Korean people

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Intrinsically and potentially the Korean is a man of high intellectual possibilities, but he is, superficially, what he is by virtue of his training and education. Take him out of this environment, and give him a chance to develop independently and naturally, and you would have as good a brain as the Far East has to offer.
Korea is a good illustration of the great influence which environment exerts upon a people's mental and moral characteristics. I am not sure that the conservatism of either the Korean or the Chinese is a natural characteristic. ”

“ All of which tends to confirm the statement of another business man—this time of Seoul, where the hatred of the Koreans for the Japanese is studiously kept aglow by Korean officialdom and by selfishly interested foreigners—that in fifty years, or less, no difference would be known between the two. There will then, perhaps, be Koreans boasting of their Japanese descent and Japanese boasting of their Korean descent; and a multitude of the people who will not even raise the question for themselves as to which kind of blood is thickest in their veins. ”

“ Another marked characteristic of the Korean is his pride. There are no people who will make more desperate attempts to keep up appearances. Take the case of one of our own nouveaux riches trying in every way to insinuate himself into good society, and you will have a good picture of a countless multitude of Koreans. In spite of the lamentable lack of effort to better their intellectual status or to broaden their mental horizon, there is a passionate desire to ascend a step on the social ladder. ”

“ I believe there are thousands of Koreans who will open their purses and subscribe generously to the funds required for this great work. Much is already being done by the various missions, but it is necessarily circumscribed and cramped by the lack of funds. What is needed is a wide-spread and thorough canvass of the entire empire for the purpose of getting the subject rightly before the Korean people. ”

“ The introduction of Western inventions to Korea has gradually eliminated from contemporary Korean life many customs which, associated with the people and their traditions from time immemorial, imparted much of the repose and picturesqueness which have so far distinguished the little kingdom. Korea, in the twentieth century, bears ample evidence of the forward movement which is stimulating its people. Once the least progressive of the countries of the Far East, she now affords an exception almost as noticeable as that shown by the prompt assimilation of Western ideas and methods by Japan. ”

“ The Korean official is the vampire which sucks the lifeblood of the people. We had crossed the Tao-jol, the boundary between the provinces of Kyöng-hwi and Hwang-hai, and were then in the latter. Most officials of any standing live in Seoul for pleasure and society, leaving subordinates in charge, and as their tenure of office is very brief, they regard the people within their jurisdiction rather with reference to their squeezeableness than to their capacity for improvement.
Forty Japanese soldiers found a draughty shelter within the tumble-down buildings of the yamen. ”

“ Some famous Americans and Englishmen have had no small part in letting in the light upon this dark nation, and in years to come, when Korea shall have attained to the full stature of national strength, the names of Rodgers, Blake, Kimberly, and many others will be held in high esteem by the people of that country. ”

“ About 60 li from Wön-san are some large grass-covered mounds, of which the Koreans do not care to speak, as they regard them as associated with an ancient Korean custom, now looked upon as barbarous. During the last dynasty, and more than five centuries ago, it was customary, when people from age and infirmity became burdensome to their relations, to incarcerate them in the stone cells which these mounds contain, with a little food and water, and leave them there to die. ”

“ BURIAL customs are not uniform throughout Korea, for the poor and the low-class people omit many of the finer points which are never forgotten in the case of a gentleman of means. If, then, we describe the treatment of the dead among the wealthy people of the upper class, it will be simply a task of elimination to describe that of any class in Korean society. For this purpose, let us take a Korean gentleman of means, the head of a household, and inquire how he is treated from the time he is known to be dying until his funeral obsequies are completed. ”

“ The tragedy of Korea is further heightened by the fact that its military action is confined to its territorial limits. It condemns that nation, which it is our purpose to save, to suffer the devastating impact of full naval and air bombardment while the enemy's sanctuaries are fully protected from such attack and devastation.
Of the nations of the world, Korea alone, up to now, is the sole one which has risked its all against communism. The magnificence of the courage and fortitude of the Korean people defies description. They have chosen to risk death rather than slavery. ”

“ At first, and for a long time to come, it should be pretty strictly limited to fitting the Koreans themselves for a serviceable life, in Korea, and under the conditions, physical, social, and economic and political, of Korea. To educate—after the fashion followed too much by Great Britain in India—thousands of Korean babus, who thus become unfitted for the pressing needs of their country at this present day, and inclined to idleness rather than any hard and disagreeable but useful work, would be a mistake which neither the Government nor the Missions can afford to make. ”

“ The Koreans, who had borne on the whole quietly the ascendency of a hated power, the murder of their Queen, and the practical imprisonment of their King, found the at- tack on their hair more than they could stand. The topknot is more to a Korean than the queue is to a Chinese. ”

“ It seems almost the law of the universe, as it certainly is the voice of human history, that in place of those who do not hear, understand, or obey the divine command to "replenish and subdue," there comes sooner or later another race of men, who, hearing and obeying, demonstrate of what the earth is capable. That law has been demonstrated in Korea, which is now an integral part of the Empire of Japan. The Korean realm is no more a Hermit Nation. ”

“ He always takes this hint and retires to his country home. I say that they reluctantly snub him, for the Korean is mortally afraid of being called stingy. You may call him a liar or a libertine, and he will laugh it off; but call him mean, and you flick him on the raw. Hospitality toward relatives is specially obligatory, and the abuse of it forms one of the most distressing things about Korea. The moment a man obtains distinction and wealth he becomes, as it were, the social head of his clan, and his relatives feel at liberty to visit him in shoals and stay indefinitely. ”

“ A large number of Manchurian Koreans—their total has been placed as high as thirty thousand—joined the Russian forces, fought under General Lin, and later, in conjunction with the Czecho-Slovak prisoners, fought the rearmed German prisoners and the Bolsheviks.
In America the Koreans who were fortunate enough to escape have brought the culture of rice into California, and are a prosperous community there. Young Koreans have won prominent place in American colleges and in American business. One big business in Philadelphia was created and is conducted by a Korean. ”

“ In the first place, it is the experience of those who have had to do with the various peoples of the Far East that it is easier to understand the Korean and get close to him than it is to understand either the Japanese or the Chinese. He is much more like ourselves. You lose the sense of difference very readily, and forget that he is a Korean and not a member of your own race. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But besides this degraded class, Korea is also afflicted with other and, if possible, still lower grades of humanity, from which not even the most enlightened countries are free. The comparative ease with which a Korean can obtain the necessities of life makes him subject to those temptations which follow in the steps of leisure and luxury, and the stinging rebuke which a Japanese envoy administered at a banquet in Seoul in 1591, when the dancing-girls indulged in a disgraceful scramble for some oranges that were thrown to them, was not wholly undeserved. ”

“ They have a number of peculiar, picturesque customs in connection with “Crossing the Bridges,” but I fancy that with both men and women it is more an excuse for a night out than anything else.
The Koreans are even more impersonal than the Chinese. The Japanese are intensely personal. The Korean is impersonal in business, and impersonal in pleasure. He feasts with other men, and mingles with other men in all his amusements, but his interest is absorbed by his surroundings, and not by his companions. ”

“ All classes of wrongs done the Koreans by the Japanese—important and trivial, real, exaggerated, or falsely claimed—are fast diminishing and are destined in time to be reduced to a minimum. The Korean Central Government is now more genuine, more intelligent, and more efficient—as distinguished from the mere wilfulness of the ex-Emperor—than it has ever been before. ”

“ When we consider the vast number of men and the millions of wealth that China poured into Korea at this time it may well be believed, as the Koreans affirm, that China, by so doing, impoverished herself so that she became an easier prey to the Manchus who, a few years later, wrested the scepter from her.
Large numbers of Japanese who had been in the country for years and were tired of the war deserted from the ranks, married Korean women and settled down to farming in various places in the south. ”

“ The same is true in China. There is no conservatism that will stand out against self-interest.
And here we touch a second characteristic of the Korean. It cannot be truthfully said that the Korean is niggardly. It has been the opinion of most who have had intimate dealings with him that he is comparatively generous. He is generally lavish with his money when he has any, and when he has none he is quite willing to be lavish with some one else's money. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They are numbered by thousands of billions, and it has been well said that their ubiquity is an unholy travesty of the Divine Omnipresence. This belief, and it seems to be the only one he has, keeps the Korean in a perpetual state of nervous apprehension, it surrounds him with indefinite terrors, and it may truly be said of him that he ‘passes the time of his sojourning here in fear.’ Every Korean home is subject to demons, here, there, and everywhere. ”

“ The Japanese having presented Korea with the gift of Independence, demanded that the King should formally and publicly renounce the suzerainty of China, and having resolved to cleanse the Augean stable of official corruption, they compelled him to inaugurate the task by proceeding in semi-state to the Altar of the Spirits of the Land, and there proclaiming Korean independence, and swearing before the spirits of his ancestors to the proposed reforms. ”

“ The air of the men has under- gone a subtle but real change, and the women, though they nominally keep up their habit of seclusion, have lost the hang- dog air which distinguishes them at home. The suspicious- ness and indolent conceit, and the servility to his betters, which characterize the home-bred Korean have very generally given place to an independence and manliness of manner rather British than Asiatic. ”