The passing of Korea/Chapter 20

by Homer Bezalee Hulbert

CHAPTER XX
DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN TRADE

UNTIL recent years the currency of Korea was only the unwieldy cash, and this had much to do in preserving the immemorial custom of barter. Even to-day this form of trade has by no means ceased, and many Koreans still look upon rice or cotton or linen as legal tender. We have already explained that in the country there are stated places where periodical markets are held. There are but few Koreans who cannot find one of these chang within ten miles of their homes. As a rule, these are held once in five days ; but there are many special markets for special objects. Almost every Korean product has its special season. The agricultural products are naturally more in evidence in the summer and autumn. Almost all farmers add to their income by some sort of handicraft during the winter, and the products of such work are on sale during the winter and spring months.

For long centuries there existed a Peddlers' Guild, composed of thousands of men throughout the country who travelled on foot with packs on their backs, and peddled their goods from house to house. They had regular circuits, and their organisation was quite complete. In later times this guild fell into decay, and was superseded by a gang of evil men who were used by corrupt officials to do questionable work. They were not peddlers, and the unsavoury reputation of the " Peddlers' Guild " should not attach to the genuine peddlers.

It was mainly through the markets and the peddlers that domestic trade was carried on in the country. In the great centres ordinary shops were common, and almost every commodity was handled by a separate guild. The freemasonry of trade reached extensive bounds. Many of these guilds were, and are, incipient or partial insurance companies, and loss by fire or death became a matter of mutual aid. These guilds were taxed, not regularly, but as occasion might demand. Whenever some sudden pressure was put on the royal household for money, a draft upon the guilds was always honoured.

Korean shops are of two kinds, open and closed ! The ordinary shop is hardly more than a stall, open directly upon the street, where the purchaser can pick up and examine almost any article in stock. The larger merchants, however, who handle silks, cotton, linen, grass-cloth, shoes and certain other goods, have nothing whatever on view. You enter and ask for what you want, and it is brought forth from the storeroom or closet. This seems very strange to foreigners, who always want to compare and select their goods. Often enough a truculent merchant, after showing one shade of silk, will refuse to show more, and say that if this is not what you want he has nothing that will suit you. You are expected to state exactly what you want, and when that is produced and examined, the price alone is expected to require consideration. Shopping in Korea is not reckoned one of the joys of life, as is so often the case in the West. When ladies of the upper class wish to make purchases of silk or other goods, they send out and have the merchants bring the goods to their residences. All foreigners who are aware of the peculiarities of the Korean merchants do likewise.

The great merchant houses in Seoul have no shop-signs whatever, but instead of this they have runners or agents on the street who solicit the attention of the passer-by and ask him to come in and look at the goods.

The sale and purchase of real estate in large towns is always effected through house-brokers, but fields change hands very commonly by direct communication between the parties interested. The legal rate of commission to the broker is one per cent of the purchase price of the house, and is paid by the seller.

The purchaser furnishes two pounds of tobacco to be consumed

INTERESTING CHESS PROBLEM

during the progress of negotiations. There is a House-brokers'

Guild, and the name of each member is registered at the mayor's office. If a broker falsifies the amount demanded by the seller and " eats " the extra money, he is very likely to be found out, in which case he will be expelled from the guild and his license will be taken away.

The rate of interest is everywhere proportionate to the safety of the investment. For this reason we find that in Korea money ordinarily brings from two to five per cent a month. Good security is generally forthcoming, and so one may well ask why it is so precarious to lend. The answer is not creditable to Korean justice. In case a man has to foreclose a mortgage and enter upon possession of the property he will need the sanction of the authorities, since possession, here as elsewhere, is nine points of the law. The trouble is that a large fraction of the remaining point is dependent upon the caprice or the venality of the official whose duty it is to adjudicate the case. In a land where bribery is almost second nature, and where private rights are of small account unless backed up by some sort of influence, the thwarting of justice is extremely common. And so the best apparent security may prove only a broken reed when the creditor comes to lean upon it. Let us take a concrete case. A man bor- rows a sum of money, giving his house-deed as security. He then makes out a false deed or secures a new one from the Mayor on the plea that the old one is lost. He then sells the house to a third party and leaves for parts unknown. The mortgage becomes due and the mortgagee proceeds to foreclose. It is now a question of which deeds are the right ones. There should be no difficulty in adjudicating the case, but the occupant, having purchased in good faith, is naturally loath to move out. He is willing to put down a neat sum to secure his possession. It all depends upon the character of the official and is no longer a matter of mere jurisprudence. Herein lies the uncertainty.

When money is loaned at the minimum rate of two per cent, or in exceptional cases one and a half per cent a month, the borrower, besides giving security, generally gets some wellknown and reliable merchant to endorse the note. As this merchant cannot afford to have his credit brought in question, the chances of loss are very small.

Considering the great inequality in commercial ethics here, the Koreans trust each other in a really remarkable manner. The aggregate of money placed in trust is very large. The average Korean would scorn to ask from his friend more than a simple receipt for money turned over in trust, and it is my deliberate conviction that in all but a small fraction of cases the ordinary sense of justice and decency is a far greater deterrent to indirection than any legal restraints could possibly be.

Foreign commerce has been carried on for many centuries between Korea and the neighbouring countries. It is not true that Korea was first opened to import and export trade during the present generation. Commerce with China has been almost uninterrupted for fifteen hundred years, though it has been carried on in such a quiet way as largely to escape observation. Ginseng, furs and other special products have been regularly marketed in China, and silks, spices and other luxuries have been as regularly imported. The annual embassy to Peking was allowed to engage in trade.

On the other side of the peninsula the annual trade with Japan through the single station at Fusan was considerable, and was almost uninterrupted from about 1406 till 1866, and even before the opening of the fifteenth century there must have been some interchange of goods between the two countries, although the Japanese freebooters of the fourteenth century did much to keep the two countries from mutual intercourse.

It is a fact to which attention should be specially directed, that before the coming of Roman Catholic emissaries to Korea, and the consequent fear that the foreign religion was a cover for political designs, this was no more a hermit kingdom than was Japan or China. The efforts which both these other countries made to keep foreigners out were more persistent and more radical than anything which has occurred in Korea. It is merely the fact that Korean exclusiveness was impinged upon somewhat later in the day that won for her the term "hermit." The difficulties encountered in opening up this country to foreign intercourse were nothing compared with those required to secure the acquiescence of either Japan or China to such action. I am prepared to say that the conservatism of the Korean has always been less than that of the Chinese. This is simply a sociological manifestation of the law of inertia. The late regent never cherished a fonder hatred against foreigners than did Prince Tuan, and no Korean ruler of the past, if brought to life, would exterminate them with greater glee than would the present Empress Dowager of China, had she but the ability.

It was between the years 1876 and 1884 that Korea was fully opened to foreign commerce in our western acceptance of the term. From the very first the trade, both import and export, has shown a steady and healthy growth. The Korean was very quick to learn the value of Manchester cottons, American petroleum and Japanese friction matches, and now all these and many other products of other countries find their way to the remotest parts of the peninsula.

This import trade owes very much to the excellent way in which the Customs has been handled. From the very first it has been in English hands. One has only to look at Turkey to see how different the status of foreign trade might be in Korea had the customs duties been collected by Korean or by any other Far Eastern people. It was a sad day for this country when the English hand was removed from the helm in favour of the Japanese.

We can here give only the briefest sketch of the export and import trade of the country. The minutiae are of interest only to the statistician. For the past four years the value of the exports has averaged, in round numbers, $4,000,000. This does not include gold bullion, which has been about $2,500,000 a year.

The goods exported are, in order of their value, beans, rice, cowhides, ginseng, raw cotton, fish, whale flesh and blubber, paper, sea-weed and barley. Other things which figure prominently are beche-de-mer, bones, cattle, feathers, mats, medicines, millet, oysters, sesamum, raw silk, tallow, tobacco, wheat, copper, curios and grass-cloth.

The value of foreign imports in 1901 and 1902 was about the same, namely, about $3,750,000; for 1903 it was $5,750,000, and for 1904 it was $8,800,000. The great increase in 1904 was due to the import of $2,000,000 worth of railway material for use in the construction of the new lines. Then, in order of value, come English and American gray shirtings, Japanese sheetings, Japanese miscellaneous cotton goods, Japanese thread and yarn, silk piece goods, tobacco, English and American sheetings, American petroleum, English and American white shirtings, rice, clothing, provisions, timber and sake. After these come figured shirtings, cotton reps, bar and other iron, galvanised iron sheeting, bags and ropes, building materials, coal, raw cotton, cotton wadding, dyes, fish, flour, fruit, grain, grass-cloth, wines and spirits, matches, medicines, mining supplies, Russian petroleum, paper, porcelain, salt, soy, sugar and telegraph and telephone supplies.

Up to the present time both the import and export trade have suffered for lack of facilities for transportation in the interior; but the railroads that are being rapidly constructed will help to overcome this difficulty, and foreign commerce ought to receive a decided impetus.

Of late years, Japanese textile fabrics have been competing successfully with the English and American, and bid fair in time to displace them even as Japanese matches have displaced the Austrian product. This readjustment of the sources of Korea's foreign supplies is the most prominent feature of the commercial situation to-day. There seems to be a natural fitness in the mutual interchange of raw material and finished product between the two countries, and there is every sign that Japan will foster and conserve this growing reciprocity by every means in her power. If American cotton goods are to compete with Japanese

SWINGING

here, it must be because better goods are offered at the same price or the same goods at a lower price. This supposes other things to be equal, but in fact other things are not equal. An army of Japanese small retailers covering the country like a network, unable to speak or read any language but their own, and connected intimately with Japanese sources of supply, make it certain that Japanese goods will be handled unless some very strong consideration intervenes of a distinctly pecuniary nature. There is a single American firm in Korea handling general goods, but it is particularly interested only in petroleum and rice. In other words, America enjoys only the very smallest facilities for commercial contact with Korea. Our merchants hardly need to be told that much more enters into successful trade competition than the mere quality and price of goods. They must be properly exhibited, advertised and placed before the public. The personal equation enters largely into the problem, and under existing conditions it is only a matter of time when the great staples of American commerce will be known here only by name. There is to-day a magnificent opening for any firm that will import Oregon pine into Korea by sailing-vessel or other cheap method of transportation. All planing and moulding is here done by hand at great expense. Planed and matched flooring would have large and lucrative sale. We say this to indicate only one of a large number of favourable openings that might be entered by enterprising people. The large and steady influx of Japanese must continue for years, and building operations which are being carried on with feverish energy will call for increasing quantities of material from abroad, especially timber. If Americans want to participate in this trade, they should enter the field and secure a footing before the commercial flux has crystallised.