One of the most dismal and squalid “towns” on this route is Shur-hung, a long rambling village of nearly 5,000 souls, and a magistracy, built along the refuse-covered bank of a bright, shallow stream. As if the Crown official were the upas tree, the town with a yamen is always more forlorn than any other. In Shur-hung the large and once handsome yamen buildings are all but in ruins, and so is the Confucian temple, visited periodically, as all such temples are, by the magistrate, who bows before the tablet of the “most holy teacher” and offers an animal in sacrifice.
The Korean official is the vampire which sucks the lifeblood of the people. We had crossed the Tao-jol, the boundary between the provinces of Kyöng-hwi and Hwang-hai, and were then in the latter. Most officials of any standing live in Seoul for pleasure and society, leaving subordinates in charge, and as their tenure of office is very brief, they regard the people within their jurisdiction rather with reference to their squeezeableness than to their capacity for improvement.
Forty Japanese soldiers found a draughty shelter within the tumble-down buildings of the yamen. As I walked down the street one of them touched me on the shoulder, asking my nationality, whence I came, and whither I was going, not quite politely, I thought. When I reached my room a dozen of them came and gradually closed round my door, which I could not shut, standing almost within it. A trim sergeant raised his cap to me, and passing on to Mr. Yi’s room, asked him where I came from and whither I was going, and on hearing, replied, “All right,” raised his cap to me, and departed, withdrawing his men with him. This was one of several domiciliary visits, and though they were usually very politely made, they suggested the query as to the right to make them, and to whom the mastership in the land belonged. There, as elsewhere, though the people hated the Japanese with an intense hatred, they were obliged to admit that they were very quiet and paid for everything they got. If the soldiers had not been in European clothes, it would not have occurred to me to think them rude for crowding round my door.
A day’s ride through monotonous country brought us to Pong-san, where we halted in the dirtiest hole I had till then been in. As soon as my den was comfortably warm, myriads of house flies, blackening the rafters, renewed a semi-torpid existence, dying in heaps in the soup and curry, filling the well of the candlestick with their singed bodies, and crawling in hundreds over my face. Next came the cockroaches in legions, large and small, torpid and active, followed by a great army of fleas and bugs, making life insupportable. To judge from the significant sounds from the public room, no one slept all night, and when I asked Mr. Yi after his welfare the next morning, he uttered the one word “miserable.” Discomforts of this nature, less or more, are inseparable from the Korean inn.
The following day, at a large village, we came upon the weekly market. It is usual to inquire regarding the trade of a district, and as the result of my inquiries, I assert that “trade” in the ordinary sense has no existence in a great part of Central and Northern Korea, i.e. there is no exchange of commodities between one place and another, no exports, no imports by resident merchants, and no industries supplying more than a local demand. Such are to be found to some extent in Southern Korea, and specially in the province of Chul-la. Apart from Phyöng-yang, “trade” does not exist in the region through which I travelled.
Reasons for such a state of things may be found in the debased coinage, so bulky that a pony can only carry £10 worth of it, the entire lack of such banking facilities as even in Western China render business transactions easy; the general mutual distrust; prejudices against preparing hides and working leather; caste prejudices; the general insecurity of earnings, ignorance absolutely inconceivable, and the existence of numerous guilds which possess practical monopolies.
Under Japanese influence, however, the superb silver yen has made its way slowly into the interior, and instead of having to carry a load of cash, as on my former journey, or to be placed in great difficulties by the want of it, this large silver coin was readily taken at all the inns, although I did not see a single specimen of the new Korean coinage.
“Trade,” as I became acquainted with it, is represented by Japanese buyers, who visit the small towns and villages, buying up rice, grain, and beans, which they forward to the ports for shipment to Japan, and by an organized corporation of pusang or pedlars, one of the most important of the many guilds which have been among the curious features of Korea.
There are no shops in villages, and few, where there are any, even in small towns. It is, in fact, impossible to buy anything except on the market-day, as no one keeps any stock of anything. At the weekly market the usual melancholy dulness of a Korean village is exchanged for bustle, color, and crowds of men. From an early hour in the morning the paths leading to the officially appointed centre are thronged with peasants bringing in their wares for sale or barter, chiefly fowls in coops, pigs, straw shoes, straw hats, and wooden spoons, while the main road has its complement of merchants, i.e. pedlars, mostly fine, strong, well-dressed men, either carrying their heavy packs themselves or employing porters or bulls for the purpose. These men travel on regular circuits to the village centres, and are industrious and respectable. A few put-up stalls, specially those who sell silks, gauzes, cords for girdles, dress shoes, amber, buttons, silks in skeins, small mirrors, tobacco-pouches, dress combs of tortoise-shell for men’s topknots, tape girdles for trousers, boxes with mirror tops, and the like. But most of the articles, from which one learns a good deal about the necessaries and luxuries required by the Korean, are exposed for sale on low tables or on mats on the ground, the merchant giving the occupant of the house before which he camps a few cash for the accommodation.
On such tables are sticks of pulled candy as thick as an arm, some of it stuffed with sesamum seeds, a sweetmeat sold in enormous quantities, and piece goods, shirtings of Japanese and English make, Victoria lawns, hempen cloth, Turkey-red cottons, Korean flimsy silks, dyes, chiefly aniline, which are sold in great quantities, together with saffron, indigo, and Chinese Prussian blue. On these also are exposed long pipes, contraband in the capital, and Japanese cigarettes, coming into great favor with young men and boys, with leather courier bags and lucifer matches from the same country, wooden combs, hairpins with tinsel heads, and, such is the march of ideas, purses for silver! Paper, the best of the Korean manufactures, in its finer qualities produced in Chul-la Do, is honored by stalls. Every kind is purchasable in these markets, from the beautiful, translucent, buff, oiled paper, nearly equal to vellum in appearance and tenacity, used for the floors of middle- and upper-class houses, and the stout paper for covering walls, to the thin, strong film for writing on, and a beautiful fabric, a sort of frothy gauze, for wrapping up delicate fabrics, as well as the coarse fibrous material, used for covering heavy packages, and intermediate grades, applied to every imaginable purpose, such as the making of string, almost all manufactured from the paper mulberry.