Here is a link to download a Kindle-friendly version of the book.

This book was published in 1911 – which is when Japan formally annexed Korea after virtually taking it over in 1905.   You can find a handful of books from around this time detailing the situation in Korea and the Japanese colonial effort. 

Some are written by missionaries.  Some by other long-time foreign residents in Korea.  Some by academics on contemporary politics.  (There are also numerous books at the rise of Japanese power in Asia and the potential clash with the United States.)

I skipped the first sections of the book that overview Korean history.  The part on the annexation by Japan might interest some.  Also, I am reading it on Kindle, so I won’t give page numbers, because there aren’t any…

Seoul

Here is an early note on Seoul that I found interesting.  It reminds me of horrible descriptions of London before modern sanitation:

All the streets are entirely innocent of sidewalks, but instead each is beautified with an open ditch with serves as a sewer for all manner of filth known to a great city like this.  The houses are built in long rows along the sides of these ditches, every house being provided with a convenient loophole through which all manner of filth is daily dumped into the open ditch.

No wonder the capital city was the focal point of life in Korea but so many people chose to live outside its walls.

There are but few temples in the city; in fact there is but one that is worthy the name.  This is the Temple of Heaven, where his Majesty is supposed to worship.

The last dynasty in Korea (Joseon/Chosun) was established in 1392 by mostly Confucian-oriented scholar-nobles.  They blamed the weakness of the Goryeo/Koryo government on Buddhism, and over a period of centuries, they dramatically limited Buddhist practice throughout the nation.  (The Confucian Transformation of Korea)

Shopping

The articles of trade are placed around the three sides of the room and piled about in different places, to display them to the passer-by.  The customer does not enter the shop, but stands in the street while he makes his purchase.. The merchant sits on a mat in the middle of the room, from which point he can reach almost everything in stock.

Economic Life

In the capital there are many people who have no business-that is to say, they are gentlemen of leisure.  They are gentlemen, and gentlemen are not supposed to meddle with such sordid matters as manufacture and merchandise-no, not even office work, unless it be an office connected with the government.

This is another aspect of the Confucianization of Korean culture.  That doesn’t mean that pre-modern Korean society was bustling with economic activity before Joseon.  It does mean that the type of economic development that took place in Japan in the 19th and 20th centuries was hampered in Korea by the strength of Confucianism. 

I haven’t read much on this in Korean literature and history, but the opening of Korea by the US and Western powers, and the encroachment of Japanese imperial power in the late 1800s led many Korean intellectuals to despise the Confucianization of the society.  (Evaluation of Confucianism and the “historical weakness” of Korea also led some of them to pro-Japanese activity – even if the idea was that a stronger Korea in the future would naturally pull back away from Japan.)

The business of a gentleman is to hold office and rule the people, and Seoul is supremely a city of gentlemen.

Many of these gentlemen spend the greater part of their lives hanging around waiting for some office-which they never get, for the simple reason that they cannot raise the money enough to pay for it.

In short, traditional Korean society (at least in Joseon) saw Big Government as the focal point of social aspirations.  Educated people studied for the Civil Service Exams (Gwageo/Kwago) in order to establish themselves at government – either in the capital or provincial or local levels.  (It is useful to remember that Korean society kept hold of the original principles of Neo-Confucianism more than even Chinese civilization.  Korean scholar-elites even sent criticism to the Chinese after reformations like that by Wang Yangming.)

That is not to say there was no business being done in the capital:

The markets are conducted every morning in the wide streets inside the South and East Gates.  They are open and the traders ready for business every morning long before sun up.

The Village

Plan, did I say?  There is hardly any plan to any of them. They all seem to have been built one house at a time, without the least reference to what would be needed in the future enlargement of the place.

No tubs are used, but water is poured over the clothes while they are being beaten with a paddle; and the water, after passing through the soiled clothes, often finds its way back into the well by the nearest route.

What in America would be called the backyard is always in the front yard in our village.  That is to say, the pigpen and all other outhouses that would be found in the backyard or in the garden of an American home are here found in the street or in the front.

Making a village house:

The foundation is prepared by first throwing up the dirt till it is higher than the surrounding ground.  It is a strange sight to see a crowd of men packing this foundation.  The leader of the band with a drum keeps time, while each man with a small stick pounds the ground, at the same time stamping it with his feet.

…[Walls] which are made by first weaving in a sort of basket-work of small sticks and tying them with straw rope.  Mud is plastered to this till the wall is about three inches thick.  The best of these walls are finished up with a coat of lime and sand, but the larger part of these houses never get this finishing touch.

Every house has at least two rooms, the living room ad the cook shed.  For the latter always, even in the best houses, there is nothing more than mother earth for the floor. 

Local Politics

The government of the village is very simple.  Every village has its elders, who are usually the older and more prominent men in the village…They are selected, however, by a sort of general consent of their fellow-villagers and confirmed by the county magistrate…Then, too, another important part of their business is to assist the tax collector in squeezing the people.

Village Life

There are no secrets in the village.  Everybody knows everybody else’s business equally as well as he knows his own…

In case of fire in a village, the people whose house is burning will do all they can to extinguish the flames, while their neighbors may be seen standing on the tops of their houses waving a pair of trousers in the air to keep the fire spirit from coming their way.

These villages are found not only along the main road, but they are to be found everywhere that farm lands can be obtained.  Often a large village of several hundred houses is found away back in some valley where nothing of the sort would be expected.

  The next chapter of the book covers Family Life and has an extended section about how the father, then eldest son, is the head of the family, with authority and responsibility, until he dies. 

I don’t know how much that is still true today (2011), but you could still see its influence among the adults I taught in the late-1990s.

Slavery

Slavery must be taken into account in discussing the family life of the well-to-do, since it is part of the social custom and law of the land.  There are no male slaves, though the condition of many men is little better than slavery. 

The women are real slaves, being bought and sold the same as pigs and cows, and are recognized as the property of their master.

In former times this was true of men also, but more than three hundred years ago, at the time of the great Japanese invasion, so many of the men were killed that a decree went forth that there were to be no more male slaves…

…The slave women are in some sense the freest women in the country…They go where they please, without regard to being seen by men, wearing no covering over their faces as do the other women.