The story of Korea

Preface

The welcome so heartily accorded both by critics and the public to the " Story of Old Japan " has tempted the writer to endeavour to tell, in the same easy and popular way, the Story of Korea, a story scarcely less replete than that of Japan with picturesque and romantic incidents of war, politics, and social life. During the last thirty years Korea has been the pivot of all the politics of the Far East. It has been the subject of two great wars, as the result of which it has ceased to exist as an independent kingdom . Few people in England know it otherwise than as a geographical expression. Fewer still realise the great addition which its incorporation in the dominions of the Emperor of Japan will make to the military and commercial resources of his Empire. Its magnificent harbours will provide new bases, and its coast population, which produced brave and skilful sailors in the Middle Ages, will afford abundant recruits for his fleet. Its peasants will furnish a large contingent to his armies, which scientific training, discipline, and good treatment, the writer, judging from his own experience in Japan, believes, will convert, ere another generation has passed away, into soldiers not less fearless or vi PREFACE

efficient than are now the Japanese themselves. Its abundant natural resources, favoured by a good climate, by rainfall and sunshine that are both abundant, and by entire exemption from the disasters of floods and earthquakes that are the terrors of Japan, only require intelligent, honest, and scientific development to convert their potentialities into realities of industrial and commercial wealth. All this will be given by Japanese administrators, who will bring to Korea the methods which they have already so successfully exploited in their own country as to raise it, within half a century, from impotence and indigence, into the position of one of the great military and commercial powers of the world. Korea, both in its own history and as a factor in the future status of our ally and in the political balance of the Far East, may, the writer hopes, prove of sufficient interest to English readers to induce them to extend to a volume in which its story is told simply, as it has never been told before, without fear or favour, without either exaggeration or concealment, no less cordial a welcome than they generously gave to his work on Japan.

The Appendix contains a bibliography of the long list of works which have been consulted in the preparation of this volume. Part of the material is founded on or has been taken from Dallet's " Histoire de l'Eglise de Coree," the contributions to the " Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan " of Dr. Aston and Mr. E. H. Parker, the latter, like Dr. Aston, a profound Oriental scholar, and Mr. Homer Hulbert's scholarly and complete " History of

PREFACE vii

Korea/' published at Seoul in 1904, in two large and closely printed volumes, a work full of interest, but one which demands attentive study on the part of its readers. Acknowledgment is made in the text in all places in which the writer has used or quoted from these works. He is also indebted to the Rev. John Ross's very learned "History of Korea" for some of the material for his story of the relations between Korea and China under the Imperial dynasties of the Tsin, Mongols, and early Manchus. His "Story of Modern Korea," since 1870, is founded almost entirely on his own personal knowledge of the events which are related, acquired during his official career in Japan.

His best thanks are due to his Excellency the Japanese Ambassador, and to Mr. Sakata, Consul - General in London, for some of the photographs with which the volume is illustrated ; and to Mr. Sakata, Mr. Kishi, Secretary of Embassy, and to Mr. Y. Komma, Secretary of the Consulate-General, for their assistance in elucidating obscure points in ancient history.

J. H. L.

King's College, June 25, 191 1.

Contents

CHAP. PAGE

I. THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE . . -9

II. THE SOCIAL SYSTEM OF OLD KOREA . . 32

Chapter I

The kingdom of Korea, which possessed an authentic history extending over three thousand years and traditional legends dating from a period more than a thousand years prior to the dawn of its history, lay in the peninsula which extends southwards into the Sea of Japan from the north-eastern boundaries of the Chinese Empire and is fringed on its southern and western sides by numerous islands. Its existence first became known in Europe through the Arab geographer Khordadbeh, who, in the ninth century of our era, described it in his book of roads and provinces, quoted in Baron Richtofen's great work on China, as "an unknown land beyond the frontiers of Kantu " — the modern Shantung — " rich in gold, and exporting ginseng, camphor, aloes, and deerhorn, and such manufactured products as nails, saddles, porcelain, and satin." M Mussulmans," he said, " who visited it were often so attracted by it that they were induced to settle there." It was visited in the sixteenth century by one of the Jesuit priests from the mission in Japan, who was permitted to act as chaplain to the Christian soldiers who formed a large contingent of Hideyoshi's invading armies in the closing decade of the century ; but the earliest European description of it which now survives was furnished by Hendrik Hamel, a Dutch seaman, who was shipwrecked in the year 1653 on the Island of jQuelpart, when on a voyage from Texel to- Japan, in the service of the Dutch East India Company. A translation of his graphic description of the country and people and of his own romantic experiences and sufferings is contained in the seventh volume of Pinkerton's " Voyages. " Hamel and thirty-five of his shipmates, out of a total complement of sixty-four, were saved from the wreck, and they remained in the country for over thirteen years, when Hamel and seven other survivors succeeded in making their escape to Japan, from which in due course they returned to their native land.

Late in the eighteenth and early in the nineteenth centuries the Korean coasts were visited by British, French, and Russian vessels of war when on voyages of exploration in the Pacific, and the commanders have left memorials of their discoveries in the geographical names that still distinguish the islands and bays in our charts and maps. None of the explorers ever ventured to leave the coasts. None ever slept outside their own ships. In all the long interval that passed between Ha-mel's escape and Captain Broughton's memorable voyage in 1797 Korea was left unregarded in its national isolation by Europeans, whether sailors, travellers, traders, or missionaries ; and it was not until the nineteenth century was well advanced into the years of its middle age that missionaries of the Roman Catholic Church, who never knew fear when in the service of their Master, stole through the barriers within which the Koreans secluded themselves from all the world, and were able to penetrate into the interior and to describe, with the skill and accuracy of scholars and scientists, the history, manners, and customs of a country and people of whom our only previous direct knowledge was founded on the writings of an humble Dutch sailor and the fragmentary notice of an ancient Arab geographer.

The peninsula extends from 43 02' to 33 12' north latitude and from 124 18' to 130 54' east longitude. Its extreme width in its widest part, from the mouth of the Yalu to that of the Tumen, is over 350 miles, but this narrows in the latitude of the capital to 120 miles. Its length is about 500 miles, and its total coast -line is said to be over 1,700 miles. Its total area is estimated as 84,000 square miles, or, roughly, about that of Great Britain and half that of Japan. It is bounded on the north by the Russian Asiatic province of Primorsk, with which it is coterminous for 1 1 miles from the Pacific coast, and by Manchuria, its confines being delimitated by the River Tumen, flowing into the Pacific on the east, by the River Yalu, flowing into the Yellow Sea on the west, and between the two by the lofty Sh,an Yan Range or Ever White Mountains, in which are the sources of both rivers. On the east it has the Sea of Japan, and on the west the Yellow Sea. On the south it is separated from Kiusiu by the Straits of Korea, in which, midway between the Korean and Japanese coasts, lies the Japanese island of Tsushima, from which Korea is visible on clear days. The number of Korean islands exceeds two hundred. One small, solitary island, Dagelet Island — so named by the French navigator La Perouse, who discovered it, in honour of the great French astronomer — lies in the Japan Sea, as lonely as St. Helena in the Great Ocean, 45 miles off the east coast, but with that exception all the islands are on the southern or western coasts of the peninsula. The majority of these are inhabited, cultivated or well wooded, but some are bare volcanic rocks, rising with picturesque precipitousness out of the sea £o a height of from i,ooo to 2,000 feet. The largest and most important among them is Quelpart — more correctly Quelpaert — the scene of Hamel's shipwreck, and in more recent days of that of H.M.S. Bedford, a well -cultivated island, 40 miles in length by 17 in breadth, with a resident population of 100,000 souls, lying about 60 miles from the south-west corner of the mainland. Thirty-six miles to the east of Quelpart is the Nan Hau Group of three islands, ,which were occupied by Great Britain in the years 1884-6, "when Russian aggression menaced the integrity of Korea, and Japan had not yet won. her spurs as a great military Power. The picturesqueness of the seascapes throughout the whole length of the western coast is increased by numberless islets or rocks that rise boldly out of the deep waters of the sea, whose cliffs and fir-clad peaks are the joy of lovers of the grand in Nature, but whose presence is a source of anxiety to the navigator when, as is often the case, they are shrouded in the dense summer fogs of the Yellow Sea. So thickly do islands and islets cluster together along the entire western shore of the peninsula that it is only at rare intervals the mainland can be seen at all from the deck of the passing sea-going steamer.

On the east, the long coast, from the Russian frontier to the south-east corner, where the harbour of Fusan fronts Tsushima and Kiusiu, is, with the one exception already mentioned, destitute of islands, and its line is broken only by what is called Brought on Bay, after the great British navigator, with its two harbours of Gensan and Port Lazareff. On the south coast are the capacious, deep, and well-sheltered harbours of Fusan and Masampo, each capable of affording safe anchorage for a fleet of the largest warships of the present day, the possession of which is therefore a most valuable asset to a Power that aspires to the naval hegemony of the Pacific. On the west coast there are many harbours, and also anchorages amid and under the shelter of the islands, but both their naval and commercial importance is discounted by the tides, which rise and fall, with great rapidity and violence, from 25 to 30 feet. On the east and south coasts the rise and fall are only a few feet. Quelpart has no harbour, but the Nan Hau Group enclose a deep and well-sheltered harbour, which could hold all the fleets on the Pacific, though they would have a poor time if seeking refuge from the guns of a blockading enemy. Both east and west coasts are bold and hilly, the east mountainous, only a narrow strip of cultivated plains separating the shore from the chain of lofty mountains which, after starting from the sacred Paik-Tu peak of the Ever White Range in the extreme north and passing through the centre of the north-eastern province of Ham Gyong, reaches the east coast about the fortieth parallel of latitude and then extends in a continuous line to the extreme south, here and there on its way throwing out spurs that wind towards the western coast. Among these spurs, nearly midway between the extreme north and south, are the Diamond Mountains, so called by the Koreans themselves, from the resemblance of their " twelve thousand serrated peaks " to rough diamonds, the site of the great historic Buddhist monasteries of Korea, and famous, not only in Korea but in China and Japan!, for the sublime grandeur of their scenery.

All Korea is mountainous, not so much so as is Japan, but still so broken that there is only one — perhaps two may be admitted — extensive plain, and the whole surface of the country was compared by the French missionaries to the sea in a heavy gale.

The mountains in the north are thickly wooded and their deep valleys and gorges afford scenes of impressive beauty ; but those along the coast are mostly bare^ their surface covered with coarse bamboo -grass, the monotony of which is only varied by scattered groves of stunted firs that rarely attain to a height of more than four to five feet. The " land of treeless mountains " is a common epithet for Korea among Japanese. At a distance the coasts are not unlike the Sussex Downs, though they rise to a greater height from the sea -level, but it is only distance that gives them this enchantment, the coarse grass which covers them being woefully different to the soft turf of the Downs.

Every mountain gorge and valley is watered by its own stream, that rushes over a shallow, pebbly bed ; but, as could not be otherwise in so narrow a country, large rivers are few, and both their swiftness and shallowness render them unsuitable for purposes of transport. The Yalu (called by the Koreans, from the yividness of its colour after the melting of the snow and ice, the Am Nok or Green Duck) and the Tumen in the north have been already mentioned. Others, flowing into the Yellow Sea, are the Tatong, which flows through a great part of the north-western province of Phyong An, and, passing the old historical capital of the province, enters the sea at Chinampo about the thirty-ninth parallel, and the Han, which, rising in the eastern province of KangiWon and entering the sea at Chemulpo on the western coast, divides the entire peninsula into two almost equal portions. On it lies the capital Seoul. All these rivers receive many tributaries, and all are navigable for small craft for some distance from their mouths. The Naktong, which finds its way to the sea at Fusan in the south-eastern corner of the peninsula, after an almost direct southern course, is the only river of importance in the east, the proximity of the mountains to the coast preventing those which take their rise on the eastern slopes attaining any higher dignity than that of streams. There are no lakes in Korea sufficiently large to be marked on the map.

The domestic animals include horses, asses, mules, oxen, dogs, sheep, goats, and pigs. The horses are small, and long-continued cruelty has rendered them vicious in the extreme, but they possess great strength. The want of roads prevents their use in carriages or carts, and as the modern Koreans are not a nation of horsemen and prefer the more humble donkey for purposes of travelling, the principal service of the horse is that of pack -carrying. For agricultural purposes only the ox is used. Cattle are abundant, especially in the south, and of excellent quality, bearing a marked resemblance to the English shorthorns, and are as remarkable for their tract - ability as the horses are the reverse. The Koreans are largely a meat -eating people, not disdaining even the flesh of dogs, and ox -hides are an important article of export, furnishing the main supply for the requirements of the modern tanneries of Japan.

Of the wild animals, the most noted is the tiger, which exists in great numbers in the mountains and forests of the north-eastern provinces, but is found all over the country, tigers having, it is said, been known to enter into the very streets of the capital. 1 It is equally characterised by its size, boldness, and ferocity, qualities which have given it a prominent place in the folklore, proverbs, and customs of the people, and have also, it may be added, filled them

1 In the early days of the Janese settlement at Gensan, a policeman left his box one cold winter's night to make his round in the settlement. On his return he found a large tiger, which had entered the box in his absence, asleep by the stove.

with a very well grounded dread. Its figure was a favourite device to be emblazoned on war banners. The tiger-hunters, who form a class by themselves, were always called upon to lead forlorn hopes when on military service, as those whose courage, strength, and activity had been developed in the best of schools. The skins, which are beautifully marked and, as is natural from the fact that its principal home is among mountains that are deeply clad in snow for nearly half the year, have a much thicker fur than the Indian variety, were highly prized for decorative purposes, not only as rugs but as military ornaments by the Japanese, among whom, ever since the days of Hideyoshi, the tiger-skin-covered scabbard was one of the most cherished outer marks of an officer of rank, while the claws were worn as jewels. The flesh was eaten and the bones were converted into a medicine which was highly prized in the Chinese pharmacopoeia as a courage-producing specific of infallible merit. Tigers were usually hunted in winter, when they floundered helplessly in the deep snow, the frozen surface of which was strong enough to bear the weight of nimble hunters on snowshoes and their dogs, but even under these circumstances, the courage of the hunters may be estimated from the fact that they seldom hesitated to attack the tiger single-handed and armed only with an old flint-lock gun. In summer, on the other hand, when the dense undergrowth of the forests placed the hunter at its mercy, the advantage was on the side of the tiger, a fact which gave rise to the Chinese saying that the tiger is hunted by the Koreans during one half of the year and the Koreans by the tiger during the other half. Notwithstanding the terror caused by his known presence in their neighbourhood, villagers are so reckless as to sleep in midsumtner with wide-open doors or even beneath sheds or in the open fields, where they fall an easy prey. The annual death roll is therefore very large. The other wild animals include leopards, bears, deer, boars, and a variety of fur -bearing animals, including otters, martins, squirrels, and sables. Among the birds are eagles, hawks, pheasants, ducks, swans, geese, herons, cranes, snipe, rooks, storks, and many others in numbers large enough to render Korea, with its additional opportunities for the hunting of large game, a paradise for sportsmen, were it not for the physical discomforts of travelling and lodging in the mountain districts.

The seas, especially on the east and south coasts, abound in fish, though the variety is much less than on the coast of Japan. They have long been a successful fishing-ground for whales, which follow the shoals of herrings and sardines that are found in immense numbers. Only the most primitive methods of fishing are followed by the Koreans, and it is principally Japanese fishermen who reap the rich harvest of their seas on the east and Chinese on the west. Even in the days of national isolation, no prohibition was imposed on either Chinese or Japanese against fishing in Korean waters, the only limitation being that they should neither land on Korean soil nor communicate with the natives while on the sea. The last was easily evaded, either in the obscurity of the frequent fogs or under the shadows of the many islands whose lofty cliffs towered out of the sea, and extensive smuggling was successfully carried on by Chinese and Japanese, especially by the former, who, to this day, may be counted among the most astute smugglers in the world.

When King Taijo founded his dynasty in 1392, one of his first measures was to divide the peninsula for administrative purposes into eight circuits or provinces. Under the Japanese protectorate, the five which were of larger area were each separated into two independent local governments retaining their old titles with the addition of North or South, but with this exception the provinces have remained until this day exactly as they were constituted by Taijo, more than six hundred years ago. Their delimitation testifies to his skill as a statesman with a keen eye to the economic welfare of his kingdom. Each province has an extensive coast -line, and there is only one in which there is not at least one fine harbour. Korea's foreign intercourse in his day was entirely with China, and five of the provinces were therefore constituted out of the west half of the kingdom which faced China, three being considered sufficient for the east half, which, though of much greater area than the west, was broken everywhere by mountains and its long coast-line faced the stormy Sea of Japan without shelter from outlying islands.

The names of the five provinces on the west coast, taking them in order from north to south are : Phyong An (Tranquil Peace), Hoang-hai (Yellow Sea), Kyong-Kwi (Capital Boundaries), Chhung Chyong (Pure Loyalty), and Cholla (Complete Network) ; and those of the provinces on the east : Ham Gyong (All Mirror), Kang Won (River Moor), and Kyong-syang (Joyful Honour).

Phyong An, on the north-west, is the frontier province, separated from Manchuria by the River Yalu and bounded on its south by the River Tatong, two of the largest rivers in Korea. It has been throughout its history the great battlefield of Korea. In ancient days when it was part of the territory of Korai it was the scene of the invasions of the Swi and Tang Emperors of China. In the Middle Ages it was again desolated by the Mongol and Manchu armies and the march of Hideyoshi's soldiers extended as far as its capital, Phyong An. In our own

O days it was the scene of the first great battle in the China-Japan War of 1894, and ten years later of the march of the Japanese on their way to drive the Russians from the Yalu. Time and time again it has been ravaged from end to end, its towns and villages sacked and burnt. In 1894 it suffered equally from flying Chinese and pursuing Japanese, but its fertility and the industry of its inhabitants, who have inherited some of the vigour of their ancestors of old Korai, and have sunk less deeply than the inhabitants of the other provinces under the blighting influence of mis -government, have enabled it each time to recover, and it is now one of the least poor of all the provinces. Two of its towns will be frequently referred to in subsequent pages. Aichiu (now called Wiju) was the old frontier town, near the mouth of the River Yalu, where a strict watch was kept for foreign trespassers and smugglers. It now promises to become an important seat of trade, the depot of the great timber industry, the material for which is furnished by the virgin forests of the Shan Yan Mountains. The exploiting of these forests by the Russians and their high-handedness in establishing a depot, which was really a military outpost, at Wiju, may be said to have been the spark that kindled the flames of the Russian War with Japan.

Phyong An, the capital of the province, on the River Tatong, about fifty miles from its mouth, was the seat which Ki Tse, the founder of Korea, chose for his government in 11 22 B.C. His tomb is still to be seen, a holy spot in the eyes of all Koreans, and there are still traces of the walls of the city which he founded. It was afterwards the capital of Korai, and when Korai fell, it was the centre from which the Chinese prefects directed the administration of the conquered provinces. It was taken and held in 1592 by Hideyoshi's general, Konishi Yukinaga, and in 1894 it was almost destroyed in the battle of September 15th between the Chinese and Japanese. It is, however, still the third city in Korea in point of population ; it is one of the most picturesque in its situation on a high bluff on the north bank of the river ; and as it is in the centre of a fertile district that not only produces in abundance the ordinary agricultural staples, including silk and the invaluable ginseng, but has great prospective treasures of mineral wealth of gold and coal ; as it is also on the great trunk railway that runs from Fusan to Seoul and from Seoul to Wiju ; and as it possesses in the Tatong, which is navigable for cargo -carrying boats of light draught to within a few miles of it, a cheap highway to its seaport Chinampo, it may develop into a prosperous commercial city. It is a great station of Nonconformist missionary enterprise at the present day. The city in its configuration resembles a Korean boat. A superstition that if a well was dug within its .walls the boat would sink formerly compelled the inhabitants to obtain their domestic water supply from the river, from which it was carried in buckets, but under the Japanese administration the city is now supplied with water-works, constructed on the most modern principles of engineering science.

Hoang Hai lies south of Phyong An and directly facing Shang Tung on the coast of China. It has no features that call for special remark, its industries being entirely fishing and agricultural. It is one of the three provinces that has not been subdivided by the Japanese.

Kyong Kwi is, in its area, the smallest, but in its wealth the greatest of all the provinces. In it are Seoul, the modern capital, and Sunto (now called Kai Seng), the ancient capital in the first four centuries (919-1392) of Korea's existence as a united kingdom, and now, in population, the second city in the peninsula. Through its centre runs the River Han, the largest river whose banks on both sides are in Korean territory. On the coast, thirty miles from the capital, on the south estuary of the Han, is the open port of Chemulpo, the chief seat of foreign trade at the present day, the Yokohama of Korea, both in its present position and its history. Like Yokohama, it owes its rise entirely to foreign trade. It was the first new port to be opened under the Treaty of 1876 with Japan, and at the time of its opening it consisted only of a few miserable huts of fishermen. There are now Japanese, Chinese, and European settlements within its limits, as well as a large Korean town, and the annual value of the trade carried on at it reaches two and a half millions sterling.

The first shot in the Japan -Russian War was fired just outside its harbour, on February 8, 1904. Two Russian men-of-war, the Variag, a swift cruiser of the most modern type, and the Korietz, a gunboat, were lying in the harbour, before the actual declaration of war, when a Japanese fleet of seven cruisers appeared off its entrance. The gunboat steamed out of the harbour, on her way to Port Arthur, but found her exit stopped by the torpedo-boats that were attached to the Japanese fleet. She fired one gun at them. It was said that the discharge was accidental, but whether accidental or not, it was the first shot that was fired on either side in the war. Then she returned to her consort in the harbour. The Japanese admiral sent a notice to the Russians that if they did not leave the harbour they would be attacked within it, and on the following day the two ships steamed out to meet the whole Japanese fleet, and within a very few hours crept back again to the port, battered and crippled wrecks. For three hours the Variag had borne the concentrated fire of the Japanese ships all round her, firing vigorously in return, but the heroic gallantry of the Russians was not supported by efficient gunnery. They did not succeed in even once hitting any one of the seven great targets around them. This fact has, to the best of the present writer's knowledge, not hitherto been told in any English history of the war, and it is his excuse for introducing the incident into pages in which it would otherwise have had no place.

The Capital is connected with Chemulpo by the first railway (2 6| miles in length) that was constructed in Korea. The journey occupies one and a half hours, there being ten stations on the way. It is a walled city lying in an amphitheatre of picturesque hills, about two miles from the banks of the wide and rapidly flowing Han, which encompasses all its southern outskirts. Seoul, with its Government offices, banks, hospitals, railway-stations, tramways, and glass -fronted shops, is, under Japanese administration, rapidly following the example of Tokio, and changing in its outward appearance from an Asiatic to a European city. In its own native form, its principal features were its walls that protected it, not only on the level, but in their winding course climbed all the steep hills around it, crossing the North and the " Three peaked " mountains, at an altitude of not less than a thousand feet ; the eight imposing gates, including among them 1 the gates of " Benevolence," " Justice," and " Courtesy," set in granite frames, which gave access through the walls ; the royal palaces, and the long and wide high street which crossed the whole city from east to west, and with its living stream of white-clothed passers is one of the most picturesque thoroughfares in the world ; the great bronze bell, ten feet in height by eight in width, the third largest bell in the world, cast in 1396, and hung in its present site in 1468, the