Life in Corea

Life in Corea

Publication

Author	W. R. Carles(1848–1929)
Language	English
Composed	1883–1887
Published	1888
Publisher	Macmillan and Co.
Place	London and New York
Total pages	xiv, 317, with a map and illustrations

Cannabis Content

Pages	38, 145, 168, 184, 212, 243, 257, 268–269, 277
Regions documented	Northern Korea: the hills north of Kaesong, the valleys of the Yalu above Uiju, the plateau beyond Changjin (1884)
Varieties described	None named; the plant is called hemp
Uses documented	Fibre crop; cloth for trade and tax; mourning dress

Access

Digital facsimile	View on the Internet Archive

Life in Corea is an account of Korea by the British consular official W. R. Carles, published in London and New York by Macmillan in 1888. It covers about 18 months that Carles spent in the country between November 1883 and 1885, first on a private visit and then as British vice-consul. Its longest part follows an overland journey he made from Seoul to the Chinese frontier and the east coast and back between September and November 1884.^{: vi, 12, 83, 315–317} On that journey Carles saw hemp growing in the hill country of the north and found hempen cloth in its markets and in a provincial tax list. In Seoul he described men in mourning robes of hemp.^{: 38, 145, 212, 268–269}

Carles wrote as a British consular officer. A 2016 study of the book found that economic information (trade, local products and industries) makes up the largest share of what it records about the country's regions. It argued that his survey served to gather the information Britain needed to work the Anglo-Korean treaty of 1883, within the expansion of British commercial imperialism. The book is read in that double light: as a first-hand account of Korea in the 1880s and as evidence of what a British consular officer was sent to find out there.

Carles writes Corea for Korea and spells places in his own romanisation, such as Soul for Seoul, Phyong-yang for Pyongyang and Gensan for Wonsan. He calls the plant hemp. His passages on it concern its fibre and cloth.

Origins

Carles first went to Korea privately. He left Shanghai by steamer on 8 November 1883. After some days in Seoul he travelled inland with companions to gold washings and in search of silver.^{: ix, 12, 47} In the spring of 1884 Sir Harry Parkes returned to Korea to exchange ratifications of the treaty he had negotiated the year before. Carles went by way of Japan to meet him at Chemulpo (Incheon), where he had been instructed to take up quarters as British vice-consul.^: 83

From 27 September to 8 November 1884 he travelled overland from Seoul north to Uiju on the Yalu, then up the Yalu valley and across the mountains to Hamhung and Wonsan before returning to Seoul.^: 315–317 He was away from Korea during the killings and fighting in Seoul in December 1884 and was in Seoul again in the early part of 1885.^: vi

Some of the material had already appeared in Blue Books, in a paper read before the Royal Geographical Society and in The Field. In the preface Carles explained that the purposes of those papers had kept them from covering all the ground of the book. He thanked George C. Foulk, in charge of the United States legation in Seoul in early 1885, for the photographs and for much of the information in the book. William George Aston, formerly consul-general in Korea, was among the others he consulted. He signed the preface at the British consulate-general in Shanghai in 1887.^: vi–vii

The document

The title page reads W. R. Carles, F.R.G.S., H.M. Vice-Consul at Shanghai and formerly H.M. Vice-Consul in Corea and announces illustrations and a map. The imprint is Macmillan and Co., London and New York, 1888. The front matter runs to xiv pages and the text to 317 pages, in 20 chapters and an appendix. The book was printed by R. & R. Clark of Edinburgh.^{: v–xiv, 317}

In the preface Carles set the book beside earlier writing on the country. He named William Elliot Griffis's Corea, the Hermit Nation (1882), drawn from written sources, the narrative of Hendrick Hamel's captivity in Korea from 1653 to 1667 and Claude-Charles Dallet's history of the Catholic church in Korea (1874). He confined his own book to the experiences of his 18 months in the country. He did not try to describe the system of government or the relations of king, nobles, people and serfs beyond the incidents he saw himself. The one exception is a short chapter on the events in Seoul of December 1884 (the Gapsin coup), when he was absent.^: v–vi

The chapters follow his time in Korea in order. Chapters I to IV cover the background to the 1883 treaty and his first visit. Chapter V describes Chemulpo and its surroundings in 1884. Chapter VI covers his preparations for the northern journey, with notes on the geography and population of the country. Chapters VII to XVII narrate that journey stage by stage, under daily headings that give the date and the morning's barometer reading. Chapters XVIII and XIX deal with the events of December 1884 and Seoul in the months after. Chapter XX discusses the Korean language and alphabet.^{: ix–xii, 175}

Most of the illustrations reproduce paintings in sepia by a Korean artist at Wonsan.^: vi One shows a man in mourning dress.^{: xiii, 39} The appendix is an itinerary of the northern journey. It lists each halt by date, with the distance of each stage in li and the number of houses in each place.^: 315–317

Hemp in Korea as documented by Carles

Carles met hemp in three settings: as a crop in the northern hills, as cloth in the trade and taxes of the north and as mourning dress in Seoul.

The crop

North of Song-do (Kaesong), early in the 1884 journey, the road entered a range of mountains wooded with fir, oak and maple. Villages stood far apart along the road; wayfarers were few and "hemp was one of the commoner crops".^: 145

In mid-October, after leaving Wi-ju (Uiju), Carles followed narrow valleys among limestone and schist hills up the Yalu. Crops there were few and scanty. Indian corn, tobacco and hemp were grown in small patches, more often than south of Wi-ju. Buckwheat and other cereals were sometimes grown too. He thought the steep slopes, stripped of their undergrowth and washed by heavy rain, unfit for farming.^{: 212, 315–316}

On 26 October, on the plateau beyond Chang-jin (Changjin), snow had already fallen. Hemp stood uncut and oats lay in the snow. At the village where he stopped that night he asked why the hemp and oats had not been carried. The only answer he got was that the snow had fallen earlier than usual, before even the potatoes and cabbages were in.^: 255–257

Cloth in trade and tax

At Phyong-yang, chief men of the Tai-dong guild answered his questions about trade. Among the products of the province they named cotton-silks, cotton and hempen cloth, beans and raw cotton.^: 167–168 In the riverside market at Pak-chhon (Pakchon) on 8 October, hempen cloth was on sale with Victoria lawns, shirtings, iron, earthenware pots, aniline dyes and cattle.^{: 184, 315}

At Kang-ge (Kanggye), reached on 21 October, the district paid for goods brought from elsewhere with its own products: cotton and hempen cloths, deer horn for medicine, ginseng and copper.^{: 243, 316}

At Ham-heung (Hamhung), seat of the provincial governor, Carles was lodged in the rooms of the officer who collected the taxes. A memorandum on the wall set out the taxation of the whole province. Beside the tax on grain it listed one on cloth, "probably hempen cloth", worth 1,591,645 cash when commuted to money, at about 600 cash to the dollar. In the town's shops the local manufacture of note was said to be hempen cloth, "which looked very fine".^: 267–269

In the market of the Korean town at Gensan (Wonsan), held the day after he arrived in early November, fish and seaweed, hempen cloth and paper and cattle were the chief products of the province on sale, besides grain.^: 277

Mourning dress

In the streets of Seoul during his first visit in November 1883, Carles saw men in mourning robes of hemp, girt at the waist with a cord or coarse band. Wicker hats reaching to the shoulders almost hid their heads. Each carried before his mouth a small screen of hempen cloth on a triangular frame of two sticks. No one addressed them and they seldom spoke.^: 38

Reception and historiography

In a notice of 19 April 1888 Nature called the book "a valuable and interesting account" of a country about which little definite was known. The notice observed that Carles said nothing of the system of government beyond incidents he had seen. It held the book worth serious attention because it rested on his own observation. It called the chapter on Chemulpo one of the best, for its facts of scientific interest and its questions about tides.

The Spectator reviewed it on 15 September 1888 under the title "Corea". The reviewer took from the book "the impression of a people living in abject poverty and listlessness, without hope and without energy". The review blamed this on centuries of contest between China and Japan over Korea and on "over-government". It compared the Koreans with the Irish and placed Korean life and the Korean artist's pictures "in the mediaeval stage". It also contrasted Carles, "chiefly intent on shooting pheasants and ascertaining revenues", with the German traveller Dr Gottsche, whom Carles met at Phyong-yang and whom the reviewer credited with "all the mental equipment of a scientific man".

Brother Anthony (An Sonjae) of Sogang University calls Life in Corea one of the first books about Korea based entirely on personal experience. Apart from Percival Lowell's Chosön (1886), he considers it the first book-length account of the country written from an extended residence there. The 2016 study calls the book both a travel account and an ethnography of the central and northern provinces in the years after the ports were opened.

See also

• Carles 195 (1885)
• Korea
• Textile (Kew EBC 43417)
• William Richard Carles

References

Korea Fibre Textile Travel account Consular travel narrative