The coast of Korea is well sprinkled with the names of foreign
navigators, who, in previous centuries, essayed to visit the Land of
the Morning Radiance. With rare exceptions, these visitors were turned
back. Some were captured and tortured; many were ordered off at once,
few were ever entertained. None were invited to make any stay in the new
land, or permitted to inspect its wonders and curiosities. Beyond the
Japanese, those who succeeded in sapping the wall of isolation which
was so carefully built around the country and so rigorously maintained,
were generally escorted inland as prisoners, the unconscious victims of
some successful stratagem. In a manner, the fashion of their treatment
is revealed in the curious names with which these pioneers of navigation
have labelled the capes and promontories, the islands and shoals, which
they were lucky enough to locate and whose dangers they were fortunate
enough to avoid. Many of these names have ceased to be recognised. The
lapse of time has caused them to be obliterated by European hydrographers
from the maps and charts of the country and seas, in which their
originators had risked so much. In many parts of the coast, however,
particularly upon the west, along the shores of the Chyung-chyöng
Province, these original names have been preserved. They form, to-day,
a tribute to the earnestness and intrepidity of these early explorers.
This mead of recognition is only just, and is not to be denied to their
undoubted gallantry and enterprise.
It is not impossible to believe that an unusually fickle fate followed
in their footsteps, prompting them to leave thus for the guidance of
future generations, some hint of their own miscalculations. If one may
judge, from the brief narratives which these discoverers have left behind
them, the result of their work upon these inhospitable shores surpassed
anything that they had foreseen. The visit of these hardy spirits aroused
the curiosity of the Koreans, giving to them their first knowledge of
that outer world which they had spurned for centuries. Despite the golden
opportunities now presented to them, however, they continued to neglect
it. The memory of the black ships and the red beards (Dutchmen)—as they
dubbed the strange craft and stranger devils, that had to appear only off
their shores to be shipwrecked—dwelt long in their minds. Although they
treated these strangers with comparative generosity, they were careful to
preserve inviolate the secrets and sanctity of their land. They rejected
with contumacy the friendly overtures of strangers who came in monster
ships, and who, forsooth, left behind nothing but a name. It is scarcely
astonishing, therefore, that there are many points upon the coast of
Korea which bear somewhat uncomplimentary names. Deception Bay, Insult
Island, and False River savour of certain physical discomforts, which,
too great to be borne in silence, left an indelible impression upon the
associations of the spot.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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