In Korea with Marquis Ito

by George Trumbull Ladd

The pagoda itself, which has now been cleared from the clutter of huts and made the central object in Seoul’s first attempt at the beginnings of a public park, deserves a brief description. It is of white marble, much stained by time, war, and neglect, and was originally thirteen stories in height; although only ten of these are now standing, while the upper three have been removed and rest beside it on the ground. The base and first six stories have twenty sides; the remainder are squares. Each story is symmetrically diminished in size; some have galleries with curved eaves and upturned corners. The ornamentation is exceedingly complicated and abstruse in its symbolism and suggestiveness. There are sculptured upon the flat surfaces processions of tigers, dragons, men on foot and on horseback, teachers discoursing in groves, pictures taken from the traditional life of Buddha, and various bas-reliefs of different Buddhas. The lower stories are composed of several blocks of carved stone, but the smaller and upper stories are monoliths.

Near the pagoda stands the Tortoise Tablet, a very ancient structure; the tablet is said originally to have been brought from the Southern Kingdom of Scilla, and erected upon the ledge of granite which outcropped in this place, after the rock had itself been carved into the shape of a tortoise. It was designed to memorialize the building of a temple which dates back to the eleventh century A. D. The tablet is probably more than one thousand years old.

Within the small enclosure surrounding these relics, Mr. Megata, the Japanese financial adviser to the Korean Government, is trying to encourage the public spirit of the natives and entertain the resident foreigners by providing band concerts on Saturday afternoons. Thus this spot also offers a study in epitome of the history, present changes, and future prospects of the capital city of Korea.

Of the few shrines which the royal prohibition of Buddhism and the low and decaying interest in all religious conceptions rising above the level of spirit-worship—and this mostly devil-worship—have allowed to remain in Seoul, the only ones of any particular importance are the Imperial Ancestral Shrines and the so-called “Temple to Heaven.” But even the guests of Marquis Ito did not think it wise to ask for permission to visit these shrines, or to exhibit any more curiosity respecting them than to glance by the guard, through the open doors of the gateway, while passing along the street. As to the New Palace, which is a stone building of modified Doric architecture, and is so far finished externally that it can be seen to have decided claims to beauty, if only the superstitions of the monarch and of his counsellors among the blind-men and the sorcerers had permitted it to be well placed—this was ever before our eyes from the windows of Miss Sontag’s house. And what was seen of the buildings occupied at the time of our visit by His Majesty and the Court, so far as it is worth a word, will be described in another place.

The Seoul seen from the surrounding mountain-sides, and the Seoul of so-called palaces, is not the city in which the people live. Apart from a few of its inhabitants—such as the missionaries, certain foreign business men and diplomatic agents, together with a small number of native officials who have acquired a taste for foreign ways—the Seoul of the people is disgustingly filthy and abjectly squalid. It is, indeed, not so filthy and miserable, and lacking in all the comforts and decencies of respectable Western life, as it was a generation, or even a few years ago. Several of the streets have now been—not only occasionally when the King was going a “processioning” through them, but habitually and to the benefit of the populace—cleared of their encroachments of squatter hovels, huts, and booths. The gutters along the sides of these streets do not quite so much as formerly disturb the eyes and nostrils of the pedestrian, especially if he walks in the middle of the thoroughfare; their use for vile purposes is not so much in evidence as was the case before any of the natives had even a glimmering sense of decency about such matters. In spite of the increased business activity of the city there is not to-day quite the same stream of white-robed saunterers, stately in gait but low in character, to give a semi-holiday aspect to the “Broadways” of Seoul; for electric cars transport the multitudes back and forth in several directions. Besides, there is the neat, attractive Japanese quarter. Here, according to my observation, the Koreans themselves were doing more sight-seeing and more trading than in their own quarters; for here the cheaper products of the new and hitherto unknown world are skilfully displayed. But otherwise and elsewhere in the city, the same unsanitary conditions and indecent habits, in all respects, prevail. The narrow, winding alleys are flanked with shallow, open ditches, that are not only the drains and sewers but the latrines of the dwellers in the low earth-walled houses on either side. Cowardly and lean dogs, naked children, and rows of men squatting and sucking their long pipes or lying flat upon the ground, crowd and obstruct these alleys. And from them the wide-spreading Korean roofs cut off the purifying and enlivening sunlight. Many of the most wretched and unsanitary of these hovels squat under the shadow of the stately city wall. May its stones sometime be used to build a better and healthier city!

There are, however, yet more notable changes and improvements than those already accomplished, which seem destined surely and speedily to follow. A water-supply, for which the surveys and contracts have already been completed and for which, during our visit, the pipes were beginning to be laid, will not only diminish the dangers that lurk in the cans of the professional water-carriers and in the private wells, but will assist the summer rains in their formidable task of washing clean the open sewers. More of these foul, winding alleys, and huddles of hovels, will be abolished. The increase in the interests of life, and the enjoyment of the rewards of protected industry, will diminish the drunkenness and gluttony, varied by enforced periods of starvation, which now distress the people. The new hospital and medical school—the former of which will immediately relieve much suffering and the latter of which will perform the yet more important service of educating a native medical class—are among the most cherished projects of the Resident-General. And when to these more essential matters there is added the cultivation of the native love of nature and taste for flowers, it is not an extravagant hope to picture Seoul as becoming, in many respects, a not undesirable place for residence, before many years are past. Even now, with the spring covering of bloom from plum, apricot, apple, and cherry, and with the profusion of flowering shrubs which adorns the valleys and the mountain-sides, one feels inclined to overlook, at least for the months of April and May, the foul sights of the gutters and the surrounding hovels. But all this was, as it were, only background and theatre for the work I wished to do and the observations I wished to make.

CHAPTER III
LIFE IN SEOUL

After accepting Marquis Ito’s formal invitation to attempt a special kind of service in Korea, the first problem to be solved concerned the choice of ways for approaching that service. Its solution was by no means obvious. In Japan there were more of urgent requests for public addresses and lectures of various kinds than could possibly be accepted. And everywhere that the speaker went, influential and large organizations of an educational and public character, to whose support the governors, of the Kens and the mayors of the cities were officially committed, could be relied upon to make all necessary arrangements and to carry the arrangements through effectively. More important still, there was the most eager interest in the subjects upon which the prospective audiences wished to be addressed, and the attitude of an open mind and even of warm personal attachment toward “the friend of Japan.” In Korea, however, all the influences would be of precisely the opposite character—indifference, deficiencies, hindrances, if not active opposition, so far as the native attitude was concerned. In Korea there were no educational associations; and, outside of a very small circle in a few cities, there was little or no interest in education. The local magistrates were, almost without exception, devoted to “squeezes” rather than to the increase of intelligence and the moral improvement of their districts. The teachers of the few existing schools were, in general, without any modern culture; they were even without the most rudimentary ideas on the subjects of pedagogy, ethics, and religion. Only in a small number of places were there any halls that could accommodate an audience, should one be gathered by an appeal to curiosity and to the Korean thirst for “look-see”; while to be known as a “friend of Japan” and a guest of Marquis Ito was to erect an almost insuperable obstacle in the way of reaching the ears of the Korean upper and middle classes, to say nothing of convincing their minds or touching their hearts. Addressing the lower classes on any scholastic topic was impossible. Through what organ, then, could a stranger help the Resident-General in his benevolent plans for the welfare of the people of Korea?

Reflection upon this problem of a means of approach to the Koreans ended in the fortunate choice of the Young Men’s Christian Association at Seoul. To be sure, the direct influence of this association is at present wisely limited to the capital city. The illicit organization of branch associations, which was undertaken for political purposes by the Koreans themselves, has made it necessary to check, rather than encourage, all efforts to multiply Y. M. C. A. societies in places beyond the immediate and unceasingly watchful control of the foreign secretaries. The same hypocritical and unscrupulous use of the name of religion for purposes of political intrigue compelled the Methodist Mission in Korea to break up the “Epworth League.” A letter to a friend in Tokyo, explaining my purposes and my embarrassment, resulted in the following telegram, which was received in Shimonoseki late in the evening of the day before sailing for Fusan: