Corea: The Hermit Nation

This little country included fifty-four tribes or clans, each one independent of the other, and living under a sort of patriarchal government. The larger tribes are said to have been composed of ten thousand, and the smaller of a thousand, families each. Round numbers, however, in ancient records are worth little for critical purposes.

South of the Ma-han was the Ben-han, in which were twelve tribes, having the same manners and customs as the Ma-han, and speaking a different yet kindred dialect. One of these clans formed the little kingdom of Amana, from which came the first visit of Coreans recorded in the Japanese annals.

After the overthrow of his family and kingdom by the traitor Wei-man, Kijun, the king of old Chō-sen escaped to the sea and fled south toward the archipelago. He had with him a number of his faithful adherents, their wives and children. He landed among one of the clans of Ma-han, composed of Chinese refugees, who, not wishing to live under the Han emperors, had crossed the Yellow Sea. On account of their numbering, originally, one hundred families, they called themselves Hiaksai. Either by conquest or invitation Kijun soon became their king. Glimpses of the manner of life of these early people are given by a Chinese writer.

The Ma-han people were agricultural, dwelling in villages, but neither driving nor riding oxen or horses, most probably because they did not possess them. Their huts were made of earth banked upon timber, with the door in the roof. They went bareheaded, and coiled or tied their hair in a knot. They set no value on gold, jewels, or embroidery, but wore pearls sewed on their clothes and hung on their necks and ears. Perhaps the word here translated “pearl” may be also applied to drilled stones of a cylindrical or curved shape, like the magatama, or “bent jewels,” of the ancient Japanese. They shod their feet with sandals, and wore garments of woven stuff. In etiquette they were but slightly advanced, paying little honor to women or to the aged. Like our Indian bucks, the young men tested their endurance by torture. Slitting the skin of the back, they ran a cord through the flesh, upon which was hung a piece of wood. This was kept suspended till the man, unable longer to endure it, cried out to have it taken off. [32]

After the field work was over, in early summer, they held drinking bouts, in honor of the spirits, with songs and dances. Scores of men, quickly following each other, stamped on the ground to beat time as they danced. In the late autumn, after harvests, they repeated these ceremonies. In each clan there was a man, chosen as ruler, to sacrifice to the spirits of heaven. On a great pole they hung drums and bells for the service of the heavenly spirits. Perhaps these are the originals of the tall and slender pagodas with their pendant wind-bells at the many eaves and corners.

Among the edible products of Ma-han were fowls with tails five feet in length. These “hens with tails a yard long” were evidently pheasants—still a delicacy on Corean tables. The large apple-shaped pears, which have a wooden taste, half way between a pear and an apple, were then, as now, produced in great numbers. The flavor improves by cooking.

As Kijun’s government was one of vigor, his subjects advanced in civilization, the Hiaksai people gradually extended their authority and influence. The clan names in time faded away or became symbols of family bonds instead of governmental authority, so that by the fourth century Hiaksai had become paramount over all the fifty-four tribes of Ma-han, as well as over some of those of the other two han.

Thus arose the kingdom of Hiaksai (called also Kudara by the Japanese, Petsi by the Chinese, and Baiji by the modern Coreans), which has a history extending to the tenth century, when it was extinguished in name and fact in united Corea.

Its relations with Japan were, in the main, friendly, the islanders of the Sunrise Kingdom being comrades in arms with them against their invaders, the Chinese, and their hostile neighbors, the men of Shinra—whose origin we shall now proceed to detail.

After the fall of the Tsin dynasty in China, a small body of refugees, leaving their native seats, fled across the Yellow Sea toward the Sea of Japan, resting only when over the great mountain chain. They made settlements in the valleys and along the sea-coast. At first they preserved their blood and language pure, forming one of the twelve clans or tribes into which the han or country was divided. [33]

This name Shin (China or Chinese), which points to the origin of the clan, belonged to but one of the twelve tribes in eastern Corea. As in the case of Hiaksai, the Shin tribe, being possessed of superior power and intelligence, extended their authority and boundaries, gradually becoming very powerful. Under their twenty-second hereditary chief, or “king,” considering themselves paramount over all the clans, they changed the name of their country to Shinra, which is pronounced in Chinese Sinlo.

Between the years 29 and 70 A.D., according to the Japanese histories, an envoy from Shinra arrived in Japan, and after an audience had of the mikado, presented him with mirrors, swords, jade, and other works of skill and art. In this we have a hint as to the origin of Japanese decorative art. It is evident from these gifts, as well as from the reports of Chinese historians concerning the refined manners, the hereditary aristocracy, and the fortified strongholds of the Shinra people, that their grade of civilization was much higher than that of their northern neighbors. It was certainly superior to that of the Japanese, who, as we shall see, were soon tempted to make descents upon the fertile lands, rich cities, and defenceless coasts of their visitors from the west.

How long the Chinese colonists who settled in Shin-han preserved their language and customs is not known. Though these were lost after a few generations, yet it is evident that their influence on the aborigines of the country was very great. From first to last Shinra excelled in civilization all the petty states in the peninsula, of which at first there were seventy-eight. Unlike the Ma-han, the Shin-han people lived in palisaded cities, and in houses the doors of which were on the ground and not on the roof. They cultivated mulberry-trees, reared the silk-worm, and wove silk into fine fabrics. They used wagons with yoked oxen, and horses for draught, and practised “the law of the road.” Marriage was conducted with appropriate ceremony. Dancing, drinking, and singing were favorite amusements, and the lute was played in addition to drums. They understood the art of smelting and working iron, and used this metal as money. They carried on trade with the other han, and with Japan. How far these arts owed their encouragement or origin to traders, or travelling merchants from China, is not known. Evidently Shinra enjoyed leadership in the peninsula, largely from her culture, wealth, and knowledge of iron. The curious custom, so well known among [34]American savages, of flattening the heads of newly born infants, is noted among the Shin-han people.

Neither Chinese history nor Japanese tradition, though they give us some account of a few hundred families of emigrants from China who settled in the already inhabited Corean peninsula, throws any light on the aborigines as to whence or when they came. The curtain is lifted only to show us that a few people are already there, with language and customs different from those of China. The descendants of the comparatively few Chinese settlers were no doubt soon lost, with their language and ancestral customs, among the mass of natives. These aboriginal tribes were destined to give way to a new people from the far north, as we shall learn in our further narrative. The Japanese historians seem to distinguish between the San Han, the three countries or confederacies of loosely organized tribes, and the San Goku, or Three Kingdoms. The Coreans, however, speak only of the Sam-han, meaning thereby the three political divisions of the peninsula, and using the word as referring rather to the epoch. The common “cash,” or fractional coin current in the country, bears the characters meaning “circulating medium of the Three Kingdoms,” or Sam-han. These were Korai in the north, Shinra in the southeast, and Hiaksai in the southwest. Other Japanese names for these were respectively Komé, Shiriaki, and Kudara, the Chinese terms being Kaoli, Sinlo, and Pe-tsi.

Like the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Wales, called also Britannia, Caledonia, and Cambria, these Corean states were distinct in origin, were conquered by a race from without, received a rich infusion of alien blood, struggled in rivalry for centuries, and were finally united into one nation, with one flag and one sovereign.

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