The exactions and dishonesty of the officials impose a perpetual drain upon the national exchequer. In the removal of this one great evil, another serious obstacle to a more flourishing financial condition would be surmounted. Unfortunately, the drought and famine of 1901, added to the decrease in the revenues of 1902, created a discrepancy of five million yen. If this deficit may be considered extraordinary, no extenuating circumstances can excuse the supplementary losses of revenue attributable to the personal peculations of the officials. The stringency of the financial situation created by the famine drew attention to the very large deficits, with which many of the more important metropolitan and chief provincial officials were debited. The inability of any of these gentry to disgorge their ill-gotten gains resulted in their immediate prosecution at the instigation of the Finance Minister, Yi Yong-ik. Ministers of State, governors of provinces, prefects and inspectors were brought sharply to account by the execution, banishment, or imprisonment of many offenders. In such a moment the peculiar astuteness of Yi Yong-ik becomes conspicuous. While he visited any official who was compromised with the full penalties of the law, he himself executed, in his capacity of Minister of Finance, a bluff by which he netted almost half a million yen for the Imperial Treasury at one stroke. Yi Yong-ik arranged to buy the ginseng crop from the ginseng farmers. This is a Government monopoly, and the price was arranged at eight dollars a pound for sixty-three thousand pounds’ weight, dried and undried. When the time came to pay, and he had secured possession of the ginseng, Yi Yong-ik refused to give more than one dollar a pound, alleging that the ginseng growers had misrepresented the condition and weight of the consignment. In the meantime the ginseng was sold; the money was appropriated, and the balance in the Treasury correspondingly increased. Upon another occasion, at a time when the discount of nickel against yen gold was very low, Yi Yong-ik was instrumental in promoting the presentation of a gift of two million dollars Korean to the Emperor. By careful adjustment the value of the exchange, nickel currency as against yen gold, hardened twenty points the day after the presentation. It is, perhaps, unnecessary to point out that Yi Yong-ik occupied the interval in disposing of the difference to the advantage of his master. [Illustration: A SEOUL GATE.] CHAPTER IX Education—Arts and graces—Penal code—Marriage and divorce—The rights of concubines—Position of children—Government