The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-05-23

made outside the city. Yards have been l there constructed, which are now turning
 out bricks by the millions. The clay is 1 excellent, and a large part of the new l Seoul will be built of these bricks. There | are other brickyards at Yong-San, the
 military city on the edge of Seoul, and l there Is no lack of fine building material. The New Government Building. Among the large buildings are many
 which are going up for the government. These are nominally Corean, but are real
 ly Japanese. The cabinet ministers act
 as the nominal advisers to the Emperor,
 but under them are Japanese vice min
 isters who really control and whose clerks are almost all Japanese.
 Not far from where l am living in the
 foreign section of Seoul is the new finance
 department. This is a fine two-story brick structure covered with stucco. It
 is built on an elevation overlooking the
 palace in which the retired Emperor lives,
 so that the clerks can see all that goes
 inside the palace grounds This is
 very offensive to his majesty, who has al-
 ways objected to anyone looking over
 his walls and has bought several for
 eign structures because they commanded
 such a view. He paid 900 for the French | legation for this very reason and he has,
 I am told, several times tried to buy the
 American consulate, which is on a hill,
 lower down. Some men have even bought lots and started buildings in order to
 make his majesty buy them at high
 prices.
 Another fine government building is that of the supreme court. This is some what similar to the structure of the finance department. 1t Is situated on the main street, which runs between the east and west gates, ana not far froms-a big | two-story brick which is being built for native Corean bank.
 hn iaIe Rai That bank, by the way, marks one of 1 the most wonderful changes which is | going on here. Until lately no Corean | was supposed to have any right to money ! that the King was pound to respect Ev i cry official squeezed the man below him, | and if he did not give up share of his 1 goods upon demand had him whipped or 1 tortured in some way or other until he | did so. The most common persuader was i flexible paddle apout as wide as the | palm of your hand and 10 or F feet In 1 length The man to be squeezed was i stripped to the skin and laid face down 1 ward on the ground and held there by l men, or he was tied to a bench so that
 1t was impossible for him to move. Then l the paddlers would strike him so many l blows on the thighs. The second or | third always brought blood and an hun l dred was supposed to mean death. Burn 1 ing and bone crushing were other meth 1 ods of torture, and men were kept for l years in prison on false charges as means ] of eXtortion. Under such conditions the | man who showed he had money was
 sure of persecution and all loans were l secretly made The Japanese have done
 away with this squeezing, and the thou
 sands of officials who lived upon it have now gone to the wall.
 The New Currency. The money is changed During that trip 1 across country to Seoul I had to have an extra man to carry the money to pay | the cooles at the end of the trip, and for l my expenses in the capital I got an order |, upon a merchant in Seoul. The coins were of copper with a square hole in the l center, and it took 1000 of them to equal | the value of an American dollar. They | were strung upon strings of 100 each, and 1 whenever I went out shopping l had to | take a servant along to carry my purse. 1 Such cash were in use here when | crossed Corea in 1894, and they continued 1 for some times after the Japanese Chinese l war Then the Corean nickel was made; l but this was counterfeited both here and 1 in Japan to such an extent that 1t fell to | half its original value. The Japanese 1 have now Introduced their own coinage, | accepting the Corean nickel at the market | rate; and from now on the country will
 be on a gold basis. Japanese bank notes are everywhere taken. and Japanese sil- yer, nickel and copper coins are in com 1 mon use. This reorganization of the f1- l nance has been one of the great prob l lems that the Japanese have had to deal | with, but the vice minister of finance, MT. Arai. tells me that it is now prac- | tically solved and that he anticipated no
 further trouble. He says the government