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Updated: May 18, 2025
The tissue paper is often dipped in oil previous to being used on the sliding doors and windows, as it is then supposed to keep out the cold better than when left in its natural state. As the doors and windows of Cho-sen, however, very seldom have the quality of fitting tight, a Corean house is therefore quite a rendezvous for draughts and currents of air.
Naturally a life of this sort makes the upper classes soft, and somewhat effeminate. They are much given to sensual pleasures, and many a man of Cho-sen is reduced to a perfect wreck when he ought to be in his prime.
If a woman in our country were sent out to do the washing under similarly trying circumstances and, mind, a suit of clothes takes no less than a couple of hours to wash properly I have no doubt that she might be tempted to ask for a divorce from her husband for cruelty and ill-treatment; but the woman of Cho-sen thinks nothing of it, and as long as it pleases the man whom she must obey she does it willingly and without a word of complaint.
Some parts of the donkey, also, when the animal is killed during the spring and under special circumstances, are equally appreciated. The lower classes of Cho-sen as is the case in most countries are more prolific than the upper ones.
Little, however, was known of the country until the Portuguese brought back to Europe strange accounts of this curious kingdom and its quaint and warlike people. According to the story, it was a certain Chinese wise man who, when in a poetic mood, baptized Corea with the name of Cho-sen.
Cho-sen, then, is now the only name by which the country is called by the natives themselves, for the name of Korai has been entirely abandoned by the modern Coreans.
Arithmetic is also pounded into the little heads of the Cho-sen mites by means of the sliding-bead addition-board, the "chon-pan," a wonderful contrivance, also much used in Japan and China, and which is of invaluable help in quick calculation. The children are made to work very hard, and I was always told by the natives that they are generally very diligent and studious.
There is no doubt that the origin of the word Corea is Korai, which is an abbreviation of Ko-Korai, a small kingdom in the mountainous region of the Ever White Mountains, and bordering upon the kingdom of Fuyu, a little further north, whence the brave and warlike people probably descended, who conquered old Cho-sen.
The woman of Cho-sen gets, to my mind, less enjoyment out of life than probably any other woman in Asia. This life includes misery, silence, and even separation from her children the male ones after a certain age. What things could make a woman more unhappy?
These, Kim told me, were the Tiger Hunters of Pyeng-yang, the fiercest and most terrible fighting men of which Cho-Sen could boast. But enough. On mere description of the Emperor's palace a thousand pages of my narrative could be worthily expended. Let it suffice that here we knew power in all its material expression.
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