since the opening of the country to foreign intercourse. In the first place, the Foreign Department has taken its place among the leading instruments of government; an Educational Department has been established, co-ordinate in grade with the other great departments; the Ceremonial Department has been relegated to a secondary place, and the Police Bureau has advanced to a position of comparative prominence.
We have seen that from the middle of the sixteenth century the barriers between the upper and lower classes were built higher and stronger, and the common people gradually got out of touch with the governing body. This was the cause of much of the subsequent trouble. Men of common extraction, however gifted, could not hope to reach distinction, and blueness of blood became the test of eligibility to office rather than genuine merit. The factional spirit added to this difficulty by making it certain that however good a statesman a man might be the other side would try to get his head removed from his shoulders at the first opportunity, and the more distinguished he became the greater would this desire be. From that time to this, almost all the really great men of Korea have met a violent death. But as all offices were filled with men who belonged to a sort of real nobility, the pride of place and the fear of having their honour brought in question did much to save the common people from the worst forms of oppression. The officials were arbitrary and often cruel, but their meannesses were of a large order, such as yangbans could engage in without derogation from their good repute in the eyes of their peers. But this state of things began to show signs of disintegration early in the nineteenth century. The power of money in politics began to make itself felt, and the size of the purse came to figure more prominently in the question of eligibility for office; the former exclusiveness of the yangban gradually gave way, and the line of demarcation between the upper and lower classes was little by little obliterated, until at the end of the century there were men of low extraction who held important government offices.
