Some miles of broad streets are now available as promenades, and are largely taken advantage of; business looked much brisker than formerly, the shops made more display, and there was an air of greater prosperity, which has been taken advantage of by the Hong-Kong and Shanghai Bank, which has opened a branch at Chemulpo, and will probably erelong appear in the capital.
It is not, however, only in the making of broad thoroughfares that the improvement consists. Very many of the narrow lanes have been widened, their roadways curved and gravelled, and stone gutters have been built along the sides, in some cases by the people themselves. Along with much else the pungent, peculiar odor of Seoul has vanished. Sanitary regulations are enforced, and civilization has reached such a height that the removal of the snow from the front of the houses is compulsory on all householders. So great is the change that I searched in vain for any remaining representative slum which I might photograph for this chapter as an illustration of Seoul in 1894. It must be remarked, however, that the capital is being reconstructed on Korean lines, and is not being Europeanized.
SOUTH STREET, SEOUL.
Chong-dong, however, the quarter devoted to Foreign Legations, Consulates, and Mission agencies, would have nearly ceased to be Korean had not the King set down the Kyeng-won Palace with its crowded outbuildings in the midst of the foreign residences. Most of the native inhabitants have been bought out. Wide roads with foreign shops have been constructed. The French have built a Legation on a height, which vies in grandeur with that of Russia, and the American Methodist Episcopal Mission has finished a large red brick church, which, like the Roman Cathedral, can be seen from all quarters.
The picturesque Peking Pass, up and down whose narrow, rugged pathway generations of burdened baggage animals toiled and suffered, and which had seen the splendors of successive Chinese Imperial Envoys at the accession of the Korean Kings, has lost its identity. Its rock ledges, holes, and boulders have disappeared—the rocky gash has been widened, and the sides chiselled into smoothness, and under the auspices of the Russian Minister a broad road, with retaining walls and fine culverts, now carries the traffic over the lowered height.
Many other changes were noticeable. The Tai-won Kun, for so many years one of the chief figures in Korean politics, was practically a prisoner in his own palace. The Eastern and Western Palaces, with their enormous accommodation and immense pleasure-grounds, were deserted, and were already beginning to decay. The Japanese soldiers had vacated the barracks so long occupied by them close to the Kyeng-pok Palace, and, reduced to the modest numbers of a Legation guard, were quartered in the Japanese settlement; parties of missionaries who had hived off from Chong-dong were occupying groups of houses in various parts of the capital, and there was a singular “boom” in schools, accompanied by a military craze, which affected not the scholars only, but the boys of Seoul generally.
But it must be remarked in connection with education in Korea that so lately as the close of 1896 a book, called Confucianist Scholars’ Handbook of the Latitudes and Longitudes, had been edited by Sin Ki Sun, Minister of Education, prefaced by two Councillors of the Education Department, and published at Government expense, in which the following sentences occur:—
P. 52: “Europe is too far away from the centre of civilization, i.e. the Middle Kingdom; hence Russians, Turks, English, French, Germans, and Belgians look more like birds and beasts than men, and their languages sound like the chirping of fowls.”
Again: “According to the views of recent generations, what westerners call the Christian Religion is vulgar, shallow, and erroneous, and is an instance of the vileness of Barbarian customs, which are not worthy of serious discussion.... They worship the heavenly spirits, but do not sacrifice to parents, they insult heaven in every way, and overturn the social relations. This is truly a type of Barbarian vileness, and is not worthy of treatment in our review of foreign customs, especially as at this time the religion is somewhat on the wane.