Undoubtedly the severity of the Corean code has been mitigated since Hamel’s time. According to his observations, husbands usually killed their wives who had committed adultery. A wife murdering her husband was buried to the shoulders in the earth at the road side, and all might strike or mutilate her with axe or sword. A serf who murdered his master was tortured, and a thief might be trampled to death. The acme of cruelty was produced, as in old Japan, by pouring vinegar down the criminal’s throat, and then beating him till he burst. The criminal code now in force is, in the main, that revised and published by the king in 1785, which greatly mitigated the one formerly used. One disgraceful, but not very severe, mode of correction is to tie a drum to the back of the offender and publicly proclaim his transgression, while the drum is beaten as he walks through the streets. Amid many improvements on the old barbarous system of aggravating the misery of the condemned, there still survives a disgraceful form of capital punishment, in which the cruelty takes on the air of savage refinement. The cho-reni-to-ta appears only in [[236]]extreme cases. The criminal’s face is smeared with chalk, his hands are tied behind him, a gong is tied on his back, and an arrow is thrust through either ear. The executioner makes the victim march round before the spectators, while he strikes the gong, crying out, “This fellow has committed [adultery, murder, treason, etc.]. Avoid his crime.” The French missionaries executed near Seoul were all put to death in this barbarous manner.
Officials often receive furloughs to return home and visit their parents, for filial piety is the supreme virtue in Chinese Asia. The richest rewards on earth and brightest heaven hereafter await the filial child. Curses and disgrace in this life and the hottest hell in the world hereafter are the penalties of the disobedient or neglectful child. The man who strikes his father is beheaded. The parricide is burned to death. Not to mourn long and faithfully, by retiring from office for months, is an incredible iniquity.
Coreans, like Japanese, argue that, if the law punishes crime, it ought also to reward virtue. Hence the system which prevails in the mikado’s empire and in Chō-sen of publicly awarding prizes to signal exemplars of filial piety. These in Japan may be in the form of money, silver cups, rolls of silk, or gewgaws. In Corea, they are shown in monumental columns, or dedicatory temples, or by public honors and promotion to office. Less often are the rewarded instances of devotion to the mother than to the father.
Official life has its sunshine and shadows in this land as elsewhere, but perhaps one of the hardest tasks before the Corean ruling classes of this and the next generation is the duty of diligently eating their words. Accustomed for centuries to decry and belittle the foreigner from Christendom, they must now, as the people discern the superiority of westerners, “rise to explain” in a manner highly embarrassing. In intellect, government, science, social customs, manual skill, refinement, and possession of the arts and comforts of life, the foreigner will soon be discovered to be superior. At the same time the intelligent native will behold with how little wisdom, and how much needless cruelty, Chō-sen is governed. The Japanese official world has passed through such an experience. If we may argue from a common ancestry and hereditary race traits, we may forecast the probability that to Corea, as to Japan, may come the same marvellous revolution in ideas and customs. [[237]]
CHAPTER XXVII.
FEUDALISM, SERFDOM, AND SOCIETY.
It is remarked by Palladius that the Fuyu race, the ancestors of the modern Coreans, was the first to emerge from the desert under feudal forms of organization. The various migrations of new nations rising out of northern and eastern Asia were westward, and were held together under monarchical systems of government. The Fuyu tribes who, by turning their face to the rising, instead of the setting sun, were anomalous in the direction of their migration, were unique also in their political genius. Those emigrants who, descending from the same ancestral seats in Manchuria, and through the peninsula, crossed toward Nippon, or Sunrise, and settled Japan, maintained their feudalism until, through ambitious desire to rival great China, they borrowed the centralized system of court and monarchy from the Tang dynasty, in the seventh century. The mikado, by means of boards or ministries like the Chinese, ruled his subjects until the twelfth century. Then, through the pride and ambition of the military clans, which had subdued all the tribes to his sway, feudalism, which had spread its roots, lifted its head. By rapid growths, under succeeding military regents, it grew to be the tree overspreading the empire. It was finally uprooted and destroyed only by the revolution of 1868, and the later victories of united Japan’s imperial armies, at an awful sacrifice of life and treasure.
That branch of the Fuyu migration which remained in the Corean peninsula likewise preserved the institution of feudalism which had been inherited from their ancestors. In their early history, lands were held on the tenure of military service, and in war time, or on the accession of a new dynasty, rewards were made by parcelling out the soil to the followers of the victor. Provision for a constant state of servitude among one class of the political body was made by the custom of making serfs of criminals or their kindred. A nucleus of slavery being once formed, [[238]]debt, famine, capture in war, voluntary surrender, would serve to increase those whose persons and labor were wholly or partly owned by another. To social prosperity, religion, and the increase of general intelligence, we may look as elements for the amelioration of serfdom and the elevation of certain classes of bondsmen into free people. The forms of Corean society, to this day, are derived from feudal ranks and divisions, and the powers, status, divisions, and practical politics of the nobles have their roots in the ancient feudalism which existed even “before the conquest.” Its fruit and legacy are seen in the serfdom or slavery which is Corea’s “domestic” or “peculiar” institution.
Speaking in general terms, the ladder of society has four rungs, the king, nobles, and the three classes of society, in the last of which are “the seven low callings.” In detail, the grades may be counted by the tens and scores. In the lowest grade of the fourth class are “the seven vile callings,” viz.: the merchant, boatman, jailor, postal or mail slave, monk, butcher, and sorcerer.