The Corean People

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 7061, 22 August 1894, Page 4

The Corean People

In the course of an address, delivered by the Rev. J. JB. Mnckay, at the last Australasian Fellowship Convention held in Melbourne, the following description of the customs of the people appears : — Corea is, roughly speaking, about the size of Victoria, [t has a population, variously estimated, at from ten to fifteen millions. It is very mountainous. One of the French missionaries has accurately described it as resembling the sea in a storm ; nevertheless it is a beautiful and fertile land. Its natural resources are great. It abounds in agricultural aud mineral wealth. Rice, barley, maize, cotton, tobhceo, gold silver, coal, and iron are found. Its history runs back 1000 years 8.C., and iks civilisation, though now in a state of decay, has been marked by periods of splendid achievement in literature, religion, and the arts of life. The people are sui (jtnero. They differ entirely from both Chinese and Japanese in appearance, language, and modes of life. They are lazy — partly through raisgovernmeut, partly through the idea that work is ignoble. If a man, through thrift and industry, amass a little substance, the nearest official will probably make him disgorge it— if need be, under torture. Then, again, the whole body of scholars and the men of rank think work degrading, and they will endure the most extreme poverty rather than do it. Drinking (intoxicants made from rice andbarley) gambling and borrowing abound. Corean publio opinion condemns these vices, yet they flourish, much as they do here, under a similar reprobation. On tho other hand, the Coreana have many tine qualities. They are generous and hospitable to a fault. They have great love for nature, are keen in intelligence, quick and true in their judgments of character, and proud of their descent from the "ods. And at bottom are they wroug in this last opinion ? Their attitude towards foreigners is critical. They have heard dark stories of the luot for empire which rages in Western nations. Then, in 1860, an American schooner, the General Sherman, was fitted out to rifle the tombs of the Corean kings at Ping-An. (It had long been believed that these monarchs were buried in golden coffins.) This vessel was burned, and the miscreants who manned her were killed by the Coreaus. Again in 1867 an expedition was organised to seize and hold to ransom the bones of the Prince Regent's father. This attempt fortunately failed through mismanagement ; but you can easily understand how, in a land where the dead are enshrined in peculiar awe and reverence, these attempts would poison the minds of the natives againstall Westerners. Further, European and American manufacturers have disorganised native industries; e.g., the Coreans are all clothed in white cotton. The manufacture of this great staple gave employment to thousands of weavers. Manchester cottons now undersell the native product, aud these men are out of w ork. Other trades have suffered in proportion. Moreover, the Coreans possess that tinpo of contempt which sill the venerable civilisations of the East entertain towards the young and upstart nations of the West, a feeling akin to that with which the decayed member of an ancient house looks upou the new grandeur of a wealthy pawnbroker or pork butcher. Yet, taking them over all, the Coreans show a more friendly feeling towards us than we do towards the resident Chinese. The Corean religion has at its base a vast system of spirit and ancestral worship. Rising from this bedrock there is Confucianism, the cult of the uoble and the learned ; and Buddhism, the faith of the masses. The root superstition, spirit and ancestral worship, is conuaon to all. It lies like the curse of bell and book upon the land. Before a man can go auy where or do anything, he must propitiate the spirits concerned, be they of the sea, or road, or hill. Bad harvests, sickness, death, misfortunes of every kind, are attributed to the same malignant agency. The terror of the unseen is ever upon these people, aud they impoverish them selves by the large gifts of money and food and the grotesque and expensive rites which they observu in order to keep away these fatal shadows.