Korea & Her Neighbours/Chapter XXVIII

Finding the Tai-dong totally impracticable, and being limited as to time by the approach of the closing of the river below Phyong-yang by ice, I regretfully turned south- wards, and journeyed Seoul-wards by another route, of much interest, which touches here and there the right bank of the Tai-dong.

As I sat amidst the dirt, squalor, rubbish, and odd and end- isra of the inn yard before starting, surrounded by an apathetic, dirty, vacant-looking, open-mouthed crowd steeped in poverty, I felt Korea to be hopeless, helpless, pitiable, piteous, a mere shuttlecock of certain great powers, and that there is no hope for her population of twelve or fourteen mil- lions, unless it is taken in hand by Russia, under whose rule, giving security for the gains of industry as well as light taxa- tion, I had seen Koreans in hundreds transformed into energetic, thriving, peasant farmers in Eastern Siberia.

The road, which was said, and truly, to be a very bad one, crosses a small plain, and passing under a roofed gateway be- tween two hills which are scarred by remains of fortifications running east and west, enters upon really fine scenery, which becomes magnificent in about 30 //, at first a fertile mountain- girdled basin, whose rim is spotted with large villages, and then a narrowing valley with stony soil, and a sparse popula- tion, walled in by savage mountains of emphatic forms, swing- ing apart at times, and revealing loftier peaks and ranges then glittering with new-fallen snow.

In crossing the plain at a point where the road was good, I was remarking to Mr. Yi what a pleasant and prosperous journey we had had, and hoping our good fortune might con- tinue, when there was a sudden clash and flurry, I was nearly kicked off my pony, and in a moment we were in the midst of disaster. One baggage pony was on his back on his load, pawing the air in the middle of a ploughed field, his mapu helpless for the time, lamed by a kick above the knee, sobbing, blood and tears running down his face ; the other baggage animal, having divested himself of Im, was kicking off the rest of his load ; and Im, who had been thrown from the top of the pack, was sitting on the roadside, evidently in intense pain— all the work of a moment. Mr. Yi called to me that the soldier had broken his ankle, and it was a great relief when he rose and walked towards me. Everything breakable was broken except my photographic camera, which I did not look at for two days for fear of what I might find !

Leaving the men to get the loads and ponies together, we walked on to a hamlet so destitute as not to be able to provide either wood or wadding for a splint ! I picked up a thick faggot, however, which had been dropped from a load, and it was thinned into being usable with a hatchet, the only tool the village possessed, and after padding it with a pair of stock- ings and making a six-yard bandage out of a cotton garment, I put up Im's right arm, which was broken just above the wrist, in splints, and made a sling out of one of the two towels which the rats had left to me. I should have been glad to know Korean enough to rate the gossiping mapii-, three men to two horses, who allowed the accident to happen.

The animals always fight if they are left to themselves, and loads and riders are nowhere. One day Mr. Yi had a bit of a finger taken off in a fight, and if a strange brute had not kicked my stirrup iron (which was bent by the blow) instead of myself, I should have had a broken ankle. When we halted at midday the villagers tried hard to induce Im to have his arm "needled" to "let out the bad blood," a most risky surgical proceeding, which often destroys the usefuhiess of a limb for life, and he was anxious for it, but yielded to persuasion.

Being delayed by this accident, it was late when we started to cross the pass of An-kil Yung, regarded as " the most dan- gerous in Korea," owing to its liability to sudden fogs and violent storms, 3,346 feet in altitude, and said to be 30 // long.

The infamous path traverses a wild rocky glen with an impetuous torrent at its bottom, and only a few wretched hamlets, in which the hovels are indistinguishable from the millet and brushwood stacks, along its length of several miles. Poverty, limiting the people to the barest necessaries of life, is the lot of the peasant in that region, but I believe that his dirty and squalid habits give an impression of want which does not actually exist. I doubt much whether any Koreans are un- able to provide themselves with two daily meals of millet, with clothes sufficient for decency in summer and for warmth in winter, and with fuel (grass, leaves, twigs, and weeds) enough to keep their miserable rooms at a temperature of 70° and more by means of the hot floor.

To the west the valley is absolutely closed in by a wall of peaks. The bridle-path, a well-engineered road, when it ascends the very steep ridge of the watershed in many zigzags, rests for 100 feet, and descends the western side by seventy- five turns. Except in Tibet, I never saw so apparently insur- mountable an obstacle, but it does not present any real diffi- culty. The ascent took seventy minutes. Rain fell very heavily, but the superb view to the northeast was scarcely ob- scured. At the top, which is only 100 feet wide, there is a celebrated shrine to the daemon of the past. To him all travellers put up petitions for deliverance from the many malignant spirits who are waiting to injure them, and for a safe descent. The shrine contains many strips of paper in- scribed with the names of those who have made special payments for special prayers, and a few wreaths and posies of faded paper flowers. The woman who lives in the one hovel on the pass nciakes a good living by receiving money from travellers, who offer rice cakes and desire prayers. The worship is nearly all done by proxy, and the rice cakes do duty any number of times.

Besides the shrine and a one-rooomed hovel, there are some open sheds made of millet stalks to give shelter during storms. The An-kil Yung pass is blocked by snow for three months of the year, but at other times is much used in spite of its great height. Excellent potatoes are grown on the mountain slopes at an altitude exceeding 3,000 feet, and round Tok Chhon they are largely cultivated and enter into the diet of the peo- ple, never having had the disease.

Darkness came on prematurely with the heavy rain, and we asked the shrine-keeper to give us shelter for the night, but she said that to take in six men and a foreign woman was impos- sible, as she had only one room. But it was equally impos- sible for us to descend the pass in the darkness with tired ponies, and after half an hour's altercation the matter was ar- ranged, Im, who retained his wits, securing for me a degree of privacy by hanging some heavy mats from a beam, giving me, I am sure, the lion's share of the apartment. Really the accommodation was not much worse than usual, but though the mercury fell to the freezing point, the hot floor kept the inside temperature up to 83°, and the dread of tigers on the part of my hostess forbade my having even a chink of the door open !

The rain cleared off in time for the last sunset gleam on the distant mountains, which, when darkness fell on the pass, burned fiery red against a strip of pale green sky, taking on afterwards one by one the ashy look of death as the light died off from their snows. All about An-kil Yung the mountains are wooded to their summits with deciduous trees, the ubiquitous Pimis sinensis being rare ; but to the northward in the direction of Paik-tu San the character of the scenery changes, and peaks and precipices of naked rock, and lofty mountain monoliths, with snow-crowned ranges beyond, form by far the grandest view that I saw in this land of hill and valley.

Then Im had to be attended to, and though I was very anxious about him, I could not be blind to the picturesqueness of the scene in the hovel, Mr. Yi sitting in my chair holding the candle, the soldier, with his face puckered with pain, squatting on the floor with his swollen arm lying on a writing board on my lap, and no room to move. I failed there as elsewhere to get a better piece of wood for the splint, which was too short, and I could only get wadding for padding it by taking some out of Im's sleeve, and all the time and after- wards I was very anxious for fear that I had put the bandage on too tightly or too loosely, and that my want of experience would give the poor fellow a useless right arm. He was in severe pain all that night, but he was very plucky about it, made no fuss, and never allowed me to suffer in the slightest degree from his accident. Indeed, he was even more attentive than before. He said to Mr. Yi, "The foreign woman looked so sorry, and touched my arm as if I had been one of her own people, I shall do my best" — and so he did. I had indulged in a long perspective of pheasant curries, and I must confess that when the prospect faded I felt a little dismal. To a traveller who carries no " foreign food," it makes a great dif- ference to get a nice, hot, stimulating dish (even though it is served in the pot it is cooked in) after a ten hours' cold ride. To my surprise, I was never without curry for dinner, and though before the accident I had only cold rice for tiffin, after it I was never without something hot.

The descent of An-kil Yung is very grand. The road leads into a wide valley with a fine stream, one side of which looks as if the mountains had dumped down all their available stones upon it, while the other is rich alluvial soil. Gold washing is carried on to a great extent along this stream, which is a tributary of the Tai-dong, and some of the work- ings show more care and method than usual, being pits neatly lined with stone in their upper parts. Eighty cents per day is the average earning of a gold-seeker there. This valley ter- minates in pretty, broken country, with fine mountain views, and picturesque cliffs along the river, on which the dark blue gloom of pines was lighted by the fading scarlet of the maple, and crimson streaks of the Ampelopsis Veitchii brightened the russet into which the countless trailers which draped the rocks had passed. The increased fertility of the soil was de- noted by the number of villages and hamlets on the road, and foot passengers in twos and threes gave something of life and movement. But it was remarkable that so soon after the har- vest, and when the roads were in their best condition, there were no goods in transit except such local productions as paper and tobacco — no strings of porters or ponies carrying goods into the interior from Phyong-yang, no evidence of trade but that given by the pedlars going the round of the market-places. Along that road and elsewhere near the villages there are tall poles branching at the top into a V, which are erected in the belief that they will guard the inhabitants from cholera and other pestilences. On that day's journey, at a crossroad, a small log with several holes like those of a mouse-trap, one of them plugged doubly with bungs of wood, was lying on the path, and the mapu were careful to step over it and lead their ponies over it, though it might easily have been avoided. Into the bunged hole the mii-tang or sorceress by her arts had in- veigled a daemon which was causing sickness in a family, and had corked him up ! It is proper for passers-by to step over the log. At nightfall it is buried. That afternoon's ride was through extremely attractive country — small valley basins of rich stoneless soil, with brown hamlets nestling round them in calm, pine-sheltered folds of hills, which though not high are shapely, and were etherealized into purple beauty by the sink- ing sun, which turned the lake-like expanse of the Tai-dong at Mou-chin Tai, the beautifully situated halting-place for the night, into a sheet of gold.

With a splendid climate, an abundant, but not superabun- dant, rainfall, a fertile soil, a measure of freedom from civil war and robber bands, the Koreans ought to be a happy and fairly prosperous people. If "squeezing," j^a»;^;^ runners and their exactions, and certain malign practices of officials can be put down with a strong hand, and the land tax is fairly levied and collected, and law becomes an agent for protection rather than an instrument of injustice, I see no reason why the Korean peasant should not be as happy and industrious as the Japanese peasant. But these are great " ifs " ! Security for the gains of industry, from whatever quarter it comes, will, I believe, transform the limp, apathetic native. Such ameliora- tions as have been made are owed to Japan, but she had not a free hand, and she was too inexperienced in the role which she undertook (and I believe honestly) to play, to produce a harmonious working scheme of reform. Besides, the men through whom any such scheme must be carried out are nearly universally corrupt both by tradition and habit. Reform was jerky and piecemeal, and Japan irritated the people by med- dlesomeness in small matters and suggested interferences with national habits, giving the impression, which I found prevail- ing everywhere, that her object is to denationalize the Koreans for purposes of her own.

Travellers are much impressed with the laziness of the Ko- reans, but after seeing their energy and industry in Russian Manchuria, their thrift, and the abundant and comfortable furnishings of their houses, I greatly doubt whether it is to be regarded as a matter of temperament. Every man in Korea knows that poverty is his best security, and that anything he possesses beyond that which provides himself and his family with food and clothing is certain to be taken from him by vo- racious and corrupt officials. It is only when the exactions of officials become absolutely intolerable and encroach upon his means of providing the necessaries of life that he resorts to the only method of redress in his power, which has a sort of counterpart in China. This consists in driving out, and occa- sionally in killing, the obnoxious and intolerable magistrate, or, as in a case Vv^hich lately gained much notoriety, roasting his favorite secretary on a wood pile. The popular outburst, though under unusual provocation it may culminate in deeds of regrettable violence, is usually founded on right, and is an effective protest.

Among the modes of squeezing are forced labor, doubling or trebling the amount of a legitimate tax, exacting bribes in cases of litigation, forced loans, etc. If a man is reported to have saved a little money, an official asks for the loan of it. If it is granted, the lender frequently never sees principal or interest ; if it is refused, he is arrested, thrown into prison on some charge invented for his destruction, and beaten until either he or his relations for him produce the sum demanded. To such an extent are these demands carried, that in Northern Korea, where the winters are fairly severe, the peasants, when the harvest has left them with a few thousand cash^ put them in a hole in the ground, and pour water into it, the frozen mass which results then being earthed over, when it is fairly safe both from officials and thieves.