It is impossible not to be impressed by a force which works so laboriously, while it takes no rest save that variety which comes with the change of season. The peaceable, plodding farmer of Korea has his counterpart in his bull. The Korean peasant and his weary bull are made for one another. Without his ruminating partner, the work would be impracticable. It drags the heavy plough through the deep mud of the rice-fields, and over the rough surface of the grain lands; it carries loads of brick and wood to the market, and hauls the unwieldy market cart along the country roads. The two make a magnificent pair; each is a beast of burden. The brutishness, lack of intelligence, and boorishness of the agricultural labourer in England is not quite reproduced in the Korean. The Korean farmer has of necessity to force himself to be patient. He is content to regard his sphere of utility in this world as one in which man must labour after the fashion of his animals, with no appreciable satisfaction to himself.
Originally, if history speaks truly, the farmers of Korea were inclined to be masterful and independent. Indications of this earlier spirit are found nowadays in periodical protests against the extortionate demands of local officials. These disturbances are isolated and infrequent, for, when once their spirits were crushed, the farmers developed into the present mild and inoffensive type. They submit to oppression and to the cruelty of the Yamen; they endure every form of illegal taxation, and they ruin themselves to pay “squeezes,” which exist only through their own humility. They dread the assumption of rank and the semblance of authority. Their fear of a disturbance is so great that, although they may murmur against the impositions of the magistrate, they continue to meet his demands.
THE KOREAN AND HIS BULL
At the present day the farmer of Korea is the ideal child of nature; superstitious, simple, patient and ignorant. He is the slave of his work, and he moves no further from his village than the nearest market. He has a terrified belief in the existence of demons, spirits and dragons, whose dirty and grotesque counterfeits adorn his thatched hut. There are other characteristic traits in this great section of the national life. Their capacity for work is unlimited; they are seldom idle, and, unlike the mass of their countrymen, they have no sense of repose. As farmers, they have by instinct and tradition certain ideas and principles which are excellent in themselves. To the wayfarer and stranger the individual farmer is supremely and surprisingly hospitable. A foreigner discussing the peculiarities of their scenery, their lands, and the general details of their life with them, is struck by their profound reverence for everything beyond their own understanding, and their amazing sense of the beautiful in nature. The simplicity of their appreciation is delightful. It is easy to believe that they are more susceptible to the charms of flowers and scenery than to that of woman.
At rare intervals the farmer indulges in a diversion. Succumbing to the seductions of market day, after the fashion of every other farmer the world has ever known, he returns to the homestead a physical and moral wreck, the drunk and disorderly residuum of many months of dreary abstinence and respectability. At these times he develops a phase of unexpected assertiveness, and forcibly abducts some neighbouring beauty, or beats in the head of a friend by way of enforcing his argument. From every possible point of view he reveals qualities which proclaim him the simple, if not ideal, child of nature.
During the many months of my stay in Korea I spent some days at a wayside farmhouse, the sole accommodation which could be obtained in a mountain village. The slight insight into the mode of life of the farming peasant which was thus gained was replete with interest, charm and novelty. Knowing something of the vicissitudes of farm life, I found the daily work of this small community supremely instructive. Upon many occasions I watched the farmer’s family and his neighbours at their work. The implements of these people are rude and few, consisting of a plough, with a movable iron shoe which turns the sods in the reverse direction to our own; a spade, furnished with ropes and dragged by several men; bamboo flails and rakes, and a small hoe, sharp and heavy, used as occasion may require for reaping, chopping and hoeing, for the rough work of the farm, or the lighter service of the house.
A SPADE FURNISHED WITH ROPES
During the harvest all available hands muster in the fields. The women cut the crop, the men fasten the sheaves, which the children load into rope panniers, suspended upon wooden frames from the backs of bulls. The harvest is threshed without delay, the men emptying the laden baskets upon the open road, and setting to with solemn and uninterrupted vigour. While the men threshed with their flails, and the wind winnowed the grain, six, and sometimes eight, women worked, with their feet, a massive beam, from which an iron or granite pestle hung over a deep granite mortar. This rough and ready contrivance pulverises the grain sufficiently for the coarse cakes which serve in lieu of bread.