Jack London
San Francisco Examiner/April 7, 1904
How the Japanese Army is Advancing Into North Korea
Troops Plodding Through Quagmires
Sidelights on the Character and Personality of the Koreans
Typical Incidents By Way of Illustration
Ping Yang, March 5.—If age and history are to be taken into account, it is a royal road that leads out of Seoul through the gap of Pekin Pass. North it leads half the length of the peninsula to the Yalu, and then, sweeping westward, rounds the head of the Yellow Sea and finally arrives at Pekin. Up the length of this road and down have passed countless Chinese imperial envoys in splendor of tinsel and barbaric trappings.
Indeed a royal road, and yet, to the western eye and judgment, a bog hole and a travesty of what he has understood “road” to mean. The least rain and it is a river of mud. Horse and rider must beware on its crazy bridges, and large opportunity is given a steed to break a leg anywhere along its length. It is a dirt road to begin with, and the Korean method of repairing it is to shovel in more dirt. I use “in” advisedly, for too many a weary mile of it is worn far down beneath the level of the rice fields on either side.
Yet up this quagmire the Japanese are shoving their troops and supplies with a patience and speed which is, to say the least, commendable. The infantry I passed was walking eighty li a day—roughly twenty-five miles. When the ice goes out of the bay at Chemulpo the troops may be landed there, and when the Tai-Tong river clears itself of ice they can be towed up by steam launches to Ping Yang.
A Small Sized Army
I felt like an army all by myself as I rode out of Seoul and took the Pekin road. My outfit, loaded on three Korean ponies (the latter scarcely larger than Newfoundland dogs), was cared for by two mapus, or grooms. On the lightest-loaded pony, perched upon the summit of the pack, rode Wanyoungi, my Korean cook, interpreter, treasurer, manager and what not. On a Chinese pony rode my Japanese interpreter, Mr. Yamada, while I rode the horse which the Russian minister had been wont to ride before his hasty departure from Seoul.
Then there was Jones, with his interpreter, mounted on Chinese ponies, and his packhorses and the packhorses of Macleod, who was himself to overtake us with his Korean and Japanese interpreters. All told, we numbered seventeen horses—a puzzling parcel to deposit in chance livery stables along the way. And stables were a necessity, first because of the impossibility of carrying horse food or of grazing horses at night in the snow, and second because Korean ponies are only fed on cooked beans and soup, piping hot. No explanation is given, except that in this way they have been fed all their lives. Nor, for that matter, are they ever given water to drink. The soup at mealtime suffices.
The road was crowded with cavalry, infantry and stores. Pack trains and huge bullock carts plodded along, and long lines of coolies, clad in white sweeping garments and burdened with rice, toiled through the slush and mud. On the left cheek of each coolie a scarlet or purple smear of paint advertised his employ with the Japanese army transport.
Possibly the strangest feature was the incongruous white garments worn by these coolies, and, for that matter, by all Koreans. The effect was like so much ice drifting on the surface of a black river. A stalwart race are the Koreans, well-muscled and towering above their masters, the “dwarfs” who conquered them of old time and who look upon them to-day with the eyes of possession. But the Korean is spiritless. He lacks the dash of Malay which makes the Japanese the soldier what he is.
Koreans Lack Strength
The Korean has finer features, but the vital lack in his face is strength. He is soft and effeminate when compared with the strong breeds, and whatever strength has been his in the past has been worked out of him by centuries of corrupt government. He is certainly the most inefficient of human creatures, lacking all initiative and achievement, and the only thing in which he shines is the carrying of burdens on his back. As a draught animal and packhorse he is a success. And yet, I am confident ay, willing to lay odds that my own breed can beat him at his own game; that my own breed, from what I have seen of it in the West and North, can outwalk him, outpack him, and outwork him at coolie labor. In this latter connection I may state that three coolies are required to work an ordinary shovel. As one may see in Seoul any day of the year, the coolie steers the shovel by the handle, and two other coolies, sometimes three, furnish the motive power by means of ropes upon which they drag.
My two mapus—and they struck me a little better than the average—required an hour to put the loads on the ponies, and then spent the rest of the day trying to keep the loads from falling off. The simplest act requires half an hour of chin-chin and chatter before it can be performed, and if left alone the Korean would prefer giving a day to the preliminary discussion. About the only way to break up this discussion is to vociferate “Os-saw!” which means hurry up, and to threaten to pull his topknot or break his head.
For the Korean is nothing if not a coward, and his fear of bodily hurt is about equal to his inaction. The creation of any word in a language denotes need for that word. The lack of quickness and the need for it has given to the Korean vocabulary a score of words, at least, among which may be mentioned Pat-pee, Oi-lun, Soik-kee, Oil-ppit, Koop-hee, Ning-kom, Bal-lee and Cham-kan, And though Kipling has well said that one mustn’t hustle the East, these are the first words the white man learns.
A Typical Scene
The following instance, culled from Pekln road, gives a good comparison between the East and the West. The scene has three actors—a mapu, a white man and a kicking Chinese pony. The mapu had attended horses all his life and he was thirty years of age and past. He knew nothing but horses, thought nothing but horses, was half horse himself. The white man had had ten days’ experience with horses, no more, and most of which ten days had been spent in getting knowledge, not of horses, but mapus. The horse had bitten, kicked and squealed all his life.
The white man wished to know the condition of the horse’s shoes. This was the mapu’s business, but the white man had already learned that whatever was the mapu’s business the mapu knew nothing about. So he directed the mapu to examine the horse’s feet. Mapu said feet and shoes were all right. White man ordered three times, through an interpreter. Fourth time interpreter re-enforced order with a threatening flourish of his riding whip. Mapu gingerly lifted one forefoot and then the other.
Back feet were all right, he insisted, and several additional orders and flourishes of whips were needed before he proceeded to the hind feet. His method of procedure was in keeping. He squatted in the mud a dozen feet to the rear and after peering profoundly for a minute declared that all was well with the hind feet. As the feet were buried in the mud to the fetlocks the white man doubted the report. More orders and bellicose persuasion, and the mapu, like a man going to his death, approached the dreaded hind feet. His approach was from the head, and he patted the horse with a tentative, trembling hand. The horse grew nervous, no doubt wondering what new and terrible atrocity was being meditated. After three minutes of this the mapu had approached the hind leg, while the horse was trembling, as frightened as the man.
Then the horse kicked and the mapu leaped for life. A crowd had gathered, which began to jeer and guy the mapu, who, however, was not to be shamed into the deed. It was a crowd of mapus, and the crowd was invited by the white man to lift the dreaded hind foot; whereupon the crowd showed signs of panic and fell back.
Western Perseverance
Then the West asserted itself. The white man knew nothing about horses, and probably the only thing to be said in his favor was that he was not a Korean. He walked up to the horse, patted it roughly a couple of times and reached for the foot. Not only did he reach for it, but he got it. The next instant he was flung clear by the consequent kick.
Now the white man was as badly scared as the mapu. But he was a white man. He went right back to the foot. The horse kicked, but the white man insisted, and after some time the horse grew tired and the foot was lifted. It is true the horse, instead of supporting itself on the other leg, leaned its body over on the man’s bent back. But the man, instead of standing out from under, held on to the foot and held the horse up. He likened himself to Atlas, and he held until the horse, finding that nothing terrible was happening, resumed the perpendicular. After that the mapu was persuaded into lifting the other hind foot. The horse did not even attempt to kick and the shoe was found broken in two and one half missing.
A Race That is Limping
This rather extended account of a trivial affair has been given to show concretely the inefficiency and helplessness of the Korean. What is true of the mapu in this affair is true of the race in all its affairs. It doesn’t know how, it doesn’t try to learn how, it doesn’t care. In a day, what of the broken shoe, the horse would have been limping. The Korean race and government have been limping for centuries and will continue to limp until some first-class, efficient mapu takes hold, lifts the feet and puts the shoes in shape.
The Asiatic Is heartless. The suffering of dumb brutes means nothing to him. Returning to the subject of mapus, for mapus are an important item on the Pekin road, it were well to advise any prospective traveler to have an eye to his horses during feeding time and during all feeding time. He may order feed and see it put under his horses’ noses; but if he goes out of the stable for a minute and returns he will find no feed under his horses’ noses. The mapus will have stolen it. If left alone the mapus will continue stealing the food till a horse cannot stand of itself, much less carry a pack or a man. Then they will inform the white man and owner, “Horse sick.” Inquiry as to the cause of sickness will elicit the usual voluble Asiatic expression of ignorance. To shoe a pony the size of a calf the Korean must throw it on the ground. A broken back is no uncommon result, but what of that? The Korean will say he is very sorry. In short, the first weeks of a white traveler on Korean soil are anything but pleasant. If he be a man of sensitive organization he will spend most of his time under the compelling sway of two alternating desires. The first is to kill Koreans, the second is to commit suicide. Personally, I prefer the first. But, having survived the first weeks without committing murder, I now consider myself fairly immune and have reasonable hopes of surviving the trip.
Japanese Indifference
The Japanese may be the Britisher of the Orient, but he is still Asiatic. The suffering of beasts does not touch him. The following case is in point and I am sure that the like would not occur with our cavalry or the cavalry of any Western power.
The day was bitter cold. A cruel north wind was blowing and the spattering mud froze wherever it struck. Jones and I had overtaken and were passing a troop of cavalry. The curious nervousness and excitement of a horse attracted our attention.
Mud to the weight of fully twenty pounds had frozen in a solid lump to the end of his sweeping tall. Had the tail been tied up in the first place this would not have happened. As it was, at every step the twenty-weight of mud swung forward between its hind legs, striking the legs on the shinbones. As a result the horse lifted its feet high in order to try and step over the object which administered the blow. It was walking over its own tail, frantic with fear.
We told the man to tie it up or to cut it off, and for the latter purpose offered a large and sharp-bladed knife. But he smiled commiseratingly at us for our anxiety and solicitude and for what he probably termed arrant idiocy, and rode on, the frozen mud, the size of a workman’s dinner pall, banging the horse’s shinbones at every step and the horse vainly trying to step over it. The man was only a common soldier after all, but where was the officer?
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