Undoubtedly the establishment which has exercised and is exercising the most powerful educational, moral, and intellectual influence in Korea is the Pai Chai College (“Hall for the rearing of Useful Men”), so named by the King in 1887. This, which belongs to the American Methodist Episcopal Church, has had the advantage of the services of one Principal, the Rev. H. G. Appenzeller, for eleven years. It has a Chinese-En-mun department, for the teaching of the Chinese classics, Sheffield’s Universal History, etc., a small theological department, and an English department, in which reading, grammar, composition, spelling, history, geography, arithmetic, and the elements of chemistry and natural philosophy are taught. Dr. Jaisohn, a Korean educated in America, has recently lectured once a week at this College on the geographical divisions of the earth and the political and ecclesiastical history of Europe, and has awakened much enthusiasm. A patriotic spirit is being developed among the students, as well as something of the English public school spirit with its traditions of honor. This College is undoubtedly making a decided impression, and is giving, besides a liberal education, a measure of that broader intellectual view and deepened moral sense which may yet prove the salvation of Korea. Christian instruction is given in Korean, and attendance at chapel is compulsory. The pupils are drilled, and early in 1897, during the military craze, adopted a neat European military uniform. There is a flourishing industrial department, which includes a tri-lingual press and a book-binding establishment, both of which have full employment.
Early in 1895 the Government, recognizing the importance of the secular education given in this College, made an agreement by which it could place pupils up to the number of 200 there, paying for their tuition and the salaries of certain tutors.
There are other schools for girls and boys, in which an industrial training is given, conducted with some success by the same Mission, and the American Presbyterians have several useful schools, and pay much attention to the training of girls.
The Société des Missions Etrangères has in Seoul an Orphanage and two Boys’ Schools, with a total of 262 children. The principal object is to train the orphans as good Roman Catholics. In the Boys’ Schools the pupils are taught to read and write Chinese and En-mun, and to a limited extent they study the Chinese classics. The religious instruction is given in En-mun. They aim at providing a primary education for the children of Korean converts.
The boys in the Orphanage are taught En-mun only, and at thirteen are adopted by Roman Catholics in Seoul or the country, and learn either farming or trades, or, assuming their own support, enter a trade or become servants. The elder girls learn Em-mun, sewing, and housework, and at fifteen are married to the sons of Roman Catholics. At Riong San near Seoul there is a Theological Seminary for the training of candidates for the priesthood.
Besides these there is a school established in 1896 by the “Japanese Foreign Educational Society,” which is composed chiefly of “advanced” Japanese Christians. The course of study embraces the Chinese classics, En-mun, composition, the study of Japanese as a medium for the study of Western learning, and lectures on science and religion. This school was intended by its founders to work as a Christian propaganda.
In 1897 there were in Seoul nearly 900 students, chiefly young men, in Mission and Foreign Schools, inclusive of 100 in the Royal English School, which has English teachers. In the majority of these the students are trained in Christian morality, fundamental science, general history, and the principles of patriotism. A certain amount of denationalization is connected with most of the Boys’ Schools, for the students necessarily receive new ideas, thoughts, and views of life, which cannot be shaken out of them by any local circumstances, changing their standpoints and the texture of their minds for life. When they replace the elder generation better things may be expected for Korea.
The Korean reformed ideas of education, which had their origin during the Japanese reform era, embrace the creation of a primary school system, an efficient Normal College, and Intermediate Schools. Actually existing under the Department of Education are a revived Confucian School, the Royal English School, and the Normal College, placed in May, 1897, under the very efficient care of the Rev. H. B. Hulbert, M.A., a capable and scholarly man, some of whose contributions to our knowledge of Korean poetry and music have enriched earlier chapters of these volumes. Text-books in En-mun and teachers who can teach them have to be created. It is hoped and expected that supply will follow demand, and that in a few years the larger provincial towns will possess Intermediate or High Schools, and the villages attain the advantages of elementary schools, all using a uniform series of text-books in the vernacular. Chinese finds its place in the curriculum, but not as the medium for teaching Korean and general history, or geography and arithmetic, which must be acquired through the native tongue.
In spite of the somewhat spasmodic and altogether unscientific methods of the Education Department, it has succeeded in getting the revived Normal College under way, as well as a fair number of primary schools, where over 1,000 boys are learning the elements of arithmetic, geography, and Korean history, with brief outlines of the systems of government in other civilized countries. Seventy-seven youths are studying in Japan at Government expense, and have made fair progress in languages, but are said to show a lack of mathematical aptitude and logical power. Altogether the Korean educational outlook is not without elements of hopefulness.
Though the Foreign Trade of Korea only averages something less than £1,500,000 annually, the potential commerce of a country with not less than 12,000,000 of people, all cotton-clad, ought not to be overlooked. The amount of foreign trade which exists is the growth of thirteen years only, but when we remember that Korea is a purely agricultural country of a very primitive and backward type, that many of her finest valleys are practically isolated by mountain ranges, traversed by nearly impassable roads, that the tyranny of custom is strong, that the Korean farmer is only just learning that a profitable and almost unlimited demand exists for his rice and beans across the sea, that the serious cost of his cotton clothing can be kept down by importing foreign yarn or piece goods, and that his comfort can be increased by the introduction of articles of foreign manufacture, and that such facts are only slowly entering the secluded valleys of the Hermit Kingdom, the actual bulk of the trade is rather surprising, and its possibilities are worth considering. The net imports of foreign goods have increased from the value of $2,474,189 in 1886 to $6,531,324 in 1896.[48] Measured in dollars, the trade of 1896 exceeds that of any previous year except 1895, when the occupation of Korea by Japanese troops, with their large following of transport coolies, created an artificial expansion.