The peasant’s houses do not differ from those of the poorer classes in Seoul. The walls are of mud, and the floors, also of mud, are warmed by a number of flues, the most economical of all methods of heating, as the quantity of dried leaves and weeds that a boy of ten can carry keeps two rooms above 70° for twelve hours. Every house is screened by a fence 6 feet high of bamboo or plaited reeds, and is usually surrounded by fruit trees. In one room are _ang-pak_, great earthenware jars big enough to contain a man, in which rice, millet, barley, and water are kept. That is frequently in small houses the women’s room. The men’s room has little in it but the mat on the floor, pillows of solid wood, and large red and green hat-cases ranging from the rafters, in which the crinoline dress hats are stowed away. Latticed and paper-covered doors and windows denote a position above that of the poorest. A pig-stye, much more substantial than the house, is always alongside of it. The villages from about 50 _li_ up the Han from Seoul may all be described as “farming villages.” Lower down they export large quantities of firewood and charcoal for the daily needs of a capital which has left itself without a stick available for fuel in its immediate neighborhood. No special industries exist. The peasants make their rude wooden ploughs and spades shod with iron, and two villages within 40 _li_ of Seoul supply them with their _ang-paks_ and culinary utensils of the same coarse ware, which stands fire and serves instead of iron pots. Such iron utensils as are used are imported from Seoul along with salt, and foreign piece goods for dress clothes, and are paid for with rice, grain, and tobacco. The people are peasant farmers in the strictest sense, most of them holding their lands from the _yang-bans_ at their pleasure. The proprietor has the right to turn them out after harvest, but it does not seem to be very oppressively exercised. He provides the seed, and they pay him half the yield. Some men buy land and obtain title-deeds. In 1894 they paid in taxes on one day’s ploughing, so much for barley, beans, rice, and cotton, the sum varying; but a new system of collecting tax on the assessed value of the land has come into operation, which renders “squeezing” on the part of the tax collector far more difficult. Money is scarcely current, business transactions are by barter, or the peasant pays with his labor. His chief outlay is on foreign piece cottons for his best clothes. These are 30 _cash_ per measure of 20 inches, dearer at Yöng-Wol, the reputed head of navigation, than at Seoul.