All through the land there were Top Knot complexities and difficulties. Countrymen, merchants, Christian catechists, and others, who had come to Seoul on business, and had been shorn, dared not risk their lives by returning to their homes. Wood and country produce did not come in, and the price of the necessaries of life rose seriously. Many men who prized the honor of entering the Palace gates at the New Year feigned illness, but were sent for and denuded of their hair. The click of the shears was heard at every gate in Seoul, at the Palace, and at the official residences; even servants were not exempted, and some of the Foreign Representatives were unable to present themselves at the Palace on New Year’s Day, because their chairmen were unwilling to meet the shears. A father poisoned himself from grief and humiliation because his two sons had submitted to the decree. The foundations of social order were threatened when the Top Knot fell! People who had had their hair cropped did not dare to venture far from Seoul lest they should be exposed to the violence of the rural population. At Chun-chön, 50 miles from the capital, when the Governor tried to enforce the ordinance, the people rose _en masse_ and murdered him and his whole establishment, afterwards taking possession of the town and surrounding country. As policemen with their shears were at the Seoul gates to enforce the decree on incomers, and peasants who had been cropped on arriving did not dare to return to their homes, prices rose so seriously by the middle of January, 1896, that “trouble” in the capital was expected, and another order was issued that “country folk were to be let alone at that time.” Things went from bad to worse, till on the 11th of February, 1896, the whole Far East was electrified by a sensational telegram--“The King of Korea has escaped from his Palace, and is at the Russian Legation.” On that morning the King and Crown Prince in the dim daybreak left the Kyeng-pok Palace in closed box chairs, such as are used by the Palace waiting-women, passed through the gates without being suspected by the sentries, and reached the Russian Legation, the King pale and trembling as he entered the spacious suite of apartments which for more than a year afterwards offered him a secure asylum. The Palace ladies who arranged the escape had kept their counsel well, and had caused a number of chairs to go in and out of the gates early and late during the previous week, so that the flight failed to attract any attention. As the King does much of his work at night and retires to rest in the early morning, the ever vigilant Cabinet, his jailers, supposed him to be asleep, and it was not until several hours later that his whereabouts became known, when the organization of a new Cabinet was progressing, and Korean dignitaries began to be summoned into the Royal presence.