cities with the comparatively filthy and slothful Korean quarters. The branches of the First Bank of Japan have been issuing recently one-, five-, and ten-_yen_ bank-notes,[44] which have been of immense value to the foreign trade in Korea, the native currency of which is in a deplorable condition.[45] The coasting and river navigation, so far as it concerns foreign trade, is largely controlled by the Japanese, who, besides, own the only railway line in operation in Korea, twenty-six miles long, running between the capital, Seul, and its port Chemulpo.[46] They are also building,[47] under the management of substantially the same company, another and longer line—two hundred and eighty-seven miles—between Seul and the port of Fusan, which passes through the richer and economically by far the more important half of the Peninsula.[48] It is not impossible to suppose that the Japanese people will succeed in their efforts to secure the right of extending this line beyond Seul up to Wiju on the northern border,[49] and thence ultimately connecting it with the Eastern Chinese and the Peking-Shanghaikwan-Sinminting Railways, so as to render the connection by rail between Fusan and China and Europe complete.[50] The Mitsui Produce Company, another Japanese concern, monopolized the export of Korean ginseng, and, in 1903, despite the competition of the Russian Baron Gunzburg,[51] succeeded in extending the term of the monopoly for five years. Twenty to forty thousand Japanese fishermen along the Korean coast report an annual catch amounting sometimes to large figures.