Corea: The Hermit Nation

America became a commercial rival to Chō-sen as early as 1757, when the products of Connecticut and Massachusetts lay side by side with Corean imports in the markets of Peking and Canton. Ginseng, the most precious drug in the Chinese pharmacopœia, had been for ages brought from Manchuria and the neighboring peninsula, where, on the mountains, the oldest and richest roots are found.

The Dutch traders, at once noticing the insatiable demand for the famed remedy, sought all over the world for a supply. The sweetish and mucilaginous root, though considered worthless by Europeans, was then occasionally bringing its weight in gold, and usually seven times its weight in silver, at Peking, and the merchants in the annual embassy from Seoul were reaping a rich harvest. Besides selling the younger and less valuable crop in its natural condition, they had factories in which the two-legged roots—which to the Asiatic imagination suggested the figure of the human body they were meant to refresh—were so manipulated as to take on the appearance of age, thus enhancing their price in the market.

Suddenly the Corean market was broken. Stimulated by the Dutch merchants at Albany, the Indians of Massachusetts had found the fleshy root growing abundantly on the hills around Stockbridge in Massachusetts. Taking it to Albany, they exchanged it for hardware, trinkets, and rum. While the Dutch domines were scandalized at the drunken revels of the “Yankee” Indians, who equalled the Mohawks in their inebriation, good Jonathan Edwards at Stockbridge was grieving over the waywardness of his dusky flock, because they had gone wild over ginseng-hunting.

The Hollanders, shipping the bundled roots on their galliots down the Hudson, and thence to Amsterdam and London, sold them to the British East India Company at a profit of five hundred per cent. Landed at Canton, and thence carried to Peking, American ginseng broke the market, forced the price to a shockingly low figure, and dealt a heavy blow to the Corean monopoly. [389]

Henceforth a steady stream of ginseng—now found in limitless quantities in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys—poured into China. Though far inferior to the best article, it (Aralia quinquefolia) is sufficiently like it in taste and real or imaginary qualities to rival the root of Chō-sen, which is not of the very highest grade.

Less than a generation had passed from the time that the western end of Massachusetts had any influence on Corea or China, before there was brought from the far East an herb that influenced the colony at her other end, far otherwise than commercially. Massachusetts had sent ginseng to Canton, China now sent tea to Massachusetts. The herb from Amoy was pitched into the sea by men dressed and painted like the Indians, and the Revolution followed.

The war for independence over, Captain John Greene, in the ship Empress of China, sailed from New York, February 22, 1784. Major Samuel Shaw, the supercargo, without government aid or recognition, established American trade with China, living at Canton during part of the year 1786 and the whole of 1787 and 1788. Having been appointed consul by President Washington in 1789, while on a visit home, Major Shaw returned to China in an entirely new ship, the Massachusetts, built, navigated, and owned by American citizens. At Canton he held the office of consul certainly until the year 1790, and presumably until his death in 1794. This first consul of the United States in China received his commission from Congress, on condition that he should “not be entitled to receive any salary, fees, or emoluments whatever.”

Animated by the spirit of independence, and a laudable ambition, the resolute citizen of the New World declared that “the Americans must have tea, and they seek the most lucrative market for their precious root ginseng.”1

It was ginseng and tea—an exchange of the materials for drink, a barter of tonics—that brought the Americans and Chinese, and finally the Americans and Coreans together. [390]

Cotton was the next American raw material exported to China, beginning in 1791. In 1842 the loaded ships sailed direct from Alabama to Canton, on the expansion of trade after the Opium War.

The idea now began to dawn upon some minds that it was high time that Japan and Corea should be opened to American commerce.

The first public man who gave this idea official expression was the Honorable Zadoc Pratt, then member of the House of Representatives from the Eleventh (now the Fifteenth) Congressional District of New York. As chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs, he introduced in Congress, February 12, 1845, a proposition for the extension of American commerce by the despatch of a mission to Japan and Corea as follows:

“It is hereby recommended that immediate measures be taken for effecting commercial arrangements with the empire of Japan and the kingdom of Corea,” etc. (Congressional Globe, vol. xiv., p. 294).

The Mexican war was then already looming as a near possibility, and under its shadow, the wisdom of sending even a part of our little navy was doubted, and Mr. Pratt’s bill failed to pass.

None of the American commanders, Glyn, Biddle, John Rodgers, or even Perry, seem to have ventured into Corean waters, and Commodore Perry has scarcely mentioned the adjacent kingdom in the narrative of the treaty expedition which he wrote, and his pastor, the Rev. Francis L. Hawks, edited. In truth, the sealed country was at that time almost as little known as that of Corea or Coreæ, which Josephus mentions, or that province of India which bears the same name.

The commerce which sprang up, not only between our country and China and Japan, but also that carried on in American vessels between Shanghae, Chifu, Tien-tsin, and Niu-chwang in North China, and the Japanese ports, made the navigation of Corean waters a necessity. Sooner or later shipwrecks must occur, and the question of the humane treatment of American citizens cast on Corean shores came up before our government for settlement, as it had long before in the case of Japan.

When it did begin to rain it poured. Within one year the Corean government having three American cases to deal with, gave a startling illustration of its policy—with the distressed, kindness; with the robber, powder and iron; with the invader, death and annihilation. [391]

On June 24, 1866, the American schooner Surprise was wrecked off the coast (of Whang-hai?). The approach of any foreign vessel was especially dangerous at this time, as the crews might be mistaken for Frenchmen and killed by the people from patriotic impulses. Nevertheless Captain McCaslin and his men with their Chinese cook, after being first well catechised by the local magistrate, and secondly by a commissioner sent from Seoul, were kindly treated and well fed, and provided with clothing, medicines, and tobacco. By orders of Tai-wen Kun, they were escorted on horseback to Ai-chiu, and, after being feasted there, were conducted safely to the Border Gate. Thence, after a hard journey via Mukden, they got to Niu-chwang and to the United States consul. A gold watch was voted by Congress to the Rev. Père Gillie for his kindness to these men while in Mukden.

From a passage in one of the letters of the Corean Government, we gather that the crew of still another American ship were hospitably treated after shipwreck, but of the circumstances we are ignorant. Of the General Sherman affair more is known.

The General Sherman was an American schooner, owned by a Mr. Preston, who was making a voyage for health. She was consigned to Messrs. Meadows & Co., a British firm in Tien-tsin, and reached that port July, 1866. After delivery of her cargo, an arrangement was made by the firm and owner to load her with goods likely to be saleable in Corea, such as cotton cloth, glass, tin-plate, etc., and despatch her there on an experimental voyage in the hope of thus opening the country to commerce.

Leaving Tien-tsin July 29th, the vessel touched at Chifu, and took on board Mr. Hogarth, a young Englishman, and a Chinese shroff,2 familiar with Corean money. The complement of the vessel was now five white foreigners, and nineteen Malay and Chinese sailors. The owner, Preston, the master, Page, and the mate, Wilson, were Americans. The Rev. Mr. Thomas, who had learned Corean from refugees at Chifu, and had made a trip to Whang-hai on a Chinese junk, went on board as a passenger to improve his knowledge of the language.3 [392]

From the first the character of the expedition was suspected, because the men were rather too heavily armed for a peaceful trading voyage. It was believed in China that the royal coffins in the tombs of Ping-an, wherein more than one dynasty of Chō-sen lay buried, were of solid gold; and it was broadly hinted that the expedition had something to do with these.

The schooner, whether merchant or invader, leaving Chifu, took a west-northwest direction, and made for the mouth of the Ta Tong River. There they met the Chinese captain of a Chifu junk, who agreed to pilot them up the river. He continued on the General Sherman during four tides, or two days. Then leaving her, he returned to the river’s mouth, and sailed back to Chifu, where he was met and questioned by the firm of Meadows & Co.

No further direct intelligence was ever received from the unfortunate party.

The time chosen for this “experimental trading voyage” was strangely inopportune. The whole country was excited over the expected invasion of the French, and to a Corean—especially in the north, where not one in ten thousand had ever seen a white foreigner—any man dressed in foreign clothes would be taken for a Frenchman, as were even the Japanese crew of the gunboat Unyo Kuan in 1875. An armed vessel would certainly be taken for a French ship, and made the object of patriotic vengeance.

According to one report, the hatches of the schooner were fastened down, after the crew had been driven beneath, and set on fire. According to another, all were decapitated. The Coreans burned the wood work for its iron, and took the cannon for models.

During this same month of August, 1866, the Jewish merchant Ernest Oppert, in the steamer Emperor, entered the Han River, and had secret interviews with some of the native Christians, who wrote to him in Latin. Communications were also held with the governor of Kang-wa, and valuable charts were made by Captain James. One month later, in September, the French war-vessels made their appearance.

The U. S. steamship Wachusett, despatched by Admiral Rowan to inquire into the Sherman affair, reached Chifu January 14, [393]1867, and is said to have taken on board the Chinese pilot of the General Sherman, and the Rev. Mr. Corbett, an American missionary, to act as interpreter. Leaving Chifu January 21st, they cast anchor, January 23d, at the mouth of the large inlet opposite Sir James Hall group, which indents Whang-hai province. This estuary they erroneously supposed to be the Ta Tong River leading to Ping-an city, whereas they were half a degree too far south, as the chart made by themselves shows.

A letter was despatched, through the official of Cow Island, near the anchorage, to the prefect of the large city nearest the place of the Sherman affair, demanding that the murderers be produced on the deck of the Wachusett. The city of Ping-an was about seventy-five miles distant. The letter probably went to Hai-chiu, the capital of the province. Five days elapsed before the answer arrived, during which the surveying boats were busy. Many natives were met and spoken to, who all told one story, that the Sherman’s crew were murdered by the people, and not by official instigation.4 [394]

On the 29th, an officer from one of the villages of the district appeared, “whose presence inspired the greatest dread among the people.” An interview was held, during which Commander Shufeldt possessed his soul in patience.

To the polished American’s eye, the Corean’s manner was haughty and imperious. He was utterly beyond the reach of reason and of argument. In his person he seemed “the perfect type of a cruel and vindictive savage.” The Corean’s impressions of the American, not being in print, are unknown.

It is unnecessary to give the details of the fruitless interview. The American could get neither information nor satisfaction; the gist of the Corean reiteration was, “Go away as soon as possible.” Commander Shufeldt, bound by his orders, could do nothing more, and being compelled also by stress of weather, came away.

In 1867, Dr. S. Wells Williams, Secretary of the Legation of the United States at Peking, succeeded in obtaining an interview with a member of the Corean embassy, who told him that after the General Sherman got aground, she careened over, as the tide receded, and her crew landed to guard or float her. The natives gathered around them, and before long an altercation took place between the two parties, which soon led to blows and bloodshed. A general attack began upon the foreigners, in which every man was killed by the mob. About twenty of the natives lost their lives. Dr. Williams’ comment is, “The evidence goes to uphold the presumption that they invoked their sad fate by some rash or violent act toward the natives.” Dr. Williams also met a Chinese pilot, Yu Wautai, who reported that in 1867 he had seen the hull of a foreign vessel lying on the south bank of the river, about ten miles up from the sea. The hull was full of water. A Corean from Sparrow Island had told him that the murder of the Sherman’s crew was entirely the work of the people and farmers, and not of the magistrates or soldiery.

Still determined to learn something of the fate of the Sherman’s crew, since reports were current that two or more of them were still alive and in prison, Admiral Rowan, in May, 1867, despatched another vessel, which this time got into the right river. Commander [395]Febiger, in the U. S. steamship Shenandoah, besides surveying the “Ping Yang Inlet,” learned this version of the affair:

A foreign vessel arrived in the river two years before. The local officials went on board and addressed the two foreign officers of the ship in respectful language. The latter grossly insulted the native dignitaries, i.e., “they turned round and went to sleep.”

A man on board, whom they spoke of as “Tony,5 a Frenchman,” used violent and very impolite language toward them. The Coreans treated their visitors kindly, but warned them of their danger, and the unlawfulness of penetrating into, or trading in the country. Nevertheless, the foreigners went up the river to Ping-an city, where they seized the “adjutant-general’s” ship, put him in chains, and proceeded to rob the junks and their crews. The people of the city aroused to wrath, attacked the foreign ship with fire-arms and cannon; they set adrift fire-rafts, and even made a hand-to-hand fight with pikes, knives, and swords. The foreigners fought desperately, but the Coreans overpowered them. Finally, the ship, having caught fire, blew up with a terrific report.

This story was not of course believed by the American officers, but even the best wishers and friends of the Ping-an adventurers cannot stifle suspicion of either cruelty or insult to the natives. Knowing the character of certain members of the party, and remembering the kindness shown to the crew of the Surprise, few of the unprejudiced will believe that the General Sherman’s crew were murdered without cause. [396]