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2
6th (28th of 2nd Moon). Sunday. Cloudy.
3
From the 2nd inst, till yesterday afternoon, Wonsan was visited by a violent wind and dust storms from the North-West. The natives say this has been the greatest wind storm ever known since the one twelve years ago. When the storm was at its worst, thick clouds of dust rolled, mass after mass, over the Ham Hung Road valley toward the sea with great velocity. In some places tall pines that have stood the storms of centuries fell. The thatched roofs of many houses were rolled away like scrolls of paper. Wind is one of the objectionable features of Wonsan. 十日分排九日風, 四時統計三時雪 originally describing the weather in the extreme north of Korea is true of Wonsan, so far as wind is concerned.
4
This month began wrong: in the night of the 1st, a fire broke out in the Korean town, burning down four houses and injuring many others. Koreans show the seamiest side of their nature or training when their neighbor's houses are either on fire or being robbed: in either case they give no help. They either look on with indifference or slink away and hide themselves. I had the greatest time of it to collect a few and keep them working at the pump which the Japanese fire brigade had brought to the scene. Anything that does not touch his immediate interest is no concern to a Korean. He doesn't care a cash whose house is burnt or robbed, so long as his own is all right. Altruism has always been condemned by Confucianists; hence public spirit is almost an unknown quantity in Korea or China or any other country where the gross materialism of Confucius has reduced the whole range of human duty within the four walls of one's house. Beyond these walls his duty ceases; witness with what indifference the Korean officials barter away the dearest interest of their country just to enrich their dirty selves.
5
At 5:30 p.m. rain began and continued several hours, laying the dust, staying the wind, nourishing the young trees and budding flowers.
6
Finished reading the French version of Machiavelli's 'Prince'. It is an interesting book, though some of its precepts are highly immoral. The raison d'etre is the supreme goddess who justifies the means by the end. While the shrewd and often wicked Maxims are shocking in cold print, I must not forget the glaring fact that they have been the rules of practice in all countries and in all ages. The difference between Mencius and Machiavelli is that the former taught people what they ought to, but never, do, while the latter, what they ought not to, but ever, do. I know a Prince who might give a point or two to Machiavelli in matters of lying and treachery.
7
Mr. Fenwick, who has just returned from Seoul, tells me that Mr. McLeavy Brown has built a harem at the expense of the Korean Customs; that he appears in public with his mistress or mistresses: that he has been ostracized by this foreign community of the Capital; that Mr. Jordan, the British Minister, hasn't been to see the Chief Commissioner except twice since he returned some six months ago and that on business only; and that Brown is a disgrace to the foreigners in general and to the English in particular. I was surprised to hear all this. When Kim Kiu Hui, Mr. B's interpreter, told me last year that Dr. Cook and another English lady, acting as her assistant, had quarrelled, each trying to be the sole possessor of Brown's love, and that a Miss Taylor was his acknowledged mistress. I thought this was one of those hasty and slanderous conclusions which a Korean too often jumps to on seeing the free intercourse existing between foreign ladies and gentlemen. But what Fenwick tells me at least partly confirms Kim's account.
9
11th (4th). Friday. Windy-cold. Wonsan
10
The last few days have been windy and as cold as winter.
11
Went to the northern boundary of Tokwon to meet Mr. Kim Jong Han, the retiring Governor. He seemed none the worse for having gone through the insurrection, except that his eyes were red. He tried to justify his acts which caused the popular disturbance and to attribute it to (1) his indulgent treatment of the people; (2) their ignorance, ingratitude and impudence; (3) and to the instigations of Yi Yun-Jai, the magistrate of Yung Hung, where the disturbance first started. Yi, by the way, as the nephew of Yi Yong Ik, the reigning favorite, has been trying to supplant Mr. Kim in the gubernatorial post.
12
Mr. Kim said, "Within last two years, I had to give Yang 30,000.($ 6,000) to His Majesty. When I get to Seoul this time, I shall have to give him as much again, not for purchasing any new appointment but for the privilege of being let alone." Now, remember his salary during the two years was only 4,000.― His Majesty was not the only person taxing his purse to its utmost capacity. "So many friends and relatives came to bother me for relief (pecuniary) that I felt no joy to see my own sons." He was thus obliged to resort to illegitimate means of getting money.
13
"I can't see," said he, "how a magistrate can be honest on Yang 3,500($700.) a year. He can not, certainly, support his parents, wife (wives?) and children and help his poor relatives and friends with an amount hardly sufficient to meet his personal expenses. Now, if he can't support his parents and help his relatives, he is neither charitable nor just (不仁不義) . Then he is necessarily a bad man, no matter if he is honest in the discharge of his official duties."
14
Thus home charity is made to hide a multitude of public sins. One can easily see how Mr. Kim's principle and logic―which are those of most Koreans―may entirely subvert all public virtues.
15
From Mr. Kim's talks and other sources, I learn that the principal causes of the popular grievance were:―
16
1. The attempt at the circulation of nickels. Some months ago, Mr. Kim tried to introduce nickels in his province against the will of the people. He or his agent bought Japanese banknotes at the rate of 600 cash or less per yen. With them he bought Nickels in Seoul and Chemulpo at the rate of 800 cash per yen, thus making a clear gain of 200 cash per yen. He brought about 70,000 yens worth of nickels to Ham Hung and tried to force them into circulation―but no go. The Ham Hung people pretended that they couldn't use the lated nickels, because Wonsan wouldn't use them. Mr. Kim sent me dispatches, letters and growling telegrams urging me to use nickels in Wonsan. I told him I couldn't because (1) I had no right to force people to take a coin whose face value is 25 cash but whose real value is no more than 3 or 4 cash; (2) the Japanese and Chinese in the port wouldn't accept nickels in business transactions; (3) I had no power to stop the flood of spurious nickels that would soon ruin all business in the port etc. So Mr. Kim's agent had to send back to Chemulpo20,000 worth of nickels which he had intended to put on the Wonsan market.
17
2. Various monopolies-of cotton goods, of "nuruk", of etc.
18
3. Exportation of rice. On account of the bad crops last year in the South, the people have been strenuously opposed to any exportation of rice. But Mr. Kim, in his capacity of the Governor, was able to export some 4,000 bags of rice. The numerous hangers-on who thronged his Yamen also speculated in rice trade in the name of the Governor.
19
4. Poor relief association. Mr. Kim, since some time past, tried to start these associations in all the magistracies of the Province. Each member is required to pay from 100 yang to 200 with the money, bags of grains were to be bought and stored in a central location. The grains are to be renewed every autumn. When famine occurs, the grains are to be distributed to the people. While all this looks fine on the paper, it is fraught with mischief in practice. In the first place, who can be trusted to be the impartial judge as to the ability of a man to pay 100 or 200 yang? 2nd. Those who are able will bribe the collectors to be let out of the association; while those who can ill spare the money may be forced to pay 100 or 200 yang. 3rd. After the money or the grains are collected, who will dare refuse handing them over to the Bureau of Crown Property 內藏院, when demanded? While the association is unnecessary at its best, it will become, from beginning to end, a source of unlimited corruption and robbery to the officials and of ceaseless bother and loss to the people. I was the only one under Mr. Kim's authority whom he did not urge to organize the association. He wrote to me two or three times but left the thing to my discretion―and my discretion was that Tokwon should have no such nonsense. But all the other magistracies were officially compelled to establish the associations; causing great popular dissatisfaction, culminating in the insurrection at Ham Hung.
21
13th. (6th). Sunday. Windy.
22
Wind, wind, wind, day and night, week in and week out. Am thoroughly tired of it.
23
At 12 noon went to the Southern boundary of Tokwon to see Mr. Kim off.
24
About 7 p.m. a telegram from the F.O. informed me "To be arrested and tried―already left―hard to avoid"査筆蕃辨正發舌間難勉. So I am to be arrested and tried(?) for what? Ah, it is hard to be a Korean. He lives in constant fear and trembling, especially when he is honest and reputed to be better off than his neighbors.
25
Wired to Father to find out what is up.
27
15th. (8th). Tuesday. Windy.
28
Through different sources I find that the last telegram from the F.O. was a mistake. I hear that Kim Jun Sik, the Kamni of Samwha, is to be arrested. The mistake arose either from the fact that I had been the Kamni of Samwha or from a slip in the complicated code now used in the F.O.―more likely the latter. Mr. Wakefield showed me much sympathy and help during the days of uneasiness.
30
24th. (17th). Thursday, Chilly-damp.
31
Rain much needed, but only a little shower last night. Too cold today for rain.
32
Last Sunday and Monday I spent in visiting the Buddhist monasteries of 蒙月庵 and 明寂寺. They occupy very beautiful spots in the northern part of Tokwon, well repaying the fatigue of the journey―about 35 li from Kamni Yamen. The Mong-Wol-Am has more trees and shrubs, though no water, than Myong-Juk, whose chief attraction is the lovely mountain stream, now flowing in placid rivulets, then falling and foaming over rocks, here and there forming beautiful little pools of crystal water. It made me feel sad to see the mountains being rapidly denuded of its noble trees. The monks, ignorant and lazy, seemed to have no compunction in cutting down trees of which they are unworthy custodians.
33
"What is the principal motive of becoming a monk, the desire for study, or the love of natural beauties or the attraction of the Buddhistic doctrine, or the fleeing from the ennui or the vanities of the world?" To this the answer was "from poverty".
34
One good service Buddhism has done for Korea which Confucianism has utterly failed to do viz: the preservation of many a beautiful spot from the devastations of the Confucius-ridden Korean to whom trees and flowers seem to have no value except so far as they can be used for fuels.
36
1. Yun Ho Sun served as a clerk in this office for seven years. I found him the most honest Korean clever met with. Then he was so handy too: he could paint, write, read. He made an excellent overseer. In his days of wild oats-sowing, he passed for a drunkard. But soon after entering this office as clerk he quit drinking and not a drop touched his lips for six or seven years. His intelligence, ability, honesty and handiness made him a favorite to all Kamnis, especially to me. However, his strict integrity and vigilance gave him many enemies among the servants of the Office. Last January his youngest daughter, 5 years old, died. Though he has two more children, one boy and another girl, his heart strings seem to have been tied to the dead one. A few days after she had been buried, the poor man lost his senses. He stayed crazy about three weeks; then he seemed to have come to himself. In spite of my persuasions, he resigned his position and betook himself to painting pictures for the Japanese, who bought them as curios. But the demand soon ceased. Confining himself in the small room and feeding his unhinged mind with the recollections of the sayings and doings of the lost child, he again became crazy, apparently beyond cure.
37
His insanity manifests itself in singing, dancing, turning somersets and reciting, with a remarkable accuracy, long pieces from the Chinese classics. For days running, however, he sits still with his eyes inflamed looking and gesticulating at some imaginary being. He often accuses his patient and suffering wife of having killed the child by giving it a piece of Korean cake―which I believe to have been the fact, though the woman did it through ignorance, of course.
38
Of the many causes to which the craziness is attributed by Koreans, such as the displeasure of the house-site spirit(터귀신) , the influence of the hills and water around the cottage, the curses of his enemies etc―the most curious and discouraging is that he was too honest! An honest man goes crazy, hence it doesn't pay to be honest.
39
2. Nor does dishonesty pay always. Among the too many "chusas" of the Telegraph Office, was a very smart man by the name of Pak Yong Pai. He is a first rate story teller. He tells so many lies in the semblance of truth that the few truths he now and then tells sound like lies. While he was "chusa" in the Telegraph Office of Wonsan, he drew his salary but didn't do a stroke of work for four years. No matter how pressed the work was, or how tired and sick his colleagues were, Pak wouldn't help them. I wouldn't believe this possible, had I not seen the whole thing myself. Some months ago, to the infinite delight of his colleagues, he was transferred to Song-do. His patron, an influential eunuch, could not keep him in the sinecure any longer.
40
With 30 a month, he wouldn't wear anything but silk nor eat anything but dainty food. He had three wives, but the No. 2 was sent away the other day, after having used her as a slave for ten years! He resigned his new position in Songdo as the reduced salary wouldn't suffice to meet his expenses. It is amusing to see him pose himself as a martyr, deprived of his office by an unjust government requiting his long and valuable service with a summary dismissal.
41
He is as mischievous as a monkey and cunning as a fox. His busy brains spin out, to mix up metaphors, webs of schemes to further his interest at the expense of others. His tricks are, however, soon found out, so that there is no respectable Korean in Wonsan who has any confidence in him. Thus, out of employment, distrusted by many and disliked by more, he is in a desperate situation.
42
The public school of Wonsan has just lost a valuable teacher, in the departure of Mr. Yi Kang Ho for Vladivostok. He is a rare specimen of Koreans―energetic, industrious, progressive and enterprising. He found the school a dying institution but left it full of life. He is a man who will accomplish something before he is done with the world. Difficulties of position seem to spur, rather than discourage, him in anything he chooses to do.
43
In spite of his remarkable qualities, gifts, gumption and grit―the respectables and fossilities of Wonsan hated him like a poison. This was due to the fact that they had no use for the new fashioned school: that he managed, somehow, or other, to levy contributions on their reluctant purses for the support of the institution; and that, when occasion called for it, he did not hesitate to run over roughshod, the respectability of the stilted Wonsanites.
44
While I admired his tireless devotion to his work and supported him in carrying out many of his plans for the good of the school, I couldn't be blind to his faults such as conceit, obstinacy and passion for notoriety. Sometimes he did a thing positively useless merely for the sake of vain reputation. He asked the Japanese Consul to give him a voluntary and gratuitous instructor of the Japanese language. The Consul consented to send his interpreter to the school twice a week. Yi knew as well as anybody that this was worse than useless, because the system couldn't be permanent. But what did the final failure matter to him so long as he got the reputation for having introduced a course of Japanese in his school. He planted poplars―more properly poplar switches, not larger than your little fingers-helterskelter along the paths, among cultivated fields, in the middle of roads even without regularity and worse still, without consulting the convenience of other people. The result was the sticks were trodden down or pulled up by children and farmers: Yi had expected as much, but then what he wanted was not the trees but the bragging of having planted "over three thousand trees" during his term of office! For the same reason, he proposed to elevate the primary school 小學校 to a high school 高等小學校. I opposed the scheme from the start on the ground that "a high school could not be managed without proper teachers, that the Education Department has no qualified instructors even for a primary school; that he, Mr. Yi, might be transferred or dismissed from the position any time of the year, thus spoiling a good primary school without making it a higher institution." He would not listen to me and applied to the Education Department for the change. Of course the petition was not granted. On the contrary, the Minister, offended by the impolite language found in the petition, dismissed the audacious subordinate!
45
Thus relieved of his burden, he quit Korea and went to Vladivostok with a couple of his old pupils to study the language. He is a fine but unripe fruit. Foreign travel, hardships and, it may be, sufferings may ripen him, I hope. With all his eccentricities I believe he is a rare Korean who will make himself felt in one thing or another.
47
28th. (11th of 3rd Moon). Monday. Pretty.
48
Wonsan I mean the nature side of Wonsan is at its best. The awful wind storms seem to have given place to balmy breezes and lovely days. The hills are literally covered with flowers. Koi-ko-ri sings among the willows. Farmers are busy plowing and sowing. All this make me positively homesick. I long for my house and gardens as passionately as a lover does for his sweetheart. I should this day give up this position with its fruitless and endless annoyances, if the Government would let me alone, enjoying and pursuing my favorite studies and occupation.
49
Mr. Byon Jung Sang(卞鼎相) , the newly appointed Kamni of Kyong Hung visited me the other day on his way to the northern frontier. He gave me the following account in regard to the arrest of Kim Jung Sik, the Kamni of Samwha.
50
Kim J. S. told His Majesty that he(Kim) had discovered a Yi-in, or a prophet, in Pyong Yang; that the Yi-in's advice was that the Emperor should build a palace in the outercity(外城) of Pyong Yang and call it the Western Capital or (西京) imitation of the two capitals in the ancient China and in Japan; that he(Kim) would testify his loyalty by building the palace without charging His Majesty, if the Emperor would only empower him to do so. His Majesty was easily taken in and Kim was at once appointed Kamni of Samwha with the insignia of an Imperial Inspector. Thus authorized, Kim collected money by extorting involuntary gifts from rich people and by other questionable methods and proceeded to build the Western Palace. But apparently his good luck excited the jealousy of others no better than he: his prophet, either of his own sweet will or through somebody's instigation, managed to tell His Majesty, the Great Emperor of Great Han, that he was no "Yi-in" at all: that the whole thing, the prophet and Place and the rest of it, was a money-making scheme of Kim Jung Sik. The Great Emperor of Great Han ordered the arrest of the prophet-discoverer who is now in durance vile meditating, no doubt, on the unprofitableness of the prophet-manufacture.
51
That man is not likely the happiest in the world whose wife makes no efforts to please him, but persists in doing exactly what he dislikes. She may think that a Christian wife is not called upon to exercise grace and tact in the little affairs of a simple home and that it is sinful to respect the wishes and prejudices, however innocent, of her husband. But she forgets that the happiness of a home largely depends on the sweet discharge of womanly offices. Because a man is fretful after a day's worry and irritation, that is no reason why she should drive him to further fretfulness by being stiff, indifferent and contrary. But then he should blame himself and no one else for having been such a fool. May I ask the man if he has been all a husband should be? If not, then, peace, be still!
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