New volumes of the Encyclopædia Britannica > Volume 30, K-MOR

KOREA
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great centre of the grain trade and the sole centre of the
ginseng manufacture, makes wooden shoes, coarse pottery,
and fine matting, and manufactures with sesamum oil the
stout oiled paper for which Korea is famous.
Phyong-yang, a city on the Tai-dong, had a population
of 60,000 before the war of 1894, in which it was nearly
destroyed. It is fast regaining its population. It lies on
rocky heights above a region of stoneless alluvium on the
east, and with the largest and richest plain in Korea on the
west. It has five coal mines within ten miles, and the
district is rich in iron, silk, cotton, and grain. It has easy
communication with the sea (its port being Chin-nampoj,
and is important historically and commercially. Auri¬
ferous quartz is worked by a foreign company in its neigh¬
bourhood. Near the city is the illustrated standard of
land measurement cut by Ki-tze in 1124 B.c.
With the exceptions of Kang-wha, Chong-ju, Tung-
nai, Fitsan, Won-san, it is very doubtful if any other
Korean towns reach a population of 15,000. The provincial
capitals and many other cities are walled. Most of the
larger towns are in the warm and fertile southern provinces.
One is very much like another, and nearly all their
streets are replicas of the better alleys of Seoul. The
actual antiquities of Korea are dolmens, sepulchral pottery,
and Korean and Japanese fortifications.
Race.—The origin of the Korean people is unknown.
They are of the Mongol family; their language belongs to
the so-called Turanian group, is polysyllabic, possesses an
alphabet of 11 vowels and 14 consonants, and a script named
En-mun. Literature of the higher class and official and
upper class correspondence are exclusively in Chinese
characters, but since 1895 official documents have con¬
tained an admixture of En-mun. The Koreans are distinct
from both Chinese and Japanese in physiognomy, though
dark straight hair, dark oblique eyes, and a tinge of bronze
in the skin are always present. The cheek-bones are high ;
the nose inclined to flatness; the mouth thin-lipped and
refined among patricians, and wide and full-lipped among
plebeians; the ears are small, and the brow fairly well
developed. The expression indicates quick intelligence
rather than force and mental calibre. The male height
averages 5 ft. 4| in. The hands and feet are small and
well-formed. The physique is good, and porters carry on
journeys from 100 to 200 lb. Men marry at from 18 to
20 years, girls at 16, and have large families, in which a
strumous taint is nearly universal. Women are secluded and
occupy a very inferior position. The Koreans are rigid
monogamists, but concubinage has a recognized status.
Government.—Up to July 1894 the system of adminis¬
tration was modelled on that of China, except that govern¬
ment was in the hands of a hereditary aristocracy, privi¬
leged and corrupt. The king was absolute, and law
consisted practically of royal edicts published in the
Gazette. During the war between Japan and China,
Japan, then in the ascendant, devised special machinery
for the reform of Korean abuses, and during the following
months the administration was reorganized and greatly
assimilated to that of Japan. Between the close of 1895
and 1900 there were ceaseless administrative fluctuations;
valuable reforms quietly lapsed; the general movement
was retrograde, and the old order now exists in the spirit
if not in the letter. The emperor is an independent and
practically an absolute sovereign, the modifying influence
of the cabinet having become insignificant. The central
Government consists of a Council of State formed of a
president premier, and the heads of nine departments—
Home Office, Foreign Office, Treasury, War Office, Educa¬
tion, Justice, and the Ministry of Agriculture, Trade, and
Industry, with their subordinate bureaus. This body
frames laws and passes resolutions which require the
imperial seal for their validity. There is a Privy Council
(consisting of a president, vice-president, not more than 50
councillors appointed by the throne, and two secretaries),
which is empowered, when consulted by the cabinet, to-
inquire into questions referred to it. On paper the new
constitution, which was very elaborate, modified the royal
absolutism considerably ; but a decree passed towards the
end of 1896, after the king’s escape from Japanese control,
marked a distinct reversion to the absolutism renounced
by his oath in January 1895. One by one the checks
devised by the Japanese “ advisers ” became inoperative,
and by 1898 the imperial will, working under partially new
conditions, produced a continual chaos, and by 1900 suc¬
ceeded practically in overriding all constitutional restraints.
Local Administration.—Korea for administrative purposes is
divided into 13 provinces and 339 prefectures or magistracies, while
the capital has a separate government, and each of the eight treaty
ports and the Russo-Korean trading mart, Kyen-heung, is under a
superintendent, ranking with a consul. The village is the adminis¬
trative unit, and under the new system its headman and officials
are annually elected. The headman and a man from each family
form a village council, which deals by resolution with educational
matters, registration of houses and lands, sanitation, roads and
bridges, agricultural improvements, common dykes, payment of
taxes, relief in famine, adjustment of the corvee, and bye-laws.
All resolutions must be sent up to the Home Office through the
prefect and the provincial governor twice a year. Above the
village and below the prefecture are cantons and districts, but it
is on the efficient working of the village system that much of
Korean wellbeing depends.
Education.—The “Royal Examinations ” in Chinese literature
held in Seoul up to 1894, which were the entrance to official posi¬
tion, being abolished, the desire for a purely Chinese education
has diminished. In Seoul there are now an imperial English
school with two foreign teachers, a reorganized Confucian college,
a normal college under a very efficient foreign principal, Japanese,
Chinese, Russian, and French schools, chiefly linguistic, several
Korean primary schools, mission boarding-schools, and the Pai
Chai College connected with the American Methodist Episcopal
Church, under imperial patronage, and subsidized by Government,
in which a liberal education of a high class is given and En-mun
receives much attention. The Koreans are expert linguists, and
the Government wisely makes liberal grants to the linguistic-
schools. About 1100 young men are receiving a liberal edu¬
cation under foreign teachers ; and in the primary schools about
1200 boys are learning arithmetic, geography, and Korean history,
with the outlines of the governmental systems of other civilized,
countries. The Education Department is tolerably efficient, and
aims at the general extension of primary and intermediate schools,
and a uniform series of text-books in the vernacular.
Laiv.—A criminal code, scarcely equalled for barbarity, though;
twice mitigated by royal edict since 1785, remained in force in its
main provisions till 1895. Since then a mixed commission of
revision has done some good work, but a body of law and the
judges to administer it righteously have still to be created. The
Ministry of Justice has charge of all judicial matters, and as a high
court of justice hears appeals from certain district courts. Five-
classes of law courts have been established, and provision has been;
made for appeals in both civil and criminal cases. Elaborate legal!
machinery was devised, but it exists chiefly on paper, and its provi¬
sions are daily violated by the imperial will and the gross corruption
of officials.
Kyei.—Abuses in legal administration and in tax-collecting are
the chief grievances which lead to local insurrections. Oppression
by the throne and the official and noble classes prevails extensively;
but the weak protect themselves by the use of the Kyci, or principle
of association, which develops among Koreans into powerful trading
guilds, trades-unions, mutual benefit associations, money-lending-
guilds, &c. Nearly all traders, porters, and artisans are members ,
of guilds, powerfully bound together and strong by combined
action and mutual helpfulness in time of need.
Revenue and Finance.—The chief sources of revenue are the land?
tax, paid since 1896 in money ; the customs duties ; the house tax,,
from which Seoul is exempt; the ginseng duty, and the tax on-
gold dust. These yield roughly as follows:—Land tax, £277,364
house tax, £46,564 ; ginseng duty, £15,000 ; duty on gold dust,.
£4000 ; customs duties, £100,000 ; miscellaneous taxes, £30,000..
The budget for 1899 showed an estimated expenditure of £647,113,
with a small surplus; but the revenue for 1900 was only estimated
at £520,000, with an expenditure of £690,000, in consequence of
which deficit all new works were dropped and relief from financial
straits was rendered necessary by a foreign loan. In 18 months.