Korean

“ 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. ”

“ But every Korean has a household spirit—a good guardian angel of his own hearthside—to whom he may pray as often as he likes. And best beloved, most god-like, most fit to be worshipped, most fit to be prayed to, most fit to be loved of the Korean gods, and of all the Korean spirits, is one called “the blesser of little children.” He is the favourite vassal of the great spirit: the phrase “great spirit” is as often upon the tongue of a Korean as upon the tongue of a North American Indian. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As for Korean gentlewomen, they are skilled in Korean music, in Chinese and Korean literature. They are unsurpassed mistresses of the needle, more than able with the brush, and thoroughly acquainted with every detail of the complicated Korean etiquette. They are deft in the nice ceremonies of the toilet. They know the histories of Korea, of China, and perhaps of Japan. They are familiar with their own folk-lore, and can repeat it glibly and picturesquely. They are nurses and mothers and wives by nature, and wives, mothers, nurses, and accoucheuses by training. ”

“ Not for her to lay at the man’s feet a son who may worship him into the most desirable corner of the Korean heaven; only for her to please him while she is with him, to touch for him odd instruments and sing to them soft, weird songs, to shake the soft perfume of her hair across his cheek and the perfume of the flowers she wears upon the bowl of food, or of fish, or fruit she humbly places before him ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Abstract qualities embodied in human form are unknown to the Korean, but his refined taste enjoys whatever thought and labour have made charming to the eye by its suggestion of pleasing images to the imagination. His art is decorative, not creative or ideal. His choice pieces of bric-a-brac may be rougher and coarser than those of Japan, but their individuality is as strongly marked as that of the Chinese, while the taste displayed is severer than that of the later Japanese. ”

“ The women of a Korean household are, as an almost invariable rule, happy together. There is less differentiation between the personalities of an Eastern race than between those of a Western, and this is especially true of the women, I think. The wife and all the concubines of a Korean have tastes in common, habits in common, likes and dislikes and accomplishments in common. It is a matter of course to them to live under the same roof, and at the disposal of the same man, and it never occurs to them to question either its fitness or its desirability. ”

“ Introspection, and the study of other men, are seldom or never methods of Korean self-entertainment. Nature is after all the greatest entertainer of the Koreans; and to study Nature, to watch her, and to fall more and more deeply in love with her, is a Korean’s greatest amusement. ”

“ A Korean sees about as much moral turpitude in a lie as we see in a mixed metaphor or a split infinitive. As for morality in its narrower sense, the Koreans allow themselves great latitude. There is no word for home in their language, and much of the meaning which that word connotes is lost to them. ”

“ As a general thing, we may say that the all-round Korean will be a Confucianist when in society, a Buddhist when he philosophises and a spirit-worshipper when he is in trouble. Now, if you want to know what a man's religion is, you must watch him when he is in trouble. Then his genuine religion will come out, if he has any. It is for this reason that I conclude that the underlying religion of the Korean, the foundation upon which all else is mere superstructure, is his original spirit-worship. ”

“ A visit to the Keum-Kang San elevates a Korean into the distinguished position of a traveller, and many a young resident of Seoul gains this fashionable reputation. It is not as containing shrines of pilgrimage, for most Koreans despise Buddhism and its shaven mendicant priests, that these mountains are famous in Korea, but for their picturesque beauties, much celebrated in Korean poetry. ”

“ But, even in its infancy, through the long years of its magnificent splendour, and in these days of its decay or of trance, Korean art always has had, and has, a marked individuality, and bears the indubitable hall-mark of genuine originality. ”

“ Korean has no dialects. There are different brogues, and a Seoul man can generally detect by a man's speech from what province he comes; but it would be wide of the truth to assert that Koreans from any part of the country could not readily understand each other. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Korean is the perfect type of inefficiency — of utter worthlessness. The Chinese is the perfect type of industry. For sheer work no worker in the world can compare with him. Work is the breath of his nostrils. It is his solution of existence. It is to him what wandering and fighting in far lands and spiritual adventure have been to other peoples. ”

“ The Korean—the Korean of the populace—the superstitious Korean attributes all his ills to demons. He, being a Korean, cannot conceive that Nature can be malignant, nor can he conceive that he is ever punished for breaking laws of whose very existence he is ignorant. So he peoples the air, the sea, and the rocks with devils of earthquake, devils of pestilence, devils of lightning, devils of hurricane, and a thousand other devils of blight and of sorrow. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are no exceptions. Any typical Korean verb can be conjugated through its thousand different forms without finding the least change in the stem of the word. A comparison of Korean with Manchu discloses at once a family likeness, and at the same time a comparison of Korean with the Dravidian dialects discloses a still closer kinship. It is an interesting fact that none of the Chinese dialects possess any of the distinctive features of this Turanian family. There is more similarity between Chinese and English than between Chinese and any of the Turanian languages. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Blessed is the man who treats his servant well, for instead of being squeezed a hundred cash on a string of eggs he will be squeezed only seventy-five.
Korean lore abounds in stories of good little boys and girls who never steal bird's-nests, nor play "for keeps," nor tear their clothes, nor strike back, nor tie tin cans to dogs' tails. They form what we may call the " Sunday-school literature " of the Koreans, and they are treated with the same contempt by the healthy Korean boy or girl as goody-goody talk is treated by normal children the world over. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In order to give an intelligent idea of Korean folk-lore, it will be necessary for me to premise it with a rapid sketch of the most probable theory as to the origin of the Korean people. This will give us a background against which to group the more salient facts of Korean lore. How or when the ancestors of the Chinese race migrated from the Iranian plateau, and found their way across the vast mountain ranges into China, is the merest matter of conjecture. ”

“ Korean tradition mentions three kinds of origin for the ancient heroes. The first is by Divine Incarnation as illustrated in the legend of the Tangun.
In primeval times, when Korea was a vast wilderness, a wonder was seen.
On the slopes of Pak Ton San, the hoary-headed, a bear and a tiger met and held a colloquy.
"Would that we might become men," they said.
Even as they spoke, they heard the voice of the Supreme Ruler, who said: "Here are twenty bunches of garlic for each of you. Eat them, and keep yourselves from the light of the sun for twenty days, and you shall become men." ”

“ Korean is an agglutinative, polysyllabic language whose development is marvellously complete and symmetrical. We find no such long lists of exceptions as those which entangle the student of the Indo-European languages. In Korean as in most of the Turanian languages the idea of gender is very imperfectly developed, which argues perhaps a lack of imagination. The ideas of person and number are largely left to the context for determination, but in the matter of logical sequence the Korean verb is carried to the extreme of development. ”

“ We see, then, that quite a list of Korean books could be gotten together, but the trouble is that very few Koreans can afford to possess them. The ordinary gentleman may have half a dozen works of various kinds, but it is only here and there that one of them will have what we could call a library. ”

“ It is not strange that the Korean populace is Korean still, when it suddenly takes to some new kind of reform, or adopts some new kind of religion. Such strong and contradictory, and even convulsive, reactions characterize the native in his politics, his morals, his religion, and his behavior generally. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All the narratives of events, except those of the most recent date, which have been written by foreigners, have, of necessity, been lacking in that intimate acquaintance with the Korean language, institutions, customs, and the temperament and spirit of the people, which is the indispensable equipment of the historian. ”

“ It may be said with considerable truth that the whole literature of Korea, as of China, is history and belles lettres. The practical side of life is hardly touched upon. To be sure, there are countless aphorisms, and moral essays of an academic character are most common, but these in their practical bearing on the Chinese or Korean mind are no more than mere polite literature, and are always perused as such. ”

“ Now in some not wholly unimportant aspects of Korean character and Korean civilization, these difficulties exist in an exaggerated form. Korea is old in its enforced ignorance, sloth, and corruption; but Korea is new to rawness, in its response to the stimulus of foreign and Western ideas, and in its exposure to the observation, either careless and casual or patient and studious, of visitors and residents from abroad. Korea has not yet been awakened to any definite form of intelligent, national self-consciousness. ”

“ Under centuries of subjection to a ruling class having the character described above, the mental and moral characteristics of the Korean people have been developed as might have been expected. The ethnic mixture from which the race has sprung is possessed of fine physical and spiritual qualities. The male members of the race, especially, are in general of good height, well formed, and capable of endurance and achievement in enterprises demanding bodily strength. ”