This recognition of the Korean language by means of the official use of the mixed, and in some cases of the pure script, the abolition of the Chinese literary examinations as the test of the fitness of candidates for office, the use of the “vulgar” script exclusively in the _Independent_, the new Korean newspaper, the prominence given to Korean by the large body of foreign missionaries, and the slow creation of scientific text-books and a literature in _En-mun_, are tending not only to strengthen Korean national feeling, but to bring the “masses,” who can mostly read their own script, into contact with Western science and forms of thought. There is no national religion. Confucianism is the official cult, and the teachings of Confucius are the rule of Korean morality. Buddhism, once powerful, but “disestablished” three centuries ago, is to be met with chiefly in mountainous districts, and far from the main roads. Spirit worship, a species of _shamanism_, prevails all over the kingdom, and holds the uneducated masses and the women of all classes in complete bondage. Christian missions, chiefly carried on by Americans, are beginning to produce both direct and indirect effects. Ten years before the opening[3] of Korea to foreigners, the Korean king, in writing to his suzerain, the Emperor of China, said, “The educated men observe and practice the teachings of Confucius and Wen Wang,” and this fact is the key to anything like a correct estimate of Korea. Chinese influence in government, law, education, etiquette, social relations, and morals is predominant. In all these respects Korea is but a feeble reflection of her powerful neighbor; and though since the war the Koreans have ceased to look to China for assistance, their sympathies are with her, and they turn to her for noble ideals, cherished traditions, and moral teachings. Their literature, superstitions, system of education, ancestral worship, culture, and modes of thinking are Chinese. Society is organized on Confucian models, and the rights of parents over children, and of elder over younger brothers, are as fully recognized as in China. It is into this archaic condition of things, this unspeakable grooviness, this irredeemable, unreformed Orientalism, this parody of China without the robustness of race which helps to hold China together, that the ferment of the Western leaven has fallen, and this feeblest of independent kingdoms, rudely shaken out of her sleep of centuries, half frightened and wholly dazed, finds herself confronted with an array of powerful, ambitious, aggressive, and not always overscrupulous powers, bent, it may be, on overreaching her and each other, forcing her into new paths, ringing with rude hands the knell of time-honored custom, clamoring for concessions, and bewildering her with reforms, suggestions, and panaceas, of which she sees neither the meaning nor the necessity.