It is really difficult to form a general estimate of the position of women in Korea. Absolute seclusion is the inflexible rule among the upper classes. The ladies have their own courtyards and apartments, towards which no windows from the men’s apartments must look. No allusion must be made by a visitor to the females of the household. Inquiries after their health would be a gross breach of etiquette, and politeness requires that they should not be supposed to exist. Women do not receive any intellectual training, and in every class are regarded as beings of a very inferior order. Nature having in the estimation of the Korean man, who holds a sort of dual philosophy, marked woman as his inferior, the _Youth’s Primer_, _Historical Summaries_, and the _Little Learning_ impress this view upon him in the schools, and as he begins to mix with men this estimate of women receives daily corroboration. The seclusion of women was introduced five centuries ago by the present dynasty, in a time of great social corruption, for the protection of the family, and has probably been continued, not, as a Korean frankly told Mr. Heber Jones, because men distrust their wives, but because they distrust each other, and with good reason, for the immorality of the cities and of the upper classes almost exceeds belief. Thus all young women, and all older women except those of the lowest class, are secluded within the inner courts of the houses by a custom which has more than the force of law. To go out suitably concealed at night, or on occasions when it is necessary to travel or to make a visit, in a rigidly closed chair, are the only “outings” of a Korean woman of the middle and upper classes, and the low-class woman only goes out for purposes of work. The murdered Queen told me, in allusion to my own Korean journeys, that she knew nothing of Korea, or even of the capital, except on the route of the _Kur-dong_. Daughters have been put to death by their fathers, wives by their husbands, and women have even committed suicide, according to Dallet, when strange men, whether by accident or design, have even touched their hands, and quite lately a serving-woman gave as her reason for remissness in attempting to save her mistress, who perished in a fire, that in the confusion a man had touched the lady, making her not worth saving!