Homer Bezalee Hulbert

“ Generally speaking, education is a private affair and has so been considered from the first. Every village has its little room, always in a private house, where the boys sit on the floor with their large-print books of Chinese characters before them, and, as they sway back and forth with half-shut eyes, they drone out the sounds of the ideographs, not in unison, but each for himself. There is no such thing as a class, for no two of the boys are together, and to the unaccustomed ear the babel that results is almost stunning. ”

“ Only one who is "to the manner born," and who has in his blood the dash of mysticism born of the East, can get from that weird music all that the Korean can. All the time the moon is adumbrated the crowd stands silent, awed, intent. They know that it is all a mere play, but the dramatic element in their nature carries them back to those far days when their savage forbears stood transfixed with genuine fear lest the light of the moon be for ever darkened. ”

“ But if we wish to feel as well as to know what the life of a people has been, we must not sit down in the drawing-room under the electric light and read their annals simply, but we must mount to the attic and rummage among their folk-lore, handle, as it were, the garments of bygone days and untie the faded ribbon which confines the love-letters of long ago. ”

“ These bullocks which wind in and out among the hills of this country, carrying every sort of produce, are not the fierce and rampageous animals that are supposed in our own land to accept every challenge of a red rag. They are docility itself. This heavy, slow-plodding animal, docile, long-suffering, uncomplaining, would make a fitting emblem of the Korean people. How often have we seen a brutal, drunken bullock-driver vent his spleen on someone else by beating his animal with a club or violently jerk the rope tied to the wooden ring that passes through the cartilage of its nose. ”

“ It was perfectly plain that Korean officialdom had no enthusiasm for the Japanese cause. It is probable that a large majority of the people preferred to see Japan win rather than the Russians, but it was the fond wish of ninety-nine out of every hundred to see Korea rid of them both. Whichever one held exclusive power here was certain to become an object of hatred to the Korean people. Had the Russians driven out the Japanese, the Koreans would have hated them as heartily. Whichever horn of the dilemma Korea became impaled upon, she was sure to think the other would have been less sharp. ”

“ The man will be like a rat in a granary (lean in spring and summer and fat in autumn and winter) , like a candle at night, like flowers meeting the springtime, like a king without a realm, like a moth about a candle, like a stork that has lost his home, like a tortoise in a box, like a dragon in the sea, like a dead man come to life. ”

“ What would life on the farm be in America if almost the total revenue of the country was collected from the farmer, while the merchant, manufacturer and house-owner went free? This government has always, and successfully, reckoned upon the passionate love of the Korean for the soil. A gentleman of the purest blood can engage in farming without soiling his escutcheon, but to be a merchant or manufacturer or broker would be beneath his dignity. Agriculture is so dignified an occupation that it stands quite alone among Korean industries. ”

“ In other words, the feudal system is a chrysalis state from which a people are prepared to leap into the full light of free self-government. Neither China nor Korea has enjoyed that state, and it is therefore manifestly impossible for them to effect any such startling change as that which transformed Japan in a single decade from a cruel and bigoted exclusiveness to an open and enthusiastic world-life. Instead of bursting forth full-winged from a cocoon, both China and Korea must be incubated like an egg. ”

“ The Korean is your true lover of springtime. The harshness of his winter is mitigated by no glowing hearth or cosey chimney-corner. Winter means to him a dungeon, twelve by eight, dark, dirty, poisonous. Spring means to him emancipation, breathing space, pure pleasure,—animal pleasure, if you will,—but the touch of spring affects him to the finger-tips and makes his senses " stir with poetry as leaves with summer wind." He is simply irrepressible. He must have song.
One branch of Korean classical music deals with convivial songs. ”

“ It will be a sad day when Nature loses all her mystery and when we can project the cathode ray of science into every crack and cranny of this over-classified world, when we shall put, as it were, a revolver to the head of the Sibyl and compel her to rearrange the scattered leaves, when we shall reduce to grammar the leaf language of the Dordonian oak. ”

“ The moment the limb of the moon appears beyond the shadow, and it becomes apparent that the Heavenly Dog has "bitten off more than he can chew," there is a sudden change in the music, a stir in the crowd. They press forward eagerly, and at that instant a man leaps into the centre of the ring, wearing a hideous mask and blood-red sleeves that hang down to the ground. ”

“ There are American gentlemen in Korea who could lead you to country villages in that land where the fetich shrines have been swept away, where schools and churches have been built, and where the transforming power of Christianity has done a fundamental work without touching a single one of the time-honoured customs of the land; where hard-handed farmers have begun in the only genuine way to develop the culture of the West. That culture evinces itself in its ultimate forms of honesty, sympathy, unselfishness, and not in the use of a swallow-tail coat and a silk hat. ”

“ Our harmonies seem to them like a veritable jargon of sounds, but they take genuine pleasure in that indescribable medley of thumps and squeaks which emanate from a Korean orchestra. To us it seems as if there were no rhyme or reason in it, but in truth every note is produced according to a fixed law. There is a distinct science of music here that has been in existence for upwards of fifteen hundred years. Every note and cadence is produced according to a specific law. It only illustrates what is true of all art, that we must bring to it a trained sense in order to appreciate it. ”

“ The very finest Korean house is the most secluded, and you can discover its charms only by close inspection, and by twisting in and out through numberless gates and alleys. You cannot stand off and admire it as you can a European building. On the street side it presents nothing to the eye but a plain row of ordinary Korean kan without anything to show its character whatever. Judging from their houses, the Koreans do not put their best side out. ”

“ Unfortunately this ecstasy of anger does not fall upon the male sex alone, and when it takes possession of a Korean woman she becomes the impersonation of all the Furies rolled into one. She will stand and scream so loud that the sound finally refuses to come from her throat, and she simply retches. Every time I see a woman indulging in this nerve-racking process I marvel that she escapes a stroke of apoplexy. ”

“ First came a number of torch-bearers, whose duty it was to light the great brush torches that are planted at intervals all down the avenue. These torches are as thick as a man's body and ten feet high; and as they flickered, crackled and then sent up a spire of lurid, smoky flame, they seemed to turn everything blood-red, and made the advancing ranks of the procession look more like a company of fiends than of human beings. ”

“ Just so through the long centuries have the Korean people borne the burdens of their rulers and taken their blows without complaint, until at last patience has become a second nature, and the Western on-looker marvels at the amount of oppression that the ordinary Korean will endure without revolt. The bullock could turn and rend his master with utmost ease, even as the people could relieve themselves of oppression, but the patience of the Korean has reached a point where it ceases to be a virtue. ”

“ There is hardly a hut in Seoul where no flower is found. As for animal life, Korea has a generous share. The magnificent bullocks which carry the heavy loads, draw the carts and pull the ploughs are the most conspicuous. It is singular that the Koreans have never used milk or any of its products, though the cow has existed in the peninsula for at least thirty-five hundred years. This is one of the proofs that the Koreans have never been a nomadic people. Without his bullock the farmer would be all at sea. No other animal would be able to drag a plough through the adhesive mud of a paddy-field. ”

“ A Korean house is a good illustration of the statement that bijouterie is the prevailing aim of their art. However large the house may be or however spacious the site, the place is divided by a network of walls into a vast number of alleys and courtyards, each very pretty in its way, but destroying all possibility of effective combination. The whole space is frittered away in a labyrinth of cheerless walls, which to the Westerner are more suggestive of a prison than a residence. Now the Korean delights in this bee-hive sort of existence. ”

“ The dropping of Buddhistic ideals in government was like the dropping of sand-bags from a balloon, and the rebound was marvellous, proving that there was still a splendid virility in the Korean people. Art, literature, science, economics, agriculture and every other form of human activity felt the impulse, and before long the former degraded condition of the people was transformed. ”

“ At one time or another almost every foot of Korean soil has been the scene of battle, and the tales of wonderful marksmanship, heroic daring, gigantic strength, subtle stratagem, inventive genius, intrepid horsemanship and hairbreadth escape by field and flood are among the commonest household words in Korea. ”

“ Written history stalks across the centuries in sevenleague boots, leaping from one great crisis to another, and giving but a bird's-eye view of what lies between ; but folk-lore takes you by the hand, leads you down into the valley, shows you the home, the family, the every-day life, and brings you close to the heart of the people. ”

“ Every river or stream, as well as the ocean, is the abode of a dragon spirit, and every village on the banks of a stream has its periodical sacrifice to this benignant power. Not only so, but the freight-boats have their ceremony, and the ferry-boats, fishing-boats and war-boats and boats that carried the annual envoys to China, - all have their special forms of worship toward the great dragon. The great importance of this sacrifice lies in the fact that the dragon has control of the rainfall, and he must be propitiated in order that agricultural pursuits may not be endangered. ”

“ Every word now is that of the spirit, not of the woman. She screams out the name of the spirit that has come, and tells what they must do to cure the patient, which directions generally include the payment of an extra sum of money. At last the spirit promises to take away the disease, and then the mudang, after a few more frantic leaps and screams which betoken the leaving of the spirit, suddenly becomes quiet and shows no signs of her previous excitement. She does not try to make the deception more complete by pretended exhaustion nor by falling down like a dead person. ”

“ Every day brings news of the existence of a surprising and hitherto unguessed-at warmth of feeling for their country on the part of Koreans. This has given the lie to those special pleaders for Japan who have denied the existence of patriotism in Korea, and gives promise of a determination to do whatever may be done to weld the Korean people into a peaceful but intelligent and prosperous body which even the Japanese will be slow to stigmatise as contemptible. ”

“ Each year, about New- Year's time, the Koreans make little straw manikins, stuff a few cash into their bodies and then throw them into the streets, where small boys seize upon them and tear them to pieces for the sake of the money. In this way the spirit of ill-luck is supposed to be dismembered and rendered innocuous. Some people hang a hat and a coat at the entrance of the house as a fetich of the Door-spirit. Others hang up old shoes, bunches of grass and fishes' heads as fetiches of their various household divinities. ”

“ Only the top itself has apparently been restored during the past five centuries. Standing upon this altar-crowned summit, as the ocean wind drives the clouds across the serrated tops of the rugged range one tries to imagine himself back in the days of Abraham, when Tangun stood by and directed the building of this heaventouching altar, and the flames leaped high about his burning hecatombs. The mind faints in the effort to grasp the meaning of four thousand years. ”