Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1904-01-11
COREA AND COREANS
COUNTRY ANH PEOPLE OF LAND
OF MORNING CALM.
Granite Hills and Fertile Valleys
Tigers anb Leopards in the
Forests.


We shall have q pretty accurate picture
of Corea If we think of Great Britain taken
up forcibiy from Its present noorings and
set against the New Jersey coast, SO that
Scotland should adhere to the mainland
while England ran southwark into the
ocean. What Great Britain would then be
to the Atlantic Corea is now to the Pacific.
The size is about the same, something over
eighty thousand square miles; the latitude
and north and south reach would be the
same. and there is also general likeness
in structure; for. while the northern half of
Corea. corresponding In our comparison to
Scotland. Is scanned by granite ridges,
crowned with pine woods, arid and cold,
the southern half, answering to England
is full of fertile valleys amid low hills, ad-
mirably adapted to tillage and the rearing
of cattle. Corea, too, like England is rug
geo and rocky on one side, and lined with
nat marshes. sands and mud stretches on
the other: cliffs frown upon the Pacific to
the east, while the west coast along the
yellow sea. reminds one of the shores of
Lincoln. Norfolk and Suffolk, with their
sWamps and mud flats There is a great
likeness even In climate, and the trees and
blrds are practically the same, far closer
than those of old and New England are.
pine. fir oak, maple, alder and birch of the
European species, and the familiar birds,
from eagles to magpies
But In the Corean forests there are also
great tigers, and numbers of leopards who
even enter the streets of the capital when
game is scarce; and for their kindred in
England we should have to go back to pre-
giaclal times In Corea also bamboos grow
and rice and tobacco, adding another touch
of more tropical life. But the physical re-
semblances are far more striking than the
dlHerences and the general size and shape
are practically Identical
Chinese Conquest.
The Corean aboriginals were like their
Manchu or Mongol neighbors, but very
rude and savage; hardly more than neoli-
thic cave jewellers. The culture of the coun-
try dates from the Chinese conquest of
three millenniums or more back when the
famous author of the Chinese classic, the
Shu King, came thither, bringing arts and
knowledge, settled the forms of life and
founded a monarchy, with an aristocracy
brought with him from China, and contin-
ually replenished by Chinese elements. The
Shu King is the great classic of ancestor
worship; the reverence of the spirits of the
iatners, VINO are conceived as still living
In the Invisible world, and as forming an
undivided part of the family They are ap-
preached in an annual feast, which has
faint analogies in our own festival of All
HalloWs, with Its halloween association of
snos.ly vlsitants. The practical applica-
great rule of life. filial piety first and then
service of the sovereign, from f1lial duty.
ms central doctrine of the Shu. King is
what Confucius sought to revive In the DAYS
Oh Ezra, Pythagoras and Buddha; editing
the OLD texts and adding his own classic of
F11al Piety But the ancient faith has fall
en- into the sere, the yellow leaf OF the
high principles of old there remain only
hardened and crystalized abuses; the mon
archy has become a willful and capricious
pushing oha
beyond the limits of absolutism, and hold
ing the weli-being anu even the whim of
the sovereign to be the supreme law.
Corean Arfstocracy.
The same hereditary principle has made
an aristocracy, hard, overbearing and
grasping, thinking wholly of their rights,
and never recognizing their duties; consid-
ering the poorer classes as their mere serfs,
whose sole use is to minister to the pleasure
of their superiors, In ritual also the bond
of kinship has become an intolerable bur-
den, not merely constituting joint liza
bility for debt, for maintenance and hospi-
tality; but, through the rules of protracted
mourning for the dead. during which time
no marriages may be made and little civil
business undertaken, lying like perpetual
obseSSion on the hearts of the whole nation
who are necessarily haunted by ghostly
presences.
Through the centuries these abuses grew
until decade ago, Corea was the
most corrupt, the most backward and des-
potic and the weakest kingdom upon earth.
1t had then population of some 15, 600 600,
groansng under the oppression of the aris-
tocracy; governed, or rather misgoverned,
much as the Macedonians are, and, like the
Macedonians, seeking redress in perpetual
against eXtOrtion, robbery and
oppression.