their dress, and its general dissimilarity to any other form of feminine garb the world has ever known, renders it sufficiently characteristic of the vagaries of the feminine mind to be attractive.
Women do not appear very much in the streets during daylight. The degree of their seclusion depends upon the position which they fill in society. In a general way the social barriers which divide everywhere the three classes are well defined here. The yang-ban or noble is, of course, the ruling class. The upper-class woman lives rather like a woman in a zenana ; from the age of twelve she is visible only to the people of her household and to her immediate relatives. She is married young, and thenceforth her acquaintances among men are restricted solely to within the fifth degree of cousinship. She may visit her friends, being usually carried by four bearers in a screened chair. She seldom walks, but should she do so her face is invariably veiled in the folds of a chang-ot. Few restrictions are imposed upon the women of the middle class as to their appearance in the streets, nor are they so closely secluded in the house as their aristocratic sisters ; their faces are, however, veiled. The chang-ot is by no means so complete a medium of concealment as the veil of Turkey. Moreover, it is often cast aside in old age. The dancing-girls, slaves, nuns, and prostitutes, all included in the lowest class, are forbidden to wear the chang-ot. Women doctors, too, dispense with it, though only women of the highest birth are allowed to practise medicine.
In a general way, the chief occupation of the Korean woman is motherhood. Much scandal arises if a girl attains her twentieth year without having married, while no better excuse exists for divorce than sterility. In
