Page:Village life in Korea (1911).djvu/42

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Village Life in Korea.

ital, he can hardly be surprised that nearly all Koreans hate Japan with a bitter hatred. This monument stands on a mound in the street where thousands of noses and ears of Koreans were buried on the return of the Japanese soldiers from one of the invasions of Korea more than three hundred years ago. While that monument stands and its bloody memory remains Koreans will hate Japan.

In the year A.D. 1392, just one hundred years before Columbus crossed the Atlantic, there came a change in the affairs of the kingdom which resulted in the fall of the dynasty and the removal of the capital to Seoul, its present location. With this change a new dynasty was established by one Ye Tai-jo, who seized the reins of government, dethroned the king, and made his peace with the ruler of China, who was at that time enraged because of the refusal to send tribute to him as had been done in the past. Mr. Gifford, in "Everyday Life in Korea," tells us that it was at this time that the dress and topknot of the Ming era of China came into Korea. The new king sent tribute to China and also to Japan for some time. The people settled down to the cultivation of the soil, and life became quite peaceful for a long period; but peace was at last broken by the awful invasion of Japan, which aroused all Korea as with the horrors of an awful nightmare, from which she has never fully recovered when she stops to think of Japan.

In the year 1876 Korea made her first treaty with Japan, and thus entered upon new relations with the outside world. There was a strong conservative party