Big People and Little People of Other Lands

by Edward R. Shaw

The shoes they wear in Korea are of many kinds and shapes. Some are made of leather. Others are like the wooden shoes the Chinamen wear, which turn up at the toes. The funniest shoes they have are made of paper. The paper is very thick and strong, and so their paper shoes last a good while. But the shoes that are worn by most of the people in Korea are made of straw. They are like sandals, and they are worn so that the large toe is not covered.

The people in Korea have a strange way of keeping themselves cool in hot weather. They have something like a basket made of rods of bamboo. This basket is round and long, and open at the top and bottom. They put their heads through this basket, and it hangs downward from their shoulders around their bodies. Then they put their clothes over it, so that the basket is inside. It is next to their skin. How would you like to have such a summer dress?

The boys in Korea go to school when they are very young. The girls do not go to school. They stay at home to help their mothers. But girls whose parents are rich have teachers at home to teach them reading and writing and other things.

In school, the teacher sits on a straw mat on the floor. The boys also sit on the floor on straw mats. They say their lessons out loud. They write their lines from the top to the bottom of the page. The people in China and Japan, as you know, write in the same way. The boys of Korea learn to count on a _chon-pan_. The chon-pan is much like the counting box they have in the schools in China. It is made of little balls on a frame of wires fixed in a box. The boys also learn by heart the wise sayings of great men.

The boys in Korea have some very nice toys. But the best playthings they have are their kites. They make their kites fight battles in the air, just as the boys do in Japan. Every boy tries to tear down every other boy's kite. This is done by pulling the strings across one another. Sometimes the sky is full of beautiful kites, which jump and dash about as if they were alive.

The boys also have fine, large pinwheels. They make these pinwheels whirl around in the wind. The boys also spin tops, and they play "seesaw," and jump the rope.

The boys in Korea are fond of fishing. Nearly every boy has a fishing rod and goes fishing whenever he can. Sometimes the boys have great fun going around dressed like their fathers. They wear wooden swords and little bows and arrows like soldiers. They make straw figures of men, and with their swords they strike off the heads of these straw men.

But the boys have to work as well as play. Many of the peddlers in Korea are boys. They sell candy and other things. The girls do a great deal of work at home. The first thing they learn to do is to sew.

Would you like to know how the women iron their clothes? They wrap each piece around a stick and lay it on the floor. Then they sit down and beat the piece on the stick with wooden clubs. In this way they make the clothes as smooth as a Chinaman makes the linen which he irons.