COREA. 
489 
state of dire poverty. The Japanese have injured Corea not only by 
their invasions but by their extortions. Then the coast fisheries in 
the south are monopolised by the Japanese, and the Japanese are the 
usurers of the country. They advance small sums of money on the 
farmers’ crops to the improvident Coreans, and exact exorbitant 
interest. In Soul, Japanese seduce the people into vice by opening 
gambling dens, booths for the exhibition of pornographic photographs, 
and brothels. I presume the Coreans have their native social evils, 
but if so they are not obtruded on the public attention. The only 
prostitutes I have seen soliciting in the country are Japanese women. 
The greatest curses of the country are the nobles and the retinue 
of the officials. The nobles in Corea are a hereditary class and very 
numerous, with excessive privileges, all of whom combine together to 
5 >rotect their order. None but nobles can become officials, and it is 
lerogatory for a noble to engage in trade or handiwork. The con- 
sequence is the country is full of proud, poor men, whose only means 
of livelihood is plundering the plebeians. This they can do with 
impunity, as the officials dare not punish a noble, even if they wished 
to throw aside the prejudices of their caste and do justice, as such 
would bring upon them the enmity of the whole of their class. 
The retinue of the officials throughout the country form a sort of 
trades union to uphold their perquisites and extortions, and any official 
who endeavours to put too strong a check on Ids retinue will have the 
retinues of oil the officials of the kingdom against him. These men 
will not hesitate, by perjury, whispered falsehoods, and other means, 
in ruining any official against whom they have a grudge. 
A fourth evil is the bad system of collecting the land tax, which 
I have above alluded to, and which leads to insurrections more or less 
dangerous every year. 
A fifth evil is the badness and severit}^ of the laws. This evil 
is to a certain extent mitigated by the fact that the law is seldom 
executed. The severe law's, for instance, against gambling would 
doubtless be carried out in Soul if a Corean opened a gambling den, 
but the Japanese, not being amenable to Corean laws, open gambling 
dens w ith impunity. The fact that the laws are inoperative through 
.the dread of a foreign State, the privileges of the nobles, the rapacity 
of the followers of the magistrate, and the partiality and ignorance of 
the judges would in a country of complex civilization and wealth be 
intolerable; but in a simple, primitive country like Corea the evil, 
though far-reaching, is not obvious. Inexorable custom maintains its 
rule in this country, and it has not yet yielded to law. The Coreans 
are still governed by traditional custom ; the reign of law has 
hardly begun. The Corean protects himself from the greater tyranny 
imposed upon him from without by a tyranny he voluntarily incurs, a 
tyranny from which he never dreams or wishes to free himself — the 
tyranny of the family, of the guild, and of the trade union. No one 
may make a hat under a certain price. The man w ho makes the hat 
must not make the strings to tie it. No one must build a bouse or 
perform any work under a certain price. It is, therefore, useless to 
advertise work to be given to the lowest tender — the tenders will all 
be the same. No porter may carry goods below a certain wage. If 
any member of a family, guild, or trade union is injured beyond what 
Corean custom considers proper — and Corean custom allows a great 
