Corea: The Hermit Nation

The fashion of mourning, the proper place and time to shed tears and express grief according to regulations, are rigidly prescribed in an official treatise or “Guide to Mourners,” published by the government. The corpse must be placed in a coffin of very thick wood, and preserved during many months in a special room prepared and ornamented for this purpose. It is proper to weep only in this death-chamber, but this must be done three or four times daily. Before entering it, the mourner must don a special weed, which consists of a gray cotton frock coat, torn, patched, and as much soiled as possible. The girdle must be of twisted straw and silk, made into a rope of the thickness of the wrist. Another cord, the thickness of the thumb, is wound round the head, which is covered with dirty linen, each of the rope’s ends falling upon the cheek. A special kind of sandals is worn, and a big knotty stick completes the costume of woe. In the prescribed weeds the mourner enters the death-chamber in the morning on rising, and before each meal. He carries a little table filled with food, which he places upon a tray at the side of the coffin. The person who is master of the mourners presides at the ceremonies. Prostrate, and struck by the stick, he utters dolorous groans, sounding “ai-kō” if for a parent. For other relatives he groans out “oi, oi.” According to the noise and length of the groans and weeping, so will the good opinion of the public be. The lamentations over, the mourner retires, doffs the mourning robes, and eats his food. At the new and the full moon, all the relatives are invited and expected to assist at the ceremonies. These practices continue more or less even after burial, and at intervals during several years. Often a noble will go out to weep and kneel at the tomb, passing a day, and even a night, in this position. In some instances, mourners have built a little house [278]before the grave, and watched there for years, thus winning a high reputation for filial piety.

Among the poor, who have not the means to provide a death-chamber and expensive mourning, the coffin is kept outside their houses covered with mats until the time of sepulture.

Though cremation, or “burying in the fire,” is known in Chō-sen, the most usual form of disposing of the dead is by inhumation. Children are wrapped up in the clothes and bedding in which they die, and are thus buried. As unmarried persons are reckoned as children, their shroud and burial are the same. With the married and adult, the process is more costly, and the ceremonial more detailed and prolonged. This, which is described very fully in Ross’ “Corea,” and with which Hamel’s curt notes agree, consists of minute ceremonial and mourning among the living and the washing, combing, nail-paring, robing, and laying out in state of the dead, with calling of the spirits, and with screens, lights, and offerings, according to Confucian ritual. In many interesting features, the most ancient rites of China have survived in the peninsula after they have become obsolete in the former country. The very old tombs opened, and the painted coffins, coated with many layers of silicious paint, dug up near Shanghai recently, are much like those of the Coreans.

The coffin, which fits the body, is made air-tight with wax, resin, or varnish, and is borne on a bier to the grave by men who make this their regular business. Often there are two coffins, one inside the other. Sons follow the body of their father on foot, relatives ride in palanquins or on horseback. Prominent at the head of the procession is the red standard containing the titles and honors of the deceased. This banner, or sa-jen, has two points on it to frighten away the spirits, and at the funeral of a high officer, a man wears a hideous mask for the same purpose. When there are no titles, only the name of the deceased is inscribed upon the banner.

The selection of a proper site for a tomb is a matter of profound solicitude, time, and money; for the geomancers must be consulted with a fee. The pung-sui superstition requires for the comfort of both living and dead that the right site should be chosen. Judging from the number of times the word “mountain” enters into terms relating to burial, most interments are on the hillsides. If these are not done properly, trouble will [279]arise, and the bones must then be dug up, collected, and reburied, often at heavy expense. Thousands of professional cheats and self-duped people live by working upon the feelings of the bereaved through this superstition.

The tombs of the poor consist only of the grave and a low mound of earth. These mounds, subjected to the forces of nature, and often trampled upon by cattle, disappear after the lapse of a few years, and oblivion settles over the spot.

With the richer class monuments are of stone, sometimes neat or even imposing, sometimes grotesque. Some, as the pi-popi, are shaped like a house or miniature temple; or, two stones, cut in the form of a ram and a horse respectively, are placed before the sepulchre. The man-tu, “gazing headstone,” consists of two monoliths or columns of masonry, flanking the tomb on either side, so that the soul of the dead, changed into a bird, may repose peacefully. In the graveyards are many tombs paved with granite slabs around the temple model, but for the most part a Corean cemetery is filled with little obelisks, or tall, square columns, either pointed at the top or surmounted with the effigy of a human head, or a rudely sculptured stone image, which strangely reminds a foreigner of “patience on a monument, smiling at grief.” This apparition of a human head rising above the tall grass of the burial-ground may be the original of Japanese pictures of the ghosts and spirits which seem to rise dark and windblown out of the wet grass. Often the carving in Corean grave-yards is so rude as to be almost indistinguishable.

Mourning is of many degrees and lengths, and is betokened by dress, abstinence from food and business, visits to the tomb, offerings, tablets, and many visible indications, detailed even to absurdity. Pure, or nearly pure white is the mourning color, as a contrast to red, the color of rejoicing. Even the rivets of the fan, the strings on the shoes, and the carrying of a staff in addition to the mourning-hat, betoken the uniform of woe.

When noblemen don the peaked hat, which covers the face as well as the head, they are as dead to the world—not to be spoken to, molested, or even arrested if charged with crime. This Corean mourning hat proved “the helmet of salvation” to Christians, and explains the safety of the French missionaries who lived so long in disguise, unharmed in the country where the police were as lynxes and hounds ever on their track. The Jesuits were not [280]slow to see the wonderful shelter promised for them, and availed themselves of it at once and always.

The royal sepulchres within the peninsula have attracted more than one unlawful descent upon the shores of Chō-sen. The various dynasties of sovereigns during the epoch of the Three Kingdoms in the old capitals of these states, the royal lines of Kokorai at Ping-an, of Korai at Sunto, and of the ruling house at Seoul, have made Corea during her two thousand years of history rich in royal tombs. These are in various parts of the country, and those which are known are under the care of the government.

Are these mausoleums filled with gold or jewels? Foreign grave-robbers have believed so, and shown their faith by their works, as we shall see. French priests in the country have said so. The ancient Chinese narratives descriptive of the customs of the Fuyu people, confirm the general impression. Without having the facts at hand to demonstrate what eager foreigners have believed, we know that vast treasures have been spent upon the decoration of the royal sepulchres, and the erection of memorial buildings over them, and that the fear of their violation by foreign or native outlaws has been for centuries ever before the Corean people. That these fears have too often been justified, we shall find when we read of that memorable year, A.D. 1866. The profuse vocabulary of terms relating to burial, mourning, and memorial tablets in Corea show their intense loyalty to the Confucian doctrines, the power of superstition, and the shocking waste of the resources of the living upon the dead.

The voluble Corean envoys when in Tōkiō, visited the Naval College, and on learning that in certain emergencies the students from distant provinces were not allowed to go home to attend the funeral of their parents, nor to absent themselves from duty on account of mourning, were amazed beyond measure, and for a few moments literally speechless from surprise. It is hard for a Corean to understand the sayings of Jesus to the disciple who asked, “Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father,” and “Let the dead bury their dead.”

From the view-point of political economy, this lavish expense of time, energy, money, and intellect upon corpses and superstition is beneficial. Without knowing of Malthus or his theories, the Chō-senese have hit upon a capital method of limiting population, and keeping the country in a state of chronic poverty. [281]The question has been asked the writer, “How can a people, pent in a little mountainous peninsula like Corea, exist for centuries without overpopulating their territory?”

Wars, famine, pestilence, ordinary poverty answer the question in part. The absurd and rigorous rules of mourning, requiring frightful expense, postponement of marriage to young people—who even when betrothed must mourn three years for parents and grandparents, actual and expected, the impoverishing of the people, and the frequent hindrances to marriage at the proper season, serve to keep down population. This fact is an often chosen subject for native anecdotes and romances. The vexations and delays often caused by the long periods of idle mourning required by etiquette, are well illustrated by the following story, from the “Grammaire Coréenne,” which is intended to show the sympathy of the king Cheng-chong (1776 to 1800) with his subjects. It is entitled “A Trait of Royal Solicitude.”

It was about New Year’s that Cheng-chong walked about here and there within the palace enclosure. Having come to the place reserved for the candidates at the literary examinations, he looked through a crack in the gate. The competitors had nearly all gone away to spend the New Year holidays at home, and there remained only two of them, who were talking together.

“Well, all the others have gone off to spend New Year’s at home; isn’t it deplorable that we two, having no place to go to, must be nailed here?”

“Yes, truly,” said the other; “you have no longer either wife, children, or house. How is this?”

“Listen to my story,” said the first man. “My parents, thinking of my marriage, had arranged my betrothal, but some time before the preparations were concluded, my future grandfather died, and it became necessary to wait three years. Hardly had I put off mourning, when I was called on to lament the death of my poor father. I was now compelled to wait still three years. These three years finished, behold my mother-in-law who was to be died, and three years passed away. Finally, I had the misfortune to lose my poor mother, which required me to wait again three years. And so, three times four—a dozen years—have elapsed, during which we have waited the one for the other. By this time she, who was to be my wife, fell ill. As she was upon the point of death, I went to make her a visit. My intended brother-in-law came to see me, found me, and said, ‘Although [282]the ceremonies of marriage have not been made, they may certainly consider you as married, therefore come and see her.’ Upon his invitation I entered her house, but we had hardly blown a puff of smoke, one before the other, than she died.

“Seeing this, I have no more wished even to dream at night. I am not yet married. You may understand, then, why I have neither wife, children, nor home.”

In his turn the other thus spoke: “My house was extremely poor. Our diet looked like fasting. We had no means of freeing ourselves from embarrassment. When the day of the examination came I presented myself. During my absence my wife contrived [283]in such a manner, that putting in the brazier a farthing’s worth of charcoal, she set a handful of rice to cook in a skillet, and settled herself to wait for me. She served this to me every time I came back. But I never obtained a degree. The day on which I was at last received as a bachelor of arts, on returning after examination, I found that she had as before lighted the charcoal, put to boil a dish of soup, and seating herself before the fire, she waited. In this position she was dead.

“At sight of this my grief was without bounds. Having no desire to contract a new union, I have never re-married.”

Hearing these narratives, Cheng-chong was touched with pity. Entering the palace, seating himself upon the throne, and having had the two scholars brought in, he said to them:

“All the other scholars have gone to their homes to spend New Year’s. Why have not you two gone also?” They answered, “Your servants having no house to go to, remained here.”

“What does that mean?” said Cheng-chong. “The fowls and the dogs, oxen and horses have shelter. The birds have also a hole to build their nests in. Can it be that men have no dwelling? There should be a reason for this. Speak plainly.” One of the scholars answered: “Your servant’s affairs are so-and-so. I have come even till now without re-marriage. It is because I have neither wife, child, nor family.”

The story being exactly like that which he had heard before, the king cried out, “Too bad!”

Then addressing the other, he put this question: “And you, how is it that you are reduced to this condition?” He answered, “My story is almost the same.”

“What do you wish? Speak!” replied the king.

“The circumstances being such and such, I am at this moment without wife and without food. That is my condition.”

As there was in all this nothing different from the preceding, the king, struck with compassion, bestowed upon them immediately lucrative offices.

If he had not examined for himself, how could he have been able to know such unfortunate men, and procure for them so happy a position in the world? In truth, the goodness of his Majesty Cheng-chong has become celebrated. [284]