Chapter XVIII: Country Trips in Korea

One morning I left Seoul with an American missionary who had lived for more than ten years in a small Korean town far from the railroad. He had a Ford, but we were not sure we would ever reach his home in it. I have already mentioned that although the Japanese are trying to give Korea good modern roads they are not very expert road builders. Besides, the soil of Korea is a kind of half sand that does not stand up well under wheels or rains and in many places there is no stone near by.

It must be very disheartening to try to build good roads in Chosen, for in the rainy season whole treeless hillsides are sometimes washed away in a few hours, leaving no sign of a road that took long to construct. More than once my missionary friend had been compelled to leave his Ford and walk home. After I had seen at close range some of the bridges of Korea, I was not surprised that they are so often destroyed. Many of them were merely logs covered with branches and earth or sod, and even those of concrete usually had flimsy wood and earth foundations. The rivers in this mountainous country, rising several feet in a few hours, tear out such bridges easily. We saw some bridges which, although still standing, were left without approaches, the river having washed away the bank on each side. Such bridges are not of much use to the automobile traveler!

This is the Korean way of carrying water, with the help of the
Standard Oil Company! In the Orient cans are used for every purpose
after the kerosene shipped in them has been sold. The frame on the
back is what the Koreans call a _jicky_.
]

During the day we crossed several rivers by crude ferries. The Ford would snort its way down through deep sand and out upon what looked like an old raft trying to be a boat. If the front wheels did not run off the far end of the ferry, or if our weight did not ground the odd craft, we would begin to crawl across stream, pushed by two or three countrymen using long bamboo poles. Then up the other bank we would snort through the sand. Sometimes we barely missed sliding off into the water between the ferry and the shore.

There are so few automobiles on the country roads in Korea that many of the people, especially the women and children, began to run as soon as they heard us coming. Some of them became so confused as our strange machine rushed down the road toward them that they dodged back and forth in front of the car like scared chickens, until we had to stop entirely. But automobiles are becoming more and more familiar to the country people of Korea and before long, no doubt, they will be taken for granted.

One of the many ways of irrigating the rice-fields of Korea is to hang
a huge wooden spoon from a framework and have a man—or a woman—scoop
up water all day long, carrying it from a lower field to a higher
one.
]

Some Koreans, however, run in front of a moving train or automobile on purpose. They think that an evil spirit is always pursuing them and trying to do them harm, and that if they dodge in front of a moving vehicle the spirit will either attach itself to the people in the vehicle or become confused and lose track of the man or woman it has been pestering. Down in the island of Haiti off our southeastern coast the black people often do the same thing for the same purpose; and sometimes I wonder if the foolish boys in our cities who dodge in front of moving cars are risking their lives in order to get rid of their evil spirits.

Unlike the Japanese, the Koreans use flails similar to ours to thresh
their rice, after which it is thrown up in the air with a wooden
scoop so that the wind can blow away the chaff.
]

Foreigners who travel through Korea often go home thinking that the Koreans are lazy. But those who live among them for years (missionaries, for example) do not think so at all. It is true that in the cities you see many men squatting in the streets in their snow-white garments (making you think of penguins on a rocky coast) to dream and smoke or gossip with their fellow loafers. Some of these men are _yangban_, that is, nobles or officials under the old corrupt government, who learned to loaf while in government employ, and who now have no work anyway. The Japanese Government pensioned many of them, so that they are supported, and the others probably could not keep a job even if they could find one.

In preparation for rice-cutting, this Korean man is sharpening his
sickle on a stone. Notice his topknot.
]

The man who thinks Korean workmen and farmers are lazy, just because he sees some of them taking a nap in the daytime, or because they do not rush around in the hot summer months, need only work with them for a day to find he is wrong. Would you think it easy work to drive a bull hitched to a plow through rice fields, knee deep, or claw all day long in the mud at the roots of the rice plants, with the lukewarm water throwing into your face the reflection of the sun that pours its rays down on your back? Or would you call the man lazy who carries on his back, sometimes all day long, a load weighing seventy or eighty pounds?

“The plowman homeward plods his weary way,” Korean fashion, carrying
the plow and driving his unburdened ox before him.
]

In June the peasants were spreading over their fields the oak leaves they use as fertilizer. But now in early July most of them were transplanting rice. Bundles of young rice, about six inches high, were carried from the seed-beds and thrown out into the flooded fields. As the roots are heavier, each bundle landed right side up, and everywhere men and women, sometimes a dozen of them in a row, were moving slowly across the fields, transplanting the grasses one by one. As land is precious in so crowded a country, most of the peasants plant beans on top of the little mud dikes separating the flooded paddy-fields. One hears frogs croaking and sees a beautiful white bird called the ibis stepping about in the water on its long legs, looking for frogs to eat.

Shoeing a bull in Korea. The Koreans use big bulls and tiny stallions
as their chief beasts of burden. In addition they have their own
backs, and now some Fords. The author remembers his father, who was
a blacksmith and horseshoer in his younger days, shoeing oxen in
Michigan in much this manner.
]

A Korean method of bringing in the sheaves. The carrying basket is
made of bamboo splints.
]

No, you could not call the Korean peasants lazy, even if some of them do carry a fan while working in the fields. One of the hardest jobs in raising rice is to get enough water to flood the fields, and on this trip I saw all sorts of schemes of irrigation. One man had what looked like an enormous wooden soup spoon suspended on a framework, and all day long he spooned the water from a lower field that was too wet into an upper field that was too dry. How amused an American farmer would be by the sight of three men instead of one using a shovel to dig a ditch! One man held the shovel and thrust it into the ground, and the other two lifted out the shovelful of earth by ropes tied to the handle. But I have seen that in Syria, way over on the other side of Asia.

Grinding grain in Korea. The young ox marches round and round under
the circular thatched roof, drawing a huge stone roller which is
smaller at one end than at the other so that it will keep its place
on the platform on which the grain—in most of Korea rice—is spread.
]

It made me think of Gray’s “Elegy” to see a Korean farmer carrying his big wooden plow home at night on his own shoulders and driving his unloaded ox before him. The Koreans are noted for the kindness they show their bulls and the little stallions which are their only draft animals. In the middle of the day we often had to stop suddenly because a man lay asleep in the middle of the road. Others slept on the paddy-dikes and in all sorts of positions that we should have found very uncomfortable. But to make up for this midday nap they begin work at the first peep of dawn and do not stop till the last flicker of twilight. I am sure you would have laughed with me to see men in the rice fields who, though naked to the waist, still wore their precious “plug” hats. Their skins were burned by the sun to the color of brown shoes. It was amusing also to see the village blacksmiths, in the missionary’s home town, dressed in white and squatting on their heels as they heated their irons in the forge.

The village blacksmith in Korea squats at his forge in white garments,
his topknot neatly done up on top of his head, and sometimes with
his black “plug” hat on.
]

Rural Customs

Beside the road near the town there were stone monuments like gravestones with little roofs over them. Some of these were in honor of magistrates who formerly ruled the village. Although the Chinese characters on the stones tell those who can read the language that they were erected by the people “out of gratitude,” the truth is that often the magistrate was a thieving rascal who forced the people to contribute money for a monument to him after misruling them for years. Other stones were in honor of “virtuous widows,” that is, wives who had refused to marry again after their husbands died and who spent most of their time weeping for them or praying for their souls. In Korea and China such grief is considered one of the highest virtues, but how dismal we should find it to have so sad a person in the house!

When crops begin to ripen, watch towers spring up all over Korean
fields. The old man stays here every night (and most of the day) in
order to guard the fields against crop-thieves.
]

An American carpenter would find the Korean adze awkward, for it is so
much more crudely made than his own.
]

The missionary and his Ford were not going back to Seoul for a month or two, so I returned by autobus. It seems strange to think of anything so up-to-date in the ancient land that a few years ago was the Hermit Kingdom, but the autobus has come to stay. To see one piled full of Koreans in their native costumes looks queer indeed. The worry and hurry that make many people old before their time in our own land are rare in Korea. When we broke down, once in climbing a rocky mountain ridge and once in getting off a miserable old ferry, the Korean men did not show any signs of being angry because they were losing time. Instead they climbed out of the car and went to squat at the roadside until we were ready to go on again, placidly smoking their long-stemmed pipes.

Do you wonder that we sometimes had trouble in crossing a river on
such a ferry as this?
]

Later in the summer, when I made another trip across Korea, I noticed that a great many little watch towers had sprung up over the fields. It seems that when the vegetables and fruit begin to ripen thieves come in the night. So the peasants build a platform on bamboo poles, eight or ten feet high, and put a thatch roof over it and sometimes straw walls around it. From up there they can see all over their fields and also catch the cool breezes. Sometimes a whole family sleeps in one of these tiny houses, one member sitting up to watch. The Koreans are much afraid of spirits, especially of those which they think fly about at night. So one of the persons in each watch-tower usually pounds on the edge of it every few minutes all night long, to frighten the spirits away. It is a very weird experience to walk across country in Korea long after midnight, as I once did, and hear the thump, thump, thump from dozens of little watch towers scattered all about in the darkness.

A Korean gentleman, in his flowing white _turamaggie_, enjoying
practice in archery.
]

Above: The living room of a Korean monastery, showing the drum which
calls the monks to their prayers. Below: Korean gods, gilded and
garbed in bright colors, in a monastery.
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