Corea: The Hermit Nation

by William Elliot Griffis

Among the conqueror’s first acts was the erection of a memorial mound over the grave of Pi Kan, and an order that Ki Tsze should be released from prison, and appointed Prime Minister of the realm.

But the sage’s loyalty exceeded his gratitude. In spite of the magnanimity of the offer, Ki Tsze frankly told the conqueror that duty to his deposed sovereign forbade him serving one whom he could not but regard as a usurper. He then departed into the regions lying to the northeast. With him went several thousand Chinese emigrants, mostly the remnant of the defeated army, now exiles, who made him their king. It is not probable that in his distant realm he received investment from or paid tribute to King Wu. Such an act would be a virtual acknowledgment of the righteousness of rebellion and revolution. It would prove that the sage forgave the usurper. Some Chinese historians state that Ki Tsze accepted a title from Wu Wang. Others maintain that the investiture “was a euphemism to shield the character of the ancestor of Confucius.” The migration of Ki Tsze and his followers took place 1122 B.C.

Ki Tsze began vigorously to reduce the aboriginal people of his realm to order. He policed the borders, gave laws to his subjects, and gradually introduced the principles and practice of Chinese etiquette and polity throughout his domain. Previous to his time the people lived in caves and holes in the ground, dressed in leaves, and were destitute of manners, morals, agriculture and cooking, being ignorant savages. The divine being, Dan Kun, had partially civilized them, but Kishi, who brought 5,000 Chinese colonists with [[13]]him, taught the aborigines letters, reading and writing, medicine, many of the arts, and the political principles of feudal China. The Japanese pronounce the founder’s name Kishi, and the Coreans Kei-tsa or Kysse.

The name conferred by Kishi, the civilizer, upon his new domain is that now in use by the modern Coreans—Chō-sen or Morning Calm.

This ancient kingdom of Chō-sen, according to the Coreans, comprised the modern Chinese province of Shing-king, which is now about the size of Ohio, having an area of 43,000 square miles, and a population of 8,000,000 souls. It is entirely outside and west of the limits of modern Corea.

In addition to the space already named, the fluctuating boundaries of this ancient kingdom embraced at later periods much territory beyond the Liao River toward Peking, and inside the line now marked by the Great Wall. To the east the modern province of Ping-an was included in Chō-sen, the Ta-tong River being its most stable boundary. “Scientific frontiers,” though sought for in those ancient times, were rather ideal than hard and fast. With all due allowance for elastic boundaries, we may say that ancient Chō-sen lay chiefly within the Liao Tung peninsula and the Corean province of Ping-an, that the Liao and the Ta-tong Rivers enclosed it, and that its northern border lay along the 42d parallel of latitude.

The descendants of Ki Tsze are said to have ruled the country until the fourth century before the Christian era. Their names and deeds are alike unknown, but it is stated that there were forty-one generations, making a blood-line of eleven hundred and thirty-one years. The line came to an end in 9 A.D., though they had lost power long before this time.

By common consent of Chinese and native tradition, Ki Tsze is the founder of Corean social order. If this tradition be true, the civilization of the hermit nation nearly equals, in point of time, that of China, and is one of the very oldest in the world, being contemporaneous with that of Egypt and Chaldea. It is certain that the natives plume themselves upon their antiquity, and that the particular vein of Corean arrogance and contempt for western civilization is kindred to that of the Hindoos and Chinese. From the lofty height of thirty centuries of tradition, which to them is unchallenged history, they look with pitying contempt upon the upstart nations of yesterday, who live beyond the sea under some other heaven. When the American Admiral, John Rodgers, in [[14]]1871, entered the Han River with his fleet, hoping to make a treaty, he was warned off with the repeated answer that “Corea was satisfied with her civilization of four thousand years, and wanted no other.” The perpetual text of all letters from Seoul to Peking, of all proclamations against Christianity, of all death-warrants of converts, and of the oft-repeated refusals to open trade with foreigners is the praise of Ki Tsze as the founder of the virtue and order of “the little kingdom,” and the loyalty of Corea to his doctrines.

In the letter of the king to the Chinese emperor, dated November 25, 1801, the language following the opening sentence is as given below:

“His Imperial Majesty knows that since the time when the remnants of the army of the Yin dynasty migrated to the East [1122 B.C.], the little kingdom has always been distinguished by its exactness in fulfilling all that the rites prescribe, justice and loyalty, and in general by fidelity to her duties,” etc., etc.