Geographical Limits of Corea—Characteristics of the Coast Line—The Surface Configuration of the Country—Isolation Made Easy by the Character of its Boundaries—Rivers of the Peninsula—The Climate—Forests, Plants, and Animals—Products of the Soil and of the Mine—Extent of Foreign Trade—The Eight provinces of Corea, Their Extent, Cities, and History—Government of the Corean Kingdom—The Dignitaries and their Duties—Corruption in the Administration of Official Duties—Buying and Selling Office—The Executive and the Judiciary.
For many a year the country of Corea has been known in little more than name. Its territory is a peninsula on the east coast of Asia, between China on the continent, and the Japanese islands to the eastward. It extends from thirty-four degrees and thirty minutes to forty-three degrees north latitude, and from one hundred and twenty-four degrees and thirty minutes to one hundred and thirty degrees and thirty minutes east longitude, between the Sea of Japan and the Yellow Sea. The Yellow Sea separates it from the southern provinces of China, while the Sea of Japan and the Strait of Corea separate it from the Japanese islands. It has a coast line of about one thousand seven hundred and forty miles, and a total area of about ninety thousand square miles. The peninsula, with its outlying islands, is nearly equal in size to Minnesota or to Great Britain[Britain]. In general shape and relative position to the Asiatic continent it resembles Florida. Tradition and geological indications lead to the belief that anciently the Chinese promontory and province of Shan-tung, and the Corean peninsula were connected, and that dry land once covered the space filled by the waters joining the Gulf of Pechili and the Yellow Sea. These waters are so shallow that the elevation of their bottoms but a few feet would restore their area to the land surface of the globe. On the other side also, the Sea of Japan is very shallow and the Straits of Corea at their greatest depth have but eighty-three feet of water.
The east coast is high, mountainous, and but slightly indented, with very few islands or harbors. The south and west shores are deeply and manifoldly scooped and fringed with numerous islands. From these island-skirted shores, especially on the west coast, mud banks extend out to sea beyond sight. While the tide on the east coast is very slight, only two feet at Gensan, it increases on the south and west coasts in a north direction, rising to thirty-three feet at Chemulpo. The rapid rise and fall of tides, and the vast area of mud left bare at low water, cause frequent fogs, and render the numerous inlets little available except for native craft. On the west coast the rivers are frozen in winter, but the east coast is open the whole winter through.
Quelpaert, the largest island, forty by seventeen miles, lies sixty miles south of the main land. Port Hamilton, between Quelpaert and Corea, was for a time an English possession, but in 1886 was given to China. The Russians are generally believed to have an overweening desire for the magnificent harbor of Port Lazaref on the east coast of the Corean mainland. In its policy of exclusion of all foreigners, the government has had its tasks facilitated by the inaccessible and dangerous nature of the approaches to the coast. The high mountain ranges and steep rocks of the east coast, and the thousands of islands, banks, shoals and reefs extending for miles into the sea on the western and southern shores, unite to make approach exceedingly difficult, even with the best charts and surveys at hand.
In the middle of the northern boundary of Corea, is the most notable natural feature of the peninsula. It is a great mountain, the colossal Paik-tu or “ever white” mountain, as it is known from the snow that rests upon its summit. When the Manchoorians pushed the Coreans farther and farther back, they reached this mountain, which marked the natural barrier which they were able to make their permanent boundary line. According to native account, which in Corea is seriously believed, the highest peak of this mountain reaches the moderate elevation of forty-four miles. It is famous as the birthplace of Corean folk lore, and a great deal that is mythical hangs about it still. On the top of the peak is a lake thirty miles in circumference. From this lake flow two streams, one to the north-east, the Tumen, which enters the Sea of Japan; and the other to the south-west, the Yalu river, which flows into the Corean bay at the head of the Yellow Sea. Corea is therefore in reality an island. These two rivers and the lake forming the northern boundary are about four hundred and sixty miles from the ocean at the southern end of the peninsula. The greatest width of the country is three hundred and sixty miles and its narrowest about sixty miles.
The Tumen river separates Corea from Manchooria, except in the last few miles of its course, when it flows by Russian territory, the south-eastern corner of Siberia. The Yalu river also divides Corea from Manchooria. The rivers of Corea are not of great importance except for drainage and water supply, being navigable but for short distances. On the west coast the chief rivers are the Yalu, the Ching-chong, the Tatong, the Han, the Kum; the Yalu is navigable for about one hundred and seventy miles and is by far the greatest of all in the peninsula. The Han is navigable to a little above Seoul, eighty miles; the Tatong to Ping-Yang, seventy-five miles; and the Kum is navigable for small boats for about thirty miles. In the south-eastern part of the peninsula the Nak-tong is navigable for small boats to a distance of one hundred and forty miles. The Tumen river, which forms the north-eastern boundary between Corea and Siberia, is not navigable except near the mouth. It drains a mountainous and rainy country. Ordinarily it is shallow and quiet, but in spring its current becomes very turbulent and swollen.
Occupying about the same latitude as Italy, Corea is also, like Italy, hemmed in on the north by mountain ranges, and traversed from north to south by another chain. The whole peninsula is very mountainous, some of the peaks rising to a height of eight thousand feet.
The climate of the country is excellent, bracing in the north, with the south tempered by the ocean breezes in summer. The winters in the north are colder than those of American states in the same latitude, and the summers are hotter. The heat is tempered by sea breezes, but in the narrow enclosed valleys it becomes very intense. The Han is frozen at Seoul for three months in the year, sufficiently to be used as a cart road, while the Tumen is usually frozen for five months.
