Korean Job Discussion Forums

[lush72]

I am currently researching the early accounts of foreigners regarding their contact with the Koreans. I am quite surprised at how some accounts, some several hundred years old, could be written today. Have Koreans changed so little?

From "Hamel's Journal and a Description of the Kingdom of Korea, 1653-1666"

[Dr. Buck]

Lush72--
I came across that sometime back and laughed when I read the same passage. There's a few other good ones in there.

Also check out "Star Rover," Jack London's account of a white sailor that bluffs his way into the Korean royal court and throws a bone to the Korean princess!

[lush72]

[Real Reality]

Excerpt from Chapter 15 of the Star Rover:

Only with the Lady Om was I man, not puppet . . . and yet, and yet, as I look back and ponder across time, I have my doubts. I think the Lady Om too had her will with me, wanting me for her heart's desire. Yet in this she was well met, for it was not long ere she was my heart's desire, and such was the immediacy of my will that not her will, nor Hendrik Hamel's nor Yunsan's could hold back my arms from about her.

In the meantime, however, I was caught up in a palace intrigue I could not fathom. I could catch the drift of it, no more, against Chong Mong-ju, the princely cousin of the Lady Om. Beyond my guessing, there were cliques and cliques within cliques that made a labyrinth of the palace and extended to all the Seven Coasts....

Came the time when our marriage was mooted-oh, quietly at first, most quietly, as mere palace gossip in dark corners between eunuchs and waiting women. As she confessed to me afterward, she bullied him with tears and hysteria and threats of a scandal that would shake the throne. And to cap it all, at the psychological moment, Yunsan pandered the Emperor to novelties of excess that had been long preparing.

The Emperor ratified whatever Chong Mong-ju willed. Beyond gasping at the sacrilege of the kings' tombs and applauding Chong Mong-ju, Cho-Sen was unperturbed. Heads of officials fell everywhere, being replaced by Chong Mong-ju's appointees; but there were no risings against the dynasty.

And now to what befell us. Johannes Maartens and his three cunies, after being exhibited to be spat upon by the rabble of half the villages and walled cities of Cho-Sen, were buried to their necks in the ground of the open space before the palace gate. Water was given them that they might live longer to yearn for the food, steaming hot and savory and changed hourly, that was placed temptingly before them. They said old Johannes Maartens lived longest, not giving up the ghost for a full fifteen days.

Kim was slowly crushed to death, bone by bone and joint by joint, by the torturers, and was a long time in dying. Hamel, whom Chong Mong-ju divined as my brains, was executed by the paddle—in short, was promptly and expeditiously beaten to death to the delighted shouts of the Keijo populace. Yunsan was given a brave death. He was playing a game of chess with the jailer when the Emperor's, or rather Chong Mong-ju's, messenger arrived with the poison cup. "Wait a moment," said Yunsan. "You should be better mannered than to disturb a man in the midst of a game of chess. I shall drink directly the game is over." And while the messenger waited, Yunsan finished the game, winning it, then drained the cup. It takes an Asiatic to temper his spleen to steady, persistent, life-long revenge. This Chong Mong-ju did with the Lady Om and me. He did not destroy us. We were not even imprisoned. The Lady Om was degraded of all rank and divested of all possessions. An imperial decree was promulgated and posted in the last least village of Cho-Sen to the effect that I was of the house of Koryu and that no man might kill me. It was further declared that the eight sea-cunies who survived must not be killed. Neither were they to be favored. They were to be outcasts, beggars on the highways. And that is what the Lady Om and I became, beggars on the highways.

Forty long years of persecution followed, for Chong Mong-ju's hatred of the Lady Om and me was deathless. Worse luck, he was favored with long life as well as were we cursed with it.

THE STAR ROVER
by Jack London, 1915
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/London/Writings/StarRover/chapter15.html

[Blind Willie]

Y'know, despite the OP providing the link to Hamel's Journal as an excuse to vent his frustrations, I thank him for it.

I read the journal in one sitting. Interesting stuff.

[jajdude]

Interesting.

Maybe things change outside us more than inside us? We are still a lot like people have been for centuries. But now we got the internet!