Show written dorthis paper BUSINESS IN COREA copyrighted by frank Q G carpenter 1894 HE city of seoul is now filled with w i t h japanese J apan e se troops and J a p a n e se in e r c h ants are p apar ing to open stores and go into business the whole country is to be reorganized on a modern basis other mer chants will soon come in and the business methods of the comeans will be changed they are the queerest business men of the world and their shops and stores are like nothing else on the face of the globe I 1 spent many days in in going through them last summer and in chatting with the merchants they are aft the gaudiest gau diest merchants on the planet they the keep their horsehair hats on when in alir their stores and instead ol of standing up behind the counters they squat cross legged on the floor and smoke long pipes while they talk to you about trade an and 1 of offer ae you goods often they squat out outside de their stores and both stores and merchants are so unlike anything in america that it is hard to describe them the stores are located on the three main business streets of the cl city these are dirt roads about as wide as pennsylvania nn sylvania avenue in washington they are lined with mud huts thatched with straw to the front of which there is often a framework or booth like awning ng which juts out over the street and in which on boards are spread out the goods they have for sale here and there little tents have been built up in the streets and there are hundreds of big white gowned squatters who have planked blanked themselves down on the road with their goods spread out before them and who soberly smoke as they wait for their customers there are hundreds of boys who part their hair in te the middle and who look like girls in their air long gowns going about peddling candy and chestnuts they have a kind of a box which is swung irom from their shoulders and which rests on their chests and the candy peddlers carry scissors and cut off their long strings of tally into such sticks as you want these boys yell out that they have taffy lor sale they are shrewd little fellows and they ply their business in all par parts of the city THE COREAN BAZAARS seoul is you know a city of people and it covers about three square miles right in the center of the city there is a point where the three business streets come together and at this point there is a temple about as big as a good sited cowshed which holds the great bell or town clock of the capital this bell rings the opening and closing of the corean day and its knell sounds the anai be beginning nning and ending of the days work and business it is rung just at dusk and at this time the great gates of the city are closed the stores are supposed to shut up and the men to go into their houses and give the women a chance to take moonlight walks unmolested about this belt bell are the biggest business establishments of seoul they are in large one and two story buildings which look a good deal like granaries and which are cut up into little bits of closets opening out upon halls each of these buildings is devoted to the selling of one kind of goods and the leading merchants who deal in them have each one of these closets and they squat on cushions just outside of them ready to bring out their goods when the customers come glass is hardly known in corea and there are no windows and the closet is as dark as a pocket I 1 here is no display of goods and you ask for what you want and the merchant brings it out one of the buildings will have nothing but cottons and there may be fifty merchants each owning one of the closet like stores within it another building will contain nothing but silk and others will be devoted to the selling of hats and paper the merchants of different classes have guilds and they fix the prices every yard of silk and every sheet of paper sold in seoul has to pass through the guild and pay its taxes before it can be sold there are six great guilds and each of these guilds pays a good round sum to the government for the controlling of its branch of trade if a retail dealer is found with a piece of goods which does not bear the stamp of the guild the guild can fine and punish him without references to any other tribunal and all of the petty traders throughout seoul have to buy through the guilds the six greatest guilds are those which control the trade in chinese silk cotton goods hemp cloth grass cloth coreau silk and paper and it will be surprising to know that the whole of corea Is is divided up into unions and that the porters have their trades unions and there are peddlers unions and all sorts of working organizations A LOOK INTO A COREAN STORE 7 he average corean store is not much bigger than a dr dry goods box and about this great beir bell lo 10 there ere are courts surrounded by such stores which open out on a ledge or porch about three feet wide upon which the merchants it A merchant could hardly turn around in one of these stores and if you would take a piano packing box and line it with shelves and run a board along in front of it about two feet from the K round you vou would have a cobean store the chief business is in cloth as the comeans probably spend more on clothes in proportion to their income than any other people in the world and the cotton trade is a big one the common people all wear cotton ani I 1 was told that they like the american goods much better than the english for the reason they are better made and that they are of finer material the corean si sik k is fairly good and they use a good deal of i chinese silk I 1 remember one fur store which I 1 visited it was not more th five feet square but it was lull full of c cost fur garments which the richer of the h people wear in the winter amonia among g it il curious articles which it had for sal were frameworks of wicker which thes people wear during the summer inrid their garments to keep them away froc fro their persons and allow a thorough cil ci lation cu of the air there were wick shirts and wicker cuffs and wicker frame fram which fit out over the stomach all si light that the weight of them would bw imperceptible and as fine in their wortel wor l manship as a panama hat THE BIGGEST BOOK STORE IN SEOUL I 1 spent some time in going among t tl book stores and picture shops and found the merchants by no mea anxious to sell especially when I 1 fa gen pak my with me was warned to pay for or everything on t spot and I 1 found that the nobility seoul and the high officials with wh I 1 was supposed to be connected had habit of taking what they pleased ai never coming back to pay for far it I 1 r real believe this was the way they 10 look upon me until I 1 offered them the in gonei 03 they always asked three times as muc ut as they expected to take and ancl eve everything ir is done by dickering I 1 bought foil about fifty cents a book which was first offered to me lor for three dollars I 1 and tha was at the biggest book store in seoul lt the books are all laid flat fiat on the flonk they have flexible backs and are mors 16 like magazines than books many them look like blank books and acco accod books until you open them and you fiak fit them filled with chinese or co core characters the merchant keeps fc accounts with a paint brush the cler cle keep their hats on and the average cl del is satisfied it he receives his clothes ai food for his family and himself bought a corean first reader an and lat a on i visited a corean printing es establish ment there were no movable ty type and the pages which were to be printed prin teo were engraved on boards the prin printer laid one of these boards down on t tw blocks of wood then mixed some las la black and water on a flat piece of ma and smeared this over the page then laid a proof sheet on it and pou po ed edit it down into the engraved type this constituted the printing ONE OF THE KINGS perquisite the king gets a big income out corean paper it is is all made by h hai and it brings about five cents a shi sh each sheet containing about as va paper I 1 judge as eight pages of newspaper I 1 went through a pt a factory which is just outside of ale se along the banks of a stream S st paper is made of bark reduced to pu and all the old paper is worked over is ground up into a sort of a mush a when it is all in bits a bamboo tram thrust into the mush and that w whid sticks to the frame makes a sheet i paper it is bleach the sun and i as strong as cloth now the king irenc his percentage out ot of the first sale all he makes a big lot of money out ot of ma nisi examination papers all offices ar aft supposed to be awarded by civil cl examinations examina pons and at certain times of year the students by the thousand coma coat from all parts of the country e aaa carrying two or three of these sheets pi paper they are admitted into one of the palace grounds and there s so down under umbrellas which they bj with them and write essays in poetry they e have ave to wear a certain kind of a cap known as a scholars cap at this time e and each essay covers a sheet of this paper it must have just so many verses and just so many lines to each verse and the students dont know what they are going to write about until they get et inside the grounds the subject is r hoisted med up on a pole just outside of a pen in which the king and the judges sit after the writing is through each student folds up his essay in a peculiar way and throws it over the fence of the pen it is carried up to the king and is spread out outon lon top of a pile of papers which growns to large proportions before the examination is through only a few pass at these examinations and hie rejected papers are all sold by the king or by his officials and there are Uund hundreds reds of houses in seoul which are carpeted with these old examination papers I 1 wore a raincoat rain coat made of oiled paper which had been originally used by a corean student for one of or these essays says and I 1 trotted about through the streets with a lot of confucian on back the stores doggerel my paper girie are found in different differ different eni parts pars of the capital and they do a big business this paper takes the place of glass and it forms the window coverings of corea THE SHOE STORES one of the largest of the guild halls about the great bell is devoted to the selling of shoes these are of many varieties vari effes and some are quite expensive those for the ladies are made of pink blue and red leather while the men usually juju ally wear black slippers with so es of 01 white wood about an inch thick the common people wear straw shoes and these are made by the bushel and are earned carried by porters all over the country 1 took a of one with about pairs on a pack on his back and I 1 saw peddlers squatting down on the road here and there with these shoes before toom they cost about one cent per 9 pair and are the cheapest article of clothing W ing in corea most things are ex trava gently dear general pak showed ue mo hats baw which cost fifteen dollars apiece and he be bought a new gown in order that JW he might go about with me in style which cost ep hun him ten dollars FREE LUNCH COUNTERS think of free lunch counters in coreal corea well they have them in all parts of the country and there is many a dirty little oan in bi seoul outside of which a clay oven is continually cooking iree soup and where you can get a bit of dried abor fish or a raw turnip without charge between drinks the comeans are less temperate 60 crate than the chinese and I 1 rd I 1 also than the japanese they 46 intoxicating ors and I 1 met aly reeling through the streets and I 1 and then saw one asleep by the roadside dressed in his long white gown and looking for all the world like a corpse in a shroud I 1 saw a number of at fights and general greathouse rather too delightedly I 1 thought once said to me why these people are just like our eople I 1 e a at t home they drink and they erht an and d they go upon sprees they have many other things in common with US and they are decidedly human there are many saloons and the sign avnie j these is a basket which is hung on a 1 above the door and which is of the kind idad through which the beer and other liquors are strained when they are made this basket is usually about eighteen inches long and eight inches in diameter and you see them all over corea THE DRUG STORES the drug stores do not sell liquors and they have very fine fluids ot of any kind their medicines consist of powders and herbs and patent medicines are as yet unknown in corea I 1 believe a great business could be done in both corea and china by taking patent medicines out there and advertising them as wonderful cure alls using the before and after taking signs especially the field is a virgin one and it ought to be worked I 1 went into one drug store in walled with drawers about six inches square filled with all kinds of nauseous herbs there were bags of medicine hanging from the root and the druggist was squatting on the floor with his hat on making more medicine both the chinese and the comeans believe in big doses they dont think a powder is worth anything unless it is big enough for a horse and their great cure all is ginseng this we consider a weed in america but it is one of the most valuable products of corea and the king has the mo noply of it he has great farms which are watched at nights by men who sit on platforms which have been bunt up in them to keep the people from stealing the crop the roots are shipped off to china where the king has his own officials to watch the he sale and see that he gets his share of the profit it is in in short worth almost its weight in gold some of this herb is shipped from america to china but is not considered as good as the corean ginseng the weed is is used as a tonic and it is believed to have wonderfully der fully strengthening hening powers THE CABINET SHOPS the comeans do some very good cabinet work and about the only things you can buy in in the country which are worth carrying away are brass cooking utensils and bureaus the brass is wonderfully fine it shines like gold and is made in little foundries which look more like blacksmith shops than brass works everything is done by hand the bureaus are all trimmed with brass and the funniest article of household furniture is the corean cash box every man has his own bank of this kind it is often bound with brass and it is made of oak wood about two inches thick and the lock to it weighs several po pounds rids the money is kept in this box and and is carried about on the backs of coolies or by servants when a man goes shopping and in the winter it is taken and put into the corean safe deposits THE COREAN SAFE DEPOSIT the comeans have perhaps the best safe deposit system in the world but it is one that works in the winter all their money is is in the shape of corean cash which is made in coins of copper and brass about as big as an old fash boned red cent with a square hole in the center it takes coins or cash to make an american dollar and about 20 20 is a good load for a man and 40 40 would break down a bullock during the summer the corean capitalists lends out his money for five per cent and upward a month very judiciously placing it in the winter however there is liable to be cold and cami famine ne and it might be stolen or his debtor might not be able to pay so as cold weather approaches he draws in his cash and puts his into safe deposit vault until spring every corean has his own vault it is usually his front yard which is walled oft off from the street he has his servant dig up this to a depth of about eight feet and then the first cold frosty night he spreads out a layer of this cash in the hole and covers it with a coating of earth he has water thrown upon this so that the cash is embedded in mud and it is watched until jack frost freezes it tight the next night there is another layer of cash |