# The passing of Korea/Chapter 28

CHAPTER XXVIII
WOMAN'S POSITION
IT is a trite saying that the civilisation of a people may be gauged by the treatment accorded to women. This is only partially true, for in the various races of mankind special conditions make special rulings necessary. For instance, in Thibet, where there seems to be a great preponderance of males, the practice of polyandry prevails; but however disgusting this may appear to the Western taste or the Western conscience, it does not place the Thibetan on a lower plane of civilisation than the Esquimaux who do not practise polyandry. Again, in China, and in all lands that have been permeated by Confucian principles, the prime necessity of securing male issue has largely influenced the position of woman and made her lot more tolerable than in Turkey or Persia; but we cannot argue from this that Chinese civilisation is at all in advance of that of Turkey or Persia. We must look to the causes underlying the better or worse treatment of women, in order to discover whether it is a true index of a people's civilisation.
When India was opened to the world, the West cried out in horror against the brutal custom of the self-immolation of widows. But even this was due to natural causes. It was a great preventive law which forced all wives, for the sake of their own happiness, to guard most sedulously the health of their husbands. The common use of poison in the tropics, added to the crafty and vindictive nature of the people, made this cruel law, if not necessary, at least intelligible.
In the same way the people of the West are moved with righteous indignation because the women of the Far East are kept so secluded and are not allowed that free intercourse with ​their fellow-men that is accorded women in the West. This feeling is also in a sense misplaced, for though the condition of woman in Asia is deplorable, we should rather criticise the moral status of the people at large, which renders the seclusion of woman a necessity, than to find fault with the mere fact. Such seclusion is a mean between the promiscuity of savage tribes and the emancipated condition of women in enlightened countries. It is as much better than the former as it is worse than the latter. There can be no question that it is Christianity which has brought about the desirable conditions that prevail in the West, and we need look for no such conditions in the East until it is permeated with ideas emanating from Christian standards. We affirm, then, that under existing moral conditions the seclusion of woman in the Far East is a blessing and not a curse, and its immediate abolishment would result in a moral chaos rather than, as some suppose, in the elevation of society.
The discussion of woman's position in Korea falls under several general heads, such as seclusion, occupation, education, punishments, property rights, testamentary rights, divorce, courtship and marriage, religion, etc.
The degree of seclusion which a Korean woman enjoys depends upon the position she holds in society. Broadly speaking, there are three classes, which may best be termed the honourable, the respectable and the disreputable. As might be expected, the seclusion of women here corresponds to what we call " exclusiveness " in the West. The higher her position, the more complete is her seclusion. And just as women in America or Europe pride themselves upon their exclusiveness, so women here pride themselves upon the fact that no male person outside the immediate household ever sees their faces.
Up to the age of ten or twelve years, the little girl of good family enjoys considerable freedom, and can play in the yard and see anyone that comes; but the time arrives when she must never be seen without the changot, or sleeved apron, over her head held close about her face. From that time she remains ​mostly indoors, and is familiarly seen only by the members of the household and the immediate relatives. This stage of her life is short, for she is married young and goes to take her place in the family of her husband. After that time she can be seen and conversed with, face to face, only by the following male members of the family: her husband, father, father-in-law, uncle, cousin, second cousin, etc., down to what the Koreans call the " eighth joint," which means about fourth cousin with us. It will at once appear, therefore, that a Korean woman is not entirely cut off from association with gentlemen, for, in a country where families are so large as in Korea, the number of men within these prescribed degrees may be anywhere from twenty to two hundred. But none of these will ever enter the inner part of the house except by invitation of the husband and in his company.
After a young bride arrives at the home of her husband, she will have free access to the private rooms of her new father and mother, even as their own daughters do, but neither her father nor any other man except her husband will ever step inside her private rooms, except under stress of sickness or other imperative cause. If any of her male relatives are to see her, it must be in the rooms of her father and mother. This does not apply to the young brothers of her husband, who may come into her room upon invitation up to the age of thirteen, after which they too are excluded. If there are two married brothers living at their father's house, neither of them can enter the private rooms of the other, though each can meet the wife of the other in the rooms of the parents. If, however, a young man marries and sets up an establishment of his own, he becomes the head of the house, and any of his male relatives, or hers, down to the " eighth joint," can enter the inner rooms upon invitation of the husband, but they will never do this unless there is some special reason for seeing the wife, since the husband will be sure to have a sarang, or general reception room, where he meets all his male friends.
​As a rule, a lady may go and visit her lady friends with considerable freedom, but she must always leave word at home exactly where she is going. She will go in a closed. "chair" carried by two men. The chair is brought to her door, the men retire till she has entered, and when she arrives at the friend's house, the men set down the chair and retire while she is getting out. She will invariably be accompanied by a slave girl or other female servant who runs along beside the chair. Arrived at the friend's house, she enters the inner rooms, and while she is there neither the friend's husband nor any other man may enter, unless he should chance to be within the prescribed limits of consanguinity. A lady of wealth or even of moderate means will not walk on the street, although this is permissible provided she keeps her face carefully hidden by the changot.
Women of the middle class are not so secluded as those of the upper class, and yet they will never be seen on the street without the head covering. At their homes they may be seen by any male relative down to the "tenth joint." We see, then, that women of the middle class are visible to relatives two degrees further removed than those by whom her higher sister may be seen; and besides this, it is far less common for a man of the middle class to possess a general reception room, and the result is that relatives are much oftener invited . into the inner rooms. The statement sometimes made, that no respectable Korean woman will ever be seen walking on the street, is very far from the truth. Hundreds of them may be seen every day.
Women of the lower or so-called disreputable class include dancing-girls, slaves, courtesans, sorceresses and Buddhist nuns. I am speaking now from the Korean point of view. A slave or a nun may be a respectable person, but she is classed with the others by Koreans. They are subject to none of the laws of seclusion that apply to so-called reputable people. In fact, they are not allowed to use the changot to cover the face. A possible exception may be found in the courtesan, who may cover the ​head, but is not allowed to use the pad or cushion on top of the head by which the change t is supported.
Besides these women of the lower orders, there are a few others that never cover the head and who, although entirely respectable, may be seen by men without reproach. These are lady physicians, of whom there are many in Korea, and blind female exorcists. Women of even the upper class may enter the medical profession, and it is said that many of them are very expert at acupuncture, which is about all the surgery that the Esculapian art can boast here.
Although women of the upper and middle classes cover the face on the street, yet this concealment is by no means so complete as among the women of Turkey, for the changot is simply held together before the face with the hand, and frequently the entire face is exposed. Elderly women of entire respectability often take little or no pains to observe the rule strictly, but one would seldom have an opportunity of catching a glance at more than one eye and a small portion of the face of a young woman.
In an afternoon's walk through the streets of Seoul you will see hundreds of women going about without any head covering whatever. They are mostly slaves. Now and then a dancinggirl will be seen riding on a pony or in an open chair with uncovered face, and, if a wedding procession passes, a large number of unveiled women with enormous piles of hair on their heads will be seen carrying gaily decorated boxes in which are kept the " plenishings " of the bride. These all belong to the low class.
It may be said in a general way that the chief occupation of the respectable Korean woman, whether of high or low degree, is motherhood. Like the ancient Hebrew woman, she says, " Give me children or I die." This springs from the instinct for self-preservation. The Confucian code renders male offspring a sine qua non of a successful life, and a woman who brings her husband no children is doubly discredited. There is no more valid cause for divorce in Korea than barrenness. ​There are no " old maids " here. It becomes a matter of public scandal if a girl passes her twentieth year without settling in a home. Of course, in the case of cripples or incompetents it is a little difficult to arrange, but many a young man takes his bride home only to find out that she is a deaf-mute or cross-eyed or humpbacked or partially paralysed. This is a triumph for the old woman, the professional go-between, whose skill in "working off" these unmarketable goods upon unsuspecting swains is proverbial. But the balance is even as between the brides and grooms, for a nice girl as often finds herself married to a drunkard or a case of non compos mentis.
The Korean woman's main business then is wifehood and motherhood; but even so, there are many opportunities for her to help along the family finances and supplement the wages of a husband who is too often shiftless and dependent or even worse.
First, as to occupations open to women of the upper class. Strange as it may seem, the only kind of shop such a woman can keep is a wine-shop. Of course she never appears in person, but if her house is properly situated she can turn a portion of it into a wine-shop, where customers can be served by her slave or other servant. No lady would ever think of selling cloth or vegetables or fruit or anything except wine. Silk culture is an important industry, in which ladies take a prominent part, especially in the country. The care of the eggs, the feeding of the worms, the manipulation of the cocoons and the spinning of the silk afford means whereby the wife of the gentleman farmer passes many pleasant hours and adds materially to the finances of the household.
WOMAN'S CORRECT STREET COSTUME
In the country it is not beneath the dignity of a lady to tend bees. She may also help in the care of fruit trees, especially the jujube. She may also make straw shoes. It seems singular that a lady should be able to make straw shoes when it would be entirely beneath her dignity to make the better kind, such, for instance, as those her husband wears in town.
If an inmate of a house is taken ill, someone must run for an exorcist to come and drive out the evil spirit which has caused the trouble. It is the blind people who do this work. It is not confined to men alone, but any blind woman, whatever her rank may be, can become an exorcist. Nor do indigent ladies hesitate to enter the ranks of fortune-tellers. It is an easy, lucrative and graceful form of labour, and contains an element of adventure that appeals strongly to some people.
But a higher form of labour to which a lady is eligible is that of physician; in fact, no woman can be a physician here unless she belongs to the upper class. The science of medicine, or I should say a science of medicine, has received much attention from Koreans for many centuries. The Korean pharmacopoeia is celebrated even in China ; and it cannot be denied that it contains many crude drugs that are very effective. Korea has many native lady physicians who administer their powdered tiger's-claw, tincture of bear's gall or decoction of crow's foot, according as the symptoms of the patient may seem to require. The lady physician is called in most often for obstetric cases where a male physician would not be tolerated for a moment. A story is told of a certain queen who was taken ill and no lady physician could be found. The royal patient grew rapidly worse. Male physicians were at hand, but they could not possibly see the patient. Suddenly there appeared an old man at the palace gate who said that he could cure the queen. When asked how he could diagnose the case without seeing the patient, he said, ​"Tie a string around her wrist and pass one end through the partition." It was done, and the old man holding the end of the string described her symptoms exactly and wrote out a prescription which soon effected a cure. Compared with this, the recent discoveries of Marconi in wireless telegraphy seem but we must not digress.
As might be supposed, a descent in the social scale widens the field of the Korean woman's work. The middle-class woman can engage in all the occupations of her higher sister, excepting those of physician and teacher of Chinese literature. She may be the proprietress of any kind of shop, though she will not appear in person. She may " take in washing," which means carrying it to the nearest brook or to the neighbourhood wellcurb, where the water she uses speedily finds its way back into the well. She may act as cook in some well-to-do family, tend the fowls and pigs or do any other form of domestic service. Concubines are drawn almost exclusively from this middle class.
THE LAUNDRY
Women of the middle class often become wet-nurses or enter a Buddhist convent, though by following the latter course they drop from the respectable class to the despised one. Others still become nain, or palace women. These are in some sort handmaidens of the queen and engage in embroidery and other fancy work under the eye of Majesty. Foreigners often make the mistake of supposing that this position is a disgraceful one, but these palace women are entirely respectable, and any delinquency on their part would be severely dealt with. The reluctance with which parents consent to their daughters becoming palace women is due to the fact that it postpones the date of marriage beyond the approved age. Many middle-class women are innkeepers. Travel on Korean roads usually averages thirty miles a day, and so the inns are numerous. The hostess has little difficulty in keeping the accounts. All she has to do is to watch the ricebag and the bean-bag, for food and fodder are the only things charged for in a Korean inn. Sleeping and stable room are thrown in gratis ; and we may add sotto voce that they are dear even at that price, at certain seasons of the year. If the hostess had to take charge of the sleeping arrangements, she would be unable to preserve the seclusion which is the sole badge of her respectability. Of all these occupations of middle-class women, there are only two to which low-class women are not eligible, those of palace woman and tobacco-pouch maker.
While middle-class women are thoroughly respectable, at least in theory, the women of the low class are entirely outside the social pale. They have practically no rights, though they manage to hold their own with remarkable pertinacity.
There are, first, those unfortunates called dancing-girls. The northern province of Pyeng-an takes the lead in supplying women to fill the ranks of this class. The girls are taken when very young and trained in all the meretricious arts of their ​degraded and degrading occupation. Some of them are secured by purchase and many more by chicanery. They are secured at too early an age to make it possible for them to give intelligent assent to their shameful fate. They are never veiled, and they go about as freely as men. In the Korean view they are unsexed and are social outcasts, but in reality, like the hctairai of ancient Greece, they enjoy far more social life than reputable women. The dancing-girl is not necessarily a woman of bad character. Many are the stories told of their kindness, charity and patriotism. And yet, if the estimate of their own countrymen counts for anything, such goodness is about as frequent as the Greek kalends. In early days there were no dancing-girls, but boys performed the dances. In course of time, however, a weakening of the moral fibre of the nation, due to increase of luxury, let in this unspeakable evil. The dancing-girl is a pratege of the government; in fact, the whole clan is supported out of government funds, and they are supposed to perform only at government functions. They do not by any means constitute that branch of society which in Western countries goes under the euphemistic name of demi monde, but they correspond very closely to our ballet-dancers. As with the hetairai of Greece, so with the Korean dancing-girl, her greater freedom gives her opportunity and leisure to acquire a culture that makes her intellectually far more companionable than her more secluded but more respectable sisters. This is, of course, a great injustice. Though there is nominally a wide difference between the dancinggirl and the ordinary courtesan, it is generally understood that enrolment in the ranks of this profession means a life of shame. Such women frequently close their professional careers by becoming the concubines of wealthy gentlemen.
The female jugglers, acrobats, contortionists and story-tellers are sufficiently described by their names. None of them are respectable people. The mudang, or sorceress, is much in evidence in Korea. She is the lowest of the low; for, in addition to an entire lack of morals, she is supposed to have commerce ​with evil spirits. The p'ansu, or blind exorcist, is an enemy of the spirits and drives them away by a superior power, but the mudang is supposed to secure their departure by friendly intercession. This, of course, determines her unenviable position, and no women in Korea are more depraved than she.
Female slavery is very common. This will be discussed under the head of slavery, but as it is an exclusively female institution, it must be enumerated here. She may be a born slave, she may be made one as punishment for a crime, either of her own or of a near relative, or she may sell herself into lifelong or temporary slavery in order to liquidate a debt or to help a relative to do so. Her condition is somewhat better than that of many of Korea's poor, for she is sure of food and shelter, which is far more than thousands can say. As a rule, she is treated well, and her condition does not specially excite our pity. She will be seen carrying water home from the well on her head, and not only will her face be uncovered, but there will be a startling hiatus between her short jacket and her waistband which leaves the breasts entirely exposed. One recent writer on Korea leaves the impression that this species of indecorum is characteristic of all women on the streets of Seoul, but of course this is a libel.
The professional go-between, who acts in the capacity of a matrimonial bureau, is one of the peculiar excrescences on the body politic of Korea. It is her business to find brides for the bachelors and husbands for the maidens. Her services are not absolutely necessary, for the parents or other relatives of the young man or woman are usually able to arrange an alliance; but there are many cases in which her services will be of value. If an undesirable young man or woman fears that he or she will not draw a prize in the matrimonial lottery, the chungma is called in, and it is made worth her while to find an acceptable partner. So it comes about that she is well worth watching, and her description of the prospective bride or groom should be verified, if possible, by ocular evidence. A case has just ​come under my notice in which a nice young girl was sadly cheated. Her relatives went to see the young man that the go-between had provided and found him handsomely dressed and living, apparently, in a fine house; but when the ceremony was over he took her to a wretched hovel, where his father and mother and a large family lived huddled together like rabbits in a burrow. The deception was a most cruel one, for the girl had been reared in comparative luxury. Occasionally the go- between is brought to justice for such felonious dealing, but usually the girl would rather suffer in silence than have her name dragged before the public.
It is difficult to estimate the wages that female labour receives in Korea, because it depends almost entirely upon the skill and the rapidity with which the work is done. Doubtless the dancing-girl gets the best pay of all, and next to her perhaps the lady physician. Then come the acrobats and fortune-tellers. The wet-nurse, or " milk-mother," is well paid, but her living is precarious. The same is true of the go-between. The teacher in a gentleman's family gets no salary at all, only a present now and then. The female physician gets her chair-coolie hire and about a dollar for each visit. The acrobat may get as low as foUr dollars a month or as high as sixty. The fortune-teller gets eight cents for each fortune that she tells. This represents two hours' work, for it is no light matter to be turned off by a mere glance at the palm. Go-betweens get from four to eight dollars for each case. The honest ones are, of course, the surest to find steady employment. The woman whose province it is to apply cosmetics to the faces of prospective brides receives some sixteen dollars for each operation, and anyone who has seen a Korean bride in her stucco will say the money is well earned.
A good seamstress or comb-maker or head-band maker will earn a dollar a day, while a wet nurse will get forty cents and her food, but if a foreigner wants to employ one, he will have to pay twenty dollars a month and support her lazy husband into ​the bargain. For sewing, weaving, fishing, doctoring, glazing pottery, preparing ginseng, boiling salt, making shoes, exorcism and many other forms of labour, a woman receives as much as a man. It may be set down as a general law that if a woman can make a thing as quickly and as well as a man she will receive the same wages as he. In this respect the Korean woman has the advantage of the female artisan in Europe or America.
The relative degree of education enjoyed by Korean women as compared with men is not thoroughly understood by foreigners, judging from what we find in print. It is commonly believed that education here is almost wholly confined to the men, but this estimate must be considerably modified. Among Korean gentlemen there are very few indeed who have not studied at least a few Chinese characters, but not one in six can pick up a book written in pure Chinese and read it with any degree of fluency. Most of them have the merest smattering of it. Among the women of the upper class, perhaps two in five study a little Chinese, but not more than one per cent of these ladies ever learn to read it. The so-called mixed script in which the daily papers are printed can be read by very many ladies, for it requires no knowledge of the Chinese idiom, but only the meaning of some eighteen hundred characters. The native Korean writing, of which we speak at length elsewhere, is often called the "ladies' writing." Gentlemen pretend to despise it, but it is well known and extensively used by all Korean ladies. If one of them is lacking in this accomplishment, she will be looked upon much as a Western lady would be who should refer to George Eliot as a gentleman. Among the middle classes perhaps half of the women are conversant with this native script. Among the low class there is no education at all, except in the case of fortune-tellers and dancing-girls, the latter of whom are frequently quite well up in letters.
The one work that Korean women must master is "The Three Principles of Conduct." These are (1) the treatment ​of parents, (2) the rearing of a family, (3) housekeeping; and, running the risk of seeming out of date, we submit that, while these three studies might not constitute a liberal education for a woman, no woman's education is complete without them. But while we cannot praise the Koreans too highly for insisting on these, we do blame them that they often stop here. Many women who cannot read learn this book by proxy. It is written in Chinese and Korean on alternate pages, so that no one may have an excuse for not reading it.
Next comes "The Five Rules of Conduct," relating to the relations between parent and child, king and subject, husband and wife, old and young, friend and friend. Then there is a book on " Interesting and Proper Things," a mass of anecdotes illustrative of the virtues, and the " Female Physician's Remedy Book," a sort of domestic medical work, dealing mainly with prenatal conditions, parturition and the care of infants. Such are the most important books studied by women, and ignorance of their contents is looked upon with great contempt among the upper classes and to a less extent among the middle classes. But besides these, there is an extensive literature in the native script alone. It contains historical works on ancient and medieval Korea, poetry, travel, letters, biographies and a wide range of fiction, based on fairies, ghosts, love, hate, revenge, avarice, ambition, adventure, loyalty and all other passions that are common to the race.
Those books which women regularly study can be obtained by purchase, but, as for the light literature, there are a number of circulating libraries in Seoul where books are lent for two cents apiece, to be returned within five days. It speaks rather poorly for the taste and morals of the Koreans that very many of these books are highly unfit for anyone to read.
There are no girls' schools in Korea, outside those that have been founded by the foreign missionaries. That Korean girls are taught almost exclusively those things that will be of practical use to them within the walls of their own homes, is ​necessarily narrowing to the intellect, and makes the woman a companion to her husband only in a domestic sense. The influence that this has upon society is too well known to need discussion here; but it is the testimony of foreigners generally, who have had to do with Korean girls, that these long centuries of repression have not impaired their mental capacity. That capacity has simply lain dormant, and when given the opportunity it will prove itself easily equivalent to that of the men.
It would be impossible to discuss the property rights of women without taking up property rights in general, which we will do as briefly as possible.
Let us take the case of a well-to-do gentleman in his home, surrounded by his family, which includes his wife, his two married sons and one unmarried daughter. His other daughter has married and gone to the home of her husband. This gentleman's property consists of rice-fields, real estate and ready money. All real estate is held by deed from the government, as with us. His ready money is not in the bank, for there are practically no banks. It is all locked in his strong box, or it is lent out to merchants and others at a rate of one and a half or two per cent a month. Considering the risks, this is a low rate. So far as his own immediate household is concerned, this man has complete control of all this property, but if he has one or more brothers and they happen to be in needy circumstances, he is bound to feed them. If he refuses to do so, they can go to the local authorities and lay complaint against him; in which case they may command him to hand over some of his money or other property to the brothers, in order to save them from starvation. If, however, he can prove that the brothers are indolent and merely want to live upon him, he will be freed from all obligation. The reason for this law will appear shortly.
If he has sisters, they are of course married and have gone to the family of the husband. He is, therefore, free from all legal obligation to them. In case they are in severe straits, he ​will probably help them, but they have no recourse to law. If his aged mother is still living, he must support her. If he does not treat her well, she has instant recourse to the law and can inflict the severest penalties. If he insults her or strikes her or if he is a thief or seditious, she might strike him dead and the law would uphold her. This is not mere theory, for such things have happened not infrequently. So long as he treats her well, she has no voice in the management of the money. It is hardly necessary to say that the government exercises the right of eminent domain, and can "condemn" and take any man's property at a fair valuation.
We next ask how a Korean can acquire or dispose of property. In the disposition of the estate his brothers may act as a check upon him. If he is wantonly squandering the patrimony, or even money that he has himself acquired, they can complain to the authorities and ask them to refuse new deeds for property that he sells. It must always be remembered that in Korea the authorities are seldom approached with empty hands, and to go to law does not necessarily mean to obtain justice.
When a man dies intestate, all his property goes into the hands of his eldest son, who is obliged to support all his brothers. If he refuses to do so, they appeal to the law and force a division of the property, in which case each receives an equal share.
If there are unmarried sisters, the elder brother will lay aside a sum sufficient for their dowries, himself being the judge as to what is necessary. These unmarried sisters have no recourse to the law, so long as their brother supports them and gives them a home. If he refuses this, the law will handle him. If they are already married before the death of the father, the brother is not under obligation to give them anything. If they are in want, he may help them or not as he pleases.
A man, seeing his end approach, desires to make his will.
He calls in a few witnesses, never from his own immediate family, and writes his will in their presence. They sign it in due form. There is no such thing as probate in Korea, and the ​eldest son is always the executor of the will. Ordinarily, the father will have no doubt as to his son's good intentions and will die intestate. It is when the father fears that the son will not treat the rest of the family well that he makes a will. Supposing that the will specifies that the widow is to receive a specified sum, and the other children each a specified sum, every person so specified has the right to claim at law the amount bequeathed to him or her, and the woman's right is as clear as the man's. But should the will include a bequest to anyone not a relative, such as a friend, or the poor, or a monk, such person cannot recover the money at law. There is no redress. If, however, the executor, the eldest son, refuses to carry out the wishes of his father in these particulars and shows a too avaricious spirit, the people of the place will compel him to sell out and move away. They will drive him from the neighbourhood, and the authorities will not stir a finger to help him, unless - but the less said about that the better.
Now let us suppose that a man dies leaving only two daughters, one married and the other unmarried. In this case the great probability is that he will adopt a son before he dies, someone among his near relatives. This will be mainly in order to have someone to sacrifice to his spirit after his death. The adopted son has all the rights and powers of a real son, and will control the property. Perhaps once out of ten times the father will fail to adopt a son, in which case the daughters take charge of the property and administer the estate exactly the same as a man would, and with equal power. These daughters are not obliged to hand the property over to their husbands unless they wish, but the husband may, if evil-minded, seize it, in which case the wife will probably have no redress. This, however, would very rarely occur, for, if it were known, the man would be subject to the most bitter scorn of his acquaintances and would be practically ostracised.
In case a man dies leaving only a widow, she will adopt as her son the eldest son of one of her husband's brothers, and he ​will naturally have charge of the money. This is a hard and fast rule that is never broken. If there be no such nephew, she may adopt some other boy, if she so desires, or she can hold the property in her own name. If her husband has a childless brother, she must divide the property with him, but not with any more distant relative.
It is a striking fact that among the common people a wife has greater power over her dead husband's property than her more aristocratic sister. If she adopts a son, she still may control the estate if she desires. The Koreans have a queer saying to the effect that to live well in this world one should be the wife of a middle-class man, and when a woman dies she should wish to be reincarnated in the shape of a gentleman or high-class man. This is because in the middle class the woman is more nearly on a level with her husband, she knows more about his business and has more to say in the management of the family affairs than the high-class woman; also she has a much firmer hold upon her husband's estate in case he dies. She is not so strictly bound to adopt a son to whom she will have to hand over the property, nor does she have to give so much to her deceased husband's brothers.
As we descend in the social scale, all restrictive laws and all inequalities between the sexes are toned down, so that when we reach the lowest classes we find that the relations are much the same as in our own land. The Koreans say that among the very lowest classes are to be found the most unfortunate and the most fortunate women ; but this would not be our estimate, for the Koreans mean by this that the mudang, or sorceress, and the courtesan and the dancing-girl, being unmarried, are the most independent women in the land, and are cared for, fed and dressed the best of any in Korea. Of course this is a terribly false judgment, for it looks merely to material comfort and forgets the awful price at which it is bought. On the other hand, the respectable woman of the lowest orders is the most pitiable, for she is everybody's drudge. She has no rights that anyone ​is bound to respect, and she lives at the caprice of her husband or master.
The question arises as to whether a married woman has control of the wages which she may earn. In this respect the middle-class woman has the advantage of her higher sisters, for while a gentleman's wife will invariably turn over the proceeds of her work to her husband, the middle-class woman may or may not do so. Every act of a high-born woman is subject to far closer scrutiny than in the case of the middle-class woman, and, as she can never go to a shop to buy anything, she cannot well use her money. On the whole, she is a very helpless being. It is very common for middle-class women to give up their wages to their husbands, and the latter can take money from their wives by force without the least fear of molestation from the authorities ; but by sufferance these women are given greater freedom than others.
If a widow is possessed of considerable property and sees her end approach, and she has neither sons nor near relatives, she may give her money to some young man and ask him to perform the annual sacrificial rites for her, or she may go to a Buddhist monastery and give her money to pay for the performance of Buddhist rites. This is a very common occurrence in Korea, and forms an important part of the income of the monasteries. No woman of the upper class ever does this.
If a man is a traitor or if he desecrates a grave, the common custom, until very recently, has been to decapitate him and all his male relatives of near degree, and to execute by poison all women of his immediate family, namely, mother, wife and daughters. In certain cases the women may merely be made slaves. If a woman herself meditates treason, she will be poisoned. For murder a man is decapitated and his wife poisoned. If a woman is the offender, she will be strangled or poisoned. For arson a man suffers strangulation or poisoning, while the woman suffers the latter penalty. For theft a man may be either decapitated, strangled or banished. His wife will be enslaved ​and all his property confiscated. Such was the law up to the year 1895, but at that time the punishment of wives and daughters for the man's fault was done away, and a great forward step was thus taken in judicial ethics. Since that time only the principal offender himself has suffered punishment.
In the matter of divorce the great inequality between the sexes becomes plainly manifest. On no pretext whatever can a woman obtain a legal separation from her husband. The only thing she can do is to run away to her father's house or to that of some relative. In this case the husband has no redress unless he can disprove her charges against him. In such case he can demand not her person, but only the cost of the marriage ceremony. This proving is not done by legal process, but is a matter between the parties concerned and their relatives. The law will not force a woman to go back to her husband's home. Thus we see that divorce in its main feature, namely, the getting rid of a bad husband, is possible to any Korean woman, but there is no legal document which dissolves the marriage tie.
If a man wants to get rid of his wife, the reason will probably be either that she is barren, or that she has committed adultery, or that she is an inveterate gossip, or that she has insulted him, or that she is indolent, or that she does not attend properly to the sacrifices or that she is a thief. If the woman thus divorced is a lady, she has absolutely no redress, whether the accusation is just or not. If she is a common woman, she can appeal to the Mayor of Seoul or to her local magistrate and can have her husband punished for driving her away without sufficient cause if she can prove that such is the case. If a woman is divorced, or if she runs away from her husband, all the children remain in his care. She cannot take any of them with her unless by his permission. If she clandestinely does so, he can force her to give the child up.
Divorce is very uncommon among the upper class. The wife and mistress of the house is by no means a mere chattel, as in Turkey or Persia. She has certain well-defined rights ​that her husband is bound to respect, and to divorce her requires very sound and patent reasons. She has her powerful relatives who could make it very uncomfortable for her husband should he attempt to discredit their house by wantonly divorcing her. It is a terrible disgrace for a gentleman to have his wife run away from him, and he will go far to conciliate her and prevent such a scandal. Among the common people, however, there is far greater license. Divorce is exceedingly easy and common. If a man finds that the woman of his choice (or the go-between's choice) is not what he anticipated, he will simply send her home to her mother. It is very uncommon for a woman to complain before the magistrate and have her delinquent husband punished, for in any case she cannot go back to him, and so the less said about the matter the better. The utmost promiscuity prevails among the lower classes. A man may have half a dozen wives a year in succession. No ceremony is required, and it is simply a mutual agreement of a more or less temporary nature. The biblical picture of the Samaritan woman at Jacob's Well who had had five husbands is descriptive of many thousands among the low-class people in Korea.
The cost of a regular wedding in this country is very great, averaging some six months' income. This is one of the main reasons for irregular connections. Concubinage is an institution as old as history. It has existed in Korea from time immemorial. There are three main causes for it, - if a man has no son by his wife, if the wife is an invalid or a cripple or old, if the man is a mere libertine; in any of these cases he is likely to take a concubine. The custom is prevalent both among the high class and the middle class. The woman of the high class never becomes a concubine, but men of that class take concubines from the lower strata of society. From time to time we hear excuses made for concubinage in the case of a man whose wife is barren, but the excuse is not a valid one; and for the very good reason that however many sons a man may have by a concubine, not one of them can call ​him father, or become his heir or sacrifice to him after death.
He may have half a dozen sons by concubines, yet when the time comes to die he will adopt a son from some more or less distant branch of the family, and it is this adopted son who will call him father, worship him after death and inherit all his property. The sons of concubines have no rights whatever, nor would any gentleman think of adopting his son by a concubine to be his legal heir. Great stress is laid upon purity of blood in the upper class. Among the common people, however, where the restraints are very much less, the son by a concubine may become the heir. In such case the man and his concubine belong to the same grade of society. The children always take the status of the mother.
If a man of the upper class has one or more concubines, he must keep a separate establishment for each of them. It would be unheard of for a gentleman to introduce a concubine into the home where his genuine wife lives. Among the common class, however, the wife and the concubine may occupy the same house. Human nature is the same the world over, and it is needless to say that oftentimes the result is most distressing. No other one thing is so conducive to domestic discord as this evil custom. The Koreans recognise its baneful effects and condemn it, but money and leisure offer great temptations in Korea even as elsewhere.
The commonest form of amusement in which women indulge is called kugyung. This word cannot be exactly translated, but it may mean to "look see" or to "take a walk," or both of these combined. In other words, it means the satisfaction of curiosity in any form. When the Korean says kugyung kapsita, he means, "Let us take a stroll and look about a bit." Now, this, in the uneventful life of a Korean woman, is one of the highest forms of pleasure. It makes no difference though she sees nothing more exciting than a passing bicycle or electric car. It is amusing and entertaining. Of course, such pleasures are mostly limited to the lower classes, who are less secluded. Ladies amuse ​themselves by playing the komungo, or harp. Its musical capabilities are not high. They also play other crude instruments.
Korean girls are very fond of swinging, and on a certain day in spring there is a swing festival in which men, women and children participate. Huge swings are arranged in public places, but these are used only by men and boys. Girls have a peculiar kind of see-saw, which consists of a short board laid across a fulcrum three or four inches high. The girls stand on opposite ends of the board and jump up and down. The impact of one coming down throws the other up into the air some three or four feet. A rope is drawn above their heads like a clothes-line, and to this they cling as they go up in the air, in order to insure their equilibrium.
In the country the girls enjoy what is called the chul nori, or rope game. A rope is drawn taut between two trees, and the girls swing back and forth against it, keeping time to a song. The Korean doll is also very common and is called a kaksi. It is most often seen tied to the back of the little girl, and she pretends that she is carrying her baby as her mother does the genuine one. Dominoes, go-bang and dice are favourite amusements of women, though the last are used almost exclusively by ladies of the higher class.
As for titles, only ladies of the very highest class, wives of the leading officials, are given a " handle " to their names. These correspond to our terms "countess," "baroness" and others; but these titles are not hereditary in Korea.