After the pagoda—perhaps before the pagoda—there are in Söul three buildings, more than any others indicative of the difference between Söul the old and conservative, and Söul the new and iconoclastic—I mean the Foreign Office, the War Office, and the Home Office. They are all of recent date, all concessions to a cosmopolitanism, with which Korea, the old, had no sympathy, and into which (though ever so little) Korea, the new, has been forced by that most brutal of all forces—the force of circumstances—forced by the irresistible might of the gigantic disproportion, to her own, of alien numbers. A few years ago Korea had never had a Foreign Office, because Korea had never deigned to be cognizant of the existence of any foreign power. True she has, for many years, paid a lazy tribute to China, and plied a lazier trade with Japan; but until a short time ago she has been essentially, and indeed, a hermit nation. Yes, it was verily the land of the morning calm. No réveil broke its early morning slumber; no drum woke its night to alarm. It was a heaven of earthly peace, a heaven in which there was neither fighting nor dying in battle.
But that is changed. So far as outside turmoil can ripple the placid waters, upon which the lotus-flower blooms and bends, in a luxury of perfumed sleep, as it does nowhere else—the lakes and ponds of Korea!
Korea admitted, gracefully, if enforcedly, foreigners to her shores—admitted them for purposes of commerce and of peace. Alas, she has had to recognize them as ambassadors of war, introducers of bloodshed.
Korea’s army has for many years been very purely artistic, ornamentally belligerent—nothing more. It has been found impossible to evolve it into anything more brutal, nineteenth-centuryish, effective, and up-to-date.
Korea’s War Office is an unhappy, if seemingly necessary, farce. It has existed for centuries. But only the conjunction, or rather the juxtaposition, of Korea with other nations has made it ridiculous.
Korea’s Home Office sprang up—as it must have done in any self-respecting soil—as soon as a Foreign Office became a regrettable fait accompli. Until Korea had a Foreign Office, Korea’s War Office was by no means the sad burlesque that it is now. Until Korea had a Foreign Office, she had not the filmiest need of a Home Office. Korea was all in all to Korea. Every effort of her being was undivertedly directed to the welfare of herself and her own. She had no need of, no excuse for, a Home Office, because all was home, everything for home. But when she was physically forced to admit the existence of other peoples, she was morally forced to insistently emphasize the existence of her own people.
Söul is rich in palaces; very rich in their quality, if not in their quantity. Each palace is, like every considerable Korean dwelling, a collection of houses. And every Korean palace—like every Korean dwelling of any distinction—is more remarkable, more admirable because of its surroundings—its garden—than because of itself.
There are four nations pre-eminent for landscape gardening—pre-eminent in this order:—the Japanese, the Koreans, the Chinese, the Italians.
Korea is, by her climate, held behind Japan in landscape gardening. Most of the flowers that in Japan bloom all the year round, can in Korea only bloom for a few months.
But in one phase of landscape gardening—(the art of bringing Nature into a garden, and there ornamenting her, without insulting her)—the Koreans quite equal the Japanese.