There are no native schools for girls, and though women of the upper classes learn to read the native script, the number of Korean women who can read is estimated at two in a thousand. It appears that a philosophy largely imported from China, superstitions regarding dæmons, the education of men, illiteracy, a minimum of legal rights, and inexorable custom have combined to give woman as low a status in civilized Korea as in any of the barbarous countries in the world. Yet there is no doubt that the Korean woman, in addition to being a born intrigante, exercises a certain direct influence, especially as mother and mother-in-law, and in the arrangement of marriages.

Her rights are few, and depend on custom rather than law. She now possesses the right of remarriage, and that of remaining unmarried till she is sixteen, and she can refuse permission to her husband for his concubines to occupy the same house with herself. She is powerless to divorce her husband, conjugal fidelity, typified by the goose, the symbolic figure at a wedding, being a feminine virtue solely. Her husband may cast her off for seven reasons—incurable disease, theft, childlessness, infidelity, jealousy, incompatibility with her parents-in-law, and a quarrelsome disposition. She may be sent back to her father’s house for any one of these causes. It is believed, however, that desertion is far more frequent than divorce. By custom rather than law she has certain recognized rights, as to the control of children, redress in case of damage, etc. Domestic happiness is a thing she does not look for. The Korean has a house, but no home. The husband has his life apart; common ties of friendship and external interest are not known. His pleasure is taken in company with male acquaintances and gesang; and the marriage relationship is briefly summarized in the remark of a Korean gentleman in conversation with me on the subject, “We marry our wives, but we love our concubines.”

CHAPTER XXX
EXORCISTS AND DANCING WOMEN

At Cha-san, a magistracy, we rejoined the road from which we had diverged on the northward journey. It is a quiet, decayed place, though in a good agricultural country. As I had been there before, the edge of curiosity was blunted, and there was no mobbing. The people gave a distressing account of their sufferings from the Chinese soldiers, who robbed them unscrupulously, took what they wanted without paying, and maltreated the women. The Koreans deserted, through fright, the adjacent ferry village of Ou-Chin-gang, where we previously crossed the Tai-döng, and it was held by 53 Chinese, being an important post. Two Japanese scouts appeared on the other side of the river, fired, and the Chinese detachment broke and fled! At Cha-san, as elsewhere, the people expressed intense hatred of the Japanese, going so far as to say that they would not leave one of them alive; but, as in all other places, they bore unwilling testimony to the good conduct of the soldiers, and the regularity with which the commissariat paid for supplies.

The Japanese detachments were being withdrawn from the posts along that road, and we passed several well-equipped detachments, always preceded by bulls loaded with red blankets. The men were dressed in heavy gray ulsters with deep fur-lined collars, and had very thick felt gloves. They marched as if on parade, and their officers were remarkable for their smartness. When they halted for dinner, they found everything ready, and had nothing to do but stack their arms and eat! The peasant women went on with their avocations as usual. In that district and in the region about Tok Chhön, the women seclude themselves in monstrous hats like our wicker garden sentry-boxes, but without bottoms. These extraordinary coverings are 7 feet long, 5 broad, and 3 deep, and shroud the figure from head to foot. Heavy rain fell during the night, and though the following day was beautiful, the road was a deep quagmire, so infamously bad that when only two and a half hours from Phyöng-yang we had to stop at the wayside inn of An-chin-Miriok, where I slept in a granary only screened from the stable by a bamboo mat, and had the benefit of the squealing and vindictive sounds which accompanied numerous abortive fights. If possible, the next day exceeded its predecessors in beauty, and though the drawbacks of Korean travelling are many, this journey had been so bright and so singularly prosperous, except for Im’s accident, which, however, brought out some of the best points of Korean character, that I was even sorry to leave the miserable little hostelry and conclude the expedition, and part with the mapu, who throughout had behaved extremely well. The next morning, crossing the battlefield once more and passing through the desolations which war had wrought, I reached my old, cold, but comparatively comfortable quarters at Phyöng-yang, where I remained for six days.

While the river remained open, a small Korean steamer of uncertain habits, the Hariong, plied nominally between Phyöng-yang and Chemulpo, but actually ran from Po-san, a point about 60 li lower down the Tai-döng, which above it is too shallow and full of sandbanks for vessels of any draught, necessitating the transhipment of all goods not brought up by junks of small tonnage. There was, however, no telegraph between Po-san and Phyöng-yang, no one knew when the steamer arrived except by cargo coming up the river, and she only remained a few hours; so that my visit to Phyöng-yang was agitated by the fear of losing her, and having to make a long land journey when time was precious. There was no Korean post, and the Japanese military post and telegraph office absolutely refused to carry messages or letters for civilians. Wild rumors, of which there were a goodly crop every hour, were the substitute for news.

A subject of special interest and inquiry at Phyöng-yang was mission work as carried on by American missionaries. At Seoul it is far more difficult to get into touch with it, as, being older, it has naturally more of religious conventionality. But I will take this opportunity of saying that longer and more intimate acquaintance only confirmed the high opinion I early formed of the large body of missionaries in Seoul, of their earnestness and devotion to their work, of the energetic, hopeful, and patient spirit in which it is carried on, of the harmony prevailing among the different denominations, and the cordial and sympathetic feeling towards the Koreans. The interest of many of the missionaries in Korean history, folklore, and customs, as evidenced by the pages of the valuable monthly, the Korean Repository, is also very admirable, and a traveller in Korea must apply to them for information vainly sought elsewhere.

Christian missions were unsuccessful in Phyöng-yang. It was a very rich and very immoral city. More than once it turned out some of the missionaries, and rejected Christianity with much hostility. Strong antagonism prevailed, the city was thronged with gesang, courtesans, and sorcerers, and was notorious for its wealth and infamy. The Methodist Mission was broken up for a time, and in six years the Presbyterians only numbered 28 converts. Then came the war, the destruction of Phyöng-yang, its desertion by its inhabitants, the ruin of its trade, the reduction of its population from 60,000 or 70,000 to 15,000, and the flight of the few Christians.

Since the war there had been a very great change. There had been 28 baptisms, and some of the most notorious evil livers among the middle classes, men shunned by other men for their exceeding wickedness, were leading pure and righteous lives. There were 140 catechumens under instruction, and subject to a long period of probation before receiving baptism, and the temporary church, though enlarged during my absence, was so overcrowded that many of the worshippers were compelled to remain outside. The offertories were liberal.[39] In the dilapidated extra-mural premises occupied by the missionaries, thirty men were living for twenty-one days, two from each of fifteen villages, all convinced of the truth of Christianity, and earnestly receiving instruction in Christian fact and doctrine. They were studying for six hours daily with teachers, and for a far longer time amongst themselves, and had meetings for prayer, singing, and informal talk each evening. I attended three of these, and as Mr. Moffett interpreted for me, I was placed in touch with much of what was unusual and interesting, and learned more of missions in their earlier stage than anywhere else.

Besides the thirty men from the villages, the Christians and catechumens from the city crowded the room and doorways. Two missionaries sat on the floor at one end of the room with a kerosene lamp mounted securely on two wooden pillows in front of them—then there were a few candles on the floor, centres of closely-packed groups. Hymns were howled in many keys to familiar tunes, several Koreans prayed, bowing their foreheads to the earth in reverence, after which some gave accounts of how the Gospel reached their villages, chiefly through visits from the few Phyöng-yang Christians, who were “scattered abroad,” and then two men, who seemed very eloquent as well as fluent, and riveted the attention of all, gave narratives of two other men who they believed were possessed with devils, and said the devils had been driven out a few months previously by united prayer, and that the “foul spirits” were adjured in the name of Jesus to come out, and that the men trembled and turned cold as the devils left them, never to return, and that both became Christians, along with many who saw them.