The general agitation in the country and several of the more serious of the outbreaks had a cause which, while to our thinking it is ludicrous, shows as much as anything else the intense conservatism of _pung-kok_ or custom which prevails among the Koreans. The cause was an attack on the “Top Knot” by a Royal Edict on 30th December, 1895! This set the country aflame! The Koreans, who had borne on the whole quietly the ascendency of a hated power, the murder of their Queen, and the practical imprisonment of their King, found the attack on their hair more than they could stand. The topknot is more to a Korean than the queue is to a Chinese. The queue to the latter may be a sign of subjugation or of loyalty to the Government and that is all, and the small Chinese boy wears it as soon as his hair is long enough to plait. To the Korean the Top Knot means nationality, antiquity (some say of five centuries, others of 2,000 years), sanctity derived from antiquity, entrance on manhood socially and legally, even though he may be a child in years, the assumption of two names by which in addition to his family name he is afterwards known, and by which he is designated on the ancestral tablets, marriage is intimately bound up with it, as is ancestral worship, and as has been mentioned in the chapter on marriage, a Korean without a Top Knot, even if in middle life, can only be treated as a nameless and irresponsible boy. In a few cases a Korean, to escape from this stage of disrespect, scrapes together enough to pay for the Top Knot ceremonies and the _mang-kun_, hat, and long coat, which are their sequence, though he is too poor to support a family, but the Top Knot in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred is only assumed on marriage, without which the wearer has the title of “a half man” bestowed on him! The ceremonies at the “Investiture of the Top Knot” deserve a brief notice as among the most important of the singularities of the nation. When the father and family have decided that a boy shall be “invested,” which in nearly all cases is on the verge of his marriage, men’s clothes, the hat, _mang-kun_, etc., are provided to the limits of the family purse, and the astrologers are consulted, who choose a propitious day and hour for the ceremony, as well as the point of the compass which the chief actor is to face during its progress. The fees of the regular astrologer are very high, and in the case of the poor, the blind sorcerer is usually called in to decide on these important points.