Korea and Her Neighbors INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER In the winter of 1894, when I was about to sail for Korea (to which some people erroneously give the name of “The Korea”), many interested friends hazarded guesses at its position,--the Equator, the Mediterranean, and the Black Sea being among them, a hazy notion that it is in the Greek Archipelago cropping up frequently. It was curious that not one of these educated, and, in some cases, intelligent people came within 2,000 miles of its actual latitude and longitude! In truth, there is something about this peninsula which has repelled investigation, and until lately, when the establishment of a monthly periodical, carefully edited, _The Korean Repository_, has stimulated research, the one authority of which all writers, with and without acknowledgment, have availed themselves, is the Introduction to Père Dallet’s _Histoire de l’Église de Korée_, a valuable treatise, many parts of which, however, are now obsolete. If in this volume I present facts so elementary as to provoke the scornful comment, “Every schoolboy knows that,” I venture to remind my critics that the larger number of possible readers were educated when Korea was little more than “a geographical expression,” and had not the advantages of the modern schoolboy, whose “up-to-date” geographical text-books have been written since the treaties of 1883 opened the Hermit Nation to the world; and I will ask the minority to be patient with what may be to them “twice-told tales” for the sake of the majority, specially in this introduction, which is intended to give something of lucidity to the chapters which follow. The first notice of Korea is by Khordadbeh, an Arab geographer of the ninth century, A.D., in his _Book of Roads and Provinces_, quoted by Baron Richofen in his work on China, p. 575. Legends of the aboriginal inhabitants of the peninsula are too mythical to be noticed here, but it is certain that it was inhabited when Kit-ze or Ki-ja, who will be referred to later, introduced the elements of Chinese civilization in the twelfth century B.C. Naturally that conquest and subsequent immigrations from Manchuria have left some traces on the Koreans, but they are strikingly dissimilar from both their nearest neighbors, the Chinese and the Japanese, and there is a remarkable variety of physiognomy among them, all the more noticeable because of the uniformity of costume. The difficulty of identifying people which besets and worries the stranger in Japan and China does not exist in Korea. It is true that the obliquity of the Mongolian eye is always present, as well as a trace of bronze in the skin, but the complexion varies from a swarthy olive to a very light brunette.