Arnold Henry Savage-Landor

CHAPTER XV. Police - Detectives - The plank-walk - The square board - The wooden blocks for hands and feet - Floggings - The bamboo rod - The stick - The flexible board - A flogging in Seoul - One hundred strokes for three-halfpence - Wounds produced.

 

Should you happen to be one of the tender-hearted sort, please pass this chapter and the next over, and I shall not bear you any malice. My present object is to describe some of the punishments inflicted on criminals, and, though they are, as a whole, quaint and original, I cannot say that they are pleasing, either to see or to read about.

CHAPTER IV. The Coreans - Their faces and heads - Bachelors - Married men - Head-band - Hats - Hat-umbrellas - Clothes - Spectacles.

 

Being now settled for the time being in Seoul, I must introduce you to the Corean, not as a nation, you must understand, but as an individual. It is a prevalent idea that the Coreans are Chinese, and therefore exactly like them in physique and appearance, and, if not like the Chinese, that they must be like their neighbours on the other side - the Japanese. As a matter of fact, they are like neither.

CHAPTER XVIII. Fights - Prize fights - Fist fights - Special moon for fighting - Summary justice - The use of the top-knot - Cruelty - A butcher combatant - Stone-fights - Belligerent children - Battle between two guilds - Wounded and killed.

 

One of the characteristic sights in Cho-sen is a private fight. The natives, as a rule, are quiet and gentle, but when their temper is roused they seem never to have enough of fighting. They often-times disport themselves in witnessing prize-fights among the champions of different towns, or of different wards in the same town, and on these occasions large crowds assemble to view the performance. The combatants generally fight with their fists, but, like the French, are much given to use their knees and feet as well in the contest.

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