Korean Peninsula

“ The future trend of affairs—whether the Korean independence will vanish into a mere fiction as the Japanese control advances, or whether under the latter the peninsular people will be trained to an effective self-government—must largely be determined by the mutual interaction of the complex factors, both Korean and Japanese, public and private, conscious and unconscious, which are steadily working out the destiny of the peninsula. ”

“ A beautiful Korean custom that used to be; flashes a flame of fire across the screen of history.
In the old days the Korean Emperor used to have signals of fire flashed from hill to hill running clear from the Chinese border to Seoul, the Korean capital. This signal indicated that all was well along the borders and that there was no danger of a Chinese invasion from the north.
Korea has always been a bone of contention between China, Russia and Japan. Consequently this little peninsula has always walked on uneasy paths, which is ever the fate of a buffer state. ”

“ Few areas of the earth’s surface are so consistently rugged. Bleak cliffs seem to thrust themselves dripping out of the sea on the East Korean littoral. The peaks become higher and more perpendicular as they march inland, until altitudes of 9,000 feet are reached.
The principal chain of mountains extends from the Yalu in the north along the east coast to the Pusan area. Just south of the 38th parallel a spur branches off diagonally to southwest Korea in the region of Mokpu. The remainder of the peninsula consists largely of smaller ranges and foothills. ”

“ They issued permits for fifty ships which passed annually from ports in Japan to the three Japanese settlements in the peninsula. These Japanese traders and the Korean officials behaved toward each other in so objectionable fashion that a revolt of the settlers in Fusan arose in 1610, in the effort to suppress which the Koreans were at first defeated; but afterward, being re-enforced strongly from Seoul, they compelled the settlers to retire from all the three settlements; and thus for the time being the trade between Japan and Korea came to an end. ”

“ Korea, Corea, or Chosen (morning calm) occupies the peninsula hanging down from Manchooria and Russian Siberia between China and Japan, and extending from the 33d to the 43d parallels of north latitude.
The area, including the outlying islands, is about one hundred thousand square miles. The population, according to the most reliable estimate, is a little more than sixteen millions. Yet, as the people live in cities, towns, and hamlets, the country does not seem to be thickly settled. ”

“ As the year advanced, the Japanese kept at work gathering in the material resources of the country. Fishing rights along the whole coast were demanded and given. No one who knows what Japanese fishermen are like will doubt for a moment that the Koreans will be driven from the fishing grounds. Then the coast-trading and riparian rights were seized, looking toward a complete absorption of the large coastwise and river traffic. Korean methods are slower and more cumbersome, and herein lies Japan's excuse for driving Koreans from the business. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With a splendid climate, an abundant, but not superabundant, rainfall, a fertile soil, a measure of freedom from civil war and robber bands, the Koreans ought to be a happy and fairly prosperous people. If “squeezing,” yamen runners and their exactions, and certain malign practices of officials can be put down with a strong hand, and the land tax is fairly levied and collected, and law becomes an agent for protection rather than an instrument of injustice, I see no reason why the Korean peasant should not be as happy and industrious as the Japanese peasant. ”

“ The geographical position of Korea, with a frontier conterminous with those of China and Russia, and divided from Japan by only a narrow sea, has done much to determine her political relationships. The ascendency of China grew naturally out of territorial connection, and its duration for many centuries was at once the cause and effect of a community in philosophy, customs, and to a great extent in language and religion. But Chinese control is at an end, and China can scarcely be regarded as a factor in the Korean situation. ”

“ People in Washington have asked me if Korea was an island in the Mediterranean; others [4] have asked if Korea could be reached by rail from Europe; others have supposed that Korea was somewhere in the South Seas, with a climate that enabled the natives to dispense with clothing. I have therefore included two chapters, introductory and descriptive in character, concerning the subjects of the majority of such questions.
“Globe trotters,” in passing from Japan to North China, usually go by way of the Korean ports, now that a line of excellent Japanese steamships covers that route. ”

“ Then came a level stretch of about a mile, much planted with potatoes, glimpses of American Protestant mission-houses in conspicuous and eligible positions (eligible, that is, for everything but mission work) , and the uneven Korean road glided imperceptibly into a broad gravel road, fringed on both sides with neat wooden houses standing in gardens, which gradually thickened into the neatest, trimmest, and most attractive [Pg 173] town in all Korea, the Japanese settlement of the treaty port of Wön-san, opened to Japanese trade in 1880 and to foreign trade generally in 1883. ”

“ One mighty range furnishes the eastern back-bone of the peninsula, while the lower western hills and slope give the land its fertile fields. From the peak which crowns all Korea, the Ever White Mountain, containing in its crater, the Dragon's Pool, flow the two streams that create Korea's northern frontier. By the rivers and the mountain chains, the old eight provinces were divided one from the other, Nature thus dictating the lines of demarcation, and making convenient divisions. Of late years, five of the large provinces have been partitioned into halves, making thirteen in all. ”

“ The crops were clean, and the rice dykes and irrigation channels well kept. Good and honest government would create as happy and prosperous a people as the traveller finds in Japan, the soil being very similar, while Korea has a far better climate.
During the land journey from Chang-an Sa to Wön-san I had better opportunities of seeing the agricultural methods of the Koreans than in the valleys of the Han. As compared with the exquisite neatness of the Japanese and the diligent thriftiness of the Chinese, Korean agriculture is to some extent wasteful and untidy. ”

“ Although Korea is called the Hermit Kingdom, and said to be many years behind Japan, there are telegraph lines, electric cars, bicycles, even one or two motors, brick houses and a Railway Station Hotel. The Japanese portion of the town was gay with flags flying from bamboo staffs, in honour of the approaching New Year, and red and white lanterns swung along the ridgepoles.
One peculiarity of Korean houses strikes a Westerner as very strange. As their walls and floors are of stone or brick, it is possible to heat them in the same manner as the Chinese kang, that is, by fires built below. ”

“ Seated on the rocks along the shore were white objects resembling pelicans or penguins, but as white objects with the gait of men moved in endless procession to and fro between old and new Fusan, I assumed that the seated objects were of the same species. The Korean makes upon one the impression of novelty, and while resembling neither the Chinese nor the Japanese, he is much better-looking than either, and his physique is far finer than that of the latter. ”

“ The picturesque Peking Pass, up and down whose narrow, rugged pathway generations of burdened baggage animals toiled and suffered, and which had seen the splendors of successive Chinese Imperial Envoys at the accession of the Korean Kings, has lost its identity. Its rock ledges, holes, and boulders have disappeared—the rocky gash has been widened, and the sides chiselled into smoothness, and under the auspices of the Russian Minister a broad road, with retaining walls and fine culverts, now carries the traffic over the lowered height. ”

“ The south means warmth, light and life. The north means blackness, cold and death. This is an idea that has been borrowed from China, and is not indigenous with the Koreans. The same is true of every grave site and of every prefectural town site as well. Other things being equal, the southern exposure will always commend itself to the Korean. ”

“ The vegetable life of Korea is like that of other parts of the temperate zone, but there is a striking preponderance of a certain kind of pine, the most graceful of its tribe. It forms a conspicuous element in every scene. The founder of the dynasty preceding the present one called his capital Song-do, [4] or Pine Tree Capital. It is a constant theme in Korean art, and plays an important part in legend and folk-lore in general. Being an evergreen, it symbolises eternal existence. ”

“ Where the ground on the valley bottom is level it is occupied by rice and wheat fields. Every now and then we pass a busy village of grey thatched houses, where groups of women and children in coloured garments are seen outside the cabins. The men wear long white coats, and on the head a thin black hat in the form of a stunted cone with flat brim. Seldom are the eyes caught by a clump of trees; as a rule the country is bare. Innumerable small mounds are often seen on the slopes; these are Korean graves.
The signs of Japan's peaceful conquest of Korea are everywhere apparent. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But these hillsides at least serve the living to some good purpose as preferred places for recreation and for intercourse with nature, as well as, in some sort, with their deceased ancestors. In Korea, as in India, birth, marriage, and death are expensive luxuries for the poor; to get into the world, to beget an [133] heir, and to get out of the world again, absorb all the accumulated resources of a lifetime of toil for the average Korean. ”

“ The Liu-Kiu Islands were occupied, and the last wave of this great dispersion broke on the southern shores of Japan and Korea, leaving there the nucleus of those peoples who resemble each other so that if dressed alike they cannot be distinguished as Japanese or Korean even by an expert. ”

“ We have thus the Land of Gentle Manners, the Country of the Eight Circuits, or Provinces, the Realm of the Twelve Thousand Serrated Peaks, the Land of the Plum Blossom, and the Country of Kija, the legendary founder of Korean civilisation. In poetry the chief ruler is the Sovereign of Ten-Thousand Isles, the people being sentimentally "Our Twenty Millions." In census mathematics, there are about two hundred islands and twelve million souls. To not a few visitors, Korea is the Land of Mosquitoes and Malaria ”

“ Possession of Korea has been for centuries an aim of aspiring conquerors in the Far East, and all three rival nations have had a turn.
China was first. From ancient times down to the last quarter of the 19th century, the Chinese Empire held a loose suzerainty acknowledged by the Koreans. Japan won a brief foothold in the 16th century under the great war lord Hideyoshi, only to learn the painful lesson that control of the sea is requisite to a seaborne invasion of a peninsula. ”

“ We shall not attempt to speak in detail of the other natural resources of Korea, of its fisheries, or its sericulture, or its raising of fruit. But all these have been in the past left in a lamentable condition of ignorance and disorder; and all of these are to be made objects of attention, with the purpose of reform, by the Korean Government under the Japanese Protectorate.
What has been shown to be true of the natural resources of Korea, in soil, forests, mines, and other products, is true of its manufacturing industries. ”

“ Tested thus, the Korean fails. He lacks the nerve to remain when a strange army crosses his land. The few goods and chattels he may have managed to accumulate he puts on his back, along with his doors and windows, and away he heads for his mountain fastnesses. Later he may return, sans goods, chattels, doors, and windows, impelled by insatiable curiosity for a “look see.” But it is curiosity merely—a timid, deerlike curiosity. He is prepared to bound away on his long legs at the first hint of danger or trouble.
Northern Korea was a desolate land when the Japanese passed through. ”

“ Such being the very backward condition of all roads in Korea, we are not surprised to learn that during the heavy rains of summer, when the temporary bridges are all down and small streams have become roaring torrents, travel and traffic are practically suspended, excepting in the case of that which goes by way of junk. At this season the Korean moves about but little. It is his lazy time, unless he is a farmer and has to look after the transplanting of his rice. Ordinarily he will stay at home and consume an indefinite number of melons, seeds and all. ”