COREA. 
495 
All Coreans are fearfully superstitious ; their lives are spent 
propitiating evil spirits, and their substance on male and female 
exorcisers. Blind people are supposed to be the most skilled in the art 
of exorcism. The Coreans spend their nights in terror of immaterial 
evil spirits, and their days in terror of the more substantial Japanese. 
Woe betide the Corean who attempts to resist Japanese oppression. 
The insulted or injured Corean has no redress. I do not know of a 
single instance in which a Japanese has been punished by his officials 
for ill-treating a Corean. In every criminal and civil case the Japanese 
court always decides in favour of the Japanese. The hatred of the 
Corean for the Japanese is not therefore to be wondered at, nor is it 
to be wondered at that a Japanese should occasionally be murdered 
by them. 
That the Coreans, under all the adverse circumstances, should 
retain their gaiety, kindness of heart, and charming politeness is to 
my mind a sign that they are worthy of the benevolent efforts of the 
Episcopal Mission to raise them in the moral scale, and free them 
from the tyranny of superstition. 
I am not without hope, when the real facts about Corea are 
known, that the Coreans may be freed from the other evils that 
oppress them — to wit, the tyranny of the Japanese and the misgovern- 
ment of the country. 
Note. — Conduct of Japanese to Coreans: This is what Captain 
Groold Adams says (Corean Repository, vol. i , No. 3, page 238) : — 
“ Our crew — Japanese — seeing that they had missed the channel, 
not knowing where to find it, and being full of resources, at once 
boarded the nearest junk, and belaboured the wretched Coreans in the 
most merciless way with boat-stretchers until they forced them to 
send one of their number to show us the way. I understand that this 
is the manner in which the Coreans are always treated by the Japanese. 
I would willingly have foregone every chance of ever getting to Soul 
just to have seen the Coreans throw those little wretches overboard, 
which they might easily have done had it not been for the certainty 
of being murdered on their arrival at Chemulpo, whither their junk 
was bound.” 
II. — NOTES OF TRAVELS IN COREA. 
By the Rev. J. S. GALE , Wonsan , Corea. 
Early in March, 1889, I took one pony and left Soul for an 
indefinite point in "YVhangha province. With me were two servants, 
who proved to be very useless and annoying. I rid myself of them as 
soon as possible, obtained others in the country, and have never had 
such ill-luck in my domestic affairs since. 
On leaving the capital, the first thing that caught my attention 
was a dead body lying by the roadside, frozen stiff. People dying on 
the road are buried by those of the district within a stated time after 
being found. The people of the district, I learned, were responsible 
for all the requirements of the road, such as when bridges are to be 
put up or taken down, roads repaired or sprinkled with red earth for 
the passing of some official. The magistrate orders a head man to see 
to it, and he appoints a clay when the people of the village begin the 
work. 
