LIFE IN KOREA

Hokitika Guardian, 21 October 1930, Page 7

LIFE IN KOREA

V. cferOA IS OF TIIE PEOPLE

’’Life in Korea is described by Ensign G. S. Arndt, of the Salvation Army who arrived in Auckland by the Ulimaroa, en route to U.S.A., where he will spend bis furlough. He is aampanied by Airs Arndt. “Korea is nothing like either of its neighbours, China or Japan,” .said Mr “The natives there are backward, particularly in the country disthe standard of civilisation ik‘ comparatively speaking low. We live in the roughest of mud lints, with a thatched root. They are flimsy af-,-fairs, just inter-twined bamboo, with mnd'. plastered over the top. The villages;] suppose, are like native villages, all, over the world. The bouses arff scattered anywhere, just as though they bad .sprung up like mush rooms. They are duty and meagre, and the streets are the same—wlmt streets there are. Then nf course there is the inevitable native dog, which acts

as’a scavnnger. ” ■■■‘When he said the standard df civilisation was low, Mr Arndt said ho did not mean as compared with any other place in the East. In the larger, more c’psatal towns, the Koreans had produced works of art of a comparatively high level. “THE EVERLASTING RICE.” , “The people live on the everlasting rice,” lie said “and when the crop fails ifien they have .resource to barley and millet. Just recently the crops did fail fo'r'' a number of years, and distress was prevalent. There was actual starvation, in the lam], and the poorer UfaijaVes."lived on what they could pick up. This consisted mostly of the mixture'of the three cereals. Then, last year the pendulum swung the other way, and in the place of rain they wanted they got hoods, the worst for many years. In their crazy little huts on the river ■ banks, the people stood no chance against the mounting flood Wii.tsrs, and in some cases villages

were swept away. One village, about 100 miles from where I. was stationed over whelmed by a great ilaMlslicle, ‘ and the death roll numbered over 100.”

ANCESTOR-WORSHIP

, t - What religion there was was either lionfucianism or Buddhism, Mr Arndt said. The sanctity of their ancestors was one pf the fundamentals of the people’s belief. Once every year they made a pilgrimage to the top of the mountain where their ancestors were buried, and they 7 laid fresh vegetables -and meat offerings at the foot of the tomb. As' in’ Biblical days,when offerings were made before another Diety' the gifts were of the best the natives could produce, the “choicest of the herd.” “They think it propitiates the gods,” explained Mr Arndt. Though the country next door was in the throes of civil war, Korea was quite J tranquil. There was no unrest in the | land,..for the reason probably that the J

natives were not sufficiently advanced to comprehend the doctrines which caused the trouble in China. “One hears an occasional whisper of Bolshevism, hut that is all.” As in China, the little baby girls were unwanted. AVhen they were anything from 12 to 14 years old, they were sold, not given in marriage, to some suitable man. The parents arranged the whole tiling. The girls were often merely chattels, bartered and sold. Japan had taken charge of Korea, said Air Arndt. Perhaps that was on account of its strategic importance. It was a foothold for Japan on the Continent, He referred to the trouble which there had been between China and Japan over the country, which was now a matter of history.