Corea: The Hermit Nation

by William Elliot Griffis

In the capital and among the higher classes, the children’s toys are very handsome, ranking as real works of art, while in every class the playthings of the tiny Corean humanity form but a miniature copy of the life of their elders. Among the living pets, the monkey is the favorite. These monkeys are fitted with jackets, and when plump and not too mischievous make capital pets for the boys. Puppies share the affections of the nursery with the tiger on wheels. Made of paper pulp and painted, this harmless effigy of the king of beasts is pulled about with a string. A [[257]]jumping-jack is but a copy of the little boy who pulls it. A jerk of the string draws in the pasteboard tongue, and sends the trumpet to his mouth. Official life is mirrored in the tasselled umbrella, the fringed hats, and the toy-chariot with fancy wheels. Other toys, such as rattles, flags, and drums, exactly imitate the larger models with which the grown-up men and women amuse themselves. All these are named, fashioned, and decorated in a style peculiarly Corean. Among the most common of the children’s plays are the following: A ring is hidden in a heap of sand, and the urchins poke sticks into and through the pile to find it. Whoever transfixes the circlet wins the game, suggesting our girls’ game of grace-hoop, though often taking a longer time. Rosettes or pinwheels of paper are made and fastened on the end of sticks. Running before the breeze, the miniature windmills afford hilarious delight.

The children’s way of bringing rain is to move the lips up and down, distending the cheeks and pressing the breath through the lips. Playing “dinner” with tiny cups and dishes, and imitating the ponderous etiquette of their elders, is a favorite amusement. See-saw is rougher and more exhilarating. Games of response are often played with hands, head, or feet, in which one watches the motions of his rival, opens or shuts his hands, and pays a forfeit or loses the game when a false move is made. For the coast-dwellers, the sea-shore, with the rocks which are the refuge of the shell-fish, is the inexhaustible playground of the children. Looking down in the clear deep water of the archipelago they see the coral reefs, the bright flower-gardens of marine plants, and shoals of striped, banded, crimson-tailed, and green-finned fish, which, in the eastern seas, glitter with tints of gold and silver. The children, half naked, catch the crabs and lobsters, learning how to hold their prizes after many a nab and pinch, which bring infantile tears and squalls. One of the common playthings of Corean children, the “baby’s rattle,” is the dried leathery egg of the skate, which with a few pebbles inside makes the infant, if not its parents, happy with the din.

Besides a game of patting and dabbling in the water—chal-pak, chal-pak—boys amuse themselves by fishing with hook and line or net. One method is to catch fish by means of the yek-kui. This is a plant of peppery taste, which poisons or stupefies the fish that bite the tempting tip, making them easy prey. More serious indoor games played by women and children are pa-tok, or backgammon; [[258]]sang-pi-yen, dominoes; siu-tu-chen, game of eighty cards; and chang-keui, or chess. All these pastimes are quite different from ours of the same name, yet enough like them to be recognized as belonging to the species named. The festivals most intensely enjoyed by the children are those of “Treading the Bridges,” “The Meeting of the Star Lovers,” and the “Mouse Fire.” There is one evening in the year in which men and children, as well as women, are allowed to be out in the streets of the capital. The people spend the greater part of the night in passing and repassing upon the little bridges of stone. It is a general “night out” for all the people. Comedians, singers, harlequins, and merry-makers of all kinds are abroad, and it being moonlight, all have a good time in “treading the bridges.” On the seventh day of the seventh month, the festival honored in China, Corea, and Japan takes place, for which children wait, in expectation, many days in advance. Sweetmeats are prepared, and bamboos strung with strips of colored paper are the symbols of rejoicing. On this night the two stars Capricornus and Alpha Lyra (or the Herd-boy and Spinning Maiden) are in conjunction in the milky way[1] (or the River of Heaven), and wishes made at this time are supposed to come true.

Chu-pul, or the Mouse Fire, occurs in the twelfth month, on the day of the Mouse (or rat). Children light brands or torches of dry reeds or straw, and set fire to the dry herbage, stubble, and shrubbery on the borders of the roads, in order to singe the hair of the various field or ground-burrowing animals, or burn them out, so as to obtain a plentiful crop of cotton.

At school, the pupils study according to the method all over Asia, that is, out loud, and noisily. This kang-siong, or deafening buzz, is supposed to be necessary to sound knowledge. Besides learning the Chinese characters and the vernacular alphabet, with tongue, ear, eye, and pen, the children master the ku-ku (“nine times nine”), or the multiplication table, and learn to work the four simple rules of arithmetic, and even fractions, involution, and evolution on the chon-pan, or sliding numeral frame. A “red mark” is a vermilion token of a good lesson, made by the examiner; and for a good examination passed rewards are given in the form of a first-rate dinner, or one or all of “the four friends of the study table”—pens, ink, paper, and inkstand, or brushes, sticks of “India” ink, rolls of unsized paper, and an inkstone [[259]]or water-dropper. Writing a good autograph signature—“one’s own pen”—is highly commended. Sometimes money is given for encouragement, which the promising lad saves up in an earthen savings-bank. Not a few of the youth of the humbler classes, who work in the fields by day and study the characters by night, rise to be able officers who fill high stations.

The French missionaries assure us that the normal Corean is fond of children, especially of sons, who in his eyes are worth ten times as much as daughters. Such a thing as exposure of children is almost unknown. In times of severe famine this may happen after failure to give away or sell for a season, that they may be bought back. Parents rarely find their family too numerous.

The first thing inculcated in a child’s mind is respect for his father. All insubordination is immediately and sternly repressed. Far different is it with the mother. She yields to her boy’s caprices and laughs at his faults and vices without rebuke. The child soon learns that a mother’s authority is next to nothing. In speaking of his father a lad often adds the words “severe,” “terrible,” implying the awe and profound respect in which he holds his father. (Something of the same feeling prevails as in Japan, where the four dreadful things which a lad most fears, and which are expressed in a rhyming proverb, are: “Earthquake, wind, fire, and father,” or “daddy.”) On the contrary, in speaking of his mother, he adds the words “good,” “indulgent,” “I’m not afraid of her,” etc. A son must not play nor smoke in his father’s presence, nor assume free or easy posture before him. For lounging, there is a special room, like a nursery. The son waits on his father at meals and gets his bed ready. If he is old or sickly, the son sleeps near him and does not quit his side night or day. If he is in prison the son takes up his abode in the vicinity, to communicate with his parent and furnish him with luxuries. In case of imprisonment for treason, the son at the portal, on bended knees day and night, awaits the sentence that will reduce himself to slavery. If the accused is condemned to exile, the son must at least accompany his father to the end of the journey, and, in some cases, share banishment with him. Meeting his father in the street, the son must make profound salute on his knees, in the dust, or in the ditch. In writing to him, he must make free use of the most exaggerated honorifics which the Corean knows.

The practice of adoption is common, as it is abnormally so in all countries where ancestral worship is prevalent and underlies [[260]]all religions. The preservation of the family line is the supreme end and aim of life. In effect all those persons are descendants of particular ancestors who will keep up the ancestral sacrifices, guard the tablets and observe the numerous funeral and mourning ceremonies which make life such a burden in Eastern Asia. Daughters are not adopted, because they cannot accomplish the prescribed rites. When parents have only a daughter, they marry her to an adopted son, who becomes head of the family so adopted into. Even the consent of the adopted, or of his parents, is not always requisite, for as it is a social, as well as a religious necessity, the government may be appealed to, and, in case of need, forces acceptance of the duty. In this manner, as in the patriarchal age of biblical history, a man may be coerced into “raising up seed” to defunct ancestors.

Properly, an adoption, to be legal, ought to be registered at the office of the Board of Rites, but this practice has fallen into disuse, and it is sufficient to give public notice of the fact among the two families concerned. An adoption once made cannot be void except by a decree from the Tribunal of Rites, which is difficult to obtain. In practice, the system of adoption results in many scandals, quarrels, jealousies, and all the train of evils which one familiar with men and women, as they are, might argue a priori without the facts at hand. The iron fetters of Asiatic institutions cannot suppress human nature.

Primogeniture is the rigid rule. Younger sons, at the time of their marriage, or at other important periods of life, receive paternal gifts, now more, now less, according to usage, rank, the family fortune, etc., but the bulk of the property belongs to the oldest son, on whom the younger sons look as their father. He is the head of the family, and regards his father’s children as his own. In all Eastern Asia the bonds of family are much closer than among Caucasian people of the present time. All the kindred, even to the fifteenth or twentieth degree, whatever their social position, rich or poor, educated or illiterate, officials or beggars—form a clan, a tribe, or more exactly one single family, all of whose members have mutual interests to sustain. The house of one is the house of the other, and each will assist to his utmost another of the clan to get money, office, or advantage. The law recognizes this system by levying on the clan the imposts and debts which individuals of it cannot pay, holding the sodality responsible for the individual. To this they submit without complaint or protest. [[261]]