Page:Korea (1904).djvu/318

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266
KOREA

by additional allowances. Houses and servants are provided free, or grants are made for house rent; there is a provision for the education of the children, and an annual capitation payment is made for each child. As a class, American missionaries have large families, who live in comparative idleness and luxury. In Korea, they own the most attractive and commodious houses in the foreign settlements, and appear to me to extract from their surroundings the maximum of profit for the minimum of labour. I do not know whether it is with the permission of the executive officers of the American Mission Boards that their representatives combine commerce with their mission to the heathen. When a missionary devotes no little portion of his time to literary labours, to the care of an insurance agency, to the needs of a fruit farm, or to the manifold exigencies of casual commerce, it seems to me that the interests of those who sit in darkness must suffer.

American mission agents have made Korea their peculiar field. Converts, who prattle of Christianity in a marked American accent, are among the features of the capital in the twentieth century. Mission centres, which have been created in a number of places, now show signs of prosperity. They enlist no little practical sympathy and support from the native population. The self-supporting character of much of the missionary work in Korea bears out the spirit of toleration which distinguishes the attitude of the people towards the propaganda. It is not to be supposed that the work of the missionaries is agreeable to all shades of native opinion. Riots and bloodshed disfigure the path of proselytism, the credulity of the natives entailing heavy sacrifices of life. The disturbances which have thus marked the spread of Christianity in Korea, notably in the anti-Christian rising in