his house for a quarter of its value. He demurred at this, but was seized, dragged away to a neighbouring Japanese barracks, and given a severe beating. In his shame and anger at this disgrace he took morphine and killed himself. Almost before his body was cold the Japanese came and demanded that his widow sell the house at the price suggested. She replied that she would die first. How it ended the writer has never heard. A Korean boatman attempted to go under the bridge at Pyengyang while it was under construction. This was forbidden, but there was no proper sign to indicate the fact. The Japanese railway coolies threw him out of his boat. He clung to some timbers in the water, but the Japanese beat his hands with railroad bolts until his fingers were broken, and he fell off and drowned. Two days later the murdered man's father, having secured the body, brought it to the Japanese Consul and demanded justice. He was driven away with the statement that the Consul would have nothing to do with the case. The criminals were well known and could have been captured with ease.
In the city of Seoul, almost within a stone's-throw of the Japanese Consulate, a Korean widow came to the house of the writer and begged him to buy her house for five cents, and put his name on the door-post, because she had reason to believe that unless she sold the house for half price to a Japanese living next door he would undermine the wall of her house and let it fall upon her head. The Koreans say deliberately that time and again naked Japanese have run into Korean houses and shocked the Korean women outrageously, simply in order to make the owner willing to sell out at any price.
An American resident in one of the ports of Korea related to the writer the case of a Korean landowner who lost his property through the following piece of trickery. A Japanese employed a disreputable Korean to make out a false deed of the land and, armed with this, went to take possession. The real owner exhibited the true and incontestable deeds; but when the matter was referred to the Japanese authorities, the false deeds
