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Updated: June 3, 2025
He not only ate a large amount of food, but ate it very rapidly almost as if he feared that some one might steal his dinner before he could dispose of it. And you would think that he never expected to get another square meal! But it was not Yung Pak's fault that he was such a little glutton. In his youngest days, when his mother used to regulate his food, she would stuff him full of rice.
One day, soon after he was six years old, his father sent for him to come to his private room, perhaps you would call it a study or library. With Yung Pak's father was a strange gentleman, a young man with a pleasant face and an air of good breeding. "This," said Ki Pak to his son as he entered the room, "is Wang Ken. I have engaged him to be your teacher, or tutor.
Some of the toys, though, were very peculiar ones different from anything you ever saw. He had little tasselled umbrellas, just like the big one his father used when he walked out in the sun. He also had little fringed hats and toy chariots with fancy wheels. One of Yung Pak's favourite toys was a wooden jumping-jack with a pasteboard tongue.
To Wang Ken and his pupil were assigned a room near Ki Pak's library, where Yung Pak would spend several hours each day trying his best to learn the Korean A B C's. The first book he had to study was called "The Thousand Character Classic." This was the first book that all Korean boys had to study, and was said to have been written by a very wise man hundreds of years ago.
Yung Pak's father would have been glad to have taken time for seeking game with some of these hunters, but the business of his trip prevented any unnecessary delay on the journey.
When the son meets his father in the street, he must drop to his knees and make a profound salute, no matter what the state of the roadway. In all letters which the son writes to his father he uses the most exalted titles and honourable phrases he can imagine. As you already know, Yung Pak's father intended that his son, when he grew up, should fill a position in the service of the king.
This does not seem strange when we know what a sober, serious, dignified man Yung Pak's father was. It would not do to allow his son to do anything that would upset his dignity, though he loved him very much indeed. It was far different with the boy's mother.
In some parts of Korea the houses were built of stout timbers, the chinks covered with woven cane and plastered with mud. Neat hedges of interlaced boughs surrounded them. The chimney was often simply a hollow tree, not attached to the house. Ki Pak's house was not only built of stone, but about it were four walls of stone, about five feet high, to help keep out intruders.
Here it was allowed to grow, and as years went by it grew quite long, and was braided in two plaits down his back. When Yung Pak grew to be a man the long hair was knotted up on top of his head, and for this reason many people call Koreans "Top-knots." But of this arrangement of the hair we shall tell more farther on. Ki Pak, Yung Pak's father, was one of the king's officials.
One of Yung Pak's greatest pleasures was to listen to the stories which his father used to tell him about these journeys.
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