Up to that date the women had been accustomed to wear the hair in a great bunch on top of the head as female professional mourners do to-day in Korea. Large amounts of false hair were used and it was decorated with long pins and with flowers. It is said that a full headdress cost as much as the furnishings of a house. The king ordered a change in this expensive custom, and since that day only mourners and palace women have been allowed to wear them.
The city of Su-wŭn dates its importance from the year 1789, for at that time the king removed his father’s grave to that place and went there several times to sacrifice. He secretly called his banished brother from Kang-wha, but when his mother learned of it she made such an ado about it that he was fain to send him back. At Ham-heung, near the ancestral seat of the dynasty, there was an immense tree, so large that ten men holding each other’s hands could but just encircle it. The shadow which it cast was “A hundred furrows wide.” So goes the story. The king had it enclosed in a wall, as being the place where his great ancestor practiced archery.
The year 1791 will always be memorable for the persecution of the Roman Catholics. During the preceding year the Roman Catholic converts had sent a man to Peking to arrange for the coming of a priest who could administer the sacraments, for the Koreans had been strictly forbidden by the Catholic authorities in China to administer them among themselves without the services of a regularly consecrated priest. At the same time certain important questions about ancestor worship were asked. A priest was promised to the Korean church but the answers to the questions about ancestor worship were very unsatisfactory to the Koreans and in consequence there were many defections. It is much to the credit of the Roman propaganda that from the very first it set its face hard against the practice of ancestor worship. In the fifth moon it is said the “flame of Roman Catholicism burned high.” In other words it was discovered then what had been going on quietly for many years. Two men of Chin-san in Chŭl-la Province were caught and killed because they had burned their ancestral tablets. It was only after long discussion and with great hesitation that the order was given for their decapitation, and at the very last moment, after the men had already been carried to the place of execution, the king changed his mind and sent a reprieve; but it was too late. The king called the new religion not Ch‘ŭn-ju-hak or “Religion of the Lord of Heaven,” but Sa-hak or “The Deceiving Religion.” The Minister Choă Che-gong advised the king to annihilate all Roman Catholics, but the king answered, “We must do it by elevating Confucianism.” He had found the only rational way to deal with religious differences. He said, in substance, let the fittest survive. This is all that Christianity asks in any land, and the opposition of it by force always has been and always will be an acknowledgment of inferiority. The king knew well that China was the source from which the new influences came and he made a very strict law against the bringing across the border of Christian books. An edict was promulgated threatening with punishment all who did not deliver up their Christian books within twenty days, and the prefect of Chin-san, where the two men had been working, was cashiered and forty-five other prefects were degraded one or two degrees, because Christian converts were numerous in their districts. The Roman Catholic writers attribute the numerous defections at this time to the entire lack of pastoral care, the absence of the sacraments and the paucity of Christian literature.
The king did not live up to his advanced ideas about using physical force to combat Christianity, for in the eleventh moon of this year four high officials who had embraced Christianity were seized and put to death, together with a considerable number of the common people.
In 1792 the pope formally put the care of the Korean church in the hands of the Bishop of Peking.
Sacrifices were offered at the tombs of Tan-gun, Ki-ja, Su-ro-wang (the founder of Karak) and of T’ă-jo Tă-wang. Whether this was done to aid in combatting Christianity we are not told but it is not improbable. This was a time of general prosperity among the people and it witnessed a rapid increase in the population of Korea. These things were evidenced by the strong colonizing spirit which sprang up. Thousands flocked northward to the banks of the Yalu and to the islands on the coast, and the area of arable land was largely increased. Two years later this period of prosperity terminated in a terrible famine in all the southern and central provinces, and the government was obliged to dispense 280,000 bags of rice among the sufferers. This same year envoys from the Liu Kiu Islands were well received. The King told them that two hundred years before Liu Kiu officials had been given honorary titles by the king of Korea. In view of the friendly relations that had always existed between Korea and these islands, the envoys were feasted and sent off in grand style. Late in this same year, 1794, the Chinese Roman Catholic priest Tsiou crossed the Yalu and entered Korea. The government was aware of it and his arrest was ordered, but he escaped from Seoul in disguise. Two of his companions were taken, and as they refused to give information as to his whereabouts they were immediately put to death. At the time of his coming the Catholics estimate that there were 400 believers[believers] in Korea, but within a very few years the number increased to 6,000.
The year 1796 was signalised by a most important event in the field of letters. In the beginning of the dynasty a fount of 100,000 pieces of moveable copper types had been cast, and these had been supplemented soon after by 200,000 more. Now the king began to add to them. First he put out 50,000 and a year later he added 150,000 more; then 80,000 more were made, and moveable wooden types were made to the number of 320,000. Already during this reign the following works had appeared. “The Gradation of Penalties,” “A Commentary on the Chinese Classics,” “The Proper Conduct of the king,” “The Record of the Decisions in Council,” “On Korean Customs,” “On Military Tactics,” “On Forms of Official Correspondence,” “On the Science of Government.” These were now followed by several editions of military and Confucian works, one of which was a digest of all the Confucian Classics in ninety-nine volumes. The King was a great lover of books and gathered all the best books that could be procured. One work whose publishing he superintended in person reached the modest number of 191 volumes.
The Minister of Finance advised the minting of five-cash pieces but all the officials united in a protest against it and advised retrenchment as the alternative. In this they were right, for the policy of meeting a deficit by minting money could not but be disastrous.
Chapter XIII.
A peculiar plague.... a peculiar remedy.... a new king.... various reforms.... beginning of the policy of Roman Catholic opposition.... Christianity and politics.... causes of opposition.... prisons full.... Chinese evangelist killed.... a traitorous letter intercepted.... end of the persecution.... conflagration.... eight severe charges.... the miners’ rebellion.... siege of Chöng-ju.... the mine explodes.... Catholics send to Peking for a priest.... a long list of calamities.... cholera.... taxes remitted.... Europeans fail to enter Korea.... nine years' famine.... terrible suffering.... a new king.... reform.... French priests enter Korea.... the persecution of 1839.... the first French naval expedition against Korea.... The Koreans answer the French charges.... a new king.... reforms.... rapid spread of Christianity.... consternation upon hearing of the fall of Peking.... a noteworthy memorial.... panic.... a good opportunity lost.... a women’s riot.