Korea

“ The history of Korea we may have always with us; but Korea—Korea of the lotus ponds and the red-arrow gates—Korea of the big hats and the devil-traps—Korea of the geisha girls and the omnipotent, red-clad king!—that we may not have so long. Civilization and war are on the march, and if ‘smooth success be strewed before their gentle feet,’ why then, the twentieth century in her youth may see the matrons of Chosön walk abroad unveiled, and night on the streets of Söul turned into day by electric light. ”

“ As to colour in art, the Koreans are still as primitive as in ancient days. Their red is the red of blood or of the peppers that lie ripening on their roofs. Their green is the vivid green of the new-sprouting rice or the dark blue-green of the pinetree. Nature's colours are in their art as nature's sounds are in their wonderfully mimetic language. ”

“ The lofty crags that lift their heads three thousand feet into the air and almost overhang the city of Seoul are alpine in their grandeur. There is always distance, openness, sweep to a Korean view which is quite in contrast to the picturesque coziness of almost all Japanese scenery. This, together with the crystal atmosphere, make Korea, even after only a few years' residence, a delightful reminiscence. No people surpass the Koreans in love for and appreciation of beautiful scenery. ”

“ So a Korean woman is as hidden from the world, in her husband’s garden or summer-house, as is a nun in her cell.
The wives and daughters of well-to-do Koreans spend a great deal of time in their gardens, sharing naturally enough the intense love of their menkind for nature, and probably finding their peculiar lives more endurable among the trees and the birds and the lotus ponds, than they do in their queer little rooms, through the paper windows of which they cannot look unless they poke a hole with their fingers first—rooms in which there is little space and less furniture. ”

“ In Korea the old is passing away, is crumbling about our ears. The new wine is bursting the old bottles. The question for the future to answer is whether the Korean people will allow their ship of state to drift upon the SargassoSargasso Sea until the seaweed “rising strake on strake” shall make her utterly derilict, or whether they will awake from their lethargy, clear away the barnacles and jam the helm down hard a-port until the wind fills the sails and she can forge ahead toward some desired haven. ”

“ My first journey produced the impression that Korea is the most uninteresting country I ever traveled in, but during and since the war its political perturbations, rapid changes, and possible destinies, have given me an intense interest in it; while Korean character and industry, as I saw both under Russian rule in Siberia, have enlightened me as to the better possibilities which may await the nation in the future. Korea takes a similarly strong grip on all who reside in it sufficiently long to overcome the feeling of distaste which at first it undoubtedly inspires. ”

“ The King of Korea does not hang about the doorways, nor prowl into the back-yards of his subjects, but in every Korean city he has several, and in every Korean village at least one appointed listener. European history tells us that more than one European monarch has disguised himself at night, and held up his thirsty ears to the nectar or the gall of his subjects’ candid opinions of himself. Whether eaves-dropping is more admirable when performed in person or when deputed to the hireling, is a nice question for those who would judge between East and West. ”

“ Every house in the main street of the Japanese settlement was turned into a barrack and crowded with troops, rifles and accoutrements gleamed in the balconies, crowds of Koreans, limp and dazed, lounged in the streets or sat on the knolls, gazing vacantly at the transformation of their port into a foreign camp. ”

“ THE EMPEROR OF KOREA AT THE NEW PALACE
Since last night we have been in the midst of revolution; but it seems that a revolution in Korea is very much like everyday life in other corners of the earth, and nobody attaches any importance to it. Everybody pursues his daily task, the ordinary routine goes on in its slow and lumbering way. Official life maintains its sluggish pulsation, and to my astonishment I even get an invitation to be received in the course of the afternoon by the Emperor and the Crown Prince. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As I sat amidst the dirt, squalor, rubbish, and odd and endism of the inn yard before starting, surrounded by an apathetic, dirty, vacant-looking, open-mouthed crowd steeped in poverty, I felt Korea to be hopeless, helpless, pitiable, piteous, a mere shuttlecock of certain great powers, and that there is no hope for her population of twelve or fourteen millions, unless it is taken in hand by Russia, under whose rule, giving security for the gains of industry as well as light taxation, I had seen Koreans in hundreds transformed into energetic, thriving, peasant farmers in Eastern Siberia. ”

“ The first day spent in the capital of Korea is nearing its end. Quietness penetrates the night—such profound quietness as can only be enjoyed in Seoul. The alley leading to the legation is dark and deserted. And as I walk home I try to recall to my memory all that I have perceived and heard; all that was new to me and striking; all the contrasts and the incoherency of earliest perceptions. ”

“ A Korean king hides his palace behind an externity of many walls that are splendid in height, in colour, in detail, in outline, and in material. Walls between which a score of flowers fight each other for the glory of killing every inch of the grass,—walls between which marble-outlined ponds sleep cosily beneath their green and pink and white coverlets of lilies, and of lotus. ”

“ Every Korean home is subject to dæmons, here, there, and everywhere. They touch the Korean at every point in life, making his well-being depend on a continual series of acts of propitiation, and they avenge every omission with merciless severity, keeping him under this yoke of bondage from birth to death. ”

“ A Korean nobleman will step aside to let a Korean peasant woman pass him on the street. The rooms of a Korean woman are as sacred to her as a shrine is to its image. Indeed, the rooms of his wife or of his mother are the sanctuary of any Korean man who breaks the law. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In an ordinary Korean house there is little or no other furniture. A screen perhaps, precious for its decorations, and for the carvings of its frame, and three or four pictures—pictures distinctly Korean, but I assure you by no means inartistic. I can think of nothing else that ordinarily furnishes a Korean room, except the quaintly clad people, and the sunshine that comes in almost iridescently—it shines through windows of so many different colours: windows of paper. The colour of the light depends entirely upon the colour and the texture of the paper through which it comes. ”

“ Nature is accented in those palace grounds, but never interfered with. Wherever an exceptionally pretty bit of view is to be seen, there is a quaint Korean summer-house. And as the pretty bits tread upon each other’s heels, the grounds are rather thick with odd summer-houses, and still odder pavilions. The Koreans are intensely fond of Nature; but they are not fond of exercise. They like to sit, even when they look upon the trees, the flowers, the hills, the sky, the lotus-ponds that they so love. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Korea is a land of stupendous beauty and attractiveness, the kingdom of toil, and it is to this they are looking. To the onward marching lines of men who see the future, Korea and Manchuria are the stepping stones. The wide fields extend in every direction, the hills “rejoice on every side.” Japan marches her soldiers at every station, law and order go with her, and out of chaos, Asiatic chaos, she will bring—who that sees her at work can doubt—civilization in the modern sense. ”

“ Squalid and mean is ordinary Korean life, and the King is a myth for most of the year. No wonder that the people turn out to see as splendid a spectacle as the world has to show, its splendor centring round their usually secluded sovereign. It is to the glory of a dynasty which has occupied the Korean throne for five centuries as well as in honor of the present occupant. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Korea is the land of beautiful scenery and lovely flowers. Snow white and ruby red are their chief colors. In the spring time when the ice has melted and the rivers have poured their floods into the sea, the whole country blushes with the pink bloom of azaleas. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Men are, however, no longer excluded from the streets at such hours. The spectacle of these white spectres of the night, flitting from point to point, their footsteps lighted by the rays of the lantern which their girl-slaves carry before them, is as remarkable as the appearance of Seoul by daylight, with its moving masses all garmented in white. A street full of Koreans aptly suggests, as Mr. Henry Norman, M.P., once wrote, the orthodox notion of the Resurrection. It cannot be denied that the appearance of both men and women makes the capital peculiarly attractive. ”

“ In the Orient tinsel is almost as common a commodity, as necessary an adjunct of daily life as is rice itself. When the King of Korea goes forth from his palace grounds he is followed by, preceded by, a glittering throng. Nobles, soldiers, secretaries, and servants arrayed in barbaric splendour, and carrying a hundred symbols of Asiatic majesty, attend upon him; and over him is carried a canopy rich with gold and jewels. Music, unless the king forbid, sounds his approach. ”

“ In a word, Korea, as it comes from the hand of God and as Nature has endowed it, is gloriously beautiful, like that land of promise described in the eighth chapter of Deuteronomy—if the natives and men besotted with Confucianism only knew it! The soil being above the average in fertility, is able to bring forth more than enough food for the people who dwell in it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Korea of the past is undoubtedly the more attractive to the traveller, but Korea of the present does not lack interest for one anxious to find in this corner of the earth something more than panoramic scenery.
The old order still catches the eye everywhere; new reforms are lost in the crowd. Outwardly everything is old, but an inward change is being effected day by day. The ancient cut and faint colour of the garb have been preserved, but new ideas are being constantly interwoven and are obliterating the old. ”