Page:History of Corea, ancient and modern; with description of manners and customs, language and geography (1879).djvu/394

364 QOYEBNMENT. have been told of China, that the government is not in earnest in its professed desire to prevent the traffia In the treaty between Japan and Corea, the opium traffic is strictly forbidden. And death is the legal penalty now to any Corean known to smoke opium. Smuggling is variously punished. Beheading is the sentence against smuggling ginsheng and ox-hide. This ginsheng the Coreans grow extensively in their gardens; but the root grown by cultivation is regarded as nothing like so efficacious as the old roots on the wild mountains, which sell at enormous prices. Other kinds of smuggling are punished by a more or less severe beating, or by banishment. People caught fighting, are beaten in the same way as naughty children, — ^but with a bamboo instead of the palm of the hand. And for disobedience to parents, a man is severely beaten. To prevent the magistrates from condoning offences for a consideration, there is a periodical visit, at irregular intervals, paid to some city or district, by a very high official in plain clothes, called Uaa. U is the king, and Umiung the law. As soon as the Usa has made all his enquiries among the common people of the district, where he is investigating the magistrate's conduct, his followers, also scattered about in plain clothes, shout out, at a sign from him, Umiunga, Umiunga, and with the shout collect around their chief, whose presence is first suspected, only when thus discovered. He wields absolute power, and immediately proceeds to the yamun to transact his busines& If the magistrate is found guilty of receiving bribes, he is sent to the capital, where he is beheaded. The Uaa can go anywhere, and punish on the spot any crime, — as disobedience to parents, reviling one's • elders, &c. He is unusually active in years of scarcity. The power of this tremendous spy is greater far than that of the Chinese censor, who can do no more than memorialise the throne. But in spite of aU, the Corean mandarins, like most of their neighbours, from highest to lowest, have their market value ; and the laws, well intentioned as they are, serve but as thumb screws to squeeze out silver out of the