The corresponding officers of the canton (commune) are a Mayor, a Clerk, a Bailiff, and a Communal Usher who is irremovable except for cause given, and is, like the other officials, elected by the canton.
A Village Council is composed of the Headman and one man from each family, and is empowered to pass resolutions on matters connected with education, registration of households or lands, sanitation, roads and bridges, communal grain exchanges, agricultural improvements, common woods and dykes, payment of taxes, relief in famine or other calamity, adjustment of the corvée, savings associations, and by-laws. The Headman, who acts as chairman, has not only a casting vote, but the power to veto. A resolution passed over the veto of the Headman has to be referred to the Mayor, and over the veto of the Mayor to the Prefect. If passed twice over the veto of the Prefect, reference may be made to the Governor. All resolutions, however, must be submitted twice a year to the Home Office, through the Prefect and Governor; and it is incumbent on the Prefectural Council to sit at least twice in the year.
Taxes are by a law of 13th October, 1895, classified as Land-Tax, Scutage, Mining Dues, Customs Dues, and Excise. Excise is now made to include, besides ginseng dues, what are known as “Miscellaneous Dues,” viz. rent of glebe lands, tax on rushes used in mat-making, market dues on firewood and tobacco, tax on kilns, tax on edible seaweed, tax on grindstones, up-river dues, and taxes on fisheries, salterns, and boats. All other imposts have been declared illegal. The first Korean Budget under the reformed system was published in January, 1896, and showed an estimated revenue from all sources of $4,809,410.
The Palace Department underwent reorganization, nominally at least, and elaborate schemes for the administration of Royal Establishments, State Temples, and Mausolea were devised, and the relative rank of members of the Royal Clan, including ladies, was fixed—the ladies of the King’s Seraglio being divided into eight classes, and those of the Crown Prince into four. The number of Court officials attached to the different Royal Households, though diminished, is legion.
Various ordinances brought the classification of Korean officials into line with those of Japan. Every class in the country, private and official, has come into the purview of the Reorganizers, and finds its position (on paper) more or less altered.
Among the more important of the Edicts which have nominally become law are the following:—
Agreements with China cancelled. Distinctions between Patrician and Plebeian abolished. Slavery abolished. Early Marriages prohibited. Remarriage of widows permitted. Bribery to be strictly forbidden. No one to be arrested without warrant for civil offences. Couriers, mountebanks, and butchers no longer to be under degradation. Local Councils to be established. New coinage issued. Organization of Police force. No one to be punished without trial. Irregular taxation by Provincial Governments forbidden. Extortion of money by officials forbidden. Family of a criminal not to be involved in his doom. Great modifications as to torture. Superfluous Paraphernalia abolished. School of Instruction in Vaccination. Hair-cropping Proclamation. Solar Calendar adopted. “Drilled Troops” (Kun-ren-tai) abolished. Legal punishments defined. Slaughter-Houses licensed. Committee of Legal Revision appointed. Telegraph Regulations. Postal Regulations. Railways placed under Bureau of Communications. These ordinances are a selection from among several hundred promulgated since July, 1894.
Of the reforms notified during the last three and a half years several have not taken effect; and concerning others there has been a distinctly retrograde movement, with a tendency to revert to the abuses of the old régime; and others which were taken in hand earnestly, have gradually collapsed, owing in part to the limpness of the Korean character, and in part to the opposition of all in office and of all who hope for office to any measures of reform. Some, admirable in themselves, at present exist only on paper; but, on the whole, the reorganized system, though in many respects fragmentary, is a great improvement on the old one; and it may not unreasonably be hoped that the young men, who are now being educated in enlightened ideas and notions of honor, will not repeat the iniquities of their fathers.
FOOTNOTES:
[43] The chapters on the Reorganized Korean Government—Education, Trade, and Finance—and Dæmonism are intended to aid in the intelligent understanding of those which precede them. The reader who wishes to go into the subject of the old and the reorganized systems of Korean Government will find a mass of curious and deeply interesting detail in a volume entitled, Korean Government, by W. H. Wilkinson, Esq., lately H.B.M.’s Acting Vice-Consul at Chemulpo, published by the Statistical Department of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs at Shanghai in March, 1897. To it I am very greatly indebted.