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APPLETON 

 POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



MAY, 1897. 

 KOREAN INTERVIEWS. 



BY EDWARD S. MORSE. 



DURING my residence in Japan I sought many interviews 

 with Korean students, attaches of the Korean legation, and 

 others, and in journalistic fashion asked them many questions 

 concerning their country, people, habits, manners, customs, etc. 

 At that time I found no Korean who understood English, but the 

 younger men were studying Japanese, and so through them, by 

 the aid of a Japanese interpreter, I managed to ask many ques- 

 tions of the older men. Since my return a number of oppor- 

 tunities have occurred meeting Koreans who spoke English, and 

 for several months I had a Korean as house companion. The 

 information thus gained was not originally intended for publica- 

 tion, but for comparison with similar material of a cognate but 

 far more advanced people, the Japanese.* 



I may say here, though not as an excuse for any errors which 

 may doubtless occur, that my questions could not have been more 

 carefully asked, or the answers more promptly recorded, had I 

 been on Korean soil. It is also proper to state that in every case 

 the information was derived from Koreans of official position, 

 and therefore the statements, so far as their own class is con- 

 cerned, ought to be reliable. 



* It is an extraordinary fact that in the late war with China the Japanese, single-handed, 

 overawed the Koreans, a hostile nation of at least eight million people, drove every Chi- 

 nese soldier out of the country, and, had it not been for the interference of three powerful 

 European nations, would have held the Regent's Sword, and would have supported the 

 young Korean party in its patriotic efforts to regenerate that poor country. That the 

 Koreans could not make the faintest stand against the Japanese, though aided by Chinese 

 armies, leads one to wonder what manner of people are the Koreans, and this is my reason 

 for publishing the following memoranda, disjointed and fragmentary as they are. 



VOL. LI. 1 



