The descent of An-kil Yung is very grand. The road leads into a wide valley with a fine stream, one side of which looks as if the mountains had dumped down all their available stones upon it, while the other is rich alluvial soil. Gold washing is carried on to a great extent along this stream, which is a tributary of the Tai-döng, and some of the workings show more care and method than usual, being pits neatly lined with stone in their upper parts. Eighty cents per day is the average earning of a gold-seeker there. This valley terminates in pretty, broken country, with fine mountain views, and picturesque cliffs along the river, on which the dark blue gloom of pines was lighted by the fading scarlet of the maple, and crimson streaks of the Ampelopsis Veitchii brightened the russet into which the countless trailers which draped the rocks had passed. The increased fertility of the soil was denoted by the number of villages and hamlets on the road, and foot passengers in twos and threes gave something of life and movement. But it was remarkable that so soon after the harvest, and when the roads were in their best condition, there were no goods in transit except such local productions as paper and tobacco—no strings of porters or ponies carrying goods into the interior from Phyöng-yang, no evidence of trade but that given by the pedlars going the round of the market-places.
Along that road and elsewhere near the villages there are tall poles branching at the top into a V, which are erected in the belief that they will guard the inhabitants from cholera and other pestilences. On that day’s journey, at a crossroad, a small log with several holes like those of a mouse-trap, one of them plugged doubly with bungs of wood, was lying on the path, and the mapu were careful to step over it and lead their ponies over it, though it might easily have been avoided. Into the bunged hole the mu-tang or sorceress by her arts had inveigled a dæmon which was causing sickness in a family, and had corked him up! It is proper for passers-by to step over the log. At nightfall it is buried. That afternoon’s ride was through extremely attractive country—small valley basins of rich stoneless soil, with brown hamlets nestling round them in calm, pine-sheltered folds of hills, which though not high are shapely, and were etherealized into purple beauty by the sinking sun, which turned the lake-like expanse of the Tai-döng at Mon-chin Tai, the beautifully situated halting-place for the night, into a sheet of gold.
With a splendid climate, an abundant, but not superabundant, rainfall, a fertile soil, a measure of freedom from civil war and robber bands, the Koreans ought to be a happy and fairly prosperous people. If “squeezing,” yamen runners and their exactions, and certain malign practices of officials can be put down with a strong hand, and the land tax is fairly levied and collected, and law becomes an agent for protection rather than an instrument of injustice, I see no reason why the Korean peasant should not be as happy and industrious as the Japanese peasant. But these are great “ifs”! Security for the gains of industry, from whatever quarter it comes, will, I believe, transform the limp, apathetic native. Such ameliorations as have been made are owed to Japan, but she had not a free hand, and she was too inexperienced in the rôle which she undertook (and I believe honestly) to play, to produce a harmonious working scheme of reform. Besides, the men through whom any such scheme must be carried out are nearly universally corrupt both by tradition and habit. Reform was jerky and piecemeal, and Japan irritated the people by meddlesomeness in small matters and suggested interferences with national habits, giving the impression, which I found prevailing everywhere, that her object is to denationalize the Koreans for purposes of her own.
Travellers are much impressed with the laziness of the Koreans, but after seeing their energy and industry in Russian Manchuria, their thrift, and the abundant and comfortable furnishings of their houses, I greatly doubt whether it is to be regarded as a matter of temperament. Every man in Korea knows that poverty is his best security, and that anything he possesses beyond that which provides himself and his family with food and clothing is certain to be taken from him by voracious and corrupt officials. It is only when the exactions of officials become absolutely intolerable and encroach upon his means of providing the necessaries of life that he resorts to the only method of redress in his power, which has a sort of counterpart in China. This consists in driving out, and occasionally in killing, the obnoxious and intolerable magistrate, or, as in a case which lately gained much notoriety, roasting his favorite secretary on a wood pile. The popular outburst, though under unusual provocation it may culminate in deeds of regrettable violence, is usually founded on right, and is an effective protest.
Among the modes of squeezing are forced labor, doubling or trebling the amount of a legitimate tax, exacting bribes in cases of litigation, forced loans, etc. If a man is reported to have saved a little money, an official asks for the loan of it. If it is granted, the lender frequently never sees principal or interest; if it is refused, he is arrested, thrown into prison on some charge invented for his destruction, and beaten until either he or his relations for him produce the sum demanded. To such an extent are these demands carried, that in Northern Korea, Where the winters are fairly severe, the peasants, when the harvest has left them with a few thousand cash, put them in a hole in the ground, and pour water into it, the frozen mass which results then being earthed over, when it is fairly safe both from officials and thieves.
CHAPTER XXIX
SOCIAL POSITION OF WOMEN
Mou-chin Tai is a beautifully situated village, and has something of a look of comfort. Up to that point small boats can come up at all seasons, but there is almost no trade. The Tai-döng expands into a broad sheet of water, on which the hills descend abruptly. There is a ferry, and we drove our ponies into the ferryboat and yelled for the ferryman. After a time he appeared on the top of the bank, but absolutely declined to take us over “for any money.” He would have “nothing so do with a foreigner,” he said, and he would not be “implicated with a Japanese”! So we put ourselves across, and the mapu were so angry that they threw his poles into the river.
Passing through very pretty country, and twice crossing the Tai-döng, we halted at the town of Sun-chhön, a magistracy with a deplorably ruinous yamen. All these official buildings have seen better days. Their courts are spacious, and the double-roofed gateways, with their drum towers, as well as the central hall of the yamen, still retain a certain look of stateliness, though paint, lacquer, and gilding have long ago disappeared from the elaborately arranged beams and carved wood of the roofs, and the fretwork screening the interiors is always shabby and broken.
About the Sun-chhön yamen, and all others, there are crowds of “runners,” writers, soldiers in coarse ragged uniforms, young men of the yang-ban class in spotless white garments, lounging, or walking with the swinging gait befitting their position, while the decayed and forlorn rooms in the courtyard are filled with petty officials, smoking long pipes and playing cards. To judge from the crowds of attendants, the walking hither and thither, the hurrying in various directions with manuscripts, and the din of drums and fifes when the great gate is opened and closed, one would think that nothing less than the business of an empire was transacted within the ruinous portals.
Soldiers, writers, yamen runners, and men of the yang-ban and literary classes combined with the loafers of the town to compose a crowd which by its buzzing and shouting, and tearing off the paper from my latticed door, gave me a fatiguing and hideous two hours, a Korean crowd being only unbearable when it is led by men of the literary class, who, as in China, indulge in every sort of vulgar impertinence. Eventually I was smuggled into the women’s apartments, where I was victimized in other ways by insatiable curiosity.