An authentic and trustworthy history of Korea has never been written; and enormous difficulties await the investigator who, in the future, attempts this task. The native records, almost down to the present time, consist of the same uncritical mixture of legend, fable, oral tradition, and unverified written narrative which characterizes the earliest so-called histories of all civilized peoples. But the Korean civilization has not as yet produced any writer both ambitious and able to treat this material in a way corresponding to the opportunity it affords. All the narratives of events, except those of the most recent date, which have been written by foreigners, have, of necessity, been lacking in that intimate acquaintance with the Korean language, institutions, customs, and the temperament and spirit of the people, which is the indispensable equipment of the historian. The antiquities and other physical records of an historical character have, moreover, never to any considerable extent been explored. A striking example of this general truth was afforded only a short time ago when Dr. George Heber Jones discovered the fact that a wrong date (by a whole century) had been given for the casting of the Great Bell at Chong-no—one of the most conspicuous public objects of interest in Seoul; yet the correct date was inscribed on the bell itself! The reason for this petty falsifying of historical fact was characteristically Korean; it was in order that the honor of casting the bell might be ascribed to the Founder of the present Dynasty. In spite of these facts, however, the main outlines of the development of Korea are unmistakable. Its history has been, for the ruling classes, one long, monotonous, almost unbroken record of misrule and misfortune; and for the people an experience of poverty, oppression, and the shedding of blood. That they have endured at all as the semblance of a nation, although not “as an organized state in the modern sense,” has been due chiefly to these two causes: first, to a certain native quality of passive resistance, varied by periods of frenzied uprising against both native and foreign oppressors; and, second, to the fact that the difficulties encountered in getting over mountains and sea, in order to maintain a foreign rule long enough to accomplish these ends, have prevented their stronger neighbors on all sides from thoroughly subjugating and absorbing them. This latter reason may be stated in another way: it has hitherto never been worth the cost to terminate the independent existence of the Korean nation.