Buddhists ; and Buddhism 
 was then in its flower, sound in itself, and 
 comparatively pure, and a powerful force for good 
 and for culture. These three states were Pe-tsi 
 (called by the Japanese historians Hiaksi), which 
 was in the west ; Sin-lo (called by the Japanese 
 Shin-ra), which was in the south-east ; and in 
 the north, Ko-rai. They banded themselves 
 together to attack or to repel the attacks of 
 
Korea's History in a Nutshell. 253 
 
 China and Japan. When this was unnecessary 
 they fought each other. They fought steadily 
 until the tenth century. Their appetite for 
 warfare seemed insatiable, and when they could 
 not fight among themselves they sought foes in 
 China and Japan, and when they could not fight 
 the Chinese or the Japanese they picked quarrel- 
 some wars with each other. But this period of 
 national and international strife and of wholesale 
 bloodshed was one of great mental and artistic 
 activity. The civilization and the culture, and 
 the learning of China, flowed rapidly and steadily 
 into Korea, and through Korea into Japan. 
 
 Sin-lo, Pe-tsi, and Ko-rai appear in their origins 
 to have had nothing in common. They were 
 alike in being conquered by at least one alien 
 race. Each of the three nations was greatly 
 enriched by an influx of, and intermarriage with, 
 Chinese, Tartars, and several other peoples of 
 Far Asia. Their rivalry and their warfare lasted 
 for hundreds of years ; then they were united under 
 one monarch, and slowly and surely became one 
 nation. 
 
 The ninth and the tenth centuries were centuries 
 of peace in Korea, and our knowledge of Korea's 
 history during these two hundred years is most 
 meagre. Sin-lo was then, and had been for some 
 time, the dominant province, but the reigning 
 
254 Quaint Korea. 
 
 house of Sin-lo had become enervated and 
 incapable. In 912 a.d. a Buddhist monk 
 initiated a rebeUion which spread with amazing 
 rapidity, and was entirely successful. The monk 
 proclaimed himself king, but he in his turn was 
 rebelled against, conquered by, and slaughtered 
 by a descendant of the kings of old Ko-rai, whose 
 name was Wang-hien, or Wang- Ken. Wang-hien 
 chose Kaiseng, which was then called Sunto, as his 
 capital. He became absolute monarch of the whole 
 peninsula, and gave back to it its ancient name of 
 Ko-rai. Kai-seng is but a short distance north- 
 east of Soul, and so the first capital of united, and 
 possibly the last capital of united Korea, are 
 but a stone's throw from each other. A war 
 which shortly occurred with the Kitan Tartars, 
 who lived west of the Yalu River, resulted in a 
 change of frontier, the Kitans taking and holding 
 most of the north-western territory of Korea. 
 From that day to this the boundaries of Korea 
 have practically remained unchanged, and this 
 brings us to the second period of Korea's history .5 
 Four hundred years of peace now fell upon 
 Korea. These four were the most brilliant 
 centuries in Korea's history. Feudalism gave 
 place to absolute monarchy, and the peninsula 
 was divided into eight provinces, over each of 
 which the king placed a governor. Buddhism 
 
Korea's History in a Nutshell. :255 
 
 became the national religion ; temples, pagodas, 
 monasteries, nunneries in the best forms of 
 Chinese architecture, and in Chinese-like, but 
 better than Chinese forms of architecture, were 
 built everywhere. The naturally rich resources of 
 the peninsula were developed, augmented, and 
 made the most of, and a flourishing trade was 
 driven with both of the rival kingdoms — China 
 and Japan. But China still remained the 
 fountain-head of Korean learning and culture. 
 The wealthy and the noble Koreans sent their sons 
 to China to be educated. This was the period of 
 the Sung dynasty in China — the wonderful 
 period of Chinese literature and art to which I 
 referred a chapter or two ago. Korea, which was 
 then more abjectly the vassal of China in culture, 
 in letters, in art, and in sociology, than she was 
 politically, followed as fast as she could in the 
 footsteps of China's literary and artistic progress. 
 It was then that Korea first became deeply 
 interested in Chinese classics, and from then 
 until now a thorough knowledge of the Chinese 
 classics has been, and is, the supreme test of 
 Korean education and culture. Then the 
 Koreans first learned to print, printing from 
 raised letters cut in blocks of wood. Toward 
 the close of these memorable four hundred years 
 it is said that there were more books, more 
 
256 Quaint Korea. 
 
 printed books in Korea than there were inha- 
 bitants. It was then that general education 
 became a matter of course in the peninsula. It 
 was then, as I have said, that Korean art was at 
 its best and broadest; and it was then that the 
 Korean alphabet was invented, or at least became 
 generally used. Many scholars maintain even 
 now that the Korean is the most beautiful, and 
 the most sensible alphabetical system that the 
 world has, or ever has had. 
 
 Early in the fourteenth century the Mongols had 
 begun their run of unprecedented conquest. Khu- 
 blai Khan and Genghis Khan, the mightiest Mon- 
 gols of their time, determined to conquer the earth. 
 Their ideas of the extent of the earth were limited, 
 very limited, but within the narrow limits of those 
 ideas they very approximately carried out their 
 bold intentions. Korea was completely subdued. 
 
 The history of Korea during the period of the 
 Mongolian supremacy in China is a history of 
 entire subjection. Toward the decadence of the 
 power of the Mongols Korea was called upon to 
 conquer Japan, but escaped from the farce of 
 trying to do so. For the Mongol was already 
 tottering on his throne. The Mongols most in 
 power were quarrelling among themselves, and 
 plotting against each other, and the people whom 
 they ruled had grown dissatisfied enough (as the 
 
Korea's History in a Nutshell. 257 
 
 Chinese once in a very great while do), to not only 
 contemplate but execute a rebellion. During the 
 last days of the Mongol's already shattered power 
 Korea was almost free from Chinese supervision, 
 and altogether free from Chinese control ; for 
 China had more than she could do at home. At 
 last a Chinese monk, a Buddhist priest, calling 
 himself Ming, or " Bright," pushed the insecurely 
 seated Mongol from his throne. This priest pro- 
 claimed himself, and the people acclaimed him, 
 the Emperor and Deliverer of China. He married 
 that he might found a dynasty. The first Ming 
 was indeed a man of might, and the period during 
 which he and his descendants were supreme in 
 China is peculiarly interesting to the student of 
 Korean history. For it was during this period 
 that the Koreans copied the Chinese Mings ; 
 assumed the dress in all its details which they 
 have worn ever since, and many of their most 
 characteristic customs. When the Mongols fell, 
 the king of Korea, who seems to have been an 
 exceptionally good sort, wished to give his one- 
 time masters sanctuary in his hermit kingdom, 
 but a greater than the king — a powerful courtier 
 named Ni Taijo — disallowed the king's judgment, 
 dethroned the king, imprisoned him, and usurped, 
 or at least ascended, the Korean , throne, and 
 established the present Korean dynasty. That 
 
 s 
 
258 Quaint Korea. 
 
 was five hundred, or to be exact, five hundred and 
 three years ago. The name of the peninsula was 
 again changed, and it was re-named Ta Cho-sun. 
 Soul, which he called, and which in fact we ought 
 to call, Han-yang, was made the capital. And it 
 was then that the famous wall of Soul was built, 
 and then that her imposingly wide streets were laid 
 out and made. Ni Taijo changed the boundaries 
 of Korea's eight provinces. Those boundaries 
 have not been changed since. It was during 
 his reign that the pale blue, which we carelessly 
 and generally call white, became the colour of 
 every ordinary Korean dress. It was then that 
 the Korean hat in all its glory was born. It was 
 then that the Korean top-knot was erected upon 
 Korean heads. It was then that Buddhism made 
 way for Confucianism ; and it was then that the 
 gaining of office or position of trust was deter- 
 mined solely by the result of competitive literary 
 examinations. And it was then that the Koreans 
 invented, as they did invent, in their part of the 
 world at least, the art of printing by movable and 
 cast metal type. 
 
 Again Korea had peace, peace for two hundred 
 years. Then like the Romans of old the Koreans 
 who, like them, had feasted and lounged too much, 
 became enervated and thriftless. Japan grew 
 bolder, and for more than a quarter of a century 
 
Korea's History in a Nutshell. 259 
 
 Korea was constantly ravaged by pirates and 
 piratical armies from the islands of Japan. In 1592 
 Konishi and Kato devastated large tracts of Korea, 
 and it was after their final expulsion, after the 
 final expulsion of the power of which they were 
 powerful units, that (as I mentioned before) 
 according to many historians, religion fell in 
 Korea into the disgrace from which it has never 
 arisen. Ping-yang was the site of many of the 
 most desperate struggles that took place between 
 the natives and the invaders. All through 
 Choson's history Ping-yang has been the battle- 
 field of a large proportion of the most desperate 
 conflicts that have taken place on Korean soil. 
 In 1597 the Japanese made their second invasion 
 of Korea. It was during this invasion that the 
 Japanese seized upon vast quantities of Korean 
 treasure and of art works — works of art \yhich, 
 transplanted to the fertile soil of Japan, quickly 
 took root, and became the seed-plants of a con- 
 siderable portion of Japan's best art. 
 
 During this second Japanese invasion China, in 
 answer to Korean prayers, sent vast reinforcements 
 to the aid of the Chosonese. For seven years 
 Korea suffered from fire, from pillage, from war, 
 from pestilence, and from famine, and her already 
 depleted resources were drained with the neicessity 
 of feeding and sheltering, wily-nily, two great alien 
 
 s 2 
 
26o Quaint Korea. 
 
 armies. A million Koreans died during these 
 seven years ; a million, beyond the normal death- 
 rate, of men were killed in battle, or died after 
 battle, or succumbed to starvation, or one of the 
 dire diseases bred of war, and in war-time. The 
 sun of Korea's greatness set then, and never since 
 have the Koreans been able to say, or to approxi- 
 mately say, — 
 
 ' Now is the sun upon the high-most hill of our national 
 day's journey.' 
 
 Korea struggled, struggled bravely enough, to 
 retrieve her fallen fortunes, but before her old 
 wounds were healed new ones were inflicted. 
 Beyond the mountains that marked, and still 
 mark, her northern boundaries a mighty race had 
 risen — a race that became supreme in China as 
 in Korea, and a race that only now seems in 
 danger of extermination or degradation. The 
 Manchius dwelt where the people of old Fuyu 
 had dwelt. They conquered Korea, and then they 
 conquered China. In 1627 the Manchius practi- 
 cally mastered Choson ; and ten years later they 
 so completely humbled the King of Korea that he 
 acknowledged as his master the Manchiu Emperor, 
 who was now supreme in Pekin, and the Korean 
 King covenanted to send four times a year to the 
 Tartar an enromous tribute, and the Koreans bound 
 themselves to perform to the Tartar and to his re- 
 
Korea's History in a Nutshell. 261 
 
 presentatives the kow-tow which has played so 
 ridiculous a part in our European difficulties with 
 China, and to sing hymns of praise commemorative 
 of the Manchius' generosity and graciousness in 
 not having wiped Korea from off the face of the 
 Asiatic earth. Let me quote a short paragraph 
 from an historian who never appears over-partial 
 to China : — 
 
 " Aside from the entrance at stated times of the 
 imperial envoy to collect the tribute, and the 
 annual embassy of Korean nobles to Pekin to do 
 homage to ' the Great Khan,' the internal politics 
 of ' the little outpost state ' were not interfered 
 with by the Chinese Government." 
 
 Should Japan become the mistress of Korea ; 
 should Japan become the mistress of China — will 
 she, I wonder, be as magnanimous ? 
 
 Twenty years brought little or no change to the 
 people of Choson. In 1653 Hamel was wrecked 
 upon the Korean shores, and what t have quoted 
 from his memoirs indicates, by no means suffici- 
 ently, but as sufficiently as my space will allow 
 me to indicate, the condition of Korea from then 
 until 1777. And in 1777 begins the history of 
 modern Korea. 
 
 That history affords neither pleasant writing 
 nor pleasant reading to any one of European or 
 Europeanly-American birth. Korea is hardly 
 
262 Quaint Korea. 
 
 enough placed with China on the one hand and 
 Japan on the other, but for all that she, perhaps 
 because she has been the weakest and the most 
 exposed of Oriental countries, has suffered most 
 from — no, I do not mean suffered, but been most 
 at the mercy of Europe. "Courtesy with the 
 East, respect to the West, tribute to them both, 
 and no foreigners wanted in the kingdom," was 
 Korea's political creed when Korea ceased to be 
 one of the intrinsically great nations of the past, 
 and becdme one of the unjustly unimportant 
 nations. During the last hundred or hundred and 
 twenty years Korea has changed but little centri- 
 fugally, but centripetally she has changed, well — 
 considering that she is Asiatic — enormously. 
 Christianity, in an insidious Portuguese sort of 
 way, had peeped into Korea many years before, 
 but]now Christianity is forcibly injected into Korea, 
 injected in a way of which, however admirable it 
 may seem to us, Christ would never have 
 approved. Christianity, the species of Christi- 
 anity offered to Korea, has not flourished there, 
 and the nice, new Occidental civilization which 
 was offered to Korea a year after the patriarchs of 
 Massachusetts perfumed the Bay of Boston with 
 tea-leaves, seems to have been rather a failure in 
 the Land of the Morning Calm. 
 
 About the Jesuit fathers who sneaked into 
 
Korea's History in a Nutshell. 263 
 
 Korea under the shelter of the big hats that 
 Korean widowers wear, and about the American 
 and English missionaries who laid down their 
 lives, and who have amplified and luxuriated their 
 lives in Korea, I should like to say a good deal, 
 but when one cannot say all that one might say 
 and wishes to say, it is perhaps least stupid to say 
 nothing. But to those who would like to study 
 Christian missions in the East I would first of 
 all recommend Mr. Curzon's " Problems of the Far 
 East," and then, as far as Korea is concerned, I 
 would recommend the works of the missionaries 
 Griffis and Ross. 
 
 Korea itself has undergone little change since 
 Hamel escaped from Korea. Korea has suffered 
 during those years a good deal of change at the 
 hands of others, a change that is, I think, not 
 altogether to our credit. An American commo- 
 dore opened Japan up to the West, and now (so 
 at least they tell me), Japan is threatening to 
 annihilate the West. Another American com- 
 modore, rather a noisier man, and not blessed 
 with so fortunate a field of action, opened modern 
 Korea to nineteenth century Europe and nine- 
 teenth century North America. Since then, the 
 history of Korea has been a history of Korean 
 degeneration, and European and United States 
 advancement. The King of Korea has become 
 
264 Quaint Korea. 
 
 a patron of telephones, and the hero of innumer- 
 able magazine articles — magazines published on 
 both sides of the Atlantic. 
 
 Such is the outline of Korea's history — hurried, 
 dry, and incomplete ; so incomplete, indeed, that 
 it is not in truth an outline but rather scraps of 
 outline. But Korea's history is anything but 
 dry, if we study it in something like intelligible 
 entirety. 
 
 One who reads only English — or even the lan- 
 guages of modern Europe — but wishes to know 
 Korean history in some detail, will be forced to do 
 considerable literary browsing. A full and al- 
 together satisfactory history of Korea has yet to be 
 written in English. Its writing would involve years 
 of earnest work, and could only be accomplished by 
 one thoroughly familiar with the Chinese language 
 and Chinese literature. In the meantime there is 
 much interesting information to be found in 
 periodicals, in English papers printed in Shanghai, 
 and to be gleaned from Blue-books. 
 
 Both Ross and Griffis have contributed valu- 
 ably to our literature re Korea. But neither of 
 them are the easiest of reading, and both write 
 from a sectarian, if not a narrow point of view. 
 No one who is interested in Korea can afford not 
 to read Curzon's " Problems of the Far East," 
 Lowell's " Choson," Carles' " Life in Korea," and 
 
Korea's History in a Nutshell. 265 
 
 almost above all Dallet's " Histoire de I'Aglise de 
 CorSe." And don't forget dear, quaint old Hamel. 
 There are more to be by-all-means read, but not 
 many, and in reading one we shall learn the titles 
 of others. 
 
 The chapter headed " Korea," in " The Life of 
 Sir Harry Parkes " is, like all the other chapters 
 in that admirable work, delightfully written, and 
 peculiarly interesting. Korea has been rather 
 cruelly used — it seems to me — but it is pleasant 
 to feel that in connection with Korea, England 
 has little or no cause to reproach herself. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE SCOURGES OF CHINA. 
 
 It is the present war between China and Japan 
 that has brought Korea to our general notice ; has 
 caused us to ask and learn something of where 
 and what Korea is. It is this war that will largely 
 open up Korea, directly or indirectly, to Occidental 
 travellers, to Occidental adventurers, and to Occi- 
 dental enterprise. 
 
 Whatever the ultimate effect of the war upon 
 Japan the effect will be far greater upon Korea, 
 greater even than it will be upon China. China is 
 a huge place, and will, I think, change but slowly, 
 no matter how great her defeat may be, no matter 
 how many and how sweeping the concessions 
 she may perforce yield to Japan. Korea is small 
 and weak, and may, if force enough is brought 
 to bear upon her, change swiftly. 
 
 Korea has been now almost lost sight of in the 
 present struggle ; because it has ceased to be the 
 theatre of the strife. But the war concerns Korea 
 no whit less than it concerns China and Japan. 
 
The Scourges of China. 267 
 
 This war is an essential part of Korea's history — 
 the most recent scene in Korea's dramatic life. 
 
 With the war in the details of its action we are 
 all very familiar, at this moment. But I doubt 
 if we are quite au courant of the causes of the 
 war ; and we have yet much to learn of the two 
 interesting peoples who are waging the war. 
 
 There are several reasons why China fell a 
 fighting of Japan — China had to, for Japan 
 forced the war — China hates Japan — China, an 
 important part of China, was unnerved by a fearful 
 plague and easily excited into indulging in the 
 dissipation of war. It was easy and comparatively 
 safe for Japan to make China fight, because 
 China had for years so neglected the art of war 
 (if so holy a name may be attached to so often 
 so unholy a thing), that she was ill prepared to 
 cope with any foe that was more than a foe of 
 straw ; was ill prepared but did not know it. The 
 Chinese for long have not regarded warfare as the 
 manliest of occupations. Scholars, not soldiers, 
 are their beau ideals, and the scum of their popu- 
 lace fills the ranks of their standing army. Their 
 officers know little of military tactics, and are 
 wont to direct, from behind the curtains of palan- 
 quins, the actions of their troops. 
 
 Japan has fallen a fighting of China because 
 she hates China ; because she dearly loves a bit 
 
268 Quaint Korea. 
 
 of glory, and saw a splendid chance to gain it ; 
 and because she too felt the need of a national 
 stimulant : the course of her true politics had not 
 been flowing over smoothly, and she had been 
 badly unnerved by earthquake. 
 
 China is the home of the wild white roses, of 
 supreme philosophy, and of deadly pestilence. 
 The recent plague in Hong Kong and Canton 
 was merely an outbreak of an inevitably recurrent 
 pest which is the sure result of the conditions of 
 Chinese life. We are railing loudly just now 
 against Chinese dirt. I feel that Chinese dirt is 
 very much less than Chinese poverty. And it is 
 a significant fact that the dirt and the poverty are 
 usually found together. The houses and grounds 
 of the rich Chinese that I have known in Singa- 
 pore, in Penang, in Shanghai, and in Hong Kong, 
 have been models of order and neatness, if not 
 (according to European standards) of beauty. 
 
 The poorer quarters of the Chinese cities are 
 undeniably filthy. But it is the filth bred of over- 
 crowding and of dire penury, and of the inability 
 of the government to cope with such enormous 
 masses of humanity, rather than of natural un- 
 cleanliness. It is an almost infallible rule that 
 only lazy people are dirty ; sloth and filth are old 
 bedfellows. The Chinese are the most indus- 
 trious, thrifty nation on our globe ; and I am 
 
The Scourges of China. 269 
 
 convinced that the national dirt, the dirt of the 
 poorer classes, is their misfortune and not their 
 fault. . 
 
 But there the dirt is, and, like a thousand 
 maggot-breeding filth-heaps, it is constantly 
 creating horrid germs of deadly disease. 
 
 It is very much to our national shame that the 
 Chinese quarters of Hong Kong are almost as 
 filthy as the poorer parts of Canton. We are 
 absolute in Hong Kong; but we have done dis- 
 gracefully little for the sanitation of the native 
 quarters in the island we have conquered. 
 
 And yet Hong Kong ought to be the healthiest 
 city in the world, the freest from pestilence. I 
 know of no other city so admirably situated for 
 conditions of health. Aside from the beauty of 
 the place, and regarding it only as adaptable to 
 healthy modes of human life and residence, it is 
 ideal. And our flag waves over Hong Kong. 
 And yet but yesterday a plague was raging there ; 
 only to think of which must make the gorge of 
 Christendom rise. 
 
 While the plague raged, no doubt everything 
 was done that terror and wisdom could devise. 
 But the evil is deep-rooted, and it will not be up- 
 rooted in an hour. 
 
 Except for their unavoidable proximity to the 
 possibility of dire disease (in which the Chinese 
 
270 Quaint Korea. 
 
 are born, live, and die), the European inhabitants 
 of Hong Kong are in every way to be envied. 
 
 Alas ! almost the latest duty of the doyen of 
 that Queen's house was the sending of a disin- 
 fecting party through the plague-stricken districts 
 of Hong Kong — a party including British soldiers, 
 some of whom were attacked by the seemingly 
 invincible plague, and died a death almost 
 Chinese in its horror. 
 
 The conditions of well-to-do Chinese life are 
 very pleasant in Hong Kong. 
 
 But in the Hong Kong of the poor there is 
 nothing much but a tragic struggle for human 
 existence; and misery, misery almost unalleviated, 
 and yet not quite unalleviated. The poorest, 
 hardest pressed of the Chinese have — more than 
 most peoples — the love of home, the joy in work, 
 the affection for kith and kin that go far to 
 alleviate any lot, however hard. And they have 
 other blessings — the poverty-cursed Chinese — they 
 have their festivals and their temples. The 
 cobbler, who sits by the wayside and works for a 
 few sen, smokes now and again his tiny pipe of 
 opium ; he burns his incense sticks and his red, 
 paper prayers in the joss-house, and once in every 
 four years he contributes some mite of work, of 
 treasure, or of interest to the Soul festival. 
 
 Plagues fall upon China almost with a grim re- 
 
The Scourges of China. 271 
 
 gularity ; they crush into terrible graves countless 
 thousands. But China goes on, and the Chinese 
 go on ; and, ignorant as they may often be of the 
 laws 6i sanitation, they remain for ever steadfast 
 to themselves and to their country, and to what 
 they conceive to be for the best advantage of 
 both. What nation does more ? , 
 
 We have made many conquests in the East. 
 But we have not been altogether victorious over 
 Asiastic disease. We have carried our flag in 
 triumph into the Chinaman's Mecca — into Pekin. 
 And we have knocked open the doors of the 
 emperor's palace, knocked them open with the 
 butts of our rifles. We have made Shamien our 
 own. We have made it bloom like a fair English 
 garden, and at the very gate of Canton ; where it 
 lies a mute but eloquent reproach to the filth of 
 the Chinese city. We have gained the probably 
 most beautifully situated city in the world — the 
 city of Hong Kong — and there we have built for 
 our soldiers an almost ideal barrack. But we 
 have been powerless — we are powerless to-day 
 against the relentless outbreak of a Chinese 
 plague. And Shamien — that proud spot of our, 
 perhaps, supremest Chinese triumph — reeks 
 with the poisonous stench that comes from 
 Canton. 
 
 Alas ! alas ! , We have paid a high price for 
 
272 Quaint Korea. 
 
 our occupancy of Asia. We have often sacrificed 
 to her our children. 
 
 The history of China is spotted with plagues. 
 And the sanitary condition of many of the 
 Chinese cities and the density of their populations 
 are such that we can scarcely hope for China a 
 future much freer from such plagues than her past 
 has been. 
 
 Go into the native market in Hong Kong ; see 
 the burning sun pour down upon the half putrid 
 fish and a hundred unwholesome looking native 
 foods ; see the dense, sweating, seething human 
 mass that is packed in among the stalls, and you 
 will wonder that Hong Kong is ever free from 
 pestilence. But the European residents of Hong 
 Kong are not, as a rule, over familiar with the 
 details of the native quarter. They live on the 
 Peak, or on the outskirts of the beautiful public 
 gardens, where no smells reach them coarser than 
 the indescribable perfume of the wistaria. 
 
 Nothing could be lovelier, happier than Hong 
 Kong the European. It is a place of charming 
 bungalows, of superb verdure, a place of green 
 hills and of fanning breezes, a place of shady 
 streets and sweetly fragrant nooks. 
 
 Nothing could be more picturesque, nothing 
 could be sadder than most of Hong Kong the 
 Chinese. It is a crowded place of deepest 
 
The Scourges of China. 273 
 
 poverty. When I have said that, I have said it 
 all. 
 
 As I have said, the Chinese are not, I believe, 
 greatly responsible for either the gravity or the 
 frequency of their epidemics. Poverty, extreme 
 poverty, commits most of the crimes against the 
 Chinese health. People who are too poor to buy 
 soap cannot wash themselves, and much less 
 their clothes. People who can afford none of the 
 necessities of health cannot be blamed for falling 
 ill. And the Chinese government, which is at the 
 fountain head the most paternal of all govern- 
 ments (but corrupt in many of its branches), is 
 unable to cope with the unavoidable poverty of 
 China's overplus of humanity in those parts of the 
 empire in which the population is densest and 
 most congested. It is a common mistake to 
 suppose that there are more people in China than 
 China could support if those people were equally 
 scattered over her vast territory. But in the great 
 centres of Chinese life the people are overcrowded 
 to starvation and to pestilence. 
 
 Yes ; things seem to be going rather badly in 
 Asia just now — Mahommedan and Hindoo strife, 
 mysterious and ominous mango smearing, native 
 regimental insubordination, and buried treasure 
 that refuses to be dug up, are rife in India and 
 Burmah. Siam is slowly, but I fear surely, dis- 
 
 T 
 
274 Quaint Korea. 
 
 appearing within the insatiable maw of France. 
 China has been smitten down by a dire plague. 
 Japan has been torn with earthquake : and now 
 a black war cloud has broken over the Far East, 
 drenching with its deadly rain of bullets Korea, 
 China, and Japan. 
 
 For centuries Korea has given China and Japan 
 an excuse to exchange discourtesies, and to vent a 
 spleen, which for many hundreds of years has 
 sometimes slept, but never slept soundly, and 
 much less died. 
 
 The Koreans have never of recent years been 
 skilful in averting calamity from themselves or 
 from their country. The Japanese are as brave 
 as they are venturesome. The knight errant 
 spirit that characterized old feudal Japan has by 
 no means died out of Japan the new, probably 
 never will die out of Japan. It is " bone of her 
 bone, flesh of her flesh." The land which was for 
 so many decades the theatre of that dignified but 
 horrible butchery called Hari-Kari, is not the 
 land of cowards. Hari-Kari, or self-disembowel- 
 ment, was looked upon in old Japan as a cere- 
 monial of more than religious importance. And, 
 even now, numbers of the Japanese deplore the 
 abolition of Hari-Kari. It follows that the 
 Japanese are neither afraid to die, nor reluctant to 
 fight against fearful odds. But it is China who is 
 
The Scourges of China. 275 
 
 fighting against fearful odds now. And yet I ven- 
 ture to think that in the long run Japan will lose 
 more, gain less than her adversary. The Chinese 
 are slow to anger. They are slower to forgive. 
 They are not fond of withdrawing from any posi- 
 tion they have taken. They are not prone to look 
 at things through the eyes of others. They are not 
 easy to convince. The Chinese in things military 
 are shockingly behind the times, and the Japanese 
 are splendidly up-to-date. But there are qualities 
 that are, in the long run, more apt to win an 
 Oriental war than being up-to-date. 
 
 China may cry, " Peccavi," but she won't 
 mean it. Unless, indeed, she be permanently 
 crippled she will bide her time, watch her oppor- 
 tunity, and fight again and to better purpose. 
 Japan is China's natural foe. China has for- 
 given us, I verily believe, for forcing ourselves 
 into Pekin and for wresting from her Hong 
 Kong. But she will never forgive Japan. And 
 why should she ? Shame to any nation that 
 forgives a Port Arthur ! 
 
 In half a day the Japanese can steam from 
 their own coast to Korea : but also any Power in 
 possession of Korea can steam from there to 
 Japan as quickly. Korea is certainly more 
 necessary to Japan than to China. But geo- 
 graphical propinquity does not necessarily con- 
 
 T 2 
 
276 * Quaint Korea. 
 
 stitute territorial right; and so far as we can 
 judge the merits and demerits of so perplexed, 
 so involved, so almost prehistoric, so Oriental 
 a question, China has more right to Korea than 
 Japan has. But international right is fast be- 
 coming (if it has not already become) a matter 
 of national might, and concerning Korea the 
 question of the moment is not, as it was a few 
 months ago, " Who will fight the better, China 
 or Japan ? " but " How far shall we let them 
 fight ? " 
 
 Russia has her eye upon Korea. Even the 
 United States may crave to stick a finger, a 
 modest little finger, in this political pie. 
 
 What right have we to interfere in the quarrels 
 of Eastern Powers? What right, have we? It 
 is too late for us to think of that now. We 
 have kinsfolk in all those Oriental places, and 
 shall have in the generations to come. It is our 
 supreme duty to protect them, even though 
 to do that 'great right we do a little wrong.' 
 Russia securely, strongly lodged in Korea would 
 not be an altogether desirable sight for British 
 eyes. 
 
 And Korea, where does she come in in the 
 present quarrel ? Alas, she bids fair to go out, 
 unless indeed Europe should be sentimentally 
 chivalrous and forbid the disnationalization of 
 
The Scourges of China. 277 
 
 one of the few remaining unchanged countries of 
 the old Eastern world, and decree that Korea 
 should remain yet a little longer a steadfast land- 
 mark upoii the ever shifting sands of history. 
 
 What rights have the Koreans in the matter ? 
 Alas, it is also too late to ask that question. 
 Their rights seem very apt to be torn into shreds 
 between the dragons of China and Japan, or else 
 to be (as most Eastern rights are) crushed into 
 dust beneath the heavy but righteous foot of 
 advancing civilization. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 japan's ingratitude. 
 
 Japan is ungrateful. She always has been, and, 
 I fear, always will be. She has achieved over 
 an adversary, in most essentials abler than her- 
 self, a brilliant run of, at least temporary, 
 victories, largely because she has adopted 
 Western methods of warfare ; and now she is 
 celebrating the victory of her European-borrowed 
 arms by slapping Europe in the face. How 
 very like a woman ! How very like Japan ! 
 
 The Emperor of Japan has politely informed 
 us — cautiously informed us through the Japanese 
 minister in Washington — that we must please 
 mind our own business, for "no offer of mediation 
 on the part of a third Power would be accepted 
 by Japan until her object, which was to crush 
 the power of China, had been completely at- 
 tained." 
 
 And it is being more or less openly said (I 
 believe the authority I quote to be entirely reli- 
 
Japan's Ingratitude. 279 
 
 able) on the streets of Yokohama : " When we've 
 finished China we must teach one of the big 
 European Powers a lesson. England, for in- 
 stance, thinks a great deal too much of herself 
 and not half enough of us." If Japan is really 
 ambitious for a war with England, let us hope 
 that she will soon find an excuse for it. The 
 sooner such warfare is waged the better — for 
 China — and it will not greatly inconvenience us. 
 
 Japan has drunk of the awful, red wine of war, 
 and the wine has gone to her pretty little head. 
 Let us hope that she will not have too much of a 
 headache in the inevitable morning, and that 
 she may, for the near future at least, have the 
 good sense to drink our health and her own in the 
 beverages that best suit her : a cup of tea and a 
 wee thimbleful of saki. 
 
 There are two reasons why Japan has so far 
 triumphed over China, reasons which prove 
 Japan our debtor ; and yet Japan has, as far as 
 we are concerned, borne her - honours so badly 
 that it deserves at least our passing attention. 
 
 Compare China and Japan on the map ; 
 compare their populations and it certainly seems 
 that by this time the Chinese Goliath should have 
 crushed and appropriated the Japanese David. 
 But maps don't tell us everything, and figures lie, 
 if we ask them to say more than they ought. 
 
28o Quaint Korea. 
 
 Figures are excellent things, if we permit them to 
 mind their own business. But they are not philo- 
 sophers ; they are not logicians. Then, too, David 
 always has so many advantages over Goliath. 
 David can get about so much quicker. He can 
 move his body sooner than the giant can move one 
 limb. His hand can receive the message sent it 
 by his brain in a fraction of the time that the 
 same transaction takes Goliath. 
 
 Perhaps we have all — those of us who are 
 surprised at China's at least momentary defeat — 
 been looking too much upon the surface, taking a 
 too topographical view of the situation. Bulk is 
 not always a blessing. It may become an 
 embarrassment. It is, at any rate, often mis- 
 leading. The size of China, and its vast popula- 
 tion have been misleading to many of us who 
 have had more interest in the present Chino- 
 Japanese war than knowledge of China and 
 Japan. 
 
 I call the war the Chino-Japanese war, because 
 it is a Chino-Japanese war. Korea is the excuse 
 for the war, not the cause of the war. Poor, 
 picturesque, badly-used place, let us pray that 
 she may not be too the victim, altogether theJ 
 victim of the war. / 
 
 China has been, so far at least, quite unable to 
 mobilize her forces. Japan — who is the art 
 
Japan's Ingratitude. 281 
 
 concentration of many nations — has concentrated 
 her comparatively small, but altogether fine 
 forces, concentrated them with a nicety and a 
 shrewdness that might well be a lesson to the 
 Europe from which she has learned her art of 
 war. 
 
 The Art of War ! Japan seems indeed to be 
 making War a fine art — but, alas ! she is making 
 it, no less than it has always been, a butchery ! 
 
 There is, however, an underlying fact, which 
 seems to me to account above everything else — 
 yes, and to account philosophically — for the 
 humbling of China, and the swift advance of 
 Japan. The Chinese are creative as a race ; the 
 Japanese are imitative. A creative nature is self- 
 reliant ; and an imitative nature is, of necessity, 
 self-doubtful. China has been inclined to rely 
 upon herself; Japan has doubted herself and 
 relied upon Europe. China's strength has been 
 China's weakness ; the weakness of Japan has 
 proven Japan's strength. It is true that China 
 has bought ships and guns from Europe; that 
 she has borrowed officers to drill her soldiers, and 
 to manage her ships ; but all this has been done 
 in a spirit of disallowance. She has always be- 
 lieved in herself. To her, all the rest of the 
 world is, as it was to ancient Rome, " barbarian." 
 
 Japan lacking, as a nation, the creative faculty, 
 
282 Quaint Korea. 
 
 possesses, more eminently than any other nation, 
 the imitative faculty. Her art is borrowed from 
 China and Korea ; her methods of government, 
 and her methods of v/ar from that Western world 
 to which she has so lately, for the first time, 
 opened her gates. Japan is victorious to-day 
 because of her self-distrust, and because of her 
 eager and compliant imitation of Western 
 methods. China is defeated to-day because of 
 her half-hearted adoption of European ways and 
 means. 
 
 Japan jumps at conclusions with the swift 
 intelligence of a bright woman. China proves, 
 and proves again, the worth of any custom or 
 method that she adopts. Japan improves every- 
 thing that she adopts. China is more like a 
 wise man, she understands everything that she 
 adopts. China is the slower, but China is the 
 surer. 
 
 Japan has so far had the best of the fight, 
 because she has imitated us, and because she has 
 been able to mobilize her forces. 
 
 Whether the present war will suddenly break 
 through the thick crust of Chinese self-sufficiency, 
 of Chinese bigotry, of Chinese hatred of change, 
 remains to be seen. If it does, China may 
 swiftly regain her lost ground. In any event it 
 is not probable that so thoughtful, so wise, so 
 
Japan's Ingratitude. 283 
 
 reasonable a people as the Chinese will fail to 
 sooner or later learn thoroughly the lesson which 
 this present war preaches to them. Perhaps in a 
 few months, perhaps in twenty or thirty years, 
 but surely sometime, China will learn how right 
 Galileo was, how decidedly the world does move, 
 and how needful it is that we who live on the 
 world, should move with the world. Then we 
 may all learn how great a people the Chinese 
 really are ; how vastly superior in many ways to 
 their more fascinating, more artistic, but less 
 stable neighbours — the Japanese. 
 
 I am not, I know, taking a popular view of the 
 relative admirableness of China and Japan ; but 
 I believe that I take the true view. It is a view 
 diametrically opposed to the concensus of Euro- 
 pean opinion, but it is not a view altogether 
 original with me. A number of eminent men, 
 who have spent some of the best years of their 
 lives in China and Japan, compare the two peoples 
 quite as much to the advantage of China as I have 
 ventured to do. In 1882 Herr von Brandt, who 
 was then the German minister to Pekin, who had 
 previously been in office in Tokio, an able diplomat, 
 and a man greatly valued by Sir Harry Parkes, 
 wrote to Sir Harry : — " The news you gave me 
 about the treaty revision has interested me much. 
 For my part I would see no objection to the insti- 
 
284 Quaint Korea. 
 
 tution of a kind of mixed court for all cases in 
 which Japanese were cdncerned, provided the 
 judges were elected from a certain number of 
 persons nominated by the Treaty Powers. The 
 proposal to submit foreigners to the Japanese 
 police jurisdiction seems inadmissible; conflicts 
 of all kinds and gravity would, in my opinion, be 
 the immediate consequences of such a concession. 
 In general it seems to me that the Japanese have 
 done nothing which could entitle them to the 
 concessions they demand, and that the experience 
 of the past hardly authorizes any far-going experi- 
 ment for the future ; the fact that Japanese juris- 
 diction is at the present moment as bad as bad 
 can be can hardly be given as a reason to extend 
 it over those who are not subjected to it for the 
 present. The opening of the country to foreign 
 trade can hardly be considered as a fair equivalent, 
 as the Japanese, if the measure is carried out, are 
 certain to reap much more benefit from it than 
 the foreigners will ever do. After all, I am glad 
 that it is not my business to put the Japanese 
 world right again : with all their faults there is 
 much more steadiness and logic in the Chinese 
 than in their high flightinesses the sons of the land 
 of the Rising Sun." 
 
 Yes; the Japanese have a graceful knack of 
 quietly getting the best of most bargains, and 
 
Japan's Ingratitude. 285 
 
 certainly the opening of the Japanese treaty ports 
 to Europeans has, as regards ever5rthing but art, 
 benefited Japan far more than it has benefited 
 Europe. Herr von Brandt's prophecy has been 
 more than fulfilled, and that gives some little 
 weight to his opinion that there is more steadiness 
 and logic in the Chinese than in the Japanese. 
 
 Sir Harry Parkes had as much cause as man 
 well could have to hate the Chinese ; and yet, 
 again and again, he has felt impelled to utter 
 some testimony in their favour. On the four- 
 teenth of December, 1874, he wrote to Sir D. 
 Brooke Robertson : — " I think our views resemble 
 very closely on the China-Japan question, now of 
 the past fortunately. The luck has fallen to 
 Japan, who certainly did not deserve it. I can't 
 help feeling sorry to see the old country opposite 
 give in, when she had right on her side, to this 
 youngster among nations." 
 
 How history repeats itself! Twenty years ago 
 the war cloud that hung over China and Japan was 
 fanned away by the temperate winds of European 
 advice, absorbed in the sunshine of common sense. 
 To-day the storm of war has burst over Further 
 Asia, burst in splendid, awful fury; and the Chinese 
 and Japanese are slaying each other by the shoal. 
 We have taught them how to do it. And the 
 Chinese Goliath lies smitten (smitten almost to 
 
286 Quaint Korea. 
 
 death, at least so his enemy seems to think), by 
 the well directed pebbles of Japan. Of the effect 
 of the successive and reportedly crushing blows 
 administered by Japan to her colossal neighbour, 
 it is, of course, too early to speak with confidence. 
 Success means so much to China, that should the 
 present run of ill luck continue, the downfall of 
 the reigning dynasty would not be surprising. A 
 victorious Japanese army in the streets of Pekin 
 would almost inevitably so result. Let us hope 
 that China — China the picturesque, China the 
 beautiful — will not be bowed so low as that. Our 
 own interests in the Orient would suffer materially 
 through such a radical disturbance of the balance 
 of power. For our own sake, and for the sake of 
 right, it is to be hoped that China will be spared 
 the humiliation of opening the gates of her' sacred 
 and capital city to an invading army from Japan. 
 That would be the saddest misfortune that has 
 ever befallen China : sadder far than the mis- 
 fortune that befell her when we took from her the 
 island of Hong Kong, and flew our flag above the 
 dragon on the imperial palace at Pekin. But so 
 long as Japan is essentially stronger in army and 
 in navy than China^ China must submit, with 
 what grace she can, to defeat. But having learned 
 from us how to fight, it really is too bad of Japan 
 to turn up at us her pretty, little, yellow nose, to 
 
Japan's Ingratitude. 287 
 
 shake her flower-crowned head at us in derision, 
 or to make' it uncomfortable for our countrymen 
 and women within her gates. 
 
 This is as true of the Japanese to-day as when 
 Sir Harry Parkes wrote it twenty years ago : — 
 " The Japanese have committed the error of 
 believing all that they have been told about them- 
 selves and increasing this by their own imagination, 
 and the result is that their own little island is too 
 small to hold them." 
 
 At this moment Japan evidently believes that 
 her present victories are attributable more to her 
 own skill and prowess than to her exact and 
 servile adoption of European methods and models, 
 and so she is tossing her head and treating us a 
 little rudely. 
 
 Ah, well! we all have to learn some sharp lessons, 
 whether we are individuals or nations. China is 
 learning such a lesson now. I wonder whose turn 
 it will be next — Japan's ? 
 
 This, at least, when next Japan fights let us hope 
 that she may have become Europeanized enough 
 not to wage war before she declares it. 
 
 Ingratitude seems to me to have been the trait 
 most pronounceably shown by the Japanese during 
 this present struggle. And the desire of some 
 Japanese women to join the army as combatants 
 seems to me the most amusing incident in a war 
 
288 Quaint Korea. 
 
 that has had more than one funny side to it. But 
 there is one other thing to have bee'n noticed about 
 Japan of late : a thing that seems to have rather 
 escaped notice — ^Japan is trembling. 
 
 In the glowing moment of her supreme victories, 
 in this long hour of her almost unprecedented run 
 of luck, does it seem more stupid, or more imper- 
 tinent to speak of Japan as being a-tremble ? The 
 laws of some countries hold that truth is no libel. 
 The laws of other countries hold that truth is the 
 greatest libel. I am uttering libel or I am not 
 uttering libel, according to the country by whose 
 laws I may be judged. Most emphatically, I am 
 uttering the truth. No other word so truly 
 adjectives Japan as does the word trembling. 
 
 This is the age of earthquakes. Almost daily 
 the papers record the upheaval of some part or 
 other of the world. And earthquakes are becom- 
 ing almost common where they used to be nearly 
 or quite unheard of. Japan, as far we know, always 
 has been, and probably always will be, the strong- 
 hold of earthquakes. That inscrutable some one 
 whom some of us call God ; that inscrutable some- 
 thing which some of us call Fate ; that inscrutable 
 some one or something of which the bravest of us, 
 the most phlegmatic of us, the most callous of us, one 
 and all, stand in more than wholesome dread ; for 
 uncountable centuries, has seen fit, and will see fit. 
 
Japan's Ingratitude. 289 
 
 to hold over the flower-crowned head of Japan a 
 Damoclean sword. The thread by which that 
 sword is held is very much frailer than the thread 
 that, in the classic days of old Greece, held that 
 sword's prototype. It breaks, does the Japanese 
 thread. It breaks very often. It breaks with a 
 persistent irregularity that is almost regular in its 
 frequency. And Japan is disembowelled with a 
 Hari-Kari far more terrible, far more merciless 
 than the Hari-Kari which used to be the glory of 
 the well-born criminals, or the well-born unfor- 
 tunates of old Japan. 
 
 The first time I ever saw a Japanese earthquake 
 (and I have had the misfortune to see many), it 
 occurred to me that the Japanese, who create 
 nothing, who imitate and ornament everything, 
 had caught from the brutal butchery of Nature 
 (Nature who is worshipped in Japan, as she is 
 worshipped almost nowhere else), the idea of that 
 terrible self-annihilation which was for centuries 
 the gruesome glory of Japan. Japan is the pet 
 lamb of Nature, .the favourite home of art, the 
 chosen throne of beauty, and yet the Japanese 
 always have had the greatest enthusiasm for the 
 horrible in Nature, and the horrible in art. 
 
 Nature is, perhaps, the most convenient term by 
 which we, who believe in God, we who believe in 
 Fate, and we who believe in nothing, can agree to 
 
 u 
 
ago Quaint Korea. 
 
 commonly express our common wish to personify 
 that of which none of us know too much, but of 
 which we all think, more or less, and of which 
 most of us wish to speak rather frequently. 
 
 I have called Japan the pet child of Nature, and 
 so she is. Not all the earthquakes that have ever 
 out-canniballed the cannibals ; not all the earth- 
 quakes that ever swallowed houses and gulped 
 down humans, could counterbalance the enormous 
 partiality which Nature shows for Japan. Never 
 bloomed such flowers, never grew such trees, never 
 did such moonlight, with such dappled gold and 
 silver, glorify such landscapes. Verily doth Nature 
 love Japan as she loves no other spot on earth. 
 Out of the great womb of Nature Japan was born, 
 and truly every star in heaven danced and shone 
 the brighter. But Nature, like many another 
 mother, seems to have overtaxed herself in giving 
 to the world so sublime a child. The umbilical 
 cord has never been cut between Nature and 
 Japan. The Japanese have never ceased to suck 
 the wonderful milk of Nature, the milk that has 
 nourished in them their great love for the beautiful, 
 their great appreciation of the beautiful, and their 
 supreme gift of reproducing the beautiful. But all 
 this seems to have worn on Nature. The mother 
 who nurses her child beyond a physically reason- 
 able period invariably suffers. The child may 
 
Japan's Ingratitude. 291 
 
 thrive, but the mother grows ill : most women who 
 are ill are hysterical. Nature, if there is such a 
 thing as Nature, is a mother. Nature, if there is 
 such a thing as Nature, is a woman. Nature is a 
 mother, because from Nature have we, all parts of 
 our world, and all other worlds, been bom. Nature 
 is a woman, because no manly thing could be so 
 cruel to its oifspring as Nature is. The child is so 
 over-grown, so hungry, so perpetually demanding 
 of, draining Nature, that Nature, veriest woman 
 that she is, must needs, once in a way, lose patience 
 with Japan. 
 
 But save for her momentary losses of temper. 
 Nature is to Japan the tenderest of mothers, 
 fashioning for her, as all mothers love to fashion 
 for their favourite children, the daintiest of gar- 
 ments. And never yet did pet child wear such 
 fine frocks, such robes of soft but splendid beauty, 
 as Nature makes, year in year out, season in season 
 out, for Japan. She weaves them of flowers, she 
 buckles them with brilliant berries, and she sprays 
 them with a drench of soft, warm, unsoiling, and 
 altogether incomparable perfume. She sings sweet 
 songs of mother-love to her pet child. Such lul- 
 labies she croons to it ! She keeps for it the 
 most wonderful of orchestras. An orchestra that 
 makes ceaseless, but everchanging music. Hum- 
 ming birds wing notes of music into that marvellous 
 u 2 
 
2g2 Quaint Korea. 
 
 concerto, silver rills " that gush out i' the 
 midst of roses," waterfalls that in the moonlight 
 and in the' sunlight kiss the moss-warmed rocks, 
 and leap in passionate ecstasy into the arms of the 
 flower-dressed earth, drip liquid notes of beauty 
 into that wondrous symphony. The wings of 
 butterflies add falsetto, but, oh ! so sweet, notes, 
 and the wind, as it wantons between the wanton 
 trees, and kisses the fragrant flowers, steals from 
 them their honey, and adds perfume unto perfume, 
 and music unto music, until Japan, Nature's pet 
 baby, cuddles down into the warm eider-down 
 of its cradle, an eider-down that is incomparably 
 soft with flower-petals, and that smells of blossoms 
 that are sweeter than music. 
 
 Nature does ten hundred gracious, gentle, 
 mother-kindnesses to Japan, and Japan accepts 
 them all, and asks for more, and then Nature, well. 
 Nature's nerves give out, and as many another 
 mother, who has an almost idolatrous love for her 
 child, has done. Nature gives Japan a fearful shak- 
 ing. When Nature recovers herself a bit, and 
 sees what she has done, she is always very sorry, 
 and about the tumbled, broken, paper houses, 
 through the ruined fields of paddy and of rice, 
 over the heaps of torn and burned wisteria, well, 
 she does what mothers have done before her, she 
 stoops and kisses the place that she has made 
 sting, she scatters violets over her pet child's 
 
Japan's Ingratitude. 293 
 
 bruises, she makes vines, blue with blossom and 
 purple with perfume, grow over the marks which 
 she has made upon the dimpled limbs and the 
 pretty features of her favourite, but somewhat 
 trying child. 
 
 But a kiss never yet altogether made up for a 
 blow. Our children forgive us our cruelties, but 
 they never forget them ; and Japan is always in a 
 state of apprehension. Japan is always afraid 
 that in another moment its mother Nature may 
 lose her temper, and Nature does not often keep 
 Japan long, waiting. 
 
 For centuries the great artifice of the Japanese 
 Government (or should I say the great art ?) has 
 been to divert the minds of the perpetually 
 frightened Japanese people. The criminal going 
 to the gallows often conserves his personal dignity, 
 and augments his personal courage with a glass 
 of brandy. The Japanese Government holds to 
 the lips of its once-so-often-to-be-by-earthquake- 
 shaken-and-perhaps-destroyed people a cup of 
 redder wine — Blood. The blood of adversaries, 
 or the blood of themselves,' seems to be the liquor 
 that, from the earliest history of Japan, has had 
 the greatest power to intoxicate the Japanese 
 people, and to make them forget the sword that 
 hangs above them, and which in any moment may 
 fall and cut into the bowels of their country. 
 
 Korea has, of course, been for a very long time 
 
294 Quaint Korea. 
 
 an excuse for war between China and Japan. 
 They seem to have an uncontrollable appetite for 
 wrangling with each other, and poor Korea hangs, 
 like a ready bone, between the open, snarling 
 mouths of Ah-man and Yamamato. 
 
 But, for all that, I verily beheve that the im- 
 mediate causes of the present war in Asia were the 
 plague in China, and the earthquakes in Japan. 
 The minds of the Chinese, and the minds of the 
 Japanese, had to be diverted, else might they both 
 have gone mad. This is true, at least of Japan, 
 who struck the first blow, and in many ways 
 forced the war. Korea has been offered up in 
 sacrifice by China and Japan, with a devotion to 
 their own safeties, and a belief in their own gods, 
 which would have done credit to Abraham. They 
 poured the vitriol of their hatred over Korea, and 
 lit her myriad gardens with the torch of war, as 
 complacently as Moses slew the task-master in the 
 brick-field of Pharaoh. 
 
 Earthquakes are perhaps as little understood as 
 any of Nature's mysterious phenomena. A new 
 science has sprung up almost mushroom-like 
 amongst us of recent years ; a science that is 
 attempting the elucidation to human understand- 
 ing of the laws that govern earthquakes. This 
 new science has not as yet made much positive 
 headway, and seismologists themselves know 
 comparative little of the phenomena they study. 
 
Japan's Ingratitude. 295 
 
 To-day we are in a Japanese village. In every 
 door-yard great clumps of gorgeous chrysahthe- 
 mums echo the glory of the sunset, wonderful 
 tangles of wistaria throw their plum-coloured 
 shadows upon the clean white paper windows, and 
 the clean white paper doors of the hundred or more 
 clean little houses. Upon the spotless-floored, 
 flower-wreathed verandahs the waning sunshine 
 sketches in crimson, in purple, and in gold the 
 outlines of the wisteria petals, and the wisteria 
 leaves. Roses, crimson and white and yellow, 
 spot the grass. Painted bowls of blue and white 
 porcelain, heaped with silky rice, stand on the 
 verandahs, and on one verandah, perhaps, stands 
 an old bowl of yellow Satsuma, which holds the 
 evening meal of rice. Lacquered trays of fish 
 stand beside the bowls of rice. The families, soft- 
 featured, pleasing of face, graceful of gesture, 
 gentle of manner, squat artistically upon the spot- 
 less floors. The sun sets, the moon comes up, the 
 rice and the fish have been eaten. The birds and 
 the butterflies sing. All is peace and content- 
 ment. The beautiful bowls have been tenderly 
 washed, and the villagers have gone to sleep, 
 resting their elaborately dressed heads upon their 
 queer little wooden pillows. 
 
 To-morrow we are in the same village, but 
 where is the village ? It is torn and crushed. A 
 thrill has passed through the earth at sunrise 
 
296 Quaint Korea. 
 
 The chrysanthemums shake their heavy heads 
 in terror, the wisteria vines are alive with dismay, 
 every purple head quivering with afright. Every 
 golden bell upon every crimson, lacquered, carved 
 temple cries out in alarm so musical, so sweet, 
 that it is incomprehensible that even so angry, 
 so momentarily relentless a mother as Nature is 
 not moved to pity, and to stay her hand. But 
 no. The wist|rias are roughly wrenched from off 
 the walls up which they were wont to climb, deck- 
 ing foot after foot with their lavish beauty. The 
 chrysanthemums are torn into rags so small and 
 pitiful, that if here and there we find an unmuti- 
 lated petal it seems to us quite huge. 
 
 There are few sights more pitiful than the sight 
 of a Japanese village that has been broken by 
 earthquake. Bits of wood, shreds of paper, 
 wrecks of trees, broken flowers, torn vines are 
 tangled together in picturesque, but deplorable 
 debris. The people are homeless, at the best, more 
 than probably, they, too, are torn and maimed, 
 most possibly they are killed. The rice is spilled, 
 and the bowls of blue, and white, and of yellow 
 Satsuma are broken. Silver pipes, torn kimonos, 
 bits of pottery, that if whole again were worth a 
 king's ransom, strew the scene, and for the moment 
 hide the gashes in the ground. And yet, like 
 everything else in Japan, even this scene of 
 desolation has its juvenile aspect; it looks not 
 
Japan's Ingratitude. 297 
 
 unlike a toy that a spoiled child has broken in 
 anger. 
 
 The trouble, the misery, the agony, physical 
 and mental, that earthquakes entail year in and 
 year out on the people of Japan is beyond ex- 
 aggeration, and quite beyond the pale of light 
 writing. All thinking travellers must feel that it 
 is no wonder that a people periodically subjected 
 to such momentous torture, periodically need a 
 big stimulant. And so, perhaps, it is less shame 
 (than at the first glance it seems) to the powers 
 that in Japan be, that soon after the recent dis- 
 embowelment of Nagasaki, and the upheaval of 
 many other Japanese states and villages, they, 
 the powerful ones of Japan, have seen fit to go to 
 war with China. 
 
 The plague that so recently devastated China, 
 though more repulsive in detail, is far less hope- 
 less to contemplate than the Japanese earth- 
 quakes. If China should ever come to the adopt- 
 ing of fairly proper sanitary laws, if China's 
 poverty should ever go down once and for all 
 beneath the iron heel of China's really vast 
 common sense, and China's infinite capacity 
 of contrivance, then would China, always vigor- 
 ous, be baptized into new health, and then would 
 China's plagues be matters of the past. 
 
 I am fain to hope all good things for China. 
 But I fear that earthquakes will never be matters 
 
298 Quaint Korea. 
 
 of the past in Japan. Well, both these peoples — 
 one very great, the other very charming — have 
 been sorely afflicted within the last year, and both 
 have fell a-fighting. 
 
 We can only hope that right may prove mighty, 
 and that in the near end peace may crown the 
 Asiatic all. 
 
 We always think of Japanese women as the 
 embodiment of everything that is feminine and 
 gentle. And with the exception of the yoshiwara 
 and the hardest worked women of the coolie 
 class, we picture the women of Japan as shrinking 
 from publicity, from unnecessary exertion, and 
 from anything bordering on self-assertion. Yet 
 in the days gone by Japan has had a class of 
 women who have been quite opposite to all this, 
 and yet who have been neither yoshiwara nor 
 coolies. I mean the Japanese Amazons, who have 
 more than once played active parts in Japanese 
 warfares. This class has quite died out, but 
 during the present Chino-Japanese war a number 
 of Japanese women of high birth have petitioned 
 the Mikado to permit them to join the army — join 
 it as active soldiers — at least, so a recent despatch 
 says. This is funny; but not in the least in- 
 credible. The Japanese are the funniest people 
 alive. They are perpetually doing the most un- 
 expected, I might almost say the most inde- 
 fensible things, but they do them with such an air 
 
Japan's Ingratitude. 299 
 
 of artistic propriety, that it is a very keen-eyed 
 European indeed who realizes that anything not 
 altogether au fait, mentally or morally, has 
 happened. 
 
 The Japanese are so incapable of a gaucherie 
 that we do not appreciate their very extensive 
 capacity for folly. 
 
 A Japanese woman in the thick of the fight ! 
 Her kimono well tucked up from her little 
 dimpled feet. Her obi bulging with cartridges ! 
 A knapsack rubbing corns on the sweet, stooped, 
 brown shoulders ! Armed cap-i-pie ! A plumed 
 helmet crushing down the elaborate shape of her 
 perfumed coiffure ! A sword hitting roughly 
 against the warm limb, to which bright-eyed, 
 brown children have been wont to gently cling ! A 
 great coarse gun chafing the soft arm and softer 
 breast where laughing, yellow babies have slept 
 and dreamed glad, soft dreams, and as they 
 learned to love their mother's milk, learned the 
 three great lessons of Japanese life : learned to be 
 happy, learned to be courteous, learned to be 
 beautiful and artistic ! It makes me laugh. 
 
 And yet I do not discredit the veracity of the 
 telegram. The Japanese women are very, very 
 drowsy. But when they wake up — and semi- 
 occasionally they do wake up — they wake up with 
 a start. 
 
 Great occasions seem to infuse them with elec- 
 
300 Quaint Korea. 
 
 tricity. I quite believe that to-day there are in 
 Japan thousands of delicate, daintily accustomed, 
 women who would gladly join the active ranks of 
 war. Japanese patriotism is as supreme, as 
 gracious, as graceful as Japanese art ; and unlike 
 Japanese art it is often visionary. 
 
 That the Japanese women want to fight the 
 Chinese soldiers — is very amusing, and rather 
 interesting. It proves that they have pluck. It 
 proves that they have bad taste. That it does 
 prove them guilty of bad taste makes it remark- 
 able. The Chino-Japanese wrangle over Korea 
 is, I believe, the first event in all our world's long 
 history that has convicted the women of Japan of 
 bad taste. 
 
 Whether any Japanese women would prove effec- 
 tive soldiers, I doubt. I doubt if even the women 
 of the coolie class : the women who sort tea in 
 Kobe, the women who, in Nagasaki, running up 
 and down the sides of P. and O. and other 
 steamers, carry upon their muscular brown backs, 
 murderous loads of coal, would advantageously 
 augment the Japanese army. I doubt if the 
 women of the Ainos (the Ainos are the fiercest, 
 wildest people of Japan) would acquit themselves 
 usefully in the field of battle. That the women 
 of Japan would acquit themselves bravely, nobly, 
 in the terrible moment of battle, admits of no 
 
Japan's Ingratitude. . 301 
 
 doubt. But to be brave is one thing ; to be noble 
 is another ; to be useful is still another. 
 
 Greatly to his credit (he seems to be — take him 
 all in all — a very worthy, manly sort of fellow), 
 the Emperor of Japan has not, I believe, allowed 
 the women of Japan to swell the pretty ranks of 
 his victorious army. 
 
 Yes ; the Japanese army is a pretty army. I 
 am speaking disrespectfully of the army of a 
 nation that has beaten the great nation of China ! 
 China is not beaten yet. Japan has trod hard, 
 very hard on one of China's toes, and the toe is 
 crushed and bleeding. But China — great big, 
 broad, yellow China is not beaten ; and won't be 
 for a few days more. 
 
 The Manchu dynasty may be unthroned. But 
 China will go on for hundreds of years very much 
 as she has gone on for hundreds of years. The 
 Japanese army has proved itself a very indus- 
 trious, capable, workman-like army indeed ; but 
 for all that, it is a pretty army. 
 
 The Japanese soldiers are plucky little heroes, 
 every one of them, but they look for all the world 
 like toy warriors — toy warriors in nice new uni- 
 forms. 
 
 If Japan were engaged in war, not with China, 
 but with one of the first-class European Powers, 
 Japan would fight as bravely as she is fighting 
 
302 Quaint Korea. 
 
 now, every bit as bravely, but would her success 
 be so swift and meteor-like ? I wonder. 
 
 If Japan should ever fall a-fighting of a Western 
 power, then I advise the Mikado to enlist as many 
 of his lady subjects as he can, and when the 
 bugle sounds the battle hour, place them in the 
 front ranks. Then might Japan hope to conquer, 
 not one, but every nation in Europe, and have 
 at her feet every army in Christendom. No Euro- 
 pean soldier could draw sword, or aim gun against 
 the Japanese army, if its front ranks were filled 
 with almond-eyed, smiling-mouthed, crepe-clad, 
 Amazons. Then would the British soldier cease 
 to sing " God Save the Queen " and " Rule 
 Britannia." Then would he stand at attention 
 before the ranks of Japan ; and this the battle 
 hymn he'd sing : — 
 
 " I fear no foe in shining armour 
 
 Though his lance be swift and keen. 
 But I fear and love the glamour 
 'Neath thy drooping lashes seen.'' 
 
 The Chinese soldier is not so sentimental. He 
 is extremely sensible. "All's game that comes 
 to my gun," is his motto in time of war, and he 
 would argue (not without some show of justice) 
 that if a woman were foolish enough, unsexed 
 enough, to go into the field of battle as a com- 
 batant, a maker of carnage, the sooner she were 
 exterminated the better. 
 
Japan's Ingratitude. 303 
 
 Yes ; the Emperor of Japan has done well to 
 exclude the dainty women folk of Japan from 
 active participation in the present fray. Let the 
 women of Japan wait. When there is a Japanese- 
 European war, then their turn will have come, and 
 they will have the proud happiness of being Japan's 
 invincible defenders, Japan's strongest soldiers, 
 and the conquerors of all Europe. 
 
 A number of Japanese women have petitioned 
 the Emperor to enrol them as army nurses, and 
 send them to the seat of war. So wise a man as 
 Mutsuhito will not, I feel sure, refuse so admirable 
 a suggestion. Cooks are taught sometimes : 
 statesmen made, poets manufactured as often as 
 not. Nurses are born. 
 
 The knack of nursing is a gift ; a gift from God. 
 Japanese women have this gift to a delightful 
 degree. Physically, they are ideal nurses. Their 
 voices are sweet, low, and clear. Their motion is 
 gentle and graceful Their touch is cool but com- 
 fortable, soft, comforting. They have not a single 
 quality among them that could rasp the sorest 
 nerves. 
 
 A Japanese girl (now the wife of a lieutenant in 
 the Japanese navy) used to make illness a perfect 
 treat to me when we were girls at school together. 
 It was a big family ours, almost a thousand, if I 
 remember, but Shige nursed us all, from the 
 Lady Principal to the college cat. We always 
 
304 Quaint Korea. 
 
 thought her inspired with a gentle, loving talent 
 for helping and soothing the sick. Certainly she 
 was the best nurse I ever knew: but when I came 
 to live in Japan, I learned that every Japanese 
 woman is an almost ideal nurse. 
 
 The Chinese hospitals are hells of horror. The 
 Japanese hospitals are heavens of flower-perfumed 
 rest and consolation. 
 
 The soldiers of Japan have acquitted them- 
 selves well in the field and in the sea of battle. 
 And they seem to have had all the best of the 
 Korean war. 
 
 The woman of Japan will excel always and 
 everywhere in the holier half of war : the binding 
 of wounds, the staunching of blood flow, the 
 decent shrouding of the dead. 
 
 And so the strife goes on. The fate of Korea, 
 and perchance the fate of the Far East, hangs in 
 war's awful balance. Yet even now Korea is half 
 asleep amid her lotus-flowers, and far more inclined 
 to dream away a hermit life, hidden behind the 
 Ever-white Mountains, lulled by the crooning of 
 the Yellow and the Japan Seas, than to come out 
 into the tumult, the struggle, and the glare of 
 international day. 
 
 THE END. 
 
GLOSSARY. 
 
 Ainos — A fierce, almost barbarian people, living in the north 
 
 of Japan. 
 Arrack — A strong liquor distilled from rice. 
 Chulalongkorn — The present king of Siam. 
 Flower-boats — The boats upon which the Chinese flower- 
 girls live. 
 Geisha — (Literally) An accomplished person. 
 Jinrickshaw — A two-wheeled vehicle, pulled by a coolie, or 
 
 by coolies. 
 Joss-house — The temple of a Chinese god. 
 Junks — A species of Chinese boats. 
 Khan — A partially underground furnace. 
 Kimono — The principal or outer robe worn both by Japanese 
 
 men and women. 
 Ki-saing — A Geisha girl. 
 Kow-tow — A profound Chinese obeisance. 
 Lien-hoas — Chinese water-lilies. 
 M agree Jlowers- A peculiarly sweet Indian blossom, worn 
 
 by the Nautch gfirls when they dance. 
 Mutsuhito — The present Emperor of Japan. 
 Obi — A narrow Japanese belt, worn above a broad sash. 
 Paddy — Young rice. 
 Pailow — A Chinese memorial arch, usually erected to the 
 
 honour of a woman who, upon her husband's death, 
 
 has killed herself. 
 
 X 
 
3o6 Glossary. 
 
 Purdah-women — Oriental women living in strict family 
 seclusion. 
 
 Queue — The long braid of hair worn by Chinese men. 
 
 Saki — A strong Japanese liquor. 
 
 Sampan — A small, rude, native boat. 
 
 Samshu — A Chinese liquor. 
 
 Satsuma — A famous Japanese family. A peculiarly beauti- 
 ful and valuable pottery, especially noted for its glaze, 
 its exquisite decorations, and for its interesting history. 
 
 Sen — A small Chinese coin ; a cent ; a hundredth part of a 
 Yen, or dollar. 
 
 Son wang-don — The home of the king of the fairies. 
 
 Tai-wan — Formosa. 
 
 Taro — A Korean sweet potato. 
 
 Torii — A Japanese arch, marking the approach to a temple 
 or sacred place. 
 
 Yamun — The official residence of a Chinese mandarin. 
 
 Yu-lan — A beautiful flower of the Far East. 
 
LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, LD., 
 
 ST. JOHN'S HOUSE, CLERKENWELL, E.C.