Pearl Buck - The Living Reed

“Call me George,” he said.

This George Foulk had lived four years in China and Japan and once had even spent a few months in Korea, so that he spoke Chinese and Japanese and some Korean. Il-han was fortunate that he himself was not official in rank and could go or not go on official calls. While the others waited here and there, he walked about the city with George and listened with lively interest to what the young man explained of history and science and art in the streets and museums and buildings. All that he, Il-han, saw and heard he stored in his mind, to be used for his own country when the time came.

Nevertheless, the formal meeting with the President of the country, whose name was Chester A. Arthur, Il-han must attend as special representative of the King of Korea. It took place not in the capital but in the city of New York in a great hotel where the President was staying, for what reason Il-han did not know. Thither they went and were installed in palatial rooms, where they waited for the appointed time. The day arrived and the hour, and Il-han prepared himself. He wore his richest robes of state, a loose coat of flowered plum-colored silk over a white silk undertunic. Over these he put his ancestral belt of broad gold plates. Upon his breast he hung his apron of purple satin embroidered with three cranes in white silk thread, surrounded with a border of many colors. On his head he wore the tall hat traditional for yangban noblemen, made of horsehair woven upon a bamboo frame and tied beneath his chin. Besides himself only Min Yong-ik, the head of the delegation, wore such robes. Two others could wear aprons with one crane embroidered on them. The rest wore no breast aprons but the coats of plum-colored silk and the white silk tunics in blue or green with tall hats.

Shortly before noon, word came that the President was ready to receive them. He stood in the center of the parlor of his private suite, and Il-han, entering first, saw a thick-bodied man wearing tight gray trousers and a long dark coat cut back from the waist. On his right was his Secretary of State, a man surnamed Frelinghuysen, who stood quiet and apart. On his left was his Assistant Secretary, surnamed Davis, and several others, among them George Foulk. Il-han and his fellow Koreans entered in single file and formed themselves in a line before the American dignitary. Then at a signal from Min Yong-ik they knelt at the same moment, and raising their hands high above their heads, they bent their bodies forward slowly in unison until their foreheads touched the carpeted floor. They remained in this position for moments, and then rose and went toward the President, who, with his suite, had bowed deeply as they entered and so remained until the Koreans had risen.

Now Frelinghuysen came forward and he led Prince Min to the President and introduced him. The two clasped their hands together, Prince and President, and they looked deeply into each other’s eyes, murmuring compliments, each in his own tongue. One after the other the Koreans were introduced to the Americans, and then the Prince and the President exchanged formal greetings, each in his own tongue, translated in turn.

After the ceremonies, the Koreans retired, and on that same days they took ship. With the American officers delegated to accompany them, they went to the city of Boston, there to inspect buildings and manufactories.

Time fails me [Il-han wrote to Sunia in the days following] to tell you of the many sights I have seen. My head is crowded with sights, my mind is enriched, and I shall need the rest of my life to tell you everything. I have seen great farms where machines take the place of men and beasts, and these I have observed most carefully, for you know my concern with the life of our landfolk. Alas, we are centuries behind these Americans! But I have seen the factories where textiles are made, especially in a city named Lowell, and there, too, I perceive how far behind we are with our handlooms. I cannot deny that our stuffs are finer, especially our silks, but can we compete with machines? I have seen hospitals and telegraph offices and shipping yards, the great shops of jewelers and merchants of all kinds. Tiffany in New York is a mighty name in jewelries, and I was glad I had not you beside me as I examined their baubles, else I could not have contained you, or myself for that matter, who wish to give you all you long for. The post office — ah, that we had such speed and exactitude, a letter posted today hundreds of miles away by tomorrow, and this not by foot but by train! And I saw sugar refineries where the whitest sugar is made, all by machines, and fire vehicles, whereby fires in great cities are put out before they destroy a hundred houses, and great newspaper offices, and above all, I saw the military academy at a place on a great river, where young men are trained as officers of the national army here. These and much more I have seen, and when you and I are old, Sunia, and sitting upon our ondul floor together, I shall still have new things to tell you, for a lifetime is not enough for all I have seen.

When the mission was ended, the Koreans bade farewell to the President in his palace, for they were in Washington again to observe how the government performed its duties. On the last day, they divided themselves. Some went to Europe and homeward by the Suez Canal, some went home directly by the way which they had come, but upon the President’s invitation three went homeward on an American warship, and with these went Il-han, for George Foulk accompanied them, and Il-han wished to stay by this young man and with his help gather more information concerning the history and political life of the western peoples. By now Il-han could read books in English partly by himself, but George Foulk was there to help him when he could not understand, and Il-han made translations of such works for the King to read, and for the Queen, if she would. Only Prince Min would have nothing to do with such works. He declared that Korea could never match the western countries and therefore her strength must remain in her own old ways. So saying, he retired to his cabin on the ship and returned to the Confucian books he had brought with him.

The warship carried Il-han and three others and George Foulk to Europe, where they disembarked at Marseilles, and for seventeen days they traveled through other new countries and saw still more new sights, until Il-han, fearing that by now one sight would be confused with another, spent every evening writing down what he had seen during the day and where he had seen it.

It was spring again before he reached home, and indeed all but summer, for it was the last day of the fifth month of the solar year, 1884, when the ship weighed anchor in the harbor at Chemulpo. From there they were escorted to the capital in sedan chairs and on horseback, and Il-han chose a horse, and so did George Foulk. Side by side they rode through the sunlit landscape, but neither saw the surrounding beauty. They talked long and quietly together, and the burden of their talk was Il-han’s fear that Prince Min’s influence might be against reforms.

“Our only hope,” he said, “is to leave the past and move into the present. I have hope, for I understand now that a small country can grow strong by means of science and machines. We must search out our best young men and send them to your country to learn, and return them here to teach. We must open colleges for our youths. Yet how can I persuade the King when Prince Min is so powerful? And certainly I shall not be able to persuade the Queen, whose relative he is. I make a prophecy and I pray it will not come true. The Prince, I prophesy with fear and sadness, will pretend to have interest in what he has seen, but it is only pretense. He will pretend to suggest reforms and then he will prevent them in secret. This is my fear.”