# The passing of Korea/Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV LEGENDARY AND ANCIENT HISTORY
Kija was a refugee from China at the time of the fall of the Shang dynasty in 1122. He was asked to take office under the new regime but refused, and secured permission to emigrate to Korea with five thousand followers. Whether he came by sea ​or by land is not known; but upon his arrival he settled at Pyeng-yang, the Tangun retiring to Kuwul Mountain, where he shortly after resumed his spirit shape and disappeared. Kija, if he was really an historical character, was one of the greatest and most successful colonisers that the world has ever seen. He brought with him artisans of every kind, and all the other necessities of a self-supporting colony. Arriving here, he began a peaceful reign, making special laws for the civilising of the half-wild people, and adopting the language of the country. The stories that are told of his administrative powers would fill a volume. He was familiar with every phase of good government. His penal code was ideal, his financial system was perfectly adapted to the time, his wisdom was never at fault. He was the King Arthur of Korea. It is believed that it was by him that the land was first called Chosun, or " Land of Morning Freshness." No remnants of literature have come down to us from his time; and while the Koreans passionately resent the supposition that he was a merely legendary character, and show his tomb and many other relics of his kingdom, it can never be definitely said that he was an historical character. Outside the new city of Pyeng-yang is shown the site of Kija's capital, the ancient well dug by that sage, and a monument inscribed with his virtues.
The Kija dynasty showed its virility by lasting almost a thousand years. The names of the forty-two kings of the dynasty are given, and some apocryphal events of the dynasty's history, but no great confidence can be placed in them. The art of writing was in its infancy, and not a single word of recorded history has come down to us.
In 193 B. c. Wiman, a fugitive from Chinese justice, crossed the Yalu with a few followers, and found asylum under the aegis of Kijun, the last King of Old Chosun. This Wiman emulated the example of the proverbial snake in the bosom, and as soon as he had consummated his plans he descended upon the unwary Kijun and compelled him to take boat with a few fol ​lowers and flee southward along the coast. The kingdom of Ancient Chosun never extended southward further than the Han River, but it had gone far beyond the limits of the Yalu, and at one time stretched as far as the present city of Mukden. Manchuria is full of Korean graves, and for many centuries the power of Chosun was felt in this region.
Wiman the usurper did not long enjoy his stolen sweets. Eighty years after he came, the rule that he set up was crushed by the Chinese Emperor Wu-wang, and all northern Korea was divided into four provinces, under direct Chinese sway. This continued until 36 A. D., when the kingdom of Koguryu was established.
But we must follow the fortunes of Kijun, who had fled south. He landed on the shore of southern Korea, and there found a peculiar race of people, differing in almost every respect from those of the north. Their language, customs, institutions and manners were so curious that the account of Kijun's astonishment is preserved in tradition to the present day. There were three groups of tribes scattered along the southern coast of the peninsula. They were the Mahan, Pyonhan and Chinhan. Each of these was composed of a large number of independent and autonomous tribes. It is very probable that these people were settlers from the south. They bear a strong resemblance to the Malays, Formosans and other southern peoples. The language, houses, customs, ornaments, traditions and many other things point strongly toward such a southern origin.
Kijun, with the superior civilisation which he brought with him, found no difficulty in establishing control over the people of Mahan, and for many decades the Kija dynasty continued in its second home. But meanwhile important things were happening on the eastern coast among the people of Chinhan. At the time of the building of the Great Wall in China, about 225 B. c., a great number of Chinese had fled across the Yellow Sea to Korea, and, after wandering about awhile, had been given a place to live by the people of Chinhan. The superior ​arts which they brought with them exerted a great influence upon their neighbours, and as they gradually became absorbed with the population of Chinhan, a new and stronger civilisation had its birth there. It was in 57 B. c. that several of the most powerful chiefs met and agreed to consolidate their interests and establish a kingdom such as that which they had heard about from their Chinese guests. This was done, and a kingdom was established, with its capital at the present town of Kyongju. It was called Suyabul at first, but as it is generally known by the name Silla, which it adopted five centuries later, we shall call it by that name. A few years later a man named Chumong is said to have fled from his home in the far north near the Sungari River and to have come across the Yalu into Korea. The Chinese rule in those regions had become very weak, and Chumong found no difficulty in welding the scattered people into a strong kingdom. It was this man who, it is said, crossed the river on the fish which came to the surface and laid their backs together to make a bridge for him. The kingdom which he founded was called Koguryu, and it comprised all the northern portion of the peninsula. Again, in 9 B. c., a fugitive from Koguryu came into the northern borders of Mahan, and by treachery succeeded in wresting the kingdom away from its rightful king, on whose fallen throne he erected the new kingdom of Pakche. So that with the opening of our era there were three powers in Korea, Silla in the southeast, Pakche in the southwest and Koguryu in the north.
RELICS OF ANCIENT KOREA
The upper picture shows the Ancient Bell of Silla, one of the largest in the world, cast about 1400 years ago. The lower illustration presents the so-called "White Buddha," near Seoul. The people say that however high the water rises in the stream it flows around the feet of the image without touching them ​the Yalu, determined that Koguryu must be destroyed. Three hundred thousand of them crossed the river and marched on Pyeng-yang, but they were drawn into an ambush and cut down by the thousands. The remainder fled, but lost their way and were destroyed one by one, so that of those three hundred thousand men only seven thousand went back across the Yalu alive.
The kingdom of Pakche was like neither of the other two. She attended neither to the arts of peace nor to those of war. Her whole history is one of self-gratification and pleasure. We learn of no great acts that she performed, nor of any praiseworthy achievements. She generally gained by deceit and treachery what she wanted, but had not the courage to wage a war of conquest with either of her neighbours. There are many things which attest the high civilisation which Silla attained. To-day there hangs in the town of Kyongju, Silla's old capital, a huge bell, the largest in Korea and one of the largest in the world. It was cast in the early days of Silla, only a few centuries after Christ. This alone would go far to prove the point, for the ability to cast a bell of that size argues a degree of mechanical and industrial skill of no mean dimensions. But besides this, there is still to be seen near that same town a stone tower that was used for astronomical purposes. We read in the records that Silla kept strict account of the various meteorological phenomena, such as eclipses of the sun and of meteors. At one place we read that an expected eclipse of the sun failed to take place, which indicates that they could calculate the date of such events in advance.
It was about three hundred years after Christ that Buddhism found entrance to Korea from China. Envoys from the various states in Korea met representatives of this cult at the court of China, and, as it was exceedingly popular there, the kings of the Korean realms asked that monks be sent to teach the tenets of the new religion here. One of the most celebrated of these was one Mararanta, whose name savours more of India than of ​China. It may be that he was an Indian who had come to China to teach Buddhism, but was transferred to Korea. At any rate, the Korean people accepted the new cult eagerly, and Buddhism flourished. Not, however, without occasional setbacks, for there were periodical lapses from it when the monks were killed and the monasteries destroyed. The tales which have been woven about these events fill the pages of Korean folk-lore.
From very early times there was some sort of communication between Silla and Japan, but curiously enough it was with Pakche, on the opposite side of the peninsula, that the Japanese were most friendly. Japanese tradition says that the Empress Jingu came to Korea and conquered the whole peninsula. There is absolutely nothing in Korean annals that would attest the truth of this statement. Korean history goes back much further than the Japanese, and if such an invasion had taken place there would have been mention of it in the Korean annals. The whole setting of the Japanese legend shows that it is merely a fanciful tale, in which gods and goddesses and other extra-human agencies are involved. In those days it is more than probable that the people of Silla bore the same relation to Japan, as regards civilisation, that the Romans did to the tribes of Germany; and if Koguryu could beat back an army of a million Chinese, it is hardly to be believed that the Empress Jingu conquered the whole peninsula. Silla was the centre of a relatively high civilisation, and, while the Korean accounts tell us very little about Korean influence upon Japan, the Japanese annals indicate that there was a continual stream of advanced ideas and civilising influences crossing the straits into those islands. It would be interesting if we could believe that Arab traders touched the shores of Korea, but, besides being intrinsically improbable, the list of things they are said to have taken from the peninsula in trade shows conclusively that it is some other place that is spoken of.
THREE BRIDGES OF KOREA
(a) Typical foot-bridge
(b) The "Blood Bridge" at Songdo
(c) The only stone arch bridge in Seoul, 700 years old ​the three kingdoms crystallised into a definite determination on the part of Koguryu and of Pakche to destroy the other two kingdoms and rule supreme in the peninsula. This was possible only with the help of China. Silla was disposed to go along quietly and let the arts of peace work out their ultimate results, and it was the very superiority of Silla in these arts that excited the jealousy and hatred of the other powers. Time and again Koguryu tried in vain to cement a friendship with one or other of the Chinese dynasties, but always in vain, for her own restless spirit could not endure the restraint necessary for the continuance of such a compact. In time China came to realise that Koguryu was an utterly unreliable ally. Pakche from time to time made flattering appeals to China for aid against Silla and Koguryu, but the Chinese were too sensible to fail to recognise the more sterling qualities of the peaceful kingdom in the southeast, and when it came to the final analysis China sided with Silla against the other two, and the allied armies overthrew both Pakche and Koguryu. This occurred in the seventh century of our era. At first China did not turn the whole peninsula over to Silla; but as time went on Silla worked further and further north, until almost the whole of the present territory of Korea was in her hands.
This was an event of great importance. Now for the first time in Korean history the whole territory was united under a single sway. It was the language, the laws, the civilisation of Silla that welded the Korean people into a homogeneous population and laid the foundations for modern Korea. And at about the same time there began that wonderful influx of Chinese ideas which have done so much to mould Korea to the Chinese type. The introduction and study of the Chinese character began about this time, and the teaching of the Confucian doctrines. The literary life of Korea was begun on the Chinese foundation, and the people were made to believe that there was no intellectual life possible for them but such as sprung from Chinese ideals. A thousand products of the arts and sciences ​poured into the peninsula and were eagerly adopted by the people, and they caused a very rapid advance in what we call enlightenment. There can be no question as to the great debt which Korea owes to China, but, on the other hand, this was not accomplished without causing a certain amount of harm to the Korean people. They were still in a formative period. They were just beginning to feel their own powers, and at this very moment they were flooded with the finished products of an older civilisation, which took away all incentive for personal effort. The genius of the people was smothered at the start, and never have they recovered from the intellectual stagnation which resulted from the overloading of their minds with Chinese ideals. And this was the more to be regretted, because these Chinese ideals were by no means fitted to the Korean temperament. Ever since that day the Koreans have been existing in spite of, rather than because of, that remarkable invasion of Chinese civilisation. Look, for instance, at the language. Korean is utterly different from the Chinese. It is a highly articulated language, and requires a very nice adjustment of its grammatical machinery to work smoothly; but the clumsy Chinese ideograph came in and prevented the working out of a phonetic system of writing, which would surely have come. The Korean people have made three distinct protests against the imposition of the Chinese character upon them : once, soon after its introduction, when a great scholar, Sulchong, was moved to make a sort of diacritical system, whereby the Chinese text could be rendered intelligible to the Korean; again, in the latter days of the Koryu dynasty; and again, in the early days of the present dynasty, when the native alphabet was evolved. In spite of all that China did for Korea by way of introducing the products of civilisation, it would have been far better for Korea to have gained these or similar things gradually, by working them out in her own way, thereby exercising her own mental powers and gaining something better even than the material benefits of civilisation.
But it was not to be. Chinese law, religion, dress, art, litera ​ture, science and ethics became the fashion, and I am convinced that from that day began the deterioration of the Korean people, which has culminated in her present helpless condition. Let us see how it worked from the very start. For upwards of three centuries Silla had the management of the whole country, but those were centuries of rapid decline. Luxury sapped the springs of her power. Her court became contemptible, and at last, when the hardy Wang-gon revolted and set up the new kingdom of Koryu, he held the power of Silla in such contempt that he would not even crush it, but let it linger on until it died a natural death. That lamentable deterioration began with the introduction of Chinese ideas. The young and virile state was not able to withstand the temptations that were put before it. It was like piling sweetmeats before a child who has not learned to use them in moderation. Silla glutted herself with them, and died of surfeit.