304
The Green Bag
of intense heat. The news of this sen tence naturally spread in the provinces, and a near relative of the princess, who was the governor of a town and greatly
stances, even in the days of which
esteemed at court, had the temerity to
that it was a land of ancestral worship, a land where filial respect and reverence
write to the King informing him that a woman who had been honored by mar
Regis writes, and for an offence which may seem shockingly trivial to our views. We must bear in mind, though,
are a man's highest duty. “A son,” he
riage with the brother of his majesty
says, “who scolds his father or mother,
should be treated less cruelly, and that her sex deserved more favor. The King,
is condemned to lose his head." Beheading continued to be the mode
offended at this indiscretion, had the
of execution until about fifteen years ago, when the Koreans, at the suggestion of an American adviser, adopted hanging as being more in accordance with occi dental ideas.
author of the letter recalled immedi ately and his head out ofl‘, he having first received shins."
twenty
blows
on
the
Regis has much less to say regarding crime and punishment and does not go into such minute details as did his predecessor. From what little he does tell us it would appear, if we may credit his statements, that there had been a considerable lessening in the rigors of the law in the fifty years which had
The dreaded bastinado was still vigor ously serving the ends of justice in Regis' day, but there is evidence of a little more regard now being paid to the feelings of the wretched victim. “Light faults," he says, “incur the penalty of the bastinado. A sack extending to the feet is thrown over the head of the person compelled to undergo some punishment, as much to assuage his
elapsed since Hamel's visit. Banishment had now largely taken the place of the death penalty. "Chas tisements," he writes, "are not very
dom in administering
severe in
ment."
Korea.
Crimes which
are
considered capital in other countries are here punished only by abandonment to some neighboring island.” This was still a common method of punishment when I was in the country, and was certainly a most desirable sub stitute for the death penalty. Also, to judge by the remarks of a recent writer, the sentence was not as formidable as the name might imply. In his recent book, “Things Korean," in describing
the punishment of a native oflicial, Dr. Allen tells us that “the returned min ister was banished.
That is, he went
out of the city walls to his country place for the space of three days." Offenders were executed, in some in
humiliation
as
to allow more
the
free
chastise
With the exception of such distinctive national punishments as that last men tioned, which long survived more humane
and modern ideas, Korea has kept well abreast of the wave of humanitarian senti ment which swept over Europe during
the closing years of the eighteenth cen tury and caused the repeal of so much of the harsh and bloody criminal legis lation of that day.
Most of the punishments which have been described are as much a curious manifestation of the perverted justice of earlier ages as were the tortures of the stake and the Inquisition; or the whipping post and the ducking stool of our Puritan forefathers.
_ _ _-_;—~ r_
Ann Arbor, Mich.
