These alien settlers practically enjoy autonomy. At the head of each district is an Elder or Headman, with from one to three assistants according to its size. The police and their officers are Korean. In each district there are two or three judges with their clerks, who try minor offences. The headmen, who are responsible for order and the collection of taxes, are paid salaries, or receive various allowances. All these officials are Koreans, and are elected by the people themselves from among themselves. The Government taxation is 10 roubles (about £1) on each farm per annum. The local taxation, settled by the villagers in council for their own purposes, such as roads, ditches, bridges, and schools, is limited to 3 roubles per farm per annum. Men who are not landholders pay from 1 to 2 roubles per annum.
Koreans settled in Siberia prior to 1884 can claim rights as Russian subjects, and at this time those who can prove that they have been settled on purchased lands for ten years can do so, as well as certain others, well reported of as being of settled lives and good conduct. Owing to the steady influx of settlers from Southern Russia, the rich lands near the railroad are required for colonization, and further immigration from Korea has been prohibited; The sending of Koreans who are either squatters or of unsettled lives to the Amur Province is under discussion.
The villages between Krasnoye Celo and Nowo Kiewsk are fair average specimens of Russo-Korean settlements. The roads are fairly good, and the ditches which border them well kept. Sanitary rules are strictly enforced, the headman being made responsible for village cleanliness. Unlike the poor, ragged, filthy villages of the peninsula, these are well-built in Korean style, of whitewashed mud and laths, trimly thatched, the compounds or farmyards are enclosed by whitewashed walls, or high fences of neatly woven reeds, and look as if they were swept every morning, and the farm buildings are substantial and well kept. Even the pigsties testify to the Argus eyes of the district chiefs of police.
Most of the dwellings have four, five, and even six rooms, with papered walls and ceilings, fretwork doors and windows, “glazed” with white translucent paper, finely matted floors, and an amount of plenishings rarely to be found even in a mandarin’s house in Korea. Cabinets, bureaus, and rice chests of ornamental wood with handsome brass decorations, low tables, stools, cushions, brass samovars, dressers displaying brass dinner services, brass bowls, china, tea-glasses, brass candlesticks, brass kerosene lamps, and a host of other things, illustrate the capacity to secure comfort. Pictures of the Tsar and Tsaritza, of the Christ, and of Greek saints, and framed cards of twelve Christian prayers, replace the coarse daubs of the family dæmons in very many houses. Out of doors full granaries, ponies, mares with foals, black pigs of an improved breed, draught oxen, and fat oxen for the Wladivostok market, with ox-carts and agricultural implements, attest solid material prosperity. It would be impossible for a traveller to meet with more cordial hospitality and more cleanly and comfortable accommodation than I did in these Korean homes.
But there is more than this. The air of the men has undergone a subtle but real change, and the women, though they nominally keep up their habit of seclusion, have lost the hang-dog air which distinguishes them at home. The suspiciousness and indolent conceit, and the servility to his betters, which characterize the home-bred Korean have very generally given place to an independence and manliness of manner rather British than Asiatic. The alacrity of movement is a change also, and has replaced the conceited swing of the yang-ban and the heartless lounge of the peasant. There are many chances for making money, and there is neither mandarin nor yang-ban to squeeze it out of the people when made, and comforts and a certain appearance of wealth no longer attract the rapacious attentions of officials, but are rather a credit to a man than a source of insecurity. All who work can be comfortable, and many of the farmers are rich and engage in trade, making and keeping extensive contracts.
Those Koreans who are not settled on lands chiefly in the direction of the Chinese frontier, and who subsist by wood cutting and hauling, are less well off, and their hamlets have something of squalor about them.
In Korea I had learned to think of Koreans as the dregs of a race, and to regard their condition as hopeless, but in Primorsk I saw reason for considerably modifying my opinion. It must be borne in mind that these people, who have raised themselves into a prosperous farming class, and who get an excellent character for industry and good conduct alike from Russian police officials, Russian settlers, and military officers, were not exceptionally industrious and thrifty men. They were mostly starving folk who fled from famine, and their prosperity and general demeanor give me the hope that their countrymen in Korea, if they ever have an honest administration and protection for their earnings, may slowly develop into men.
In parts of Western Asia I have had occasion to note the success of Russian administration in conquered or acquired provinces, and with subject races, specially her creation of an orderly, peaceful, and settled agricultural population out of the nomadic and predatory tribes of Turkestan. Her success with the Korean immigrants is in its way as remarkable, for the material is inferior. She is firm where firmness is necessary, but outside that limit allows extreme latitude, avoids harassing aliens by petty prohibitions and irksome rules, encourages those forms of local self-government which suit the genius and habits of different peoples, and trusts to time, education, and contact with other forms of civilization to amend what is reprehensible in customs, religion, and costume.
A few days later I went to Hun-chun on the frontier of Chinese Manchuria, from its position an important military post, and was most hospitably received by the Commandant and his married aide-de-camp. There, as everywhere in Primorsk, and from the civil as well as the military authorities, I not only received the utmost kindness, courtesy, and hospitality, but information was frankly given on the various topics I was interested in, and help towards the attainment of my objects. Hun-chun is in the midst of mountainous country, denuded of wood in recent years, and abounding in rich, well-watered valleys inhabited only by Koreans. A wilder, drearier, and more wind-swept situation it would be hard to find.
Instead of “4,000 troops” there were only 200 Cossacks, housed in a good brick barrack, one half of which is a much decorated chapel, besides which there are only open thatched sheds for their hardy, active Baikal horses, a small, well-arranged hospital, a wooden house for the Colonel Commandant, and some terra-cotta mud-houses for the officers and married troopers. The whole Russian military force from Hun-chun to the Amur consisted of 1,500 Cossacks, distributed among thirty frontier posts. The Commandant told me that their chief duty at that time was the “daily” arresting of Chinese brigands who crossed the frontier to harry the Korean villages, and who, on being marched back and handed over to the mandarins, were at once liberated to repeat their forays.