The Land & The People

BACKGROUND FOR WAR

Thirteenth in population (30,000,000) among the world's nations, but only 42nd in area, Korea is washed on three sides by salt water--the Japan Sea, the Korea Strait, and the Yellow Sea (see map). It can be said to begin with a mountain, the far northern peak of Paektu (White Head), coated with glistening pumice and sheltering in its ancient crater the deep Dragon Prince's Pool.

Ever White. Southwest from Paektu along the Manchurian border flows the Yalu River, blue-green with melted snow and ice from its mountain source, and known to Koreans as the Am Nok (Green Duck). Springing northeast from Paektu, the cold Tumen River separates Korea from eastern Manchuria and Siberia. On the Yalu and along the swift-flowing tributaries of the Tumen stand the Japanese-built hydroelectric plants which, until the power lines were cut by the Communists at the 38th parallel, provided 90% of the electricity used in all Korea.

Southeast from Paektu runs the Chang-paik (Ever White) Range. Winding down along the east coast to the southern tip of the peninsula, this mountain backbone according to Korean folklore, changes direction 99 times.

On the east, where the mountains rise abruptly out of the Japan Sea, there are few good harbors. On the western side of the peninsula, the mountains slope gently into the sea and natural harbors are numerous, but their usefulness is reduced by huge tides. Inchon, the port of Seoul is bedeviled by 29-foot tides. The best harbor is Pusan, now held by the US from which in 1592 the Koreans sent a turtle-shaped ship, the world's first ironclad, to beat the invading Japanese.

Tigers & Timber. The northern mountains, covered with snow from September to March, are rugged and heavily forested with spruce, larch, birch, juniper, maple and walnut. In the forests lurk leopards wild boars, wolves and tigers. Still a menace to the northern peasants, tigers were so much a part of Korean life 30 years ago as to justify the Chinese sneer: "The Korean hunts the tiger one half of the year and the tiger hunts the Korean the other half."

North Korea produces more than tigers and timber. It has 75% of all the industry on the peninsula and in the Musan fields of the far northeast lie Korea's largest iron deposits; from the northern mountains come gold, copper and most of the country's coal--anthracite, bituminous and lignite.

As the mountains spread south, their forest cover gradually changes to pine and alder, then disappears entirely. And as the forest disappears, the mountains dwindle until in the far south they become mere hills.

The climate, too, grows milder and comes to resemble that of southern Virginia. In both North and South Korea, rainfall is almost entirely confined to July and August. The heavy concentration of rainfall is welcomed in the wide, southern valleys, which contain three times as much rice paddy land as the North, and where two crops a year of rice, barley, wheat or rye are harvested. Heart of the South is Seoul, which lies among granite hills overlooking the lordly Han River. The Japanese built wide avenues and modern buildings in Seoul's westernized center, but most of the city's side streets are unpaved alleys bordered by drab wooden shops. Even in the city's center men in western business suits brush elbows with ragged coolies.

In their smattering of western ways, Seoul's people differ from most Koreans, 75% of whom are peasants. Average size of Korean farms: three acres. Essentially there is nothing to distinguish the more than 20,000,000 Southern Koreans from the 9,000,000 who live in the North. All Koreans speak the same language; it is not related to Chinese and Japanese, but to Finnish, Hungarian and Turkish. Korean is usually written in Chinese characters.

North and South Koreans eat the same foods (relying heavily on highly spiced cabbage called kimchi) and enjoy the same pastimes--notably swinging on a kind of trapeze bar, flying kites and prancing strenuously through intricate folk dances. In physical appearance, too, there is little regional difference among the people of Korea. Somewhat taller than the Japanese on average, they are nonetheless hard to distinguish from either Japanese or Chinese.

White Collar Workers? Early in Korean history, white clothing was adopted as a sign of mourning for the death of a king or a close relative. Kings seldom lived long in ancient Korea, and the populace was required to mourn each royal death for 30 years. So over the centuries Korean men adopted as regular daily dress gowns of white cotton over baggy white trousers. Soon after the beginning of Japanese rule in 1910, a statistically minded Japanese estimated that Korean women spent three billion hours a year washing white clothes, and voiced the suspicion that Korean peasants worked less than Japanese because they were afraid of getting their white clothes dirty.

The bustling Japanese quickly launched a campaign to get Korean men to wear dark clothes. It failed. The Japanese also tried to get the Koreans to save fuel by feeding raw food to farm animals, but Korean farm wives went right on cooking meals for bullocks and ponies.

Squealing & Trumpeting. Foreigners have sometimes called the Koreans "otherwise-minded," accusing them of contrariness and a constitutional dislike for authority. Even the ponies are "otherwise-minded" in Korea. Though prized for their ability to carry 160-to 200-lb. loads 30 miles a day through mountain passes, they are probably the least equable beasts of burden in the world. Wrote one western visitor to Korea: "They are most desperate fighters, squealing and trumpeting on all occasions, attacking every pony they meet on the road . . . and in their fury ignoring their loads which are often smashed to pieces. At the inn stables they are not only chained down to the troughs by chains short enough to prevent them from raising their heads, but are partially slung at night to the heavy beams of the roof. Even under these restricted circumstances, their cordial hatred finds vent in hyena-like yells, abortive snaps, and attempts to swing their hind legs round."

The Korean, like his horse, has had some hard treatment--from his own kings and from the Japanese conqueror. Like his horse, the Korean has never stopped snapping and kicking.

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