Korea (Hamilton)/Chapter 14

The oldest of the settlements in Korea is the port of Won-san, situated upon the eastern shores of the kingdom, half-way between Fusan and Vladivostock.

The picturesqueness of its setting makes the spacious harbour of this bustling treaty port a graceful conclusion to any tour which has had for its object the inspection of the scenic loveliness of the Diamond Mountains. There is little indeed to disturb the placid enjoyment of life amid the pine-clad bluffs and frowning headlands which surround the broad waters of the bay. The fact of passing from the seclusion of wild valleys and rugged heights, sheltering only the monasteries of Buddha, into the lively atmosphere of a treaty port does not destroy the illusions which any stay in the lofty regions of these Twelve Thousand Peaks necessarily fosters.

Within wooded cliffs, which hang above a fringe of silver sand, looking out over a harbour forty square miles in extent, where mountains encompass every quarter of the horizon, and rocky islets, verdant with vegetation, stud a sapphire sea, there lies a spot where the fleets of the world might swing at anchor with perfect safety, in perfect ​isolation. It is certainly a wonderful harbour; and worthy of the commotion caused at intervals by the desire of Russia to secure possession of the prize. The superb advantages with which it is endowed make it an object of solicitude to the Powers. If possession of this harbour were coupled with the occupation of Vladivostock and Port Arthur, the control of those northern seas would rest with the Russian fleet. Otherwise, it is a peaceful place to be the centre of so much political turmoil.

Won-san, the treaty port, is situated in the south-west corner of the harbour. The northern arm of the harbour is known as Port Lazareff; the south-eastern portion is Broughton Bay, the name which is usually given to the entire harbour. Captain W. R. Broughton, the English navigator, first entered it on October 4, 1797, in his sloop-of-war of 16 guns, Providence. Port Lazareff is about sixteen miles from Won-san, in a westerly direction across the bay, at the mouth of the Dun river. It is the point which Russia was credited with the intention of securing for the terminus of her Trans-Siberian Railway. There are two entrances into Broughton Bay, one giving direct admission into Port Lazareff. Russian men-of-war make the most of this advantage in visiting the harbour, for it enables them to enter without revealing their presence to the authorities upon shore. Upon one occasion, when I was visiting the neighbourhood, I surprised parties from two Russian men-of-war engaged in surveying the hills and taking soundings of the anchorages; their presence was quite unsuspected by the Japanese Consul or by the Commissioner of Customs.

The bay is well protected by chains of mountains, its physical perfections in this respect rendering it of peculiar ​value as a naval base. The channel into the harbour is broad, deep, and free from all encumbrances. Numerous islands are so situated about the mouth that every approach could be strongly protected. Besides being easy of access, there is an average depth of about nine fathoms upon a firm bottom. The water is free from ice in winter, notwithstanding the severity of the cold in this region. Inexhaustible supplies of spring water can be obtained; and, in the proper season, the shooting and fishing afford very varied sport. These are, however, but the accessories to a harbour, which, if it were fortified and converted into a first-class naval station, would be the equal of Vladivostock and superior to every other station in the Far East. It is far in advance of anything which the Powers have seized in China.

Between Hong Kong and Dalny, the commercial harbour of Port Arthur, which Russia has endeavoured to improve since it belonged to China, there is no anchorage which could be so readily and inexpensively adapted to the requirements of a first-class naval station of a first-class naval Power. At present, Won-san harbour is visited only by the squadrons which Russia and Japan maintain in this water. Athough there is a flourishing Japanese settlement upon shore, no Japanese gun-boat is detached as yet for guardship duties. At Fusan and Chemulpo, however, the practice of detailing ships for port duties is carefully observed, Japan losing few opportunities to impress upon her neighbour in particular, and the world in general, the significance of her interests in Korea.

Won-san was opened to Japanese trade in 1880, becoming a general foreign settlement on November 3rd, three years later. Although its subsequent development is due entirely ​to the industry of the Japanese, and their undoubted commercial sagacity, its imports of foreign trade in recent years have contributed to the position which it now takes in the commercial progress of the country. The economic expansion of the port, however, has been promoted by the business resulting from the immigration of Japanese settlers and the doubling of the native population. Materials for clothing, cotton goods, grass-cloth, and silk are pre-eminent in the local requirements. A comparison of the annual returns discloses a steady advance in its prosperity, the paramount influence, which the Japanese exercise over its welfare, restricting foreign trade to those articles which cannot be imported from Japan. Business has just doubled in six years; but the increase in the import trade is not in favour of British goods. The imposition of the tariff, which prevails in European Russia, at Vladivostock, accounted for the general advance in foreign imports at Won-san during 1901. In the following year, 1902, the imports were again heavier than the exports, the figures being: Imports, £191,535, and exports, £102,205. The local government of the port is conducted upon Japanese lines. The streets are broad, well gravelled, and fringed with an irregular border of trees. After the foul and narrow lanes of the Korean town, through which it is necessary to pick one's way before entering the settlement, their appearance is cheerful and attractive.

Won-san, the native town which has given its name to the port, is two miles from the heart of the settlement, and comprises a quaint medley of thatched and tiled houses, crowded together in narrow and noisome alleys. The main road from Seoul to the frontier, one of the six great roads of the country, lies through the centre of the town. The ​clusters of hovels, upon both sides of this excellent highway, suggest that the eligible sites are only those which abut upon this spacious thoroughfare. Glimpses of the bay are visible through gaps in the houses. The smell of the sea is lost in the fumes of drying fish and decaying garbage, which hang heavily in the atmosphere, impregnating everything and penetrating everywhere, save to the wind-swept heights which encircle the bay. A population of 15,000 huddles in these groups of thatched shops and tumble-down houses.

The native town ceases abruptly about a mile from the settlement. Fields of vegetables border the road. The strip of beach upon which the town is placed, is black with patches of fish spread to the sun, littered with fishing nets, and encumbered with crazy fishing-boats and junks. After a little it disappears around cliffs, whose crests are fragrant with pine and fir trees. Tortuous valleys, giving glimpses of prosperous villages set in their midst against a background of majestic peaks and ridges of hills, well-timbered headlands and promontories upon which are set the houses of the missionaries, combine, with the broad waters of the bay and the vista of the open sea beyond, to form a series of picturesque and supremely attractive views. There are nearly three thousand Japanese in residence at Won-san, a few Chinese merchants, and a small foreign community, including the Commissioner of Customs and Mrs. Wakefield, and the Customs staff. The rest are evangelists of no great importance.

The climate of Won-san is dry and healthy. The heat is tempered by sea breezes and the nights are cool. The mean temperature for the summer is seventy-three degrees, and for the winter twenty-nine degrees; the rainfall is forty​four inches, a little greater than that upon the west coast. Snow falls to a depth of four feet, covering the mountains from October until May. The port is, however, rather cooler than Chemulpo in summer and a little warmer in winter, the dryness of the atmosphere considerably modifying the cold. The splendour of an autumn sky continues throughout the winter, when the principal shooting is to be obtained.

Much historical interest attaches to many of the more beautiful spots in the vicinity. From this neighbourhood sprang the kings of Ancient Ko-ryö; and again, it gave birth to the reigning house of Cho-syön, for, in the monastery of Sok-wan, twenty-two miles distant, A Tai-cho, the first king of the present dynasty, was educated and lived. The monastery itself, with its temples, was erected by the King to mark the spot where, 509 years ago, he received that supernatural summons to rule, in virtue of which his descendants now occupy the throne. In the seclusion of this beautiful spot, the early years of A Tai-cho were passed in meditation, study, and preparation for his future kingship. Many of the magnificent trees, which embower the temples and rise in stately dignity from the grand mountain clefts, in which the monastery is situated, are reputed to have been planted by his hands. In a building apart, into which no one is allowed to enter, save the monk in whose keeping the relics are placed, his regalia and robes of State are preserved to this day.

Won-san is situated in the southern corner of the province of Ham-kyöng. A considerable portion of its trade is carried on with the closely adjoining divisions of Pyöng-an and Kang-won, the three provinces forming the northern half of the kingdom; their population is variously estimated ​at between three and five millions. Mountains predominate in these districts. A bewildering tangle of wooded hills and bleak peaks meets the eye, jumbling and jostling one another in every direction until nothing is seen but broken mountains and ridges cleft into a thousand little valleys. More especially is this the case in Ham-kyöng and Kang-won; in Pyöng-an the valleys broaden out and the hills become lower and less frequent, giving place to the Ta-dong River, and many wide spaces for agricultural purposes. Among these broken ranges in the neighbourhood of Won-san, and towards the interior, there is much sport. Sable, ermine, and otter are trapped in Northern Ham-kyöng; tigers, leopards, bears, wolves and foxes are rare in fact, plentiful in fiction. Wild boar, deer and hares are not uncommon; pheasants are less numerous than formerly. Snipe appear in August, duck in September, geese and wild fowl in the winter on the marshes and lagoons. There is much game upon the land, and there is much sport in the sea. Whales, shark, seal, salmon, and innumerable small species wait to be caught, the products of sea and land combining to make the place a sportsman's paradise.

The approach to the treaty port of Fusan is through a bay strewn with green islands and encompassed by high cliffs. A narrow path, skirting the shore and running over the cliffs, leads presently to Old Fusan, a walled city of great antiquity, situated at the end of a stretch of ten miles of sea, which forms one of the arms of the bay. New Fusan is like every other Korean treaty port. The smells of the Japanese settlement were worse, however, very much worse, as I well remember, than any which rose from the sewers and slimy alleys of the old town. Old Fusan stands alone, at the head of the bay, looking down from its ruined and crumbling ​walls across the waste of water, musing in decrepit isolation upon departed glories. New Fusan, the foreign quarter, is very noisy, very dirty, and uncomfortable. The Japanese shopkeepers make little attempt to provide for other aliens; the wretched hotel demurs at receiving them. The place is

thoroughly Japanese, prosperous, active, and enduring. It is the focus of the tumble-down steamers which run between the ports of Korea and Japan, venturing even to Taku, Port Arthur and Vladivostock. Upon all sides there is the appearance of industry and trade, inseparable from any Japanese community. In conjunction with the Seoul-Fusan Railway a vast scheme of harbour reclamation is in progress. This will provide suitable sites for godowns, in which the port is sadly deficient. The making of roads, the installation of electric light, and the construction of large waterworks are the objects which have already received the attention of the ​Japanese authorities. There is a Japanese Consul-General in Fusan, who administers Japanese law to some fourteen thousand of his fellow countrymen. Half of this number is comprised in the floating population, whose sole business is fishing. The valuable fisheries lying off the coast and in the adjacent archipelago return an annual yield of ten million herring and half a million cod. Altogether, the bustle and confusion of the place supports its claim to be the most important of the treaty ports of Korea, in spite of the neglect with which British merchants treat it. The actual Japanese population of the Fusan settlement in 1901 was seven thousand and fourteen, an increase of more than one thousand upon the returns of the previous year—six thousand and four. Since then there has been a further increase, and the population at the present time falls little short of nine thousand.

The activity of the Japanese in the open ports of Korea does not correspond in any way to the size of the port. Whatever may be the local conditions, there is no falling-off in their untiring enterprise. If the port has been established ten or twenty years, or only one, their commercial vigour is the same. After the settlements of Won-san, Fusan, and Chemulpo, a visit to the port of Mok-po, declared open in the autumn of 1897, fails to elicit much which is new or important. Mok-po is very small. To those who are interested in the subject, it gives an excellent example of the cool, resolute manner in which the Japanese build up a very flourishing settlement upon the foundations of an unprepossessing native village. The pioneers of the ports in Korea, it is natural that they should select the best available sites for their own quarter. At Mok-po, repeating a system which was adopted in the case of Fusan, Won-san, and ​Chemulpo, the Japanese settlement commands the one situation which is adaptable for commercial purposes. The approaches to Mok-po lie through a network of island and rock-strewn channels, the largest of which is some six hundred yards wide. The harbour is the embouchure of the River Ru-yong-san, the main water-way of the province, some ninety miles long. It can accommodate forty vessels of large tonnage. The best passage is through Lyne Sound, but easy access is given, from the south, by Washington Gulf. The width of the harbour is a little less than two miles, with a depth at low water of eleven fathoms, rising to nineteen on a full tide. At ebb tide the current averages five knots an hour; during the spring tides this velocity increases, adding to the disadvantages offered by an indifferent holding-ground.

Mok-po is situated in the south-western corner of the Province of Chyöl-la, sometimes called the granary of Korea. The port takes its name from a large island, which faces it on the north, and forms the entrance to the river. It is picturesque and stands sufficiently high to break the monotony of the surrounding country. Rough and barren to look upon, it possesses the nucleus of what will become an important settlement as trade increases. The buildings of the Japanese Consulate and the Customs House are the most imposing structures at present in the place. The British Consulate, a mass of rock, unadorned, bluff, bare and bleak, is the most desolate and depressing. A vista of mud flats does not add to the beauty of this spot. A well-built sea-wall, behind which some acres of marshy shore have been reclaimed, indicates the spirit in which the Japanese set to work to improve their concessions.

A composite trade centres at Mok-po, exceeding one ​hundred thousand pounds in value. Foreign imports stand for quite eighty thousand of this total. It is, perhaps, needless to add that no British shipping has entered the harbour within the six years of its existence. German and American steamers have nevertheless brought cargoes to Mok-po; Japanese steamers touch regularly. The trade is that of a native market, whose demands can be furnished from Japan; it is, of course, beneath the notice of the British exporter. Piece goods, Japanese and American cigarettes, matches, yarn, articles which the humbler classes now use and for which, owing to the rapidly increasing native population of this south-western Province, there will be greater demand in the future, make up the trade.
PALACE GATEWAY

It may be that this port, despised by the British merchant, as are all the ports of Korea, will some day head the centres of commerce of the kingdom. Even now it attracts foreign goods from Japan, America, and Germany. There are many channels through which British wares, cheap, enduring, practical and suitable to prevailing conditions could filter to the advantage of the British merchant. Cereals are raised in large quantities, straw-matting, grass-cloth, paper and fans are the other native manufactures. A vein of bituminous coal has been struck within a short ​distance of the port. In two industries—the making of paper and the weaving of grass-cloth—there are opportunities for expansion, which any enterprising and intelligent agent could promote by introducing cheap chemicals and inexpensive mechanical appliances. In the paper-making trade alone there is a rich harvest to be garnered by the firm who will choose to devote time, energy and patience to the creation of a business in alkalies. Already the basis of a remunerative connection exists among the villages devoted to this labour.