# The passing of Korea/Chapter 17

CHAPTER XVII
ARCHITECTURE AND BUILDING
Outside of a few pagodas and other monumental buildings we find no remains of ancient edifices, such as excite the admiration and interest of the traveller in western Asia or in Europe. It may be said with reasonable assurance that there are practically no buildings in the Far East, intended for the occupancy of people, that have existed for three centuries without undergoing such radical repairs as to constitute a virtual rebuilding. This is especially true of Korea. The reason is that there is a great disproportion between the weight of the roof and the strength of its supports. The principle of the arch has been known for many centuries, and it has been utilised in the city gates and in a certain number of bridges ; but it has not been used in ordinary buildings, however permanent may have been their intended use. The weight of the roof is invariably supported upon wooden pillars, and this, too, in the most primitive manner. Huge beams are laid across from the top of one pillar to the top of another, and from the centres of these beams the roof-tree is supported. There is an utter lack of anything like a strengthening truss to prevent the building from getting out of plumb; and as only that portion of the ground immediately under each of the pillars is specially prepared, to prevent sinking, we see that the enormous weight of the tiled roof rests upon a ludicrously insufficient foundation. It is much like a Chinese lady of, say, one hundred and fifty pounds going about on feet two inches long and one inch wide. This insecurity is increased by the fact that in sinking these slight ​foundations the Koreans seldom reach hard-pan, but having gone through the soft upper sediment they pound the earth down with a heavy stone or iron mallet, and without more ado set the heavy foundation stone which is to support the pillar. The impossibility of securing entire uniformity in the solidity of these separate foundations is revealed in about twenty years, when the roof of the building begins to assume a wavy appearance, and everything loses its horizontal or perpendicular position in favour of a certain bibulous obliquity. The first serious repairs, therefore, which a Korean house has to undergo consist in tearing out the flimsy material which fills the wall spaces between the pillars, relieving each pillar in turn of the vertical pressure of the roof by means of improvised struts, and then shifting the position of the foundation stone so as to allow the pillar to be made perpendicular once more. The Orientals seem never to have acquired the notion of a tie-beam so arranged as to relieve the lateral thrust caused by a roof resting upon rafters. By far the greater part of the weight of the roof rests directly upon the centre of the tie-beam. The result is that this beam has to be of enormous thickness. The only thing that prevents the building from leaning is the mortise of the tie-beam into the top of the supporting pillar. There are no trusses to prevent leaning, and so it takes but a few years for the building to get out of plumb. It is doubtless this which makes Koreans prefer to have their houses all together in a bunch. They resemble a company o.f jolly roisterers trying to get home in the " wee sma' hours " with arms interlocked for mutual support. If you buy a Korean house in a crowded quarter and want to tear it down, you are likely to arouse shrill protests from your neighbours on either side. You will not go far along any street in Seoul or any other Korean town without seeing houses propped up with stout sticks for fear they will fall over into the ditch. On the whole, one has to conclude that the roof is considered the main thing, and the foundation only a side issue. All Korean houses, whether those of the common people or the palaces of kings, are built upon ​one and the same plan. The only difference is in degree. The basis of the structure is what is called the kan. This means a space about eight feet square. If you wish to buy a house, the first question will be as to how many kan you require. The price is stated in terms of the kan, and you will buy the building just as you would buy silk by the yard or beef by the pound.
A CORNER GROCERY
Dried cuttlefish (white) hanging on the wall, with dried oysters and clams; on the ground dried jujubes, persimmons, chestnuts, ginger, and other delicacies
Meanwhile the window and door frames have been put up, and the mural spaces have been filled in with a strong wattle, upon which clay mud is plastered. After this mud has dried and is seamed in every direction with cracks, a kind of plaster is applied which is made of a mixture of fine loamy earth, sand and horse-manure, the last ingredient taking the place of hair. The inside and outside are made the same, for the overhanging eaves are supposed to keep the weather from the outer walls. When this is covered with the strong, fibrous Korean paper, it makes a very thorough and durable wall.
The floor is an important matter, as it is both floor and stove. From the level of the ground up to the level of the floor they build with mud and stone, making, as it were, three or four ditches, which converge into one at each end of the room. The whole floor is then covered with large slabs of stone about two inches thick. The joints are carefully sealed with cement so that no smoke can come through into the room. Over the stones a thin layer of cement is spread, and then the whole is covered with a heavy oiled paper which under the tread of stockinged feet soon wears as smooth as silk. The opening to the fireplace is outside the room, and above it is generally set the great kettle for boiling the family rice. This is the kitchen, and it is simply the dirt floor, with whatever benches, shelves and implements are necessary. A room heated this way is called a pang, and it differs from the Chinese kang in no essential particular except that the latter occupies only part of the room and is raised above the floor like a divan, while the Korean forms the whole of the floor itself. A small house will contain only one room like this, with a kitchen attached and one or two storerooms; but a large gentleman's establishment, while built in the same general way, will contain perhaps a dozen or more such rooms and a long row of servants' quarters, making in all as many as a hundred and ​fifty or even two hundred kan. Every dwelling with any pretension to comfort will have a separate part called the sarang. This is the gentleman's reception-room, and is approached from the outside without coming near the women's part of the house. This latter is called the " inner room," and no one of the male sex will enter there without the express invitation of and in company with the master of the house.
The Koreans have a passion for cutting up their compounds with endless walls, making a veritable labyrinth of the place. To our eyes this is a great blemish, for it leaves little opportunity for a pleasing effect on the eye. 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. You cross the cesspool to get into the gate; you go through the servants' quarters and stables to get to the apartments of the master of the house. At the very back of all, and most inaccessible, you may find a pretty bank with some flowering shrubs, some quaint water-worn stones, and perhaps a solemn stork or two. In none of the various enclosures will you find a blade of grass growing. Such a thing as a lawn is quite unknown, and if grass tries to sprout it will be immediately scraped away with a hoe. In a very nice house you may find a few potted plants or shrubs in the enclosure before the sarang.
How they shovel dirt
The scavenger comes around at any time of day to take away the night soil, and you are more than likely to pass him and his load as you enter the gentleman's compound. To the Westerner this insensibility of the Korean, and of all the dwellers of the Far East without exception, is entirely unaccountable. You will find the most horribly offensive conditions as readily among the residences of the wealthy and powerful as among the poor. There is this much to be said, however, before leaving this rather unpleasant subject: the open sewerage of Korea, while offensive to the eye, is far less so to the nose than that of China, and even many portions of Japan. There are much fewer epidemics of cholera in Korea than in Japan, while diphtheria, that special disease resulting from imperfect sewerage, is far more common in Tokyo than in Seoul. What I would maintain is that in spite of the offensiveness of the sanitation of Seoul, both to the eye and the nose, there is little evidence to prove that the actual health conditions among the natives are any worse than among the Japanese or Chinese.
The Koreans seem to have but a vague idea of what a street is really for, and of the restrictions which communal ownership should place upon its use. It is only since the coming of foreigners that the streets of Seoul have assumed anything like a semblance of order. Up to that time even the broad street which forms the central artery of the city was so choked up with booths and stalls that two carts could hardly pass each other at certain points. The Korean shopkeeper thinks nothing of extending his establishment out into the street for a distance of two, three or even four feet. At first he does it only as a temporary booth or screen for his goods, but as soon as the public get used to going around the obstruction he will quietly plant permanent posts at the limits of his encroachment, and the thing is done. If ​expostulated with, he will put on a look of injured innocence, and assert that he has been using the space for many years, in fact, since his father's time, and has a right to it. Not once but many times have I been obliged to nip this thing in the bud on streets leading to my own house. The little awning appears, and you bend aside to pass it, but if you are wise you will stop and see that it is removed ere it is too late. The street is also the depository of any and every kind of filth. Sooner or later it is trampled down by the hoofs of passing horses and is lost to sight ; but if it were not for the great army of scavenger hawks that keep eternal watch for tempting morsels, and that other army, of anaemic dogs, who live on the border line of famine, I do not know what would become of the people of any Korean town. If a Korean wants some dirt to make mud with which to plaster a wall or mend a smoke-flue, he simply goes out into the middle of the street and digs as much as he wants. No care is taken to fill up the hole, and time only accomplishes the feat. Scores of times I have come upon places where a hole had been dug in the street large enough to bury an ox. The people who took the soil away may obligingly deposit the sweepings of their yards there as a pretence to remove the serious obstruction, but it is mere pretence. So long as the vandal leaves a narrow path by which people can pass, there is likely to be no complaint at all. The principle seems to be that what belongs to nobody in particular is lawful loot for anybody.
Building a dirt wall
The Koreans have no notion of public parks or other places of public ornament or recreation, and yet they are passionately fond of wandering about the hills finding picturesque nooks and enjoying the beauties of nature. In many of these retreats there are semi-public houses of diversion, which include a considerable area of land enclosed by a wall. These places belong to the government, and can be used only by application to the proper office. School picnics or other similar entertainments are held in these pretty retreats during the proper season, but it is only the upper classes that have access to them at any time. Their only attractions are a rocky gorge, a little pond and a summer pavilion ten feet square. In country districts the monasteries form the public parks. These are always beautifully situated, and are surrounded with trees. Here the people will congregate and have a grand picnic, generally in connection with some national festival. But besides this, there is in almost every village some large tree beneath which the people meet to talk and gossip. It is the village agora. The old men bring out ​their chess boards and play, and the leaders of the village talk over the communal affairs. If there is any gossip going, you will be sure to hear it at this point. Not uncommonly the village shrine is the place of general rendezvous.
Without doubt the city walls are the most imposing structures in Korea. The enormous work represented by the wall which surrounds Seoul is at once apparent, and is very impressive. As you pass through the country you will frequently see the top of some rocky hill crowned with a genuine acropolis. It is a heavy stone wall twelve or fifteen feet high and a mile or more around. Within you will find no evidences of life nor of recent occupation. Long centuries ago the usefulness of these places of refuge passed away, and they remain, like the feudal castles of Europe, mere monuments of past events. They never were places of permanent residence, but were used, like the block-houses in western America, when there was danger of an Indian raid.
A word is in place regarding architectural decorations. These do not consist, as in the West, in variations of general style. The Koreans adhere strictly to one plan, and their forms of ornamentation are wholly superficial. Only government buildings can be painted. A private citizen would be arrested and punished severely if he presumed to paint his house. It would imply an assumption of royal privilege. The same would happen if he should leave the posts of his house round instead of squaring them. This also is a royal prerogative.
It is not easy to describe the paint on a Korean palace. If the reader will imagine that a rainbow has been dashed against the house and that fragments of it have adhered to every exposed piece of wood he will gain a faint idea of how it looks. The colours are the primitive hues of the rainbow, and they are applied in little curved rainbow patterns, so that any painted surface looks like a conglomerate of kaleidoscopic fragments.
ART AND RELIGION
(a) Under the eaves of an audience hall
(b) A Buddhist Holy of Holies
Wood carving plays some part in the ornamentation of public buildings, though here again the private citizen is debarred. The latticed windows sometimes consist of an elaborate filigree, but, as ordinary pine wood is always used, no very fine effects are possible. One of the most characteristic forms of wood carving is seen in the multiplicity of horns that protrude from the ends of the beams beneath the eaves of audience halls and other ceremonial buildings. To save these from the contamination of innumerable sparrows, a wire net is commonly drawn about the building just beneath the eaves. Not infrequently a curious addition is made by hanging from the corners of eaves a large number of small pieces of broken window-glass. Each piece is suspended from a separate string, and they all hang in a bunch so that the least breath of wind makes them strike together and produce a soft and pleasant tinkle. Each piece of glass is painted in colours.
Among the most conspicuous objects in Korea are the earthenware "monkeys" which stand in rows along the sloping corners of the city gates and government buildings. These nondescript figures do not represent monkeys, but they are so called by foreigners because they bear some resemblance to that animal. Nor are they placed upon the gates by way of ornament. The vivid imagination of the Korean peoples heaven and earth with all sorts of demons, and these " monkeys " are placed on the gates in order to frighten away these evil influences. This is the most pointed, if not the only, reference which the government, as such, makes to the native spirit worship. In every other respect the Confucian system is adhered to.