Korea is a country abounding in valuable products, one of the chief of which is gold. There are also excellent anthracite coal and other minerals, but as yet these resources have been little utilised. At the present time no less than one hundred and eighty-four mining concessions have been granted to British, American, German, and French companies, and their prospects are thoroughly encouraging. Korea is the fifth largest cotton producing country in the world, and now that it is opening up to trade, with fresh facilities of transport by land and sea, it is likely to make rapid progress. The people are naturally peaceful and diligent, and under a wise rule the land ought to become an ideal one. Christianity and education are spreading rapidly, the former being said to have already 200,000 adherents. The written language is alphabetical, and consists of twenty-five letters, but the literate Koreans use Chinese characters, and all of them are expected to know that language. The missionaries decided to use the _Un Mum_, the native script, and most of the Christian literature is published in that form. The Protestant Missions have been working only about twenty-five years in Korea, but the Roman Catholics were there long ago, and the terrible persecutions they underwent form one of the most striking chapters in Korean history. The former have had remarkable success, and have introduced fresh methods of missionary enterprise, which will be described in the next chapter, as they are likely to have great influence on the future development of missions in other countries. Nowhere have the people of a country more thoroughly recognised their duty of handing on the gift they have received, or of accepting their personal responsibility for evangelising their own people. PART II The Face of Korea CHAPTER VII Pyöng Yang We reached Pyöng Yang (written Ping Yang by the war correspondents, and universally pronounced Piang) in the early afternoon, and found chairs sent by our kind hosts to take us from the station to the town, a distance of about one and a half miles. Other passengers got into rickshas, and others again into the drollest little trolleys on wheels, like boxes with the front side missing, and containing a bench to seat two persons. These trolleys run on the narrowest gauge tram lines, and are propelled with great rapidity by a coolie running on each side: I have never seen them anywhere but at Pyöng Yang.