The Epic Of Korea

By A. Wigfall Green

A fascinating history of the Korean peninsula. From its earliest populated human origins up until the present day.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: May 31, 2013
• ISBN: 9781473384125

Book preview

1

INTRODUCTION

AS this book goes to press, Korea has become the proving ground of civilization—the arena in which the fate of mankind is being contested. Here the weakness and strength of man’s attempt to create a world organization with power to restore peace and grant freedom to all people are being tried.

War is not new to Korea. It has had more than its fill of war in the past. Here Manchu and Mongolian battled; here, with five thousand men, the Chinese refugee Kija founded a dynasty that lasted a thousand years; here, even before the Spanish Armada, the Koreans defeated the Japanese navy with the first ironclad ship; here, in the same year, 1592, the flying bomb was invented; here, in the nineteenth century, the submarine became a menace and a protection to mankind. Here, at the turn of the twentieth century, China, Russia, and Japan struggled for supremacy; and here, in the middle of that century, Democracy and Communism faced each other for a showdown.

Korea, to some Americans, is a land of gooks. Every one knows vaguely, but no one specifically, what a gook is. Perhaps a gook is any one other than a North American, but he is, more especially, an Oriental: a native of any of the South Pacific islands, a Filipino, a Japanese, a Chinaman, or a Korean. He is one whose turn of mind is not Western or American. He is one whose culture is so different that the average American cannot understand him. Gook is sometimes used to belittle; but it is also used to express familiarity and even fondness, as Hello, Joe! is used by the American in greeting the Filipino, or the Filipino the American.

Korea is a land of gooks; the Korean is a gook. He is incomprehensible because his thought processes are different, his philosophy not of the earth but of the air. He belongs to another world. But just when we think that we can never understand the Korean, the light of comprehension shows in his dark eyes and in his ready smile and laughter, and we call him gook with foolish tenderness. Almost unwittingly we find ourselves so fond of him that we want to shelter him from all harm.

But Korea is more than a land of gooks: it is a land of insuperable beauty. Over one who has an irrepressible urge to see the ends of the earth, Korea casts a spell: Korea gives a warm welcome to the man who follows the sea up the long rivers, often yellow, past bald or wooded hills or mountains, into the safe anchorages. Korea is as grand in natural scenery as Switzerland, with its Everwhite Mountains in the far north, its Diamond Mountains fringing the eastern seaboard, and its numberless cascades and overhanging rocks—all endowed with life by the Korean.

Korea is a land of the old and the new: its burial mounds and chambers make every one who sees them want to grab a spade and start to dig. The tombs yield antique vases, jade, and other rare jewels.

Among the antiquities of Korea are a seventh-century observatory and a sundial, a barometer, and an instrument for measuring precipitation, all going back to the fifteenth century.

In the thirteenth century, long before the West knew of the possibility of printing with movable type, a Korean was actually printing with such type, and in the fifteenth century an entire encyclopedia was so printed. In the same century, a phonetic alphabet was devised.

Almost two centuries before Sir Francis Bacon cried for, and began, a codification of English law, the law of Korea was codified.

Korea excels in ancient and modern music. An orchestra of royal ancestry has been playing for five hundred years. Folksongs can be heard everywhere, and every town and city presents operas, ancient and modern, Oriental and Occidental.

In Korea, as nowhere else in the world, the mysticism of the natives has been blended with the philosophy of the greatest religious thinkers: Shinto, Buddhism, and Confucianism have been commingled with Christianity, thought to have entered Korea with Marco Polo.

Korea is a land of true culture. It has sifted all that Old China had, transformed it, and passed it on to Japan and the rest of the world.

Korea is the strongest link between the East and the West. It is worth knowing. If the American is as keen in his desire to know Korea as the Korean is to know America, the West will come to understand the East and the East the West, and, because of such knowledge, each will be enriched.

2

THE COUNTRY

IF inverted, Korea resembles the Gulf of California in shape and size. Its area of about 85,000 square miles is somewhat larger than the total combined land and water areas of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. Viewed comparatively with other nations better known to the world, it is nearly twice the size of Greece, two and one-half times the size of Portugal, five times the size of Switzerland, seven times the size of Belgium, and eight times the size of Palestine.

Not large in area, Korea is, nevertheless, one of the major countries of the world in population, although at least one-tenth of all Koreans live outside Korea. The portion of Korea occupied by Russia had an estimated population of 10,000,000. There are slightly fewer than 20,000,000 in the southern area, making a total of about 30,000,000 for the entire nation.¹ Using, however, the 1940 figure of 23,000,000 for the entire nation, the population of Korea is approximately two-thirds of that of France, the same as that of Spain, and three times that of Portugal. Coming closer to home, Korea has 3,500,000 people more than Mexico and about twice as many as either Argentina or Canada.

Beauty abounds in Korea. The peninsula, dividing the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan, is five hundred miles long and one hundred thirty-five miles wide on the average. It has more than six thousand miles of coastline, which about equals the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coastlines of the United States combined. Including the coastline of the Korean islands, about five thousand four hundred miles in length, Korea has a coastline which is more than three thousand miles more extensive than the combined Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf of Mexico coastlines of the United States. A mountain range runs near the eastern coast of the peninsula from the north to the south. The Diamond Mountains and the tall, silent forests in the north are retreats of virginal beauty. In the denuded south, the hills, like gaunt skeletons, show their bare ribs of rock.

The Yalu and the Tumen rivers form the northern boundary line of Korea. Vladivostok is but a hundred miles from the Korean border, to the east. Port Arthur, less than the distance from Key West to Havana, is but twice that distance west of Korea. Thus Russia would welcome possession of the mainland, Manchuria or Korea, or both, which separates two invaluable ports. The Han, or The River, is about four hundred yards wide at Seoul, the capital city.

Seoul, which means Capital, was renamed Keijo by the Japanese. The capital is a hill-girt city of about two million people, situated on the west coast at about the center of the peninsula. It is a city sad but stately, clamorous but philosophic. From the hills on an early spring morning or a late autumn afternoon, it is tranquilly beautiful. When the cherry blossoms bloom and a late snow falls, it is painfully beautiful. Pusan, the great port in the southeast, is scarcely more than a hundred miles from Japan. Pingyang is the ancient capital and city of culture of the northwest.

Before World War II, nearly two million tons of fish were taken annually from Korea’s waters, more than from American waters. Korea has foxes and deer, wild boars and bears, and leopards and man-eating tigers. It used to be said that in North Korea during six months of the year the Koreans hunt the tigers and during the other six months the tigers hunt the Koreans. Under the Russo-American occupation it was said that during six months of the year the Russians hunted the Americans and during the other six months the Americans hunted the Russians. Fowl abound, from the hummingbird and the skylark to the duck and the swan. When one walks into a forest, there is a flurry of pheasants’ wings as the birds clumsily take off in their sudden, frightened flight.

Hot springs are plentiful. They are used not only for bathing but also for washing the multicolored native clothing and for heating houses.

Throughout Korea there are vestiges of a greatness known only in ancient Egypt, in Yucatan, and in China. What King Alfred says in the preface to the Pastoral Care might well be applied to Korea: Our elders, those who formerly held these places, loved wisdom, and through it they begot weal, which they left to us. Here men may yet see their path, but we cannot follow it, and, therefore, we have lost both the wisdom and the weal because we would not incline to their path with our minds.

In the heart of Seoul itself are three imperial palaces, one modern and two ancient. In the ancient palaces at the time of the first invasion of Westerners, there were at least four thousand in the imperial retinue, concubines and eunuchs, sorcerers and mystics, princes and politicians. In one of these palaces, the Syotoku Palace or East Palace, the imperial library, with its rare, handwritten and printed tomes, bears mute testimony to the genius of the Korean in bookmaking, in the manufacture of the finest paper and ink in the East, and perhaps in the world, and in the invention of printing with metal type. A botanical garden, rich with the perfume of the East, and a zoological garden, maintained by the Japanese through the war, indicate the luxurious and scholarly taste of the emperors. Massive upturned roofs, with carved animals and birds peering from the ends of rafters, rise, layer upon layer, to an Oriental heaven. Tall cedar columns, stained or lacquered and carved, are massive enough to support Solomon’s Temple. Gigantic doors are lacquered in Korean red or blue, almost as vivid in luster as when applied centuries ago. A part of this palace was destroyed in 1593 during a Japanese invasion. The second of the ancient imperial palaces, the Keihuku Palace, is at the foot of the mountains overhanging the principal avenue of Seoul. It was built a hundred years ago by the father of the last King Li on the site of a palace burned in 1592. Here there are vast, empty audience chambers and a banqueting hall eighty feet by one hundred feet, from which one descends by carved marble stairs to water gardens filled with islets, all surrounded by green terraces with pillared summerhouses. In front of this palace is the Government-general Building, or the Capitol, a structure of such delicate design that the very granite of which it is built appears to float in the air. The architect subtly blended structure and setting: at a distance, the graceful dome of the Capitol appears to be at the foot of the black mountains behind it; but, as one approaches, the dome rears itself above the mountains and appears to surmount them. On each side of the main entrance there is in carved marble a fabulous amphibious animal, part sea-lion and part dog, with the eyes of a human being. These animals are supposed to frighten away fire, particularly fire originating in volcanic action. The foyer of the Capitol is open to the dome, with broad marble staircases leading to two balconies. On the second floor is the Throne Room, renamed the Surrender Room after World War II because here the surrender was accepted from the Japanese by the Americans. At the far end of the room is a dais, richly canopied. During the Japanese occupation, to gild the bitter pill of dethronement, the Korean royalty were permitted to sit here in audience to their former Korean vassals.

An ancient crenelated wall, in places more than twenty feet high, encircles the entire city of Seoul. Although not so Cyclopean as the Great Wall of China, this wall lends a Gothic charm to the city. In the mountainous sections, downward embrasures permit the rolling or firing of missiles on an approaching enemy. From the mountain top, signals were flashed by the building of fires. Huge, ornate gates, formerly closed at night, pierce the wall at the north, south, east, and west.

Lifting one’s eyes to the hills, Buddhas sometimes appear on the sheer face of the rock, carved more than a thousand years ago. And not infrequently in caves one finds bas-reliefs of great antiquity and beauty.

From almost any elevation in the country it is possible to see in the distance innumerable circular mounds, resembling beehives or balls which have been halved, the rounded surface on top. Usually these grassy mounds have been placed at the base of hills which have been concaved. These beehives are the graves of the Korean dead. The mounds usually face the east, where the sun can shine upon them all day. They are not placed at the foot of mountains, for the mountain peaks obscure them from the sun. Geomancers were employed to fix the sites of the mounds. They are anywhere from two feet to twenty feet in height, depending upon the economic and social station of the deceased. Usually stone figures of rams and other animals appear to stand guard by the mounds; and stone figures, often of life or heroic size, of wise men holding scrolls of Oriental prophecy are placed in two columns facing each other on each side of a royal mound. Sometimes the ascent to the mound consists of terrace

Reviews for The Epic Of Korea

[André de Bruyn · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Spelling mistake ridden. Reads like the final word with personal views and no nuance. Mostly trying to compare Korea to America. Avoid