COREA. 
523 
course, the elder brother, as elder brother, exercises authority in the 
division, yet he is not entitled to any larger share merely because 
he is the eldest son. The daughters have no legal share whatever in 
the property, though a man is at liberty in his lifetime to give any 
of his daughters a portion if he wishes. If a man has no issue, his 
brothers divide the land. It is, of course, the duty of the sons to 
support the mother if she survives. The sisters of a landed proprietor 
cannot inherit anything, though he may bestow property on them in 
his lifetime. 
Land is made over to the purchaser in Corea by a title deed, 
drawn up by the seller, and signed by witnesses ; the deed is handed 
over after the receipt of the money, and is the only means of 
proving rightful ownership. The title deeds of the last two or three 
owners are always kept and handed over with the deed of sale to the 
buyer, forming a guarantee for the genuineness of the sale. Sales of 
houses and land are private matters, and there is no tax payable to 
the Government when a sale takes place, though all title deeds direct 
an appeal to the magistrate in case of any trouble occurring in the 
matter. 
Houses are taxed by the Government according to the amount 
of ground which they take up. Land is taxed according to measure- 
ment. 
Small lots of land are usually sold by the toi-chihi (10 toi = 
1 vial or English peck) — that is, by the number of toi of seed 
that it takes to sow the plot in question. Larger plots of ground 
are sold by the mal-chiki , or the number of pecks (1 mal = 
about a peck) of seed that is required to sow the ground. 
Another way of measuring land is according to the number of 
days or fraction of a day that it takes to plough the land. A 
man ought to plough in one day about five mal-chiki of ground. 
I believe that although this mode of measuring ground is frequently 
used in speaking of land, yet in drawing up title deeds the 
measures of seed required to sow it are the recognised form of 
measurement. 
Good land is taxed more highly than bad, and the amount of the 
taxation varies yearly. Every house and all land has a fixed “burden” 
upon it ; that is to say, the owner has to pay every year a fixed 
number of chim or mout, but the value of each chim that the 
land is burdened with is variable, though this is not the case with the 
houses. According as the season is good or bad, or possibly accord- 
ing to his own whim occasionally, the civil magistrate fixes the amount 
that each chim is to be valued at. For instance, a property may be 
taxed at nineteen chim ; that means that the owner must pay nineteen 
sums of money in Kyungkeiu-To, or nineteen measures of produce in 
outlying provinces ; but the value of the chim — that is to say, how 
much a chim means — is in the hands of the magistrates. Usually these 
taxes are very low indeed according to our ideas ; but of course great 
room is left for extortion if the magistrate he so inclined, and this is 
especially the case when the taxes are paid in rice, as is very largely 
the case in Iyen-ra-To, Ch’oong-Ch’ung-To, and Kyung-Sang-To, the 
three southern provinces. Taxes are payable in the twelfth month of 
each year. 
