The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, January 24, 1904, Page 4

THE SAN TeE BY STEPHEN BONSAL. IL ten years ago Korea, now of the Far deserved its poetic e storm center well the Land of the Morn- ing Calm Then what has become the Naboth's vineyard of the Asian coast was generally referred to, when refer- ence was necessary, as the Hermit Kingdom, and it kept severely to it- self. In 1866, however, an adventur- ous Hamburg merchant, listening to the fairy tales of the Shanghai settle- ment, f expedition and ate the forbidden land. y thought that the ob- out an It was gene: ject of the Hamburger's venture was to rob the royal tombs at Pingan, which were reputed to contain much treasure. However, he returned empty handed. Then we Americans got Into a little war with the Hermits American schooner, the Gen- man, which disappeared up a river, and together with the was never heard of again. Our marines and bluejackets went up the Han mur nearly to the Korean capi- i gave the tiger hunting batta- s of the then King a good drub- bing, but we @id not push the war to # conclusion or insist upon the com- orean crew plete satisfaction and peparation which Sir Harry Parkes and some other English = Judges thought we should have had. Our want of energy was really due to the apparently well substantiated fact that the W of the Sherman AUDIENCE FAVILLION AND LOTOJ POND SEOUL were practically pirates who had gone to Korea on a gamble in which they lost everything—including their lives. As a matter of fact the only connec- tion Korea had at this time with the world outside was through a Chinese Embassador who came every year from the court of Peking to the penin- sula. Recen'ly the attempt was made to show that the relations betweeh China and Korea were those of a suzerain power and a tributary state. If they were so, at least the Koreans— certainly the people most directly con- cerned—were not aware of it. They had—and in a measure still have—a sentimental attachment to the Chin- ese, and they showed their respect for the Emperor of their neighbors by speaking to him in even more exalted honorifics than were required by eti- quette when addressing their own ruler. The duties of this Chinese Embassa- dor to Korea were not onerous and the Koreans lodged him free, used him very well in every way and sent him home laden with rich presents. His duties were hardly diplomatic, there being apparently at that time no busi- ness of state between the two coun- tries worth discussifiz. More than anything else he was a literary agent pledged to boom the study of Con- fuclus and to make known to the literati of Seoul the latest commen- taries on the disputed or more obscure passages of the sage by the Han-lin professors. But the mission had one business feature and served at least one useful Several thousand years ago, as we all know, the Koreans were in- tellectually a prodigiously active peo- ple. They had printing presses before Gutenberg was ever dreamed of, and they had monitors and ironclads twenty generations at least before Ericsson was born. This great mental activity has been followed by a period of brain weariness which is apparent the first day you arrive in Korea. Bright enough though they are when they want to be, every Korean impresses you as wishing to avoid working his brain. However, they did want to know where they were at and how the seasons passed, if this could be ascertained without astronomical calculations, which, as we know, are so wasting upon the gray matter and the nervous tissues. So the Emperor purpose. FRANCISCO SU GROUND EAS’I‘ERN ASIA ' COREA, BETWEEN ~ THE RUMSTANS AND THEJARY, HER QUAINT PE.PLE. T EH{ ODDb (CMJ)’ AND SACRED, T TJ' Mu.o-uo Ts &%, “ By S cuow 1 YELlOW‘xvm' 7 HitEl-sma 1 A Tsunc mine 1 3w HShanghat 4,\ienmelmw \\b‘ horju o v" ’} £ A o0 Hnnn;;wgld““m ~° “‘ VELPARTT. Ofi‘a '?) o‘« of China sent every year by his Em- bassador a calendar in which not only ‘were the seasons set forth, but much other useful and timely advice was given. For instance, the calendar would say: “March 20 the season of the great cold ends; you can put on your spring clothes. July 10 the great heat begins; shed your wadded overalls and show your skin.” The King would immediately er the calendar re- printed and have it distributed throughout the land, and so it can be said that the whole of Korea went by Peking time. The calendar did not fit in very well with the weather condi- tions of Seoul, and the Hermits often sweltered in their wadded overalls and blouses when the warm weather had come, but like many another people, though the physical discomfort was great, they had the proud satisfaction of knowing that they were running and dressing according to the court calendar, During the sixteenth century Korea was invaded several times by the Japanese, and prodigies of valor were accomplished on both sides. The up- shot of these wars was to engender one of the most pronounced cases of racial antipathy I have ever encoun- tered. It is now three hundred years old and shows no signs of abating. As a result of their many invasions the Japanese remained in possession of Fusan, a little port in the southeast corner of Korea, around which they built a wall and a string of little stone forts. They held it idle many years, as the English did Calais, in France, against the time of their next invasion, on-chhdn = Cape Povorotng & ol oF 7ZE GREAT. and that came In 1895, when jealousy as to their respective rights and duties in Korea brought about war between Japan and CL: a. One of the results of this war, In which the Koreans perserved an atti- tude of amused impartiality, was the introduction of the Japanese calendar in Seoul and a lot mere objectionable features of the conqueror's pro- gramme. Every department of the Korean Government, which had got along so noiselessly in the sleepy old days of the Chinese misfit calendar, was now simply crowned with Japan- ese advisers, who had been graciously loaned to the King by his imperial cousin of Japan, though the large fat salaries they drew came out of the de- pleted treasury of the Hermits, who now, very much against their win, found themselves right in the midst of things. The first and the most prominent of these advisers had been loaned to the Koreans regasdless of cost was Mr. Hoshi Toru, afterward Japanese Min- ister in Washington, where he became celebrated for his se study and ad- miration of the Tammany system of political organization. He tried to introduce the system in Tokio, the Japanese capital, and was promptly assassinated. But in Seoul Hoshi was a reformer of the most uncompromis- ing character and made himself most cordlally detested by the Koreans, as I had ample opportunity of seeing. Mr. Hoshi knew a great many things, but he had forgotten the fact, which it is especially weil for reformers to recall every now and then, that Rome was not built in a day. He made fun of the old customs of the country. He even ordered the Koreans to cut off their topknot hair adornments. He said men were not necessarily wise because they had hair growing out of their ears, and he dis- couraged the habit of Korean states- men of pretending they could not walk and appearing at the councils of state supported by their bond slaves. He also ridiculed their flowing sleeves and abundant skirts, which, as he said quite truly, made it impossible for them to work; but of course that was just what they wanted. The awful fear of having some day to work was the one preoccupation of the Korean statement as long as the strenuous Mr. Hoshi remained in the land. Time went on; one tempest after another disturbed that Korean teapot, and the one thing that became at all clear was the faflure of reforms to catch on and the ever Increas hatred of the Koreans of all classes for thelr benefactors. Symptomatie rebellions took place in various prov- inces, and at last the Japanese Mt ter to Seoul, probably without the ad- vice and sanction of his Government, determined upon a desperate act. One night in October, 1896, the palace was surrounded by a battalion of Japanese troops, and a body of soldiers and Japanese civilians, some, at least, wearing the disguise of Korean uni- forms, entered the private apartments of Queen Min and murdered her. The Queen was undoubtedly the head and front of the anti-Japanese party, but her death urder such dis- graceful circumstances did not have the result which the conspirators un- doubtedly hoped from it. Russian diplomacy, of course, made the mest of the opportunity. For a few months practical anarchy reigned throughout the country, and at last the King in fear of his life took refuge in the Rus- slan legation. This was the end of whatever pretemse of independence Kborea up to that time had maintained. For seven years now the only power in the country has been that of the antagonistic legationg of Japan and Russia. - Our efforts have been con- fined to seeking to induce Korea to open more treaty ports, with the double purpose of increasing our mar- kets and as@ means of life insurance to the threatened kingdom. Of course, the fate of Korea at an early day is aonexation to ah efficient power, and the treaty ports and treaty rights form some slight obstacle to offhand annefation, as the case of Niuchwang in the Manchurian difii- culty clearly demonstrates. But up to the present these efforts have not been crowned with success. The Xing of Korea, who now, as though to emphasige the pitifulness of his position, styles himself Emperor, is a bright little man with a very im- posing face and sympathetic eyes. He has a greater insight into Western way® and manners than any other Eastern potentalz I have known, with the exception of the King of Slam, and has borne himself with considerable dignity in the many trying positions in which he has been placed by the ‘recent course of events. However, he is not a strong man, he seems to have no power over his lethargic subjects, and probably, should war again take place about the fimal disposition Korea, he and his people will, as in 1894, maintain an attitude of impas- sive reserve and indeed indifference to the result. The Crown Prince, whose pleture is given as he beams out from the audience pavilion, is a cheerful idiot, who has, I believe, been recently supplanted in favor of another son. However, the fault seems to be in the sace rather than in the individual. The Koreans have lived too long with no admixture of fresh blood, For some years past, in fact ever since the war with China, a company in which were interested many promi- nent Japanese has been engaged in promoting the construction of a rail- Continued on Page Fifteen.