Through the Valley of Clothes runs a long, clear stream, on whose banks are innumerable large, smooth-topped rocks. Altogether it is an admirable place for Oriental washing. In the winter every Korean garment is ripped into all its component parts before it is washed. In summer the garments are washed each in its entirety. This ripping up of the clothes before washing them is one of the comparatively few customs which the Koreans have borrowed from the Japanese. In Japan, however, all clothes about to be washed are taken to pieces, whether it be winter or summer.
Nothing could well be simpler than the _modus operandi_ of the Korean washermen and washerwomen. The clothes are well soaked in the stream. Then they are well beaten with smooth, heavy, edgeless sticks. Then they are spread upon the ground or on the rocks, as much in the sun as possible, and left to dry indefinitely. No one ever steals them! Think of it! And even the gentle winds of the Asiatic heavens scorn to blow them away. If there seems the slightest chance of such a catastrophe, a few smooth pebbles are laid upon the garments’ edges.
The qualities which the upper classes of Korea have most in common are—love of art and literature, reverence for law, kindness of disposition, and love of nature. The point upon which they most differ is religion. Korea is really a country without religion. The upper classes are intellectual to a degree, but their intellectuality is invariably of the agnostic order. Rationalism and agnosticism are the only recognized religions in upper Korean circles.
The Korean populace also profess agnosticism, but do not practise it; at least they do not practise rationalism; for if they believe in no gods, most of them believe in countless devils.
The sacred devil-trees are supposed to be (after the blind) most efficacious in ridding the land of the spirits of evil. A writer—one of the best writers on Korea—thus describes a devil-tree upon which he came one bleak autumn day:—“An ancient tree, around whose base lies piled a heap of stones. The tree is sacred; superstition has preserved it, where most of its fellows have gone to feed the subterranean ovens. It is not usually very large, nor does it look extremely venerable, so that it is at least open to suspicion that its sanctity is an honour which is passed along from oak to acorn or from pine to seed: however, it is usually a fair specimen of a tree, and, where there are few others to vie with it, comes out finely by comparison: otherwise there is nothing distinctive about the tree, except that it exists,—that it is not cut down and borne off to the city on the back of some bull, there to vanish in the smoke. On its branches hang, commonly, a few old rags, evidently once of brilliantly-coloured cloth; they look to be shreds of the garments of such unwary travellers as approached too close; but a nearer inspection shows them to be tied on designedly. The heap of small stones piled around the base of the tree gives one the impression at first that the road is about to undergo repairs, which it sadly needs, and that the stones have been collected for the purpose. This, however, is a fallacy: no Korean road ever is repaired.