The War in the East: Japan, China, and Corea

by Trumbull White

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF COREA, THE HERMIT NATION.

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Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Land—Founding the Kingdom of Cho-sen—The Era of the Three Kingdoms—Dependence on China and Japan—Period of Peace and Prosperity—Invasion of Corea by the Japanese in the Sixteenth Century—Introduction of Christianity—The Modern History of Corea—Breaking down the Walls of Isolation—The French Expedition—American Relations with Corea—Ports Opened to Japanese Commerce—The Year of the Treaties—A Hermit Nation no Longer.

Until recent years our knowledge of the remarkable country of Corea, known indeed to the general public by little more than its name, has been limited to the meagre and scanty information imparted to us by Chinese and Japanese sources. After having been for several thousands of years the scene of sanguinary and murderous feuds between the various races and tribes who peopled the peninsula, and of the intrigues and wars of conquest of its rapacious neighbors, Corea succeeded after its final union under the sway of one ruler, but with considerable loss of territory, in driving back the invaders behind its present frontiers, enforcing since that time with an iron rule, that policy of exclusion which effectually separated it from the whole outer world. Corea, though unknown even by name in Europe until the sixteenth century, was the subject of description by Arab geographers of the middle ages. The Arab merchants trading to Chinese ports crossed the Yellow Sea, visited the peninsula, and even settled there. The youths of Shinra, one the Corean states, sent by their sovereign to study the arts of war and peace at Nanking, the mediæval capital of China, may often have seen and talked with the merchants of Bagdad and Damascus.

As has been said, nearly all that the western world was able to learn about Corea until recent years, has been collected from Chinese and Japanese sources, which confine themselves mainly to the historical and political connection with these countries. The meagre early accounts owed to Europeans on this interesting subject, originate either from shipwrecked mariners who have been cast upon the inhospitable shores of Corea and there been kept imprisoned for some time, or from navigators who have extended their voyages of discovery to these distant seas and who have touched a few prominent points of the coast.

Like almost every country on earth, Corea is inhabited by a race that is not aboriginal. The present occupiers of the land drove out or conquered the people whom they found upon it. They are the descendants of a stock who came from beyond the northern frontier. It may not be a wrong conjecture, which is corroborated by many outward signs, to look for the origin of the people in Mongolia, in a tribe which finally settled down in Corea after roaming about and fighting its way through China. We may also take those who bear the unmistakable stamp of the Caucasian race to have come from Western Asia whence they had been driven by feuds and revolutions. At the conclusion of the long wars which have at last led to the union of the different states founded by various tribes, a partial fusion had taken place, which, though it has not succeeded in eradicating the outer signs of a different descent, at least caused the adoption of one language and of the same manners and customs.

Most of the Coreans claim to be in complete darkness and ignorance of their own origin; some declare quite seriously that their ancestors have sprung from a black cow on the shores of the Japan sea, while others ascribe their origin to a mysterious and supernatural cause.

The first mention of the inhabitants of Corea we find in old Chinese chronicles about 2350 B.C., at which period some of the northern tribes are reported to have entered into a tributary connection with China. The first really reliable accounts, however, commence only with the twelfth century B.C., at which time the north-westerly part of the peninsula first stands out from the dark.

The last Chinese emperor of the Shang dynasty was Chow Sin, who died B.C. 1122. He was an unscrupulous tyrant, and one of his nobles, Ki Tsze, rebuked and remonstrated with his sovereign. His efforts were hopeless, and the nobles who joined him in protest were executed. Ki Tsze was cast into prison. A revolt immediately ensued against the tyrant; he was defeated and killed, and the conqueror Wu Wang released the prisoner and appointed him prime minister. Ki Tsze however refused to serve one whom he believed to be an usurper and exiled himself to the regions lying to the north-east. With him went several thousand Chinese immigrants, most the remnant of the defeated army, who made him their king. Ki Tsze reigned many years and left the newly founded state in peace and prosperity to his successors. He policed the borders, gave laws to his subjects, and gradually introduced the principles and practices of Chinese etiquette and polity throughout his domain. Previous to his time the people lived in caves and holes in the ground, dressed in leaves, and were destitute of manners, morals, agriculture and cooking. The Japanese pronounce the founder’s name Kishi, and the Coreans Kei-tsa or Kysse. The name conferred by the civilizer upon his new domain was that now in use by the modern Coreans, “Cho-sen,” or “Morning Calm.”

The descendants of Ki Tsze are said to have ruled the country until the fourth century before the Christian era. Their names and deeds are alike unknown, but it is stated that there were forty-one generations, making a blood line of eleven hundred and thirty-one years. The line came to an end in 9 A.D., though they had lost power long before that time.

This early portion of Cho-sen did not contain all of the territory of the modern Corea, but only the north-western portion of it. While the petty kingdoms of China were warring among one another, the nearest to Cho-sen encroached upon it and finally seized the colony. This was not to be permanent however, and there ensued a series of wars, each force becoming alternately successful. The territory of Cho-sen grew in area and the kingdom increased in wealth, power and intelligence under the rule of King Wie-man, who assumed the authority 194 B.C. Thousands of Chinese gentry fleeing before the conquering arms of the Han usurpers settled within the limits of the new kingdom, adding greatly to its prosperity. In 107 B.C., after a war that had lasted one year, a Chinese invading army finally conquered the kingdom of Cho-sen and annexed it to the Chinese empire. The conquered territory included the north half of the present kingdom of Corea.

Things remained in this condition until about 30 B.C., at which time a part of Cho-sen taking advantage of the disorders which had broken out afresh in China, separated itself from the empire and again formed a state by itself, but still remained tributary; while the other portions of the old kingdom for some time longer remained under Chinese rule, until they also joined the portion that had been freed. Up to this period Cho-sen forming the north-west of the present Corea, had been the only part of that country that had become more closely connected with China. The tracts to the north-east, south-west and south were occupied by different independent tribes, and little more is known of them than that they were ruled by chiefs of their own clan. In course of time three kingdoms, Korai, Hiaksai, and Shinra, were formed out of these various elements, subsisting by the side of Cho-sen, at a later date fighting either beside or against China, and almost incessantly at feud with each other, until Shinra gained the predominance about the middle of the eighth century A.D. and kept the same up to the sixteenth century. It was then supplanted in the leading position by Korai, which united under its supremacy all those parts of Corea which had hitherto been separate, and constituted the whole into a single state. Like the three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Wales, these Corean states were distinct in origin, were conquered by a race from without, received a rich infusion of alien blood, struggled in rivalry for centuries, and were finally united under one nation with one flag and one sovereign.

Hiaksai was for a while the leading state in the peninsula. Buddhism was introduced from Thibet in 384 A.D. And to this state more than any other part of Corea, Japan owes her first impulses towards the civilization of the west. The kingdom prospered until the decade from 660 to 670, when it was overrun and practically annihilated by an army of Chinese, despite the aid of four hundred junks and a large body of soldiers sent from Japan to the aid of Corea.

Korai of course took its turn in struggling with the Dragon of China. Early in the seventh century China had been defeated, and for a generation peace prevailed. But the Chinese coveted Koraian territory and again an invading fleet attacked the country. It took years to complete the conquest, but finally all Korai with its five provinces, its one and seventy-six cities and its four or five millions of people, was annexed to the Chinese empire.

Shinra, in the south-west of the peninsula, was probably the most advanced of all of the states. It was from this kingdom that the tradition reached Japan which tempted the Amazonian queen of Japan, Jingo, to her invasion and conquest. The king of Shinra submitted and became a declared vassal of Japan, but in all probability Shinra was far superior to the Japan of that early day in everything except strength. From this kingdom came a stream of immigrants which passed into Japan carrying all sorts of knowledge and an improved civilization. It is well to remember from this point that the Japanese always laid claim to the Corean peninsula and to Shinra especially as a tributary nation. They supported that claim not only whenever embassies from the two nations met at the court of China, but they made it a more or less active part of their national policy.

During this period Buddhism was being steadily propagated, learning and literary progress increased, while art, science, architecture were all favored and improved. Kion-chiu, the capital of Shinra, was looked upon as a holy city, even after the decay of Shinra’s power. Her noble temples, halls and towers stood in honor and repair, enshrining the treasures of India, Persia, and China, until the ruthless Japanese torch laid them in ashes in 1596.

From the year 755 A.D. up to the beginning of the tenth century, Shinra maintained its undisputed rule over the other countries of the peninsula, but about this time successive revolts occurred, Shinra was conquered, and the three kingdoms now united were called Korai, a name which was retained to the end of the fourteenth century. The kingdoms now thoroughly subdued, never recovered their old position and independence, and composed from that time forward the undivided kingdom of Corea, such as it has been maintained until the present day. In 1218 A.D. the king of Corea promised allegiance to the Chinese emperor Taitsou who was the Mongol Genghis Khan.

Here we find explanation for some features of the war now in progress between China and Japan. Corea has at various times acknowledged its dependence upon both of these countries. The Japanese laid claim to Corea from the second century until the 27th of February, 1876. On that day the mikado’s minister plenipotentiary signed the treaty recognizing Cho-sen as an independent nation. Through all the seventeen centuries, which according to their annals elapsed since their armies first completed the vassalage of their neighbor, the Japanese regarded the states of Corea as tributaries. Time and again they enforced their claim with bloody invasion, and when through a more enlightened policy the rulers voluntarily acknowledged their former enemy as an equal, the decision cost Japan almost immediately afterward seven months of civil war, twenty thousand lives, and $50,000,000 in treasury. The mainspring of the “Satsuma rebellion” of 1877 was the official act of friendship by treaty, and the refusal of the Tokio government to make war on Corea. It seemed until 1877 almost impossible to eradicate from the military mind of Japan the conviction that to surrender Corea was cowardice and a stain upon the national honor.

From the ninth century onward to the sixteenth century, the relations of the two countries seem to be unimportant. Japan was engaged in conquering northward her own barbarians. Her intercourse, both political and religious, grew to be so direct with the court of China, that Corea in the Japanese annals sinks out of sight except at rare intervals. Nihon increased in wealth and civilization, while Cho-sen remained stationary or retrograded. In the nineteenth century the awakened “Sunrise Kingdom” has seen her former self in the “Land of Morning Calm,” and has stretched forth willing hands to do for her neighbor now what Corea did for Japan in centuries long gone by. It must never be forgotten that Corea was the bridge on which civilization crossed from China to the archipelago.

About 1368 the reigning King of Corea refused vassalage to China. His troops refused to repel the invasion that threatened, and under their General Ni Taijo, deposed the king. Taijo himself was nominated king. He paid homage to the Chinese emperor and revived the ancient name of Cho-sen. The dynasty thus established is still the reigning family in Corea, though the direct line came to an end in 1864. The Coreans in their treaty with Japan in 1876, dated the document according to the four hundred and eighty-fourth year of Cho-sen, reckoning from the accession of Ni Taijo to the throne. One of the first acts of the new dynasty was to change the location of the national capital to the city of Han Yang, situated on the Han river about fifty miles from its mouth. The king enlarged the fortifications, enclosed the city with a wall of masonry, and built bridges, renaming the city Seoul or “capital.” He also redivided the kingdom into eight provinces which still remain. An era of peace and flourishing prosperity ensued, and in everything the influence of the Chinese emperors is most manifest. Buddhism, which had penetrated into every part of the country, and had become in a measure at least the religion of the state, was now set aside and disestablished. The Confucian ethics were diligently[diligently] studied and were incorporated into the religion of the state. From the early part of the fifteenth century, Confucianism flourished, until it reached the point of bigotry and intolerance, so that when Christianity was discovered to be existing among the people, it was put under the ban of extirpation, and its followers thought worthy of death.

PAGODA AT SEOUL.

COREAN SOLDIERS.

At first the new dynasty sent tribute regularly to the shogun of Japan, but as intestinal war troubled the Island Empire and the shoguns became effeminate, the Coreans stopped their tribute and it was almost forgotten. The last embassy from Seoul was sent in 1460. After that they were never summoned, so they never came. Under the idea that peace was to last forever, the nation relaxed all vigilance; the army was disorganized and the castles were fallen into ruin. It was while the country was in such a condition that the summons of Japan’s great conqueror came to them, and the Coreans learned for the first time of the fall of Ashikaga and the temper of their new master.

As the Mongol conquerors issuing from China had used Corea as their point of departure to invade Japan, so Hideyoshi resolved to make the peninsula the road for his armies into China. He sent an envoy to Seoul to demand tribute, and then, angered at the utter failure of his mission, commanded the envoy and all his family to be put to death. A second ambassador was sent with more success, and presents and envoys were exchanged. Hideyoshi, however, became enraged at the indifference of the Coreans to assist him in his dealings with China, and resolved to humble the peninsular kingdom, and China, her overlord.

FIGHTING BEFORE THE GATE OF SEOUL.

The invasion of Corea was made as related in the earlier chapters on Japan. The Coreans were poorly prepared for war, both as to leaders, soldiers, equipments and fortifications. The Japanese swept everything like a whirlwind before them, and entered the capital within eighteen days after their landing at Fusan. The accounts of the war are preserved in detail, and are exceedingly interesting, but the limits of this volume compel their omission to provide space for the war of 1894-5. At first Chinese armies coming to reinforce the Coreans were defeated and turned back, but another effort of the allies was more effective and the Japanese troops found advance turned to retreat. The Japanese armies concentrated at Seoul to receive the advance of the allies numbering some two hundred thousand. The capital was burned by the Japanese, nearly every house being destroyed, and hundreds of men, women, and children, sick and well, living quietly there, were massacred. The allied troops were beaten back in a ferocious battle, but hunger reached both armies, pestilence entered the Japanese camp, and both sides were utterly tired of war and ready to consider terms of peace.

OLD MAN IN COREA.

Konishi, the general of the Japanese army, had been converted to Christianity by the Portuguese Jesuits. During this period of tiresome waiting he sent to the superior of the missions in Japan asking for a priest. In response to this request came Father Gregorio de Cespedes and a Japanese convert. These two holy men began their labors among the Japanese armies, preaching from camp to camp, and administering the right of baptism to thousands of converts, but their work was stopped by the jealousy of the Buddhist power. The Jesuits in Japan were then being expelled for their political machinations, and the chaplains in Corea were brought under the same ban. Konishi was called back to Japan with the priest and was unable to convince the shogun of his innocence. A few Corean converts were made during this time, and one of them a lad of rank, was afterward educated in the Jesuit seminary at Kioto. He endeavored to return to Corea as a missionary, but the condition of affairs in Japan interrupted his intentions and in 1625 he was martyred during the prosecutions of the Christians. Of the large number of Corean prisoners sent over to Japan, many became Christians. Hundreds of others were sold as slaves to the Portuguese. Others rose to positions of honor under the government or in the households of the daimios. Many Corean lads were adopted by the returned soldiers or kept as servants. When the bloody persecution broke out, by which many thousand Japanese found death, the Corean converts remained steadfast to their Christian faith, and suffered martyrdom with fortitude equal to that of their Japanese brethren. But by the army in Corea, or by the Christian chaplain Cespedes, no trace of Christianity was left in the land of Morning Calm, and it was two centuries later before that faith was really introduced.

The fortunes of the war alternated, and finally, after deeds of heroism on both sides, a period of inaction ensued, the result of exhaustion. At this time Hideyoshi fell sick and died, September 9, 1598, at the age of sixty-three years. Almost his last words were, “Recall all my troops from Cho-sen.” The orders to embark for home were everywhere gladly heard. It is probable that the loss of life in the campaigns of this war was nearly a third of a million. Thus ended one of the most needless, unprovoked, cruel, and desolating wars that ever cursed Corea. More than two hundred thousand human bodies were decapitated to furnish the ghastly material for the “ear-tomb” mound in Kioto. More than one hundred and eighty-five thousand Corean heads were gathered for mutilation, and thirty thousand Chinese, all of which were despoiled of ears and noses. It is probable that fifty thousand Japanese left their bones in Corea.

Since the invasion the town of Fusan, as before, had been held and garrisoned by the retainers of the Daimio of Tsushima. At this port all the commerce between the two nations took place. From an American point of view, there was little trade done between the two countries, but on the strength of even this small amount Earl Russell in 1862 tried to get Great Britain included as a co-trader between Japan and Corea. He was not, however, successful. A house was built at Nagasaki by the Japanese government which was intended as a refuge for Coreans who might be wrecked on Japanese shores. Wherever the waifs were picked up, they were sent to Nagasaki and sheltered until a junk could be dispatched to Fusan.

The possession of Fusan by the Japanese was, until 1876, a perpetual witness of the humiliating defeat of the Coreans in the war of 1592-1597, and a constant irritation to their national pride. Yet with all the miseries inflicted on her, the humble nation learned rich lessons, and gained many an advantage even from her enemy. The embassies which were yearly dispatched to yield homage to their late invaders were at the expense of the latter. The Japanese pride purchased the empty bubble of homage by paying all the bills.

The home of the Manchoos was on the north side of the Ever-white mountains. From beyond these mountains was to roll upon China and Corea another avalanche of invasion. By the sixteenth century the Manchoos had become so strong that they openly defied the Chinese. Formidable expeditions previous to the Japanese invasion of Corea kept them at bay for a time, but the immense expenditure of life and treasure required to fight the Japanese drained the resources of the Ming emperors, while their attention being drawn away from the north, the Manchoo hordes massed their forces and grew daily in strength. To repress the rising power in the north, and to smother the life of the young nation, the Peking government resorted to barbarous cruelties and stern coercion. Unable to protect the eastern border of Liao Tung the entire population of three hundred thousand souls, dwelling in four cities and many villages, were removed westward and resettled on new lands. Fortresses were planned in the deserted land to keep back the restless cavalry raiders from the north. Thus the foundation of the neutral strip of fifty miles was unconsciously laid, and ten thousand square miles of fair and fertile land west of the Yalu were abandoned to the wolf and tiger. What it soon became it remained until yesterday—a howling wilderness.

In 1615 the king of the Manchoo tribes was assassinated as the result of a plot by the Ming emperor. This exasperated the tribes to vengeance and they began hostilities. China now had to face another great invasion. Calling on her vassal, Corea, to send an army of twenty thousand men, she ordered them to join the imperial army about seventy miles west of the Yalu River. In the battle which ensued the Coreans were the first to face the Manchoos. The imperial legions were beaten, and the Coreans seeing which way the victory would turn, deserted from the Chinese side to that of their enemy. This was in 1619. Enraged by alternate treachery to both sides from the Coreans, the Manchoos invaded Corea in 1627, to which time the war had been prolonged. They crossed the frozen Yalu in February, and at once attacked and defeated the Chinese army. They then began the march to Seoul. Town after town was taken as they pressed onward to the capital, the Coreans everywhere flying before them. Thousands of dwellings and stores of provisions were given to the flames and their trail was one of blood and ashes. After the siege of Seoul began, the king sent tribute offerings to the invaders, and concluded a treaty of peace, by which Corea again exchanged masters, this time confessing subjection to the Manchoo sovereign. As soon as the invading army had withdrawn, the Corean king, confident that the Chinese would be ultimately successful over the Manchoos, annulled the treaty. No sooner were the Manchoos able to spare their forces for the purpose than they again marched into Corea and overran the peninsula.

The king now came to terms, and in February, 1637, utterly renounced his allegiance to the Ming emperor, gave his two sons as hostages, and promised to send an annual embassy with tribute to the Manchoo court. After the evacuation of Corea the victors marched into China, where bloody civil war was raging. The imperial army of China had been beaten by the rebels. The Manchoos joined their forces with the imperialists and defeated the rebels, and then demanded the price of their victory. Entering Peking they proclaimed the downfall of the house of Ming. The son of the late king was set upon the dragon throne, and as we have seen in a foregoing chapter the royal house of China came to be a Manchoo family.

When, as it happened the very next year, the shogun of Japan demanded an increase of tribute to be paid in Yeddo, the court of Seoul plead in excuse their wasted resources, consequent upon the war with the Manchoos, and their heavy burdens newly laid upon them in the way of tribute to their conqueror. Their excuse was accepted. Twice within a single generation had the little peninsula been devastated[devastated] by mighty invasion that laid waste the country.

COAST NEAR CHEMULPO.

In 1650 a captive Corean maid, taken prisoner in their first invasion, became sixth lady in rank in the imperial Manchoo household. Through her influence her father, the ambassador, obtained a considerable reduction of the annual tribute that had been fixed by treaty. Other portions of the tribute had been remitted before, so that by this time the tax upon Corean loyalty became very slight, and the embassy became one of ceremony rather than a tribute bringing.

In the seventeenth century some information about Corea began to reach Europe, first from the Jesuits in Peking, who sent home a map of the peninsula. There is also a map of Corea in a work by the Jesuit Martini, published in 1649 in Amsterdam. The Cossacks who overran northern Asia brought reports of Corea to Russia, and it was from Russian sources that Sir John Campbell obtained the substance of his history of Corea. In 1645 a party of Japanese crossed the peninsula, and one of them on his return wrote a book descriptive of their journey. In 1707[In 1707] the Jesuits in Peking began their great geographical enterprise, the survey of the Chinese empire, including the outlying vassal kingdoms. A map of Corea was obtained from the king’s palace at Seoul and sent to Europe to be engraved and printed. From this original most of the maps and supposed Corean names in books published since that time have been copied.

The first known entrance of any number of Europeans into Corea was that of Hollanders belonging to the crew of the Dutch ship Hollandra which was driven ashore in 1627. Coasting along the Corean shores, John Wetterree and some companions went ashore to get water, and were captured by the natives. The magnates of Seoul probably desired to have a barbarian from the west, as useful to them as was the Englishman Will Adams to the Japanese in Yeddo, where the Corean ambassadors had often seen him. This explains why Wetterree was treated with kindness and comparative honor, though kept as a prisoner. When the Manchoos invaded Corea in 1635, his two companions were killed in the war, and Wetterree was left alone. Having no one with whom he could converse he had almost forgotten his native speech, when after twenty-seven years of exile, in the fifty-ninth year of his age, he met some of his fellow Hollanders, and acted as interpreter to the Coreans.

In the summer of 1653 the Dutch ship Sparwehr was cast on shore on Quelpaert island, off the southwest coast of Corea. The local magistrate did what he could for the thirty-six members of the crew who reached the shore alive, out of the sixty-four on board. On October 29th the survivors were brought by the officials to be examined by the interpreter Wetterree. The latter was very rusty in his native language, but regained it in a month. Of course the first and last idea of the captives was how to escape. They made one effort to reach the sea shore, but were caught and severely punished, after which they were ordered to proceed to the capital. Wherever they went the Dutchmen were like wild beasts on exhibition. When they once reached the palace they were well treated, and were assigned to the body guard of the king as petty officers. Each time that the Manchoo envoy made his visit to the capital the captives endeavored to enlist his sympathy and begged to be taken to Peking, but all such efforts resulted in failure and punishment. The suspicions of the government were aroused by the studies which the Dutchmen pursued, of the climate, the topography, and the products of the country, and by their attempts[attempts] to escape, and in 1663 they were separated and put into three different towns. By this time fourteen of the number were dead and twenty-two remained.

Finally, early in September 1667, as their fourteenth year of captivity was drawing to a close, the Dutchmen escaped to the seacoast, bribed a Corean to give them his fishing craft, and steered out into the open water. A few days later, they reached the northwestern islands in the vicinity of Kiushiu, Japan, and landed. The Japanese treated them kindly and sent them to Nagasaki, where they met their countrymen at Desima. The annual ship from Batavia was then just about to return, and in the nick of time the waifs got on board, reached Batavia, sailed for Holland, and in July, 1668, stepped ashore at home. Hendrik Hamel, the supercargo of the ship, wrote a book on his return recounting his adventures in a simple and straightforward style. It has been translated into English and is a model work of its sort.

The modern introduction of Christianity in Corea dates little more than a hundred years ago. Some Corean students studying with the famous Confucian professor Kwem, during the winter of 1777, entered into discussion of some tracts on philosophy, mathematics, and religion just brought from Peking. These were translations of the writings of the Jesuits in the imperial capital. Surprised and delighted, they resolved to attain if possible to a full understanding of the new doctrines. They sought all the information that they could from Peking. The leader in this movement was a student named Stonewall. As his information accumulated, he gave himself up to fresh reading and meditation, and then began to preach. Some of his friends in the capital, both nobles and commoners, embraced the new doctrines with cheering promptness and were baptized. Thus from small beginnings, but rapidly, were the Christian ideas spread.

But soon the power of the law and the pen were invoked to crush out the exotic faith. The first victim was tried on the charge of destroying his ancestral tablets, tortured, and sent into exile, in which he soon after died. The scholars now took up weapons, and in April, 1784, the king’s preceptor issued the first public document officially directed against Christianity. In it all parents and relatives were entreated to break off all relations with Christians. The names of the leaders were published, and the example of Thomas Kim, the first victim, was cited. Forthwith began a violent pressure upon the believers to renounce their faith. Then began an exhibition alike of steadfast faith and shameful apostasy, but though even Stonewall lapsed, the work went on. The next few years of Christianity were important ones. The leaders formed an organization and as nearly as they could on the lines of the Roman Catholic church. Instructions were sent from Peking by the priests there, and the worship in Corea became quite in harmony with that of the Western church. But the decision that the worship of ancestors must be abolished, was, in the eyes of the Corean public, a blow at the framework of society and state, and many feeble adherents began to fall away. December 8, 1791, Paul and Jacques Kim were decapitated for refusing to recant their Christian faith. Thus was shed the first blood for Corean Christianity. Martyrdom was frequent in this early history of the Christian church in Corea, but in the ten years following the baptism of Peter in Peking in 1783, in spite of persecution and apostasy, it is estimated that there were four thousand Christians in the peninsula.

The first attempt of a foreign missionary to enter the Hermit Kingdom from the west was made early in 1791. This was a Portuguese priest who endeavored to cross the Yalu River to join some native Christians, but was disappointed in meeting them and returned to Peking. Two years later a young Chinese priest entered the forbidden territory, and was hidden for three years in the house of a noble woman, where he preached and taught. Three native Christians who refused to reveal his whereabouts were tortured to death and were thrown into the Han River. From the beginning of this century the most bitter general persecutions against Christians was enforced. The young Chinese priest, learning that he was outlawed, surrendered himself to relieve his friends of the responsibility of protecting him, and was executed. The woman also who had so long sheltered him was beheaded. Four other women who were attendants in the palace, and an artist who was condemned for painting Christian subjects were beheaded near the “Little Western Gate” of Seoul. The policy of the government was shown in making away with the Christians of rank and education who might be able to direct affairs in the absence of the foreign priests, and in letting the poor and humble go free.

It is impossible to catalogue the martyrs and the edicts against Christianity. The condition of the Christians scattered in the mountains and forests, suffering poverty, hunger, and cold, was most deplorable. In 1811 the Corean converts addressed letters to the Pope begging aid in their distress. These however could not be answered in the way they desired, for the Pope himself was then a prisoner at Fontainebleau and the Roman propaganda was nearly at a standstill.

COREAN MANDARINS.

In 1817 the king and court were terrified by the appearance off the west coast of the British vessels Alceste and Lyra, but beyond some surveys, purchases of provisions, and interviews with some local magistrates, the foreigners departed without opening communication with them. Fifteen[Fifteen] years later the British ship Lord Amherst passed along the coasts of Chulla, seeking commercial connections. On board was a Protestant missionary, a Prussian. He landed on several of the islands and attempted to gain some acquaintance with the people, but made little progress. The year 1834 closed the first half century of Corean Christianity. It is not strange that persecutions resulted from the advance of Roman Catholic strength in Corea, for the Corean Christians assumed naturally the righteousness of the Pope’s claim to temporal power as the vicar of heaven. The Corean Christians not only deceived their magistrates and violated their country’s laws, but actually invited armed invasion. Hence, from the first, Christianity was associated in patriotic minds with treason and robbery.

After the restoration of the Bourbons in France and the strengthening of the Papal throne by foreign bayonets, the missionary zeal in the church was kindled afresh, and it was resolved to found a mission in Corea. The first priest to make entrance was Pierre Philibert Maubant, who reached Seoul in 1836, the first Frenchman who had penetrated the Hermit Nation. A few months later another joined him, and in December, 1838, Bishop Imbert ran the gauntlet of wilderness, ice, and guards at the frontier, and took up his residence under the shadow of the king’s palace. Work now went on vigorously, and in 1838 the Christians numbered nine thousand. At the beginning of the next year the party in favor of extirpating Christianity having gained the upper hand, another persecution broke out with redoubled violence. To stay the further shedding of blood, Bishop Imbert and his two priests came out of their hiding places and delivered themselves up. They were horribly tortured, and decapitated September 21, 1839. Six bitter years passed before the Christians again had a foreign pastor.

Since 1839 the government had tripled its vigilance and doubled the guards on the frontier. The most strenuous efforts to pass the barriers repeatedly failed. Andrew Kim is a name to be remembered in the history of Christianity in Corea. Year after year he worked to enter Corea, or once in, to advance the cause, or when rejected to help others in the work. He was ordained to the priesthood in Shanghai, and finally in company with two French priests, in September, 1845, sailed across the Yellow Sea, and landed on the coast of Chulla, to make his final effort to spread Christianity among the Coreans. During July of the same year, the British ship Samarang was engaged in surveying off Quelpaert and the south coast of Corea. Beacon fires all over the land telegraphed the news of the presence of foreign ships, and the close watch that was kept by the coast magistrates made the return of Andrew Kim doubly dangerous.

These records of perseverance[perseverance], of distress, of martyrdom, from the pages of missionary work in Corea, written in the blood of native converts, who bore their cross with equal bravery to that of the Roman fathers, may be surprising to some who have been unfamiliar with the history of the Corean peninsula. But they are convincing testimony to controvert the assertions of some incredulous ones who affirm that the “heathen” are never really Christianized, but are always ready to return to their idols in times of trial. There is no country that can show braver examples of fortitude, in enduring trial for the support of the faith, than the “Hermit Nation.”

Three priests in disguise were now secretly at work in Corea, Andrew Kim, a native convert, and the Frenchmen, Bishop Ferreol, and his companion Daveluy. Kim was captured and in company with half a dozen others was executed September 16th. While he was in prison the Bishop heard of three French ships which were at that time vainly trying to find the mouth of the Han River and the channel to the capital. Ferreol wrote to Captain Cecile, who commanded the fleet, but the note arrived too late and Kim’s fate was sealed. The object of the fleet’s visit was to demand satisfaction for the murder of the two French priests in 1889, but after some coast surveys were made and a threatening letter was dispatched the ships withdrew.

During the summer of 1845, two French frigates set sail for the Corean coast, and August 10th went aground, and both vessels became total wrecks. The six hundred men made their camp at Kokun island, where they were kindly treated and furnished with provisions, although rigidly secluded and guarded against all communication with the main land. An English ship from Shanghai rescued the crews. During the ensuing eight years repeated efforts were made by missionaries and native converts to enter Corea and advance the work there, and the labor of propagation progressed. A number of religious works in the Corean language were printed from a native printing press and widely circulated. In 1850 the Christians numbered eleven thousand, and five young men were studying for the priesthood. Regular mails sewn into the thick cotton coats of the men in the annual embassy were sent to and brought from China. The western nations were beginning to take an interest in the twin hermits of the east, Corea and Japan. In 1852, the Russian frigate Pallas traced and mapped a portion of the shore line of the east coast, and the work was continued three years later by the French war vessel Virginie. At the end of this voyage the whole coast from Fusan to the Tumen was known with some accuracy and mapped out with European names.

It was in the intervening years, 1853 and 1854, that Commodore Perry and the American squadron were in the waters of the far east, driving the wedge of civilization into Japan. The American flag, however, was not yet seen in Corean waters, though the court of Seoul was kept informed of Perry’s movements.

A fresh reinforcement of missionaries reached Corea in 1857. When three years later the French and English forces opened war with China, took the Peiho forts, entered Peking, and sacked the summer palace of the Son of Heaven, driving the Chinese emperor to flight, the loss of Chinese prestige struck terror into all Corean hearts. For six centuries China had been in Corean eyes the synonym and symbol of invincible power. Copies of the treaties made between China and the allies, granting freedom of trade and religion, were soon read in Corea, causing intense alarm. But the most alarming thing was the treaty between China and Russia, by which the Manchoo rulers surrendered the great tract watered by the Amoor river and bordered by the Pacific, to Russia. It was a rich and fertile region, with a coast full of harbors, and comprising an area as large as France. The boundaries of Siberia now touch Corea. With France on the right, Russia on the left, China humbled, and Japan opened to the western world, it is not strange that the rulers in Seoul trembled. The results to Christianity were that within a few years thousands of natives fled their country and settled in the Russian villages. At the capital, official business was suspended and many families of rank fled to the mountains. In many instances people of rank humbly sought the good favor and protection of the Christians, hoping for safety when the dreaded invasion should come. In the midst of these war preparations, the French missionary body was reinforced by the arrival of four of their countrymen who set foot on the soil of their martyrdom, October, 1861.

The Ni dynasty, founded in 1392, came to an end January 15, 1864, by the death of King Chul-chong, who had no child, before he had nominated an heir. Palace intrigues and excitement among the political parties followed. The widows of the three kings who had reigned since 1831 were still living. The eldest of these, Queen Cho, at once seized the royal seal and emblems of authority, which high-handed move made her the mistress of the situation. A twelve-year-old lad was nominated for the throne, and his father, Ni Kung, one of the royal princes, became the actual regent. He held the reins of government during the next nine years, ruling with power like that of an absolute despot. He was a rabid hater of Christianity, foreigners, and progress.

The year 1866 is phenomenal in Corean history. It seemed to the rulers as if the governments of many nations had conspired to pierce their walls of isolation. Russians, Frenchmen, Englishmen, Americans, Germans, authorized and unauthorized, landed to trade, rob, kill, or what was equally obnoxious to the regent and his court, to make treaties. This and the rapid progress of Christianity now excited the anti-Christian party, which was in full power at the court, to clamor for the enforcement of the old edict against the foreign religion.

Vainly the regent warned the court of the danger from Europe. Forced by the party in power, he signed the death warrants of bishops and priests and promulgated anew the old laws against the Christians. Within a few weeks fourteen French priests and bishops were tortured to death, and twice as many native missionaries and students for the priesthood suffered like fate. Scores of native Christians were put to death, and hundreds more were in prison. In a little over a month, all missionary operations came to a standstill. The three French priests who remained alive escaped from the peninsula in a Chinese junk, and finally reached Chefoo October 26. Not one foreign priest now remained in Corea, and no Christian dared openly confess his faith. Thus after twenty years of nearly uninterrupted labors, the church was again stripped of her pastors, and at the end of eighty-two years of Corean Christianity the curtain fell in blood.

With Bishop Ridel as interpreter and three of his converts as pilots, three French vessels were sent to explore the Han River and to make effort to secure satisfaction for the murder of the French bishops and priests in the previous March. They entered the river September 21, and two of the vessels advanced to Seoul, leaving one at the mouth of the river. One or two forts fired on the vessels as they steamed along, and in one place a fleet of junks gathered to dispute their passage. A well-aimed shot sunk two of the crazy craft, and a bombshell dropped among the artillerists in the redoubt, silenced it at once. On the evening of the 25th, the two ships cast anchor and the flag of France floated in front of the Corean capital. The hills were white with gazing thousands, who for the first time saw a vessel moving under steam. The ships remained abreast of the city several days, the officers taking soundings and measurements, computing heights, and making plans. Bishop Ridel went on shore in hopes of finding a Christian and hearing some news but none dared to approach him. While the French remained in the river not a bag of rice nor a fagot of wood entered Seoul. Eight days of such terror, and a famine would have raged in the city. Seven thousand houses were deserted by their occupants. When the ships returned to the mouth of the river two converts came on board. They informed Ridel of the burning of a “European” vessel, the General Sherman, at Ping-Yang, of the renewal of the persecution, and of the order that Christians should be put to death without waiting for instructions from Seoul. Sailing away, the ships arrived at Chefoo, October 3.

The regent, now thoroughly alarmed, began to stir up the country to defense. The military forces in every province were called out, and the forges and blacksmith shops were busy day and night in making arms of every known kind. Loaded junks were sunk in the channel of the Han to obstruct it. Word was sent to the tycoon of Japan informing him of the trouble, and begging for assistance, but the Yeddo government had quite all it could do at that time to take care of itself. Instead of help two commissioners were appointed to go to Seoul and recommend that Corea open her ports to foreign commerce as Japan had done, and thus choose peace instead of war with foreigners. Before the envoys could leave Japan the tycoon had died, and the next year Japan was in the throes of civil war, the shogunate was abolished, and Corea was for the time utterly forgotten.

Another fleet of French vessels sailed from China to Corea, consisting of seven ships of various kinds, and with six hundred soldiers. The force landed before the city of Kang-wa on the island of the same name, and captured the city without difficulty on the morning of October 16. Several engagements in the same vicinity followed, all of them successful to the French until they came to attack a fortified monastery on the island some ten days later. Here they were repulsed with heavy loss to themselves and to the foe. The next morning to the surprise of all and the anger of many, orders were given to embark. The troops in Kang-wa set fire to the city which in a few hours burned to ashes. The departure of the invaders was so precipitate that Corean patriots to this day gloat over it as a disgraceful retreat.

In the palace at Seoul the resolve was made to exterminate Christianity, root and branch. Women and even children were ordered to the death. Several Christian nobles were executed. One Christian who was betrayed in the capital by his pagan brother, and another fellow believer, were taken to the river side in front of the city, near the place where the two French vessels had anchored. At this historic spot, by an innovation unknown in the customs of Cho-sen, they were decapitated and their headless trunks held neck downward to spout out the hot life blood, that it might wash away the stain of foreign pollution. Upon the mind of the regent and court the effect was to swell their pride to the folly of extravagant conceit. Feeling themselves able almost to defy the world, they began soon after to hurl their defiance at Japan. The results of this expedition were disastrous all over the east. Happening at a time when relations between foreigners and Chinese were strained, the unexpected return of the fleet filled the minds of Europeans in China with alarm. The smothered embers of hostility to foreign influence, steadily gathered vigor as the report spread through China that the hated Frenchmen had been driven away by the Coreans. The fires at length broke out in the Tien-tsin massacre of 1870.

It was this same year, 1866, that witnessed the marriage of the young king, now but fourteen years old, to Min, the daughter of one of the noble families. Popular report has always credited the young queen with abilities not inferior to those of her royal husband. The Min or Ming family is largely Chinese in blood and origin, and beside being preëminent among all the Corean nobility in social, political, and intellectual power, has been most strenuous in adherence to Chinese ideas and traditions with the purpose of keeping Corea unswerving in her vassalage and loyalty to China.

American associations with Corea have been peculiarly interesting. The commerce carried on by American vessels with Chinese and Japanese ports made the navigation of Corean waters a necessity. Sooner or later shipwrecks must occur, and the question of the humane treatment of American citizens cast on Corean shores came up before our government for settlement, as it had long before in the case of Japan. Within one year the Corean government had three American cases to deal with. June 24, 1866, the American schooner Surprise, was wrecked off the coast of Wang-hai. The approach of any foreign vessel was especially dangerous at this time, as the crews might be mistaken for Frenchmen and killed by the people from patriotic impulses. Nevertheless, the captain and his crew, after being well catechised by the local magistrate and by a commissioner sent from Seoul, were kindly treated and well fed and provided with the comforts of life. By orders of Tai-wen Kun, the regent, they were escorted on horseback to Ai-chiu and after being feasted there were conducted safely to the border gate. Thence after a hard journey via Mukden they got to Niuchwang and to the United States consul.

The General Sherman was an American schooner that had the second experience with the Coreans. The vessel was owned by a Mr. Preston who was making a voyage for health. At Tien-tsin the schooner was loaded with goods likely to be salable in Corea, and she was dispatched there on an experimental voyage in the hope of thus opening the country to commerce. The complement of the vessel was five white foreigners and nineteen Malay and Chinese sailors. The white men were Mr. Hogarth, a young Englishman, Mr. Preston, the owner, and Messrs. Page and Wilson, the master and mate of the vessel, and the Rev. Mr. Thomas, a missionary, who were Americans. From the first the character of the expedition was suspected, because the men were rather too heavily armed for a peaceful trading voyage. It was believed in China that the royal coffins in the tombs of Ping-Yang were of solid gold, and it was broadly hinted that the expedition had something to do with these.

The schooner, whether merchant or invader, sailed from Chefoo and made for the mouth of the Tatong River. There they met the Chinese captain of a Chefoo junk who agreed to pilot them up the river. He stayed with the General Sherman for two days, then leaving her he returned to the river’s mouth, and sailed back to Chefoo. No further direct intelligence was ever received from the unfortunate party. According to one report the hatches of the schooner were fastened down after the crew had been driven beneath, and set on fire. According to another, all were decapitated. The Coreans burned the woodwork for the iron and took the cannon for models.

The United States steamship Wachusett, dispatched by Admiral Rowan to inquire into the matter, reached Chefoo January 14, 1867, and took on board the Chinese pilot of the General Sherman. Leaving Chefoo they cast anchor two days later at the mouth of the large inlet next south of the Tatong River, thinking that they had reached their destination. A letter was dispatched to the capital of the province demanding that the murderers be produced on the deck of the vessel. Five days elapsed before the answer arrived, during which the surveying boats were busy. Many natives were met and spoken with, who all told one story, that the Sherman’s crew were murdered by the people and not by official instigation. In a few days an officer from one of the villages appeared. He would give neither information nor satisfaction, and the gist of his reiteration was “go away as soon as possible.” Commander Shufeldt, bound by his orders, could do nothing more, and being compelled also by stress of weather came away.

COLOSSAL COREAN IDOL—UN-JIN MIRIOK.

Later in the year Dr. Williams, Secretary of the United States Legation at Peking, succeeded in obtaining an interview with a member of the Corean embassy, who told him that after the General Sherman got aground she careened over as the tide receded, and her crew landed to guard or float her. The natives gathered around them, and before long an altercation arose. A general attack began upon the foreigners, in which every man was killed by the mob. About twenty of the natives lost their lives. Dr. Williams’ comment is, “The evidence goes to uphold the presumption that they invoked their sad fate by some rash or violent act towards the natives.”

The United States steamship Shenandoah was sent to make further investigation, and this version of the story was given to the commander. The Coreans said that when the Sherman arrived in the river, the local officials went on board and addressed the two foreign officers of the ship in respectful language. The latter grossly insulted the native dignitaries. The Coreans treated their visitors kindly, but warned them of their danger and the unlawfulness of penetrating into the country. Nevertheless, the foreigners went up the river to Ping-Yang where they seized the ship of one of the city officials, put him in chains, and proceeded to rob the junks and their crews. The people of the city aroused to wrath, attacked the foreign ship with firearms and cannon; they set adrift fire rafts and even made a hand to hand fight with knives and swords. The foreigners fought desperately, but the Coreans overpowered them. Finally the ship caught fire and blew up with a terrible report. This story was not, of course, believed by the American officers, but even the best wishers and friends of the Sherman adventurers cannot stifle suspicion of either cruelty or insult to the natives. Remembering the kindness shown to the crew of the Surprise it is difficult to believe that the General Sherman’s crew was murdered without cause.

In 1884 Lieutenant J.B. Bernadon, of the United States navy, made a journey from Seoul to Ping-Yang, and being able to speak Corean, secured the following information from native Christians: The governor of Ping-Yang sent officers to inquire the mission of the Sherman. To gratify their curiosity large numbers of the common people set out also in boats which the Sherman’s crew mistook for a hostile demonstration and fired guns in the air to warn them off. When the river fell the Sherman grounded and careened over, which being seen from the city walls, a fleet of boats set out with hostile intent and were fired upon. Officers and people now enraged, started fire rafts, and soon the vessel, though with white flag hoisted, was in flames. Of those who leaped into the river most were drowned. Of those picked up one was the Rev. Mr. Thomas, who was able to talk Corean. He explained the meaning of the white flag, and begged to be surrendered to China. His prayer was in vain. In a few days all the prisoners were led out and publicly executed.

In the spring of 1867 an expedition was organized by a French Jesuit priest who spoke Corean, having been a missionary in the country; a German Jew named Ernest Oppert; and the interpreter at the United States consulate in Shanghai, a man named Jenkins. These worthies, it is said, conceived a plan to steal the body of one of the dead Corean monarchs, and hold it for ransom. With two steam vessels and a crew of sailors, laborers, and coolies, the riffraff of humanity, such as swarm in every Chinese port, they left Shanghai the last day of April, steamed to Nagasaki, and then to the west coast of Corea, landing in the river which flows into Prince Jerome Gulf. The steam tender which accompanied the larger vessel took an armed crowd up the river as far as possible, and from this point the march across the open country to the tomb was begun. Their tools were so ineffective that they could not move, the rocky slab which covered the sarcophagus, and they were compelled to give up their task. During their return march they were attacked by the exasperated Coreans, but were able to protect themselves without great difficulty. During the remainder of their buccaneering trip, which lasted ten days, they had various skirmishes and two or three of their party were killed. On their return to Shanghai the American of the party was arrested and tried before the United States consul, but it was impossible to prove the things with which Jenkins was charged, and he was dismissed. A few years later Oppert published a work in which he told the story of his different voyages to Corea, including this last one. In writing of the last he takes pains to gloss over the intentions of his journey and to explain the good motives behind it.

The representations made to the department of state at Washington by the United States diplomatic corps in China concerning these different attempts to enter Corea, directed the attention of the United States government to the opening of Corea to American commerce. The state department in 1870 resolved to undertake the enterprise. Frederick F. Low, minister of the United States to Peking, and Rear Admiral John Rodgers, commander in chief of the Asiatic squadron, were entrusted with the delicate mission. The American squadron consisted of the flagship Colorado, the corvettes Alaska and Dimitia, and the gunboats Monocacy and Palos. In spite of the formidable appearance of the navy, the vessels were either of an antiquated type, or of too heavy a draft, with their armament defective. All the naval world in Chinese waters wondered why the Americans should be content with such old fashioned ships unworthy of the gallant crews who manned them.

The squadron anchored near the mouth of the Han River May 30, 1871. Approaching the squadron in a junk, some natives made signs of friendship and came on board without hesitation. They bore a missive acknowledging the receipt of the letter which the Americans had sent to Corea some months before, by a special courier from the Chinese court. This reply announced that three nobles had been appointed by the regent for a conference. The next day a delegation of eight officers of the third and fifth rank came on board, evidently with intent to see the minister and admiral to learn all they could and gain time. They had little authority and no credentials, but they were sociable, friendly and in good humor. Neither of the envoys would see them, because they lacked rank and credentials and authority. The Corean envoys were informed that soundings would be taken in the river and the shores would be surveyed.

The best judges of eastern diplomacy think that this mission was very poorly managed. These envoys were sent ashore, and at noon on the 2nd of June the survey fleet moved up the river. The fleet consisted of four steam launches abreast, followed by the Palos and Monocacy. But a few minutes passed until from a fort on the shore a severe fire was opened on the moving boats. The Americans promptly returned the fire, with the result that the old Palos injured herself by the cannon kicking her sides out. The Monocacy also struck a rock and began to leak badly, but after hammering at the forts until they were all silenced, the squadron was able to return down the river and not greatly injured. Strange to say only one American was wounded and none were killed. It was a strong evidence of the poor marksmanship of Corean gunners.

Ten days were now allowed to pass before further action was taken, then the same force started up the river again, enlarged by twenty boats conveying a landing force of six hundred and fifty men. These were arranged in ten companies of infantry and seven pieces of artillery. The squadron proceeded up the river on the morning of the 10th of June, and soon after noon, having demolished and emptied the first fort, the troops were landed. The next day they began the march and soon reached another fortification which was deserted. Here all of the artillery was tumbled into the river and the fort was named Monocacy. In another hour, another citadel was reached, attacked, and conquered by the united efforts of the troops on shore and the vessels in the stream. The final charge of the American troops up a steep incline met a terrible reception. The Coreans fought with furious courage in hand to hand conflict. Finally the enemy was completely routed, some three hundred and fifty of them being killed. On the American side three were killed, and ten wounded. Before the day was over two more forts were captured. The result of the forty-eight hours on shore, of which only eighteen were spent in the field, was the capture of five forts, probably the strongest in the kingdom, fifty flags, and four hundred and eighty-one pieces of artillery. The work of destruction was carried on and made as thorough as fire, ax and shovel could make it, and this was all on Sunday, June 11.

Early on Monday morning the whole force was re-embarked in perfect order, in spite of the furious tide. The fleet moved down the stream with the captured colors at the mast heads, and towing the boats laden with the trophies of victory. Later in the day the men slain in the fight were buried on Boisee Island, and the first American graves rose on Corean soil.

Admiral Rodgers, having obeyed to the farthest limit the orders given him, and all hope of making a treaty being over, the fleet sailed for Chefoo on the 3rd of July, after thirty-five days’ stay in Corean waters.

“Our little war with the heathen,” as the New York Herald styled it, attracted slight notice in the United States. In China the expedition was looked upon as a failure and a defeat. The popular Corean idea was that the Americans had come to avenge the death of pirates and robbers, and after several battles had been so surely defeated that they dare not attempt the task of chastisement again.

When the mikado was restored to supreme power in Japan, and the department of foreign affairs was created, one of the first things attended to was to invite the Corean government to resume ancient friendship and vassalage. This summons, coming from a source unrecognized for eight centuries, and to a regent swollen with pride at his victory over the French and his success in extirpating the Christian religion, was spurned with defiance. An insolent and even scurrilous letter was returned to the mikado’s government. The military classes, stung with rage, formed a war party, but the cabinet of Japan vetoed the scheme and in October, 1873, Saigo, the leader of the war party, resigned and was returned to Satsuma to brood over his defeat.

In 1873 the young king of Corea attained his majority. His father Tai-wen Kun, the Regent, by the act of the king was relieved of office and his bloody and cruel lease of power came to an end. The young sovereign proved himself a man of some mental vigor and independent judgment, not merely trusting to his ministers, but opening important documents in person. He was ably seconded by his wife, to whom was born in the same year an heir to the throne.

The neutral belt of land, long inhabited by deer and tigers, had within the last few decades been overspread with squatters, brigands, and outlaws. The depredations of these border ruffians had become intolerable both to China and Corea. In 1875 Li Hung Chang sending a force of picked Chinese troops with a gunboat to the Yalu broke up the nest of robbers and allowed settlers to enter the land. Two years later the Peking government shifted its frontier to the Yalu River, and Corean and Chinese territory was separated only by flowing water. The neutral strip was no more.

In 1875 some sailors of one of the Japanese ironclads, landing near Kang-wa for water, were fired on by Corean soldiers under the idea that they were Americans or Frenchmen. The Japanese before this time had adopted uniforms of foreign style for their navy. Retaliating, the Japanese two days later stormed and dismantled the fort, shot most of the garrison, and carried the spoils to the ships. The news of this affair brought the wavering minds of both the peace and the war party of Japan to a decision. An envoy was dispatched to Peking to find out the exact relation of China to Corea, and secure her neutrality. At the same time another was sent with the fleet to the Han River, to make if possible a treaty of friendship and open ports. General Kuroda having charge of the latter embassy, with men of war, transports, and marines, reached Seoul February the 6th, 1876. About the same time a courier from Peking arrived in the capital, bearing the Chinese imperial recommendation that a treaty be made with the Japanese. The temper of the young king had been manifested long before this by his rebuking the district magistrate of Kang-wa for allowing soldiers to fire on peaceably disposed people, and ordering the offender to degradation and exile. Arinori Mori in Peking had received a written disclaimer of China’s responsibility over Corea, by which stroke of policy the Middle Kingdom freed herself from all possible claims of indemnity from France, the United States, and Japan.

After several days of negotiation the details of the treaty were settled, and on February 27 the treaty in which Chosen was recognized as an independent nation was signed and attested. The first Corean embassy which had been accredited to the mikado’s court since the Twelfth century, sailed from Fusan in a Japanese steamer, landing at Yokohama, May 29. By railroad and steam cars they reached Tokio, and on the first of June the envoy had audience of the mikado. For three weeks the Japanese amused, enlightened and startled their guests by showing them their war ships, arsenals, artillery, torpedoes, schools, buildings, factories, and offices, equipped with steam and electricity, the ripened fruit of the seed planted by Perry in 1854. All attempts of foreigners to hold any communication with them were firmly rejected by the Coreans. Among the callers with diplomatic powers from the outside world in 1881, each eager and ambitious to be the first in wresting the coveted prize of a treaty, were two British captains of men-of-war and a French naval officer, all of whom sailed away with rebuffs.

Under the new treaty Fusan soon became a bustling place of trade with a Japanese population of some two thousand. Public buildings were erected for the Japanese consulate, chamber of commerce, bank, steamship company, and hospitals. A newspaper was established, and after a few years of mutual contact at Fusan the Coreans, though finding the Japanese as troublesome as the latter discovered foreigners to be after their own ports were opened, with much experience settled down to endure them for the sake of a trade which was undoubtedly enriching the country. Gensan was opened May 1, 1880. An exposition of Japanese, European, and American goods was established for the benefit of trade with the Coreans.

Russia, England, France, Italy, and the United States all made efforts in the next few months to make treaties with Corea, and all were politely rejected. Early in 1881 Chinese and Japanese influence began to be enlisted in favor of the United States in the effort to make a treaty. Li Hung Chang, China’s liberal statesman, wrote a letter to a Corean gentleman in which he advised the country to seek the friendship of the United States. The Chinese secretary of legation at Tokio also declared to the Coreans that Americans were the natural friends of Asiatic nations, and should be welcomed. It began to look more hopeful for the United States to secure her treaty through the influence of the Chinese than that of the Japanese, on whom we had previously depended. One of the most important moves in the advancement of Corea’s civilization was the sending of a party of thirty-four prominent men to visit Japan, and further study the problem of how far western ideas were adapted to an oriental state. The leader of this party, after his return from Japan, was dispatched on a mission to China, where his conference was chiefly with Li Hung Chang. He had now a good opportunity of judging the relative merits of Japan and China. The results of this mission were soon apparent, for shortly after, eighty young men were sent to Tien-tsin where they began to diligently pursue their studies of western civilization as it had impressed itself on China in the arsenals and schools.

The spirit of progress made advance from the beginning of 1882, but discussion reached fever heat in deciding whether the favor of Japan or China should be most sought, and which foreign nation should be first admitted to treaty rights. An event not unlooked-for, increased the power of the progressionists. Kozaikai urged the plea of expulsion of foreigners in such intemperate language that he was accused of reproaching the sovereign. At the same time a conspiracy against the life of the king was discovered. Kozaikai was put to death, many of the conspirators were exiled, and the ringleaders were sentenced to be broken alive on the wheel. The progressionists had now the upper hand, and early in the spring two envoys went to Tien-tsin to inform Americans and Chinese that the Corean government was ready to make a treaty. Meanwhile Japanese officers were drilling the Corean soldiers in Seoul.

The American diplomatic agent, Commodore R.W. Shufeldt, arrived in the Swatara off Chemulpo May 7. Accompanied by three officers he went six miles into the interior, to the office of the Corean magistrate, to formulate the treaty. Two days afterward the treaty document was signed, in a temporary pavilion on a point of land opposite the ship. Both on the American and Corean side this result had been brought about only after severe toil and prolonged effort.

MAP SHOWING JAPAN, COREA AND PART OF CHINA.

Four days after the signing of the American treaty, the crown-prince, a lad of nine years old, was married in Seoul. This year will be forever known as the year of the treaties. Within a few months treaties were signed by Corea with Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy and China. Within a week there appeared in the harbor of Chemulpo two American, three British, one French, one Japanese, one German and five Chinese armed vessels; all of them except the French had left by June 8, to the great relief of the country people, many of whom had fled to the hills when the big guns began to waste their powder in salutes.

The Japanese legation in Seoul now numbered about forty persons. They seemed to suspect no imminent danger, although the old fanatic and tyrant Tai-wen Kun was still alive and plotting. He was the centre of all the elements hostile to innovation, and being a man of unusual ability, was possessed of immense influence. During the nine years of his nominal retirement from office, this bigoted Confucianist who refused to know anything of the outer world waited his opportunity to make trouble. Just then the populace was most excited over the near presence of the foreigners at Chemulpo, the usual rainfall was withheld, and in the consequent drought the rice crop was threatened with total failure. The sorcerers and the anti-foreign party took advantage of the situation to play on the fears of the superstitious people. The spirits displeased at the intrusion of the western devils were angry, and were cursing the land.

While the king was out in the open air praying for rain July 23, a mob of sympathizers with the old regent attempted to seize him. The king escaped to the castle. Some mischief-maker then started the report that the Japanese had attacked the royal castle and had seized the king and queen. Forthwith the mob rushed with frantic violence upon the legation, murdering the Japanese policemen and students whom they met on the streets, and the Japanese military instructors in the barracks. Not satisfied with this, the rioters, numbering four thousand men, attacked and destroyed the houses of the ministers favoring intercourse. Many of the Mins and seven Japanese were killed. The Japanese legation attaches made a brave defence to the night attack which was made on them. Armed only with swords and pistols, the Japanese formed themselves into a circle, charged the mob, and cut their way through it. After an all night march through a severe storm, the little band fighting its way for much of the time, reached In-chiun at three o’clock the next day. The governor received them kindly and supplied food and dry clothing, then posting sentinels to watch so that the Japanese could get some rest. In an hour the mob attacked them there, and they were again compelled to cut their way out. They now made for Chemulpo, the seaport of the city, and about midnight, having procured a junk, they put to sea. The next morning they were taken on board a British vessel which was surveying the coast, and a few days later were landed at Nagasaki.

Without hesitation the Japanese government began preparations for a military and naval attack. Hanabusa, the minister to Corea and his suite were sent back to Seoul, escorted by a military force. He was received with courtesy in the capital whence he had been driven three weeks ago. The fleet of Chinese war ships was also at hand, and everything was apparently under the control of Tai-wen Kun, who now professed to be friendly to foreigners. At his audience with the king, Hanabusa presented the demands of his government. These were nominally agreed to, but several days passing without satisfactory action, Hanabusa having exhausted remonstrance and argument left Seoul and returned to his ship. This unexpected move, a menace of war, brought the usurper to terms. On receipt of Tai-wen Kun’s apologies, the Japanese envoy returned to the capital and full agreement was given to all the demands of Japan by the Corean government. The insurgents were arrested and punished, the heavy indemnity was paid, and an apology was sent by a special embassy to Japan. Within the next few days Tai-wen Kun was taken on board a Chinese ship at the orders of Li Hung Chang and taken to Tien-tsin. It is generally believed that this action was practically a kidnapping, but whether to rescue Tai-wen Kun from the dangers which threatened him or to maintain China’s old theory of sovereign control over Corean rulers it is hard to know.

The treaty negotiated with the United States was duly ratified by our senate, and Lucius H. Foote was appointed minister to Corea. General Foote reached Chemulpo in the United States steamship Monocacy May 13, and the formal ratifications of the treaty were exchanged in Seoul six days later. The guns of the Monocacy, the same which shelled the Han forts in 1870, fired the first salute ever given to the Corean flag. The king responded by sending to the United States an embassy of eleven persons led by Min Yong Ik and Hong Yong Sik, members respectively of the conservative and liberal parties.

Their interview with President Arthur was in the parlors of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York, on September 17. All the Coreans were dressed in their national custom, which they wore habitually while in America. After spending some weeks in the study of American Institutions in several cities, part of the embassy returned home by way of San Francisco, leaving one of their number at Salem, Mass., to remain as a student; while Min Yong Ik and two secretaries embarked on the United States steamship Trenton, and after visiting Europe, reached Seoul in June, 1884.

We have now reached a point in Corean history from which a continuance can be better made in a later chapter. Almost from the time of the return of the Corean embassy from the United States, the political ferment increased, until a few months after began the disorders which culminated ten years later in the present Japanese-Chinese war. These events will therefore be related in the chapter which is to follow, descriptive of the causes of the war, and the relations of the three oriental nations at the outbreak of hostilities.

GEOGRAPHY, GOVERNMENT, CLIMATE AND PRODUCTS[PRODUCTS] OF COREA.

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Geographical Limits of Corea—Characteristics of the Coast Line—The Surface Configuration of the Country—Isolation Made Easy by the Character of its Boundaries—Rivers of the Peninsula—The Climate—Forests, Plants, and Animals—Products of the Soil and of the Mine—Extent of Foreign Trade—The Eight provinces of Corea, Their Extent, Cities, and History—Government of the Corean Kingdom—The Dignitaries and their Duties—Corruption in the Administration of Official Duties—Buying and Selling Office—The Executive and the Judiciary.

For many a year the country of Corea has been known in little more than name. Its territory is a peninsula on the east coast of Asia, between China on the continent, and the Japanese islands to the eastward. It extends from thirty-four degrees and thirty minutes to forty-three degrees north latitude, and from one hundred and twenty-four degrees and thirty minutes to one hundred and thirty degrees and thirty minutes east longitude, between the Sea of Japan and the Yellow Sea. The Yellow Sea separates it from the southern provinces of China, while the Sea of Japan and the Strait of Corea separate it from the Japanese islands. It has a coast line of about one thousand seven hundred and forty miles, and a total area of about ninety thousand square miles. The peninsula, with its outlying islands, is nearly equal in size to Minnesota or to Great Britain[Britain]. In general shape and relative position to the Asiatic continent it resembles Florida. Tradition and geological indications lead to the belief that anciently the Chinese promontory and province of Shan-tung, and the Corean peninsula were connected, and that dry land once covered the space filled by the waters joining the Gulf of Pechili and the Yellow Sea. These waters are so shallow that the elevation of their bottoms but a few feet would restore their area to the land surface of the globe. On the other side also, the Sea of Japan is very shallow and the Straits of Corea at their greatest depth have but eighty-three feet of water.

The east coast is high, mountainous, and but slightly indented, with very few islands or harbors. The south and west shores are deeply and manifoldly scooped and fringed with numerous islands. From these island-skirted shores, especially on the west coast, mud banks extend out to sea beyond sight. While the tide on the east coast is very slight, only two feet at Gensan, it increases on the south and west coasts in a north direction, rising to thirty-three feet at Chemulpo. The rapid rise and fall of tides, and the vast area of mud left bare at low water, cause frequent fogs, and render the numerous inlets little available except for native craft. On the west coast the rivers are frozen in winter, but the east coast is open the whole winter through.

Quelpaert, the largest island, forty by seventeen miles, lies sixty miles south of the main land. Port Hamilton, between Quelpaert and Corea, was for a time an English possession, but in 1886 was given to China. The Russians are generally believed to have an overweening desire for the magnificent harbor of Port Lazaref on the east coast of the Corean mainland. In its policy of exclusion of all foreigners, the government has had its tasks facilitated by the inaccessible and dangerous nature of the approaches to the coast. The high mountain ranges and steep rocks of the east coast, and the thousands of islands, banks, shoals and reefs extending for miles into the sea on the western and southern shores, unite to make approach exceedingly difficult, even with the best charts and surveys at hand.

In the middle of the northern boundary of Corea, is the most notable natural feature of the peninsula. It is a great mountain, the colossal Paik-tu or “ever white” mountain, as it is known from the snow that rests upon its summit. When the Manchoorians pushed the Coreans farther and farther back, they reached this mountain, which marked the natural barrier which they were able to make their permanent boundary line. According to native account, which in Corea is seriously believed, the highest peak of this mountain reaches the moderate elevation of forty-four miles. It is famous as the birthplace of Corean folk lore, and a great deal that is mythical hangs about it still. On the top of the peak is a lake thirty miles in circumference. From this lake flow two streams, one to the north-east, the Tumen, which enters the Sea of Japan; and the other to the south-west, the Yalu river, which flows into the Corean bay at the head of the Yellow Sea. Corea is therefore in reality an island. These two rivers and the lake forming the northern boundary are about four hundred and sixty miles from the ocean at the southern end of the peninsula. The greatest width of the country is three hundred and sixty miles and its narrowest about sixty miles.

The Tumen river separates Corea from Manchooria, except in the last few miles of its course, when it flows by Russian territory, the south-eastern corner of Siberia. The Yalu river also divides Corea from Manchooria. The rivers of Corea are not of great importance except for drainage and water supply, being navigable but for short distances. On the west coast the chief rivers are the Yalu, the Ching-chong, the Tatong, the Han, the Kum; the Yalu is navigable for about one hundred and seventy miles and is by far the greatest of all in the peninsula. The Han is navigable to a little above Seoul, eighty miles; the Tatong to Ping-Yang, seventy-five miles; and the Kum is navigable for small boats for about thirty miles. In the south-eastern part of the peninsula the Nak-tong is navigable for small boats to a distance of one hundred and forty miles. The Tumen river, which forms the north-eastern boundary between Corea and Siberia, is not navigable except near the mouth. It drains a mountainous and rainy country. Ordinarily it is shallow and quiet, but in spring its current becomes very turbulent and swollen.

Occupying about the same latitude as Italy, Corea is also, like Italy, hemmed in on the north by mountain ranges, and traversed from north to south by another chain. The whole peninsula is very mountainous, some of the peaks rising to a height of eight thousand feet.

The climate of the country is excellent, bracing in the north, with the south tempered by the ocean breezes in summer. The winters in the north are colder than those of American states in the same latitude, and the summers are hotter. The heat is tempered by sea breezes, but in the narrow enclosed valleys it becomes very intense. The Han is frozen at Seoul for three months in the year, sufficiently to be used as a cart road, while the Tumen is usually frozen for five months.

COREAN BULL HARROWING.

Various kinds of timber abound, except in the west, where wood is scarce and is sparingly used; and in other parts the want of coal has caused the wasteful destruction of many a forest. The fauna is very considerable and besides tigers, leopards, and deer, includes pigs, wild cats, badgers, foxes, beavers, otters, martens, bears, and a great variety of birds. The salamander is found in the streams as in western Japan. The domestic animals are few. The cattle are excellent, the bull being the usual beast of burden, the pony very small but hardy, fowls good, the pigs inferior.

Immense numbers of oxen are found in the south, furnishing the meat diet craved by the people, who eat much more of fatty food than the Japanese. Goats are rare. Sheep are imported from China only for sacrificial purposes. The dog serves for food as well as for companionship and defense. Of birds the pheasants, falcons, eagle, crane, and stork are common.

Among the products are rice, wheat, beans, cotton, hemp, corn, sesame, and perilla. Ginseng grows wild in the Kange mountains and is also much cultivated about Kai-seng, the duties upon it, notwithstanding much smuggling, yielded about half a million dollars annually.

COREAN CITY WALL.

Iron ore of excellent quality is mined; and there are copper mines in several places. The output of the silver mines is very small, but the customs returns for 1886 show the value of gold exported that year to be $503,296. The principal industries are the manufacture of paper, mats woven of grass, split bamboo blinds, oil paper, and silk. The total value of the foreign imports in 1887 was $2,300,000, two-thirds representing cotton goods; the native exports reached about $700,000, chiefly beans and cow hides. The foreign vessels entering the treaty ports yearly number about seven hundred and fifty, of some two hundred thousand tons burden. Three-fourths of the trade is with Japan and more than one-fifth with China; British goods go by way of these countries. Until 1888 business was done chiefly by barter, imports being exchanged largely for gold dust, and Japanese silk piece goods being a current exchange for trade inland. In that year the mint at Seoul was completed, and a beneficial effect on commerce resulted from the introduction of a convenient and sufficient coinage. Seoul is connected by telegraph with Taku, Port Arthur, Chemulpo, Gensan, and Fusan.

Corea is divided into eight provinces, three on the east coast and five on the west coast. These eight provinces are divided into sixty districts with about three hundred and sixty cities, only sixty of which however are entitled to the name, the remainder distinguishing themselves from the larger hamlets and villages merely by the walled-in residence of the chief government official. Only a portion of each real city is walled in; but it must not be thought that these walls are in any way similar to those to be found in China, where even second and third rate cities are protected by high and strong fortifications with moats. Corean walls are usually about six feet high, miserably constructed, of irregular and uneven stone blocks, and nearly every one of them would tumble down at the first shock of a ball fired from a modern gun.

CHINESE PROTECTED CRUISER CHIH-YUEN.
Sunk at the Battle of the Yalu.

Corea has for centuries successfully carried out the policy of isolation. Instead of a peninsula, her rulers strove to make her an accessible island, and insulate her from the shock of change. She has built, not a great wall of masonry, but a barrier of sea and river-flood, of mountain and devastated land, of palisade and cordon of armed sentinels. Frost and snow, storm and winter, she hailed as her allies. Not content with the sea border, she desolated her shores lest they should tempt the foreigner to land. In addition to this, between her Chinese neighbor and herself she placed a neutral space of unplanted, unoccupied land. This strip of forest and desolated plain twenty leagues wide, has stretched for three centuries between Corea and Manchooria. To form it, four cities and many villages were suppressed and left in ruins. The soil of these former solitudes is very good, the roads easy, and the hills not high. The southern boundary of this neutral ground has been the boundary of Corea, while the northern boundary has been a wall of stakes, palisades and stone. Two centuries ago, this line of walls was strong, high, guarded and kept in repair, but year by year at last, during a long era of peace, they were suffered to fall into decay, and except for their ruins exist no longer. For centuries only the wild beasts, fugitives from justice, and outlaws from both countries have inhabited this fertile but forbidden territory. Occasionally borderers would cultivate portions of it, but gathered the produce by night or stealthily by day, venturing on it as prisoners would step over the dead line. Of late years the Chinese government has respected the neutrality of this barrier less and less. Within a generation large portions of this neutral strip have been occupied; parts of it have been surveyed and staked out by Chinese surveyors, and the Corean government has been too feeble to prevent the occupation. Though no towns or villages are marked on the map of this neutral territory, yet already a considerable number of small settlements exist upon it, and it was through them that the overland marches of the Japanese army from Corea into Manchooria had to be made.

The province which borders this neutral territory, is that of Ping-Yang or “Peaceful Quiet.” It is the border land of the kingdom, containing what was for centuries the only acknowledged gate of entrance and outlet to the one neighbor which Corea willingly acknowledged as her superior. The battle of Ping-Yang recently fought, is only one of many which have interrupted the harmony of the province of “Peaceful Quiet.” The town nearest the frontier and the gateway of the kingdom is Wi-ju. It is situated on a hill overlooking the Yalu river, and surrounded by a wall of light colored stone. The annual embassy always departed for its overland journey to China through its gates. Here also are the custom house and vigilant guards, whose chief business it was to scrutinize all persons entering or leaving Corea. Nevertheless most of the French missionaries have entered the mysterious peninsula through this loop-hole, disguising themselves as wood cutters, crossing the Yalu river on the ice, creeping through the water drains in the grand wall, and passing through this town, or they have been met by friends at appointed places along the border, and thence have traveled to the capital. Further details as to the political condition of this neutral strip will be included in a succeeding chapter, preliminary to the outbreak of the war. The Tatong river, which forms the southern boundary of the province, is the Rubicon of Corean history. At various epochs in ancient times it was the boundary river of China or of the rival states within the peninsula. About fifty miles from its mouth is the city of Ping-Yang, the metropolis and capital of the province and the royal seat of authority from before the Christian era to the tenth century. Its situation renders it a natural stronghold. It has been many times besieged by Chinese and Japanese armies, and near it many battles have been fought.

The next province to the south is that of Hwanghai or the “Yellow Sea” province. This is the land of Corea that projects into the Yellow Sea directly opposite the Shan-tung promontory of China, on which are the ports of Chefoo and Wei-hai-wei. Tien-tsin, the seaport of Peking, is a little farther east. From these ports since the most ancient times, the Chinese armadas have sailed and invading armies have embarked for Corea. Over and over again has the river Tatong been crowded with fleets of junks, fluttering the dragon banners at their peaks. To guard against these invasions signal fires were lighted on the hill-tops which formed a cordon of flame and sped the alarm from coast to capital in a few hours. This province has been the camping ground of the armies of many nations. Here, beside the border forays which engaged the troops of the rival kingdom, the Japanese, Chinese, Mongols, and Manchoos have contended for victory again and again. The principal cities of this province are Hai-chiu the capital, Hwang-ju an old baronial walled city, and the commercial city of Sunto or Kai-seng. Rock salt, flints, ginseng, varnish, and brushes made of the hair of wolf tails, are the principal products of the province.

GATE OF SEOUL.

Kiung-kei is the province which contains the national capital, although it is the smallest of all. The city of Han Yang, or Seoul, is on the north side of the river, forty or fifty miles from its mouth. The name Han Yang means “the fortress on the Han river,” while the common term applied to the royal city is Seoul, which means “the capital.” The population of the city is between two hundred thousand and two hundred and fifty thousand. The natural advantages of Seoul are excellent, as it is well protected by surrounding mountains, and its suburbs reach the navigable river. The scenery from the city is magnificent. The walls are of masonry, averaging about twenty feet in height, with arched stone bridges over the water courses. The streets are narrow and tortuous. The king’s castle is in the northern part. The islands in the river near the capital are inhabited by fishermen.

Four great fortresses guard the approaches to the royal city, all of which have been the scene of siege and battle in time past. The fortresses in succession are Suwen to the south, Kwang-chiu to the south-east, Sunto to the north and Kang-wa to the west. On the walls of the first three have been set the banners of the hosts of Ming from China and of Taiko from Japan, in the wars at the close of the sixteenth century. The Manchoo standard in 1637 and the French eagles in 1866 were planted on the ramparts of Kang-wa. Beside these castled cities there are forts and redoubts along the river banks crowning most of the commanding headlands. Over these the stars and stripes floated for three days in 1871 when the American forces captured the strongholds.

Sunto is one of the most important, if not the chief commercial city in the kingdom, and from 960 to 1392 it was the national capital. The chief staple of manufacture and sale is the coarse cotton cloth which forms the national dress. Kang-wa on the island of the same name, at the mouth of the Han river, is the favorite fortress to which the royal family are sent for safety in time of war, or are banished in case of deposition.

The province Chung Chong or “Serene Loyalty” is the next one to the southward facing the Yellow Sea. In the history of Corean Christianity this province will be remembered as the nursery of the faith. Here were made the most converts to the teachings of the French missionaries, and here persecutions were most violent. When the Japanese armies of invasion reached the capital in 1592, it was over the great highways from Fusan which cross this province. Chion-Chiu, the fortress on whose fate the capital depended, lies in the north-east of the province. The province contains ten walled cities, and like all its fellows it is divided into departments, right and left.

The most southern of the eight provinces, Chulla or “Complete Network” is also the warmest and most fertile. It is nearest to Shanghai and to the track of foreign commerce. Considerable quantities of hides, bones, horns, leather, and tallow are exported to Japan. The beef supplied from the herds of cattle in the pastures of Chulla is famous, and troops of horses graze on the pasture land. The province is well furnished with ports and harbors. Christianity had quite a hold in this province, and when Corea was partly opened to the world there were many believers found in the north who were descendants of Christian martyrs. The capital is Chon-chiu. The soil of the province was the scene of many battles during the Chinese invasions of 1592-97.

NAVAL ATTACK ON THE CHEN-YUEN BEFORE CHEMULPO.
Japanese Drawing.

The island of Quelpaert is about sixty miles south of the mainland. It is mountainous, with one peak called Han-ra more than six thousand five hundred feet high. On its top are three extinct craters within each of which is a lake of pure water. Corean children are taught to believe that the three first created men of the world still dwell on these lofty heights.

The most south-easterly province of Corea, and therefore the nearest to Japan, is Kiung-sang or the “Province of Respectful Congratulation.” It is one of the richest of the eight provinces as well as the most populous, and the seat of many historical associations with Japan. The city of Kion-chiu was the capital of the ancient kingdom of Shinra, and from here to Kioto, from the third to the tenth century, the relations of war and peace, letters and religion were continuous and fruitful. The province has always been the gateway of entrance and exit to the Japanese. Fusan, the port which was held by the Japanese from very ancient times, is well at the south-eastern extremity of the peninsula. Its fortifications are excellent, and its harbor well protected. Populous cities encircle the bay on which Fusan stands, and from this point extend two great roads to Seoul. The influence of centuries of close intercourse with their neighbors, the Japanese, is strongly marked in this province.

The “River Meadow,” or Kang-wen province fronts Japan from the middle of the eastern coast directly north of Kiung-sang. It is a province of beautiful scenery and precipitous mountains. The capital is Wen-chiu. The women of the province are said to be the most beautiful in Corea.

Ham-kiung, or complete view, is that part of Corean territory adjoining the boundary of Russia. The south-eastern boundary of Siberia, which has been pushed farther south after every European war with China, touched the Tumen river, the northern boundary of Corea, in 1858. It is but a little ways from the mouth of the Tumen river to the forts of Vladivostok and Possiet in Russian territory. From these cities extends a telegraph across Siberia to the cities of European Russia, and here will be the terminus of the great Trans-Siberian railway now under construction. Possiet is connected with Nagasaki by an electric cable. In the event of a war between China and Russia, the Czar would most probably make Corea the basis of operations. Thousands of Coreans have left their own country to dwell in the neighboring portions of Siberia, and most of them are from the province of Ham-kiung. Persecuted Christians from all over the Corean peninsula have however escaped to Russia for protection for many years. The port of Gensan near Port Lazaref, fronting Broughton’s Bay has been opened for trade since May 1, 1880, and has been an important strategic and commercial point ever since. The capital city of this province is Ham-hung and there are fourteen other walled cities within its limits. Until the Russians occupied the adjoining territory, an annual fair was held at the Corea city of Kion-wen which lies close to the border. Here the Manchoo and Chinese merchants bartered their wares for those of Corean, the traffic lasting but two or three days and sometimes only one day. At the end of the fair any lingering Chinese not soon across the border was urged over at the point of a spear. Foreigners found within the Corean limits at any other time were apt to be ruthlessly murdered.

The government of Corea, since the amalgamation of the different tribes and union of the various states five hundred years ago, has devolved upon an independent king, an hereditary monarch whose rule was absolute and supreme. Next in authority to the king are the three Chong, or high ministers. The chief of these is the greatest dignitary of the kingdom, and in time of minority or inability of the king wields royal authority. The father of the present king ruled as regent up to the time when his son reached his majority in 1874. After the king and the three prime ministers, come the six heads of departments of government which rank next. These six department ministers are assisted by two other associates, the Cham-pan and the Cham-e. These four grades and twenty-one dignitaries constitute the royal council of Dai-jin, though the actual authority is in the three ministers. All of the department ministers make daily reports of their affairs, and refer matters of importance to the supreme council. There are also three chamberlains who record every day the acts and words of the king. A daily government gazette called the Cho-po is issued for information on official matters. The general cast and method of procedure in the court and government were copied in the beginning after the great model in Peking. The rule of the king in Corea is absolute, and his will alone is law. There has always existed, indeed, the office of a high functionary whose special duty consists in watching and controlling the royal actions. Formerly this office really had some significance, but of late years it has possessed none whatever. Another very curious institution has been that of the declared or official favorite, a position generally filled by some member of a noble family, or by one of the ministers whose influence for good or for evil was paramount with his royal master.

COREAN MAGISTRATE AND SERVANT.

The titles of the prime ministers are Chief of The Just Government, The Just Governor of the Left, and The Just Governor of the Right. The six department ministers are those of the interior, or office and public employ, finance, war, education, punishments or justice, and public works. The duties of the minister of foreign affairs devolve on the minister of education.

Each of the eight provinces is under the direction of a Kam-sa or governor. The cities are divided into six classes, and are governed by officers of corresponding rank. Towns are given in charge of the petty magistrates, there being twelve ranks or dignities in the official class. In theory, any male Corean able to pass the government examination is eligible to office, but the greater number of the best positions are secured by the nobles and their friends. The terms of office in these posts, from that of provincial governorship down to the lowest are only for two or three years. At the end of that time the incumbent pays purchase money and is removed to another place. The natural result of this system is that the officials take little interest in their offices except to extort as much profit as possible from the people whom they are governing. With offices and honors sold to the highest bidder, the high officers sell justice and plunder their subordinates, while these again try to indemnify themselves by further extortion.

The magistrates lay great stress on the trifles of etiquette, and sumptuary laws exist referring to all sorts of the small things of life. The rule of the local authorities is very minute in all its ramifications. The system of making every five houses a social unit is universal. Every subject of the sovereign except nobles of rank must possess a passport testifying to his personality and must show his ticket on demand.

Civil matters are decided by the ordinary civil magistrate, while criminal cases are tried by the military commandant. Very important cases are referred to the governor of the province, and thence appealed to the high court in the capital.

JAPANESE NAVAL ATTACK ON THE FORTS AT WEI-HAI-WEI, August 17th.

COREAN CHARACTERISTICS AND MANNERS OF
LIFE.

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Physique of the People—Rigid Caste System—Slavery—Guilds and Trade Unions—Position of Women—Nameless and Oppressed—Marriage and Family Life—Burial and Mourning Customs—Dress and Diet—Homes—Home Life—Children—Education—Outdoor Life—Music—Literature—Language—Religion.

The Corean people are mainly of a Mongolian type, though there is some evidence that there is a Caucasian element in the stock. They are a little larger and steadier of physique than the Japanese, or the Chinese of the south, more nearly approaching to the northern Chinese and even to the tribes in the northeast of Asia. Frequently individuals are met, with hair not quite black, and even blue eyes and an almost English style of face. The characteristics of the people are distinguished to advantage from that of their Chinese neighbors by the openness and frankness of their demeanor. The Coreans, even of the lower classes, are grave and sedate by nature, which, however, does not exclude a spirit of frank gayety shown on nearer acquaintance. They are thoroughly honest, faithful and good natured, and attach themselves with an almost childlike confidence even to strangers and foreigners, when once they begin to trust in their sincerity.

Firm, sure, and quick in his walk, the Corean possesses greater ease and a freer motion than the Chinese, to whom they are superior in height and bodily strength. On the other hand it cannot be denied that the Coreans rank considerably below the Chinese in cultivation of good manners, and they are wanting in that little polish which is not absent even among the lower classes of China and Japan.

The peculiarity of the Corean race and the difference between the same and the neighboring nations, shows itself mainly in the strict and rigid division of the castes which part the various ranks of the population of the peninsula from each other, showing some analogy to the caste institutions prevailing among the Hindus in India. There exists, however, this notable difference between the two, that while with the latter this separation is based upon religious principles and customs, no religious movement appears as its cause in Corea, where its origin seems solely attributable to political reasons, which have been maintained and kept up to our times by the government for reasons of its own. The forms of Corean society to this day are derived from feudal ranks and divisions. The fruit and legacy of feudalism are seen in the serfdom or slavery which is Corea’s peculiar domestic institution.

Speaking in general terms, society has four grades, following the king. These are the nobles and the three classes which come after them, in the last of which are “the seven low callings.” In detail the grades may be counted by the scores. In the lowest grade of the fourth class are “the seven vile callings,” that is, the merchant, boatman, jailer, postal or mail slave, monk, butcher, and sorcerer. The first and foremost rank, immediately after the king and the members of the royal family, who stand absolutely above and beyond these castes, is taken up by the so-called nobles, descendants of the old families of chieftains, who are again subdivided into two degrees, the civil and the military nobility. These two classes of nobles, in the course of time, had possessed themselves of the exclusive right of occupying public office. Following upon these we find the caste of the half nobles, numerically a very weak class, which forms the transition from the nobility to the civic classes. These also enjoy the right to fill certain offices from their ranks, principally those of government secretaries and translators of Chinese. After these come the civic caste, which consists of the better and wealthier portion of the city inhabitants. This class counts amongst its numbers the merchants, manufacturers, and most kinds of artisans. Next follows the people’s caste, which comprising the bulk of the people is naturally the most numerous of all and includes all villagers, farmers, shepherds, huntsmen, fishermen, and the like.

STATESMAN ON MONOCYCLE.—Native Drawing.

The nobles are usually the slave holders, many of them having in their households large numbers whom they have inherited along with their ancestral chattels. The master has a right to sell or otherwise dispose of the children of his slaves if he so choose. Slavery or serfdom in Corea is in a continuous state of decline, and the number of slaves constantly diminishing. The slaves are those who are born in a state of servitude, those who sell themselves as slaves, and those who are sold to be such by their parents in times of famine or for debt. Infants exposed or abandoned that are picked up and educated become slaves, but their offspring are born free. The serfdom is really very mild. Only the active young men are held to field labor, the young women being kept as domestics. When old enough to marry, the males are let free by an annual payment of a sum of money for a term of years. Outside of private ownership of slaves, there is a species of government slavery which illustrates the persistency of one feature of the ancient kingdom of Korai perpetuated through twenty centuries. It is the law that in case of the condemnation of a great criminal, the ban shall fall upon his wife and children, who at once become the slaves of the judge. These unfortunates do not have the privilege of honorably serving the magistrate, but usually pass their existence in waiting on the menials in the various government offices. Only a few of the government slaves are such by birth, most of them having become so through judicial condemnation in criminal cases; but this latter class fare far worse than the ordinary slaves. They are chiefly females, and are treated little better than beasts. Nothing can equal the contempt in which they are held.

COREAN BRUSH CUTTER.—Native Drawing.

By union and organization it has come to pass that the common people and the serfs themselves in Corea have won a certain degree of social freedom that is increasing. The spirit of association is spread among the Coreans of all classes, from the highest families to the meanest slaves. All those who have any kind of work or interest in common, form guilds, corporations or societies which have a common fund contributed to by all for aid in time of need. Very powerful trade unions exist among the mechanics and laborers, such as hat-weavers, coffin-makers, carpenters, and masons. These societies enable each class to possess a monopoly of trade which even a noble vainly tries to break. Sometimes they hold this right by writ purchased or obtained from government, though usually it is by prescription. Most of the guilds are taxed by the government for their monopoly enjoyed. They have their chief or head man who possesses almost despotic power, even in some guilds of life and death.

One of the most powerful and best organized guilds is that of the porters. The interior commerce of the country being almost entirely on the backs of men and pack horses, these people have the monopoly of it. They number about ten thousand, and are divided by provinces and districts under the orders of chiefs and inspectors. They have very severe rules for the government of their guild, and crimes among them are punished with death at the order of their chief. They are so powerful that they pretend that even the government dare not interfere with them. They are honest and faithful in their business, delivering packages with certainty to the most remote places in the kingdom. When they have received an insult, or injustice, or too low wages, they “strike” in a body and retire from the district. This puts a stop to all travel and business until the grievances are settled, or submission to their own terms is made. Owing to the fact that the country at large is so lacking in the shops and stores common in other countries, and that instead fairs on set days are so numerous in the towns and villages, the guild of peddlers and hucksters is very large and influential. This class includes probably two hundred thousand able bodied persons who in the various provinces move freely among the people, and are thus useful to government as spies, detectives, messengers, and in time of need, soldiers.

PORTERS WITH CHAIR.—Native Drawing.

The Corean woman has little moral existence. She is an instrument of pleasure or of labor, but never man’s companion or equal. She has no name. In childhood she receives indeed a surname by which she is known in the family and by near friends, but as she grows up none but her father and mother employ this appellation; to all others she is “the sister” of such a one or “the daughter” of so and so. After her marriage her name is buried, and she is absolutely nameless. Her own parents allude to her by employing the name of the district or ward in which she is married. When she bears children she is “the mother” of so and so. When a woman appears for trial before a magistrate, in order to save time and trouble she receives a special name for the time being.

In the higher classes of society etiquette requires that the children be separated after the age of eight or ten years. After that time the boys dwell entirely in the men’s apartments to study and even to eat and drink; the girls remain secluded in the women’s quarters. The boys are taught that it is a shameful thing even to set foot in the female part of the house. The girls are told that it is disgraceful even to be seen by males, so that gradually they seek to hide themselves when any of the male sex appear. These customs, continued from childhood to old age, result in destroying the family life. A Corean of good taste only occasionally holds conversation with his wife, whom he regards as being far beneath him. The men chat, smoke, and enjoy themselves in the outer rooms, and the women receive their parents and friends in the inner apartments. The men seek the society of their male neighbors, and the women on their part unite together for local gossip. In the higher classes, when a young woman has arrived to marriageable age none even of her own relatives except those nearest of kin, is allowed to see or speak to her. After their marriage women are inaccessible. They are nearly always confined to their apartments, nor can they even look out into the streets without permission from their lords.

There is, however, another side. Though counting for nothing in society, and nearly so in their family, they are surrounded by a certain sort of exterior respect. They are always addressed in the formulas of the most polite language. The men always step aside in the street to allow a woman to pass, even though she be of the poorer classes. There is also a peculiar custom which exists in Seoul which exhibits deference to the comfort of the women. A bell in the castle is struck at sunset, after which male citizens are not allowed to go out of their houses even to visit their neighbors. Women, on the contrary are permitted the freedom of the streets after this time, consequently, as they are assured of safety, from seeing men or being seen by them, they take their exercise and enjoy the outdoors most heartily and freely at night.

Marriage in Corea is a thing with which a woman has little or nothing to do. The father of the young man communicates with the father of the girl he wishes his son to marry. This is often done without consulting the tastes or character of either, and usually through a middleman or go-between. The fathers settle the time of the wedding, and a favorable day is appointed by the astrologers. Under this aspect marriage seems an affair of small importance, but in reality it is marriage only that gives one any civil rank or influence in society. Every unmarried person is treated as a child. He may commit all sorts of foolishness without being held to account. His capers are not noticed, for he is not supposed to think or act seriously. Even the unmarried young men of twenty-five or thirty years of age can take no part in social reunions or speak on affairs of importance. But marriage is emancipation. Even if mated at twelve or thirteen years of age, the married are adults. The bride takes her place among the matrons and the young man has a right to speak among the men and to wear a hat.

The badge of single or married life is the hair. Before marriage the young man who goes bareheaded, wears a simple tress hanging down his back. In wedlock the hair is bound up on the top of the head and is cultivated on all parts of the scalp. Young persons who insist on remaining single, or bachelors who have not yet found a wife, sometimes, however, secretly cut off their hair or get it done by fraud in order to pass for married folks and avoid being treated as children. Such a custom however is a gross violation of morals and etiquette.

On the evening before the wedding the young lady who is to be married invites one of her friends to change her virginal coiffure to that of a married woman. The bridegroom-to-be, also invites one of his acquaintances to do up his hair in manly style. On the marriage day in the house of the groom a platform is set up and richly adorned with decorative cloths. Parents, friends, and acquaintances assemble in a crowd. The couple to be married, who may never have seen or spoken to each other, are brought in and take their places on the platform face to face. There they remain for a few minutes. They salute each other with profound obeisance but utter not a word. This constitutes the ceremony of marriage. Each then retires upon either side; the bride to the female, and the groom to the male apartments, where feasting and amusement after fashions in vogue in Chosen take place. The expense of a wedding is considerable and the bridegroom must be unstinting in his hospitality. Any failure in this particular may subject him to unpleasant practical jokes. On her wedding day the young bride must preserve absolute silence both on the marriage platform and in the nuptial chamber. Etiquette requires this at least among the nobility. Though overwhelmed with questions and compliments, silence is her duty. She must rest mute and impassive as a statue.

It is the reciprocal salutation before witnesses on the wedding dais that constitutes legitimate marriage. From that moment a husband may claim a woman as his wife. Conjugal fidelity, obligatory on the woman, is not required of the husband, and a wife is little more than a slave of superior rank. Among the nobles the young bridegroom spends three or four days with his bride, and then absents himself from her for a considerable time to prove that he does not esteem her too highly. To act otherwise would be considered in very bad taste and highly unfashionable.

JAPANESE WAR SHIP “YOSHINO.”
(During the Attack on Wei-hai-wei, August 17th, 1894.)

Habituated from infancy to such a yoke and regarding themselves as of an inferior race, most women submit to their lot with exemplary resignation. Having no idea of progress or of an infraction of established usage they bear all things. They become devoted and obedient wives, jealous of the reputation and well-being of their husbands. The woman who is legally espoused, whether widow or slave, enters into and shares the entire social estate of her husband. Even if she be not noble by birth she becomes so by marrying a noble. It is not proper for a widow to remarry.

The fashion of mourning, the proper time and place to shed tears, and express grief, according to regulations, are rigidly prescribed in an official treatise, or “Guide to Mourners,” published by the government. The corpse must be placed in a coffin of very thick wood, and preserved during many months in a special room prepared and ornamented for this purpose. It is proper to weep only in this death chamber, but this must be done three or four times daily. Before entering it the mourner must don a special suit of mourning clothes. At the new and full moon all the relatives are invited and expected to assist in the ceremonies. These practices continue more or less even after burial, and at intervals during several years. Often a noble will go out to weep at the tomb, passing days and nights in this position. Among the poor, who have not the means to provide a death chamber and expensive mourning, the coffin is kept outside their houses covered with mats until the time for its burial.

Though cremation is known in Corea, the most usual form of disposing of the dead is by burial. Children are wrapped up in the clothes and bedding in which they die and are thus buried. As all unmarried persons are reckoned as children their shroud and burial are the same. With the married the process is more costly, and more detailed and prolonged. The selection of a proper site for their tomb is a matter of profound solicitude, time, and money; for the geomancers must be consulted with a fee. The tombs of the poor consist only of a grave and a low mound of earth. With the richer class monuments are of stone, sometimes neat or even imposing, sometimes grotesque.

Mourning is of many degrees[degrees] and lengths, and is betokened by dress, abstinence from food and business, visits to the tomb, offerings, tablets, and many visible indications detailed even to absurdity. Pure or nearly pure white is the mourning color, as a contrast to red, the color of rejoicing. When noblemen don the peaked hat which covers the face as well as the head, they are as dead to the world, not to be spoken to, molested, or even arrested, if charged with crime. This Corean mourning hat proved the helmet of salvation to Christians and explains the safety of the French missionaries who lived so long in disguise under its shelter, unharmed in the country where the police were ever on their track. The Jesuits were not slow to see the wonderful protection promised for them, and availed themselves of it at once and always, both while entering the well-guarded frontier and while residing in the country.

Corean architecture is in a very primitive condition. The castles, fortifications, temples, monasteries, and public buildings cannot approach the magnificence of those of Japan or China. The dwellings are tiled or thatched houses, almost invariably one story high. In the smaller towns these are not arranged in regular streets but are scattered here and there. Even in the cities the streets are narrow and tortuous. In the rural parts the houses of the wealthy are surrounded by beautiful groves, with gardens circled by hedges or fences of rushes or split bamboo. The cities show a greater display of red-tiled roofs, as only the officials and nobles are allowed this honor. Shingles are not much used. The thatchings are rice or barley straw. A low wall of uncemented stone five or six feet high, surrounds the dwellings. The foundations are laid on stone set in the earth, and the floor of the humble is the ground itself. The people one grade above the poorest, cover the hard ground with sheets of oiled paper which serve as a carpet. For the better class a floor of wood is raised a foot or so above the earth.

Bed clothes are of silk, wadded cotton, thick paper, and furs. Cushions or bags of rice-chaff form the pillows of the rich. The poor man uses a smooth log of wood or slightly raised portion of the floor to rest his head upon. In most families of the middle class, the “kang” forms the vaulted floor, bed, and stove. It is as if we should make a bedstead of bricks and put foot-stoves under it. The floor is bricked over or built of stone, over flues which run from the fireplace at one end of the house to the chimney at the other. The fire which does the cooking is thus used to warm those sitting or sleeping in the room beyond.

Three rooms are the rule in an average house, and these are for cooking, eating, and sleeping. In the kitchen the most notable articles are the large earthen jars for holding rice, barley or water. Each of them is big enough to hold a man easily. The second room, containing the “kang,” is the sleeping apartment, and the next is the best room or parlor. Little furniture is the rule. Coreans, like the Japanese, sit not cross-legged but on their heels. Among the well-to-do, dog skins cover the floor for a carpet, or tiger skins serve as rugs. Matting is common.

COREAN BOAT.—Native Drawing.

The meals are served on the floor on small low tables, usually one for each guest, but sometimes one for a couple. The best table service is of porcelain and the ordinary sort of earthenware with white metal or copper utensils. The tablecloths are of fine glazed paper and resemble oiled silk. No knives or forks are used; but instead chopsticks and what is more common than in China or Japan, spoons are used at every meal. The walls range in quality of decoration from plain mud to colored plaster and paper. Pictures are not known. The windows are square and latticed without or within, covered with tough oiled paper, and moving in grooves. The doors are of wood, paper, or plaited bamboo. Glass was till recently a nearly unknown luxury in Corea.

The Corean liquor by preference is brewed or distilled from rice, millet, or barley. These alcoholic drinks are of various strength, color, and smell, ranging from beer to brandy. No trait of the Coreans has more impressed their numerous visitors than their love of all kinds of strong drink. No sooner were the ports of Corea opened to commerce than the Chinese established liquor stores, while European wines, brandies and whiskeys have entered to increase the national drunkenness. Although the Corean lives between the two great tea-producing countries of the world, he scarcely knows the taste of tea and the fragrant herb is little used on the peninsula.

The staple diet has in it much more of meat and fat than that of the Japanese, and the average Corean can eat twice as much as the Japanese. Beef, pork, fowls, venison, fish, and game are consumed without much waste and rejected material. Dog flesh is on sale among the common butchers’ meat. The women cook rice beautifully, and other well-known dishes are barley, millet, beans, potato, lily-bulbs, seaweeds, acorns, radishes, turnips, macaroni, vermicelli, apples, pears, plums, grapes, persimmons, and various kinds of berries. All kinds of condiments are much relished.

One striking fault of the Coreans at the table is their voracity. In this respect there is not the least difference between the rich and poor, noble or plebeian. To eat much is an honor, and the merit of a feast consists not in the quality but in the quantity of the food served. Little talking is done while eating, for each sentence might lose a mouthful. Hence, since a capacious stomach is a high accomplishment, mothers use every means to develop as elastic a capacity as possible in their children from very infancy. The Coreans equal the Japanese in devouring raw fish, and uncooked food of all kinds is swallowed without a wry face. Fish bones do not scare them. These they eat as they do the small bones of fowls.

THE BATTLE AT GAZAN.
Japanese Drawing.

COREAN EGG-SELLER.—Native Drawing.

Nationally and individually the Coreans are very deficient in conveniences for the toilet. Bath tubs are rare, and except in the warmer days of summer, when the river and sea serve for immersion, the natives are not usually found under water. The need of soap and hot water has been noticed by travelers and writers of every nation. The men are very proud of their beards, and honor them as a distinctive glory and mark of their sex. Women coil their glossy black tresses into massive knots and fasten them with pins, or gold and silver rings.

Corea is famous as the land of big hats. Some of these head-coverings are so immense that the human head encased in one of them seems as but a hub in a cart wheel. In shape the gentleman’s hat resembles a flowerpot inverted in the center of a round table. Two feet is a common diameter, and the top, which rises in a cone nine inches higher, is only three inches wide at the apex. The usual material is bamboo, split to the fineness of a thread and woven. The fabric is then varnished or lacquered, and becomes perfectly weatherproof. The prevalence of cotton clothing, easily soaked and rendered uncomfortable, requires the ample protection for the back and shoulders which these umbrella-like hats furnish.

The wardrobe of the upper classes consists of the ceremonial and the house dress. The former as a rule is of fine silk, and the latter of coarser silk or cotton. They are of pink, blue, and other rich colors. The official robe is a long garment like a wrapper, with loose baggy sleeves. There are few tailors’ shops, the women of each household making the family outfit. The underdress of both sexes is a short jacket with tight sleeves, which for men reaches to the thighs, and for women only to the waist, and a pair of drawers reaching from waist to ankle. The females wear a petticoat over this garment, so that the Coreans say they dress like western women, and foreign-made hosiery and undergarments are in demand. Their general style of costume is that of the wrapper, stiff, wide, and inflated, with abundant starch in summer, but clinging and baggy in winter. The white dress of the Corean makes his complexion look darker than it really is. Footgear is either of native or of Chinese make. The laborer contents himself with sandals woven from rice-straw, which usually last but a few days. Small feet do not seem to be considered a beauty, and the foot binding of the Chinese is unknown in Cho-sen.

Judging from a collection of the toys of Corean children, and from their many terms of affection, and words relating to games and sports, festivals and recreation, and nursery stories, the life of the little ones must be pleasant. In the capital and among the higher classes, children’s toys are very handsome, ranking as real works of art. They have many games played by the little ones quite similar to those of our own babies, and they delight in pets, such as monkeys and puppies.

At school the pupils study out loud and noisily, according to the method all over Asia. Besides learning the Chinese characters and the vernacular alphabet, the children master arithmetic and writing. The normal Corean is fond of his children, especially of sons, who in his eyes are worth ten times as much as daughters. Such a thing as exposure of children is little known. The first thing inculcated in a child’s mind is respect for his father. All insubordination is immediately and sternly repressed. Far different is it with the mother. She yields to her boy’s caprices, and laughs at his faults and vices without rebuke, while the child soon learns that a mother’s authority is next to nothing.

Primogeniture is the rigid rule. Younger sons at the time of their marriage, or at other important periods of life receive paternal gifts, but the bulk of the property belongs to the oldest son, on whom the younger sons look as their father. He is the head of the family, and regards his father’s children as his own. In all eastern Asia the bonds of family are much closer than among Caucasian people of the present time. All the kindred, even to the fifteenth or twentieth degree, whatever their social position, rich or poor, educated or illiterate, officials or beggars, form a clan or more properly one single family, all of whose members have mutual interests to sustain. The house of one is the house of the other, and each will assist to his utmost, another of the clan to get money, office, or advantage. The law recognizes this system by levying on the clan the taxes and debts which individuals of it cannot pay, holding the clan responsible for the individual. To this they submit without complaint or protest. Instead of the family being a unit, as with us, it is only the fragment of a clan, a segment in the great circle of kindred. The Coreans are fully as clannish as the Chinese, and in this lies one great obstacle to Christianity or to any kind of individual reform.

China gave her culture to Corea and Corea passed it on to Japan. If we may believe Corean tales, then the Coreans have possessed letters and writing during three thousand years. It is certain that since the opening of the Christian era the light of China’s philosophy has shone steadily among Corean scholars. In spite of their national system of writing, the influence of the finished philosophy and culture of China has been so great that the hopelessness of producing a copy equal to the original became at once apparent to the Corean mind. The culture of their native tongue has been neglected by Corean scholars. The consequence is that after so many centuries of national life Corea possesses no literature worthy of the name.

At present Corean literary men possess a highly critical knowledge of Chinese. Most intelligent scholars read the classics with ease and fluency. Penmanship is an art as much prized and as widely practiced as in Japan, and reading and writing constitute education. Corea has most closely imitated her teacher, China, in the use of education. She fosters education by making scholastic ability as tested in the literary examination, the basis of appointment to office. This civil service reform was established by the now ruling dynasty early in the fifteenth century. The Corean child, neglecting his own language, literature, and history, studies those of China and the philosophy of Confucius, so that his education is practically that of the young man in China. The same classics are studied and the same attention is paid to memory cultivation. The competitive examinations too are very similar to those of China, and corresponding degrees are granted. The system of literary examinations, which for two or three centuries after its establishment was vigorously maintained with impartiality, is at present in a state of decay, bribery and official favor being the causes of its decline.

The special schools of languages, mathematics, medicine, art etc., are under the patronage of the government, but amount to very little. The school of astronomy and the choice of fortunate days for state occasions is for the special service of the king. There is also a school of interpreters, charts, law, and horology.

Although the Chinese language, writing and literature form the basis of education and culture in Chosen, yet the native language is distinct in structure from the Chinese, having little in common with it. The latter is monosyllabic, while the Corean is polysyllabic, as is the Japanese which the Corean closely resembles. No other language is so nearly affiliated to the Japanese as is the Corean. The Corean alphabet, one of the most simple and perfect in the world, consists of twenty-five letters, eleven vowels and fourteen consonants. They are made with easy strokes in which straight lines, circles, and dots only are used.

JAPANESE SOLDIERS DESCENDING FROM THE CASTLE AT FUNG-HWANG.
Japanese Drawing.

As in Japan, so in Corea three styles of languages prevail, and are used as follows: Pure Chinese without any admixture of Corean, in books and writings on science, history and government, and in the theses of the students and literary men; in the books composed in the Corean language the vernacular syntax serves as the framework, but the vocabulary is largely Chinese; the Corean book style of composition which is written in the pure Corean language. Every one in Corea speaks the vernacular and not Chinese.

The books which have been written in Corean, are chiefly primers or manuals of history, books on etiquette and ritual, and geography. There are also a few works of poetry written in the vulgar dialect.

COREAN BAND OF MUSICIANS.—Native Drawing.

In passionate fondness for music the Coreans decidedly surpass all other Asiatic nations. Their knowledge is indeed primitive, however, not superior to that of their neighbors, and their instruments are of rude workmanship and construction. The principal of these instruments are the gong, the flute, and the two-stringed guitar, combining to make a music anything but harmonious. They always sing in falsetto, like the Chinese, in a monotonous and melancholy manner. The Coreans however possess a musical ear, and they know how to appreciate and like to listen to foreign music very much, while the Chinese have not the slightest[slightest] idea of harmony, and placing our music far below their own, look down upon our art with something like a feeling of pity.

The fibres of Corean superstition, and the actual religion of the people of to-day, have not radically changed during twenty centuries in spite of Buddhism. The worship of the spirits of nature and the other popular gods is still reflected in superstition and practice. The Chinese Fung Shuy, which in Corean becomes Pung-siu, is a system of superstition concerning the direction of the everyday things of life, which is nearly as powerful in Corea as in the parent country. Upon this system, and perhaps nearly equal in age with it, is the cult of ancestral worship which has existed in Chinese Asia from unrecorded time. Confucius found it in his day and made it the basis of his teachings, as it had already been of the religious and ancient documents of which he was the editor. The Corean system of ancestral worship presents no feature radically different from the Chinese. Confucianism, or the Chinese system of ethics, holds about the same position that it does in China. Taoism seems to be little studied.

In Corean mouths Buddha becomes Pul and his “way” or doctrine Pul-to or Pul-chie. The faith from India has made thorough conquest of the southern half of the peninsula, but has only partially leavened the northern portion where the grosser heathenism prevails. The palmy days of Corean Buddhism were during the era of Korai, 905 to 1392 A.D. In its development, Corean Buddhism has frequently been a potent influence[influence] in national affairs, and the power of the bonzes has at times been so great as to practically control the court and nullify decrees of the king. As in Japan the frequent wars have developed the formation of a clerical militia, able to garrison and defend their fortified monasteries, and even to change the fortune of war by the valor of their exploits. There are three distinct classes or grades of the bonzes or priests. The student monks devote themselves to learning and to the composition of books and to Buddhist rituals. Then there are the mendicant and traveling bonzes who solicit alms and contributions for the erection and maintenance of the temples and monastic establishments. Finally the military bonzes act as garrisons, and make, keep in order, and are trained to use weapons. Even at the present day Buddhist priests are made high officers of the government, governors of provinces, and military advisers. In the nunneries are two kinds of female devotees, those who shave the head and those who keep their locks. The vows of the latter are less rigid. Excepting in its military phases, the type of Corean Buddhism approaches that of China rather than of Japan.

The great virtue of the Coreans is their innate respect for and daily practice of the laws of human brotherhood. Mutual assistance and generous hospitality among themselves are distinctive national traits. In all the important events of life, such as marriages and funerals, each person makes it his duty to aid the family most directly interested. One will charge himself with the duty of making purchases; others with arranging the ceremonies. The poor, who can give nothing, carry messages to friends and relatives in the near or remote villages, passing day and night on foot and giving their labors gratuitously. When fire, flood or other accident destroys the house of one of their number, neighbors make it a duty to lend a hand to rebuild. One brings stone, another wood, another straw. Each in addition to his gifts in material devotes two or three days’ work gratuitously. A stranger coming into a village is always assisted to build a dwelling. Hospitality is considered as one of the most sacred duties. It would be a grave and shameful thing to refuse a portion of one’s meal to any person, known or unknown, who presents himself at eating time. Even the poor laborers at the side of the roads are often seen sharing their frugal nourishment with the passer-by. The poor man making a journey does not need elaborate preparations. At night, instead of going to a hotel, he enters some house whose exterior room is open to any comer. There he is sure to find food and lodging for the night. Rice will be shared with the stranger, and at bedtime a corner of the floor mat will serve for a bed, while he may rest his head on the long log of wood against the wall, which serves as a pillow. Even should he delay his journey for a day or two, little or nothing to his discredit will be harbored by his hosts.

It is evident after this glance at the history, the conditions, and the customs of the Coreans, that they have many excellent qualities, which require but the leavening influence of Christianity and western civilization to make them worthy members of the family of nations. It is quite possible that the influence of the Japanese-Chinese war, in its ultimate results, may reach this desirable consummation.

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The War

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JAPANESE COOLIES FOLLOWING THE ARMY.