The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-02-27
KOREANS A RIDDLE.
They Seem Indifferent to All Things
 Earthly

q
 American build across an indistinguish-
 able tract of desolation.'' says Reginald J. Farrar in the Nineteenth Century.
 The country is one fearful wilderness.
 As far as eye can see, over the tossing ocean of sedge to the mountains beyond,
 there is no sign of life. Nothing any
 where but innumerable mounds of ! grass-the graves of all the Koreans dead in ten thousand years. Every
 where are graves and graves and graves-under a wild, spiteful sky, whose breath comes acrid down from
 the north, laden with the white dust of 1 the dead. Once or twice perhaps how el may be seen. But at last. after cross
 ing a viaduct of modern construction,
 the train wanders into sight of a deso-
 late road that leads up, in the face of
 the wind, to a mighty crenelated wall.
 Here the traveller alights and is con
 veyed in .rickshaw over impossible
 streets, under the great Enthusiastically
 bedeviled gateway. into Seoul.
 Here tramways instantly meet the
 eye, and a Roman Catholic cathedral. : There are also other denominational ed l ifices, and legations, and hotel. But though the blessings of civilization are carried so far, yet the east triumphs
 The open drains, the putrescent dust the broad cloaca that oozes through the
 city and supplies it with water, all eom- : bine to teach the wanderer that he is
 indeed in the most tranquil country of
 the tranquil east. The natives throng
 round the stranger with stare of dull curiosity. Vague fiat, foolish faces
 they have under the inevitable cap of
 horsehair--like a skeleton Welsh hat
 which is always worn to shield the holy
 topknot. The topknot is of the highest
 importance and sanctity to every male
 Korean and, though it's scheme looks
 facility itself (being only rough twist
 of hair with coral pin jabbed through
 iD, the compilation of the topknot is
 said to be a lengthy and afduous work
 of art. requiring two or more pairs of
 hands. It is one of the principles to
 which the. Korean is genuinely attached,
 and if ever a reform in the matter be i threatened the topknot promises to be come as dire and catastrophe a ques- l tion as ever wrecked the career of an
 innovator.
 "The character of the Koreans is a
 riddle They seem race sovereignty ] indifferent to the changes and chances
 of this mortal life. They front life and
 death with the same uninterested pla- 5cidity. Fate leads them onward, and they go quietly, like cattle led to the tshambles. Little wonder that the na- tions of the east have always treated
 them like cattle. Opportunity excuses tyranny The Korean is a fine, stout fellow, with plenty of vigor, who takes pleasure in wild and brutal stone fights;
 and yet he is also passive, silent dolt, who will allow himself, even when in force, to be beaten, bulled and boxed tby one Japanese so small that he al lmost requires a stool to reach his vic- itim's ears. The Korean is not to be moved by love or by hate. His pleas ures in life is to go with his pipe to a hilltop, and there to sit all day in an Eunbroken silence.
 ''The emperor of Korea has exchanged his fealty to China for complicated slavery to most of the hotel-keepers in 1.-the remoter east He is obseded by a crowd of advisers to the throne, ap- pointed by almost every European pow Ter and recurited from every possible
 rank of life. He has a further taste of
 western blessings in the religious mas- lsacres that from time to time threaten 1 his security by a sanguinary convulsion between Catholic and Protestant con- verts with their pastors. The govern lment as it now stands is a pure despo- tism, tempered by abject poverty, and | by many western notions translated into the vernacular from his majesty s lwestern advisers. In the domain of finance the waste is phenomenal, and bribemry on the widest scale governs l the emperor's ministers in every de tpartment. Torture and punishment are still barbarous. Literature and art can Inever be said to have existed in any de- lvetoped forms-unless we make an ex- lception in favor of the exquisite and jdelicate white porcelain that is quar- ried occasionally from the tombs of for gotten kings. The people is as it was two thousand years ago in it's contempt tuous indifference to life, to well being
 and to all the resources of prosperity. l "The religion is, of course, the pure Buddhism of the Middle Vehicle-the worship of Amida- -Buddha, that Korea received from China and handed on to
 Japan Buddhism is still absolutely dominant over the far east, and. in the face of the present Buddhist renascence, the day of it's decline seems further l away than ever. In Korea the old forms hold good. In one of the widest gorges of Puk'han is throned a colossal Amida, whom in the midst of the deso- lation pious hands still keep clean and white. No neglect is allowed to touch him. It is only on the estates of the great Buddhist abbeys that the native l forests have been saved from the cu- pidity of the ages The country is ire deemably bare and wild, the very hills show like gaunt skeletons with their bare ribs of rock and gravel protruding from beneath their thin, torn skin of grass. But round the Buddhist abbeys lie, protected by their circle of wall, rich tracts of woodland, recalling the | forests of Surrey were it not for the strange little beautiful flowers that shine among the shadows. These ab- beys are the havens of the wanderer. | Drifting on to mudbank through the dusk across that dreary country toward the far off forest which means his safe