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The Green Bag
have been beaten for a long time he is forced by means of a funnel to swallow vinegar, in which has been washed the rotten corpse of his victim, and when
ancestors seem even mild by compari son. “Those who do not pay their creditors," writes Hamel, “within the required time, are beaten on the shins two or three times a month, until they
he is well filled with it he is beaten on the abdomen until he dies." This may seem incredibly barbarous, but what should be said of the English
find the means of discharging their debts. If they die without having ful
criminal laws of that day? Coin sweaters were boiled in lead or hot water; per petrators of brutal murders were half
to pay for them or else undergo the same chastisement." This method must have been extremely efficacious, for our
hanged and then, while still living, dis emboweled. It was an age of brutal punishments the world over; and Korean justice was no more fiendish than that
of other more civilized countries. The severity of the sentence imposed in the case of adultery depended on whether the culprit were married or single. “A married man . . .," our narrator says, “ . is by law con
demned to death, especially when the offence involves persons of distinction. The father of the criminal or his next of kin is compelled to act as executioner.
The criminal is allowed to choose the mode of death: usually, however, men ask to be stabbed in the back, and
women to have the throat cut.” In the case of a single man “his face is smeared with lime, each ear pierced with an arrow, and a bell hung on his back; this is rung at all the cross-roads where he is exposed and this punishment is usually completed by forty or fifty
blows of a stick on the buttocks.” The lives of the miserable slaves, un protected from the rapine and cruelty of their masters, must have been wretched
in the extreme.
“Slaves who kill their
masters are delivered over to cruel tor tures; but a master has the right to
take the life of his slave on the slightest pretext.” The payment of debts was enforced in so harsh a manner as to make the infamous debtors’ prison of our English
filled their duty their next of kin have
informant then naively remarks, “Thus
no one is in danger of losing what is due him." Death seems also to have been the
penalty inflicted even for some of the lesser crimes. “Robbers," Hamel says, “undergo the torture of being beaten on the feet until dead." Those hardy men must have proven more obdurate than did the delinquent debtors for, “Such a terrible chastisement," he adds,
“does not hinder the Koreans from being much addicted to larceny.” It appears from his observations that in those days even the mildest official remedy was of a nature well calculated to secure obedience to the laws. “The
lightest punishment in Korea," he writes, “is the bastinado on the buttocks or on the calf of the leg.
It is not even re
garded as a disgrace, because it is very common there, and a word spoken out
of place is sometimes suflicient to merit it." It will be observed that the bastinado was so often the instrument of justice, that it might be interesting to note our author's rather minute description of the four ways in which it was usually applied. “The manner in which the bastinado is applied to the shins is as strange as the torture itself. The criminal's feet are bound to a little bench, about four
inches broad.
Another bench is placed
under the calves, which are attached