Corea (native name Chosŏn, 'Morning Calm'), a kingdom on the east coast of Asia, stretching as a peninsula from 34° 30' to 43° N. lat., and from 124° 30' to 130° 30' E. long., between the Sea of Japan and the Yellow Sea, and separated by the Strait of Corea from the Japanese Islands. It has a coastline of about 1740 miles, and a total area of about 90,000 sq. m. The north boundary line is formed by the river Tu-man flowing north-east, and the Am-nok flowing south-west from the watershed of Paik-to-san. The Tu-man, for the last 5 miles of its course, separates Russian Asia from Corea. A belt of land, 5600 sq. m., on the north side has for the last three centuries been constituted a neutral zone between Corea and Manchuria, but is now being gradually encroached upon both from the Chinese and Korean side. The east coast is high, monotonous, and but slightly indented, with very few islands and harbours. The south and west shores are deeply and manifoldly scooped, and beset by numberless picturesque islands. From these island-fringed shores, especially on the west coast, mud-banks extend out to sea beyond sight. While the tide on the east coast is very slight—only 2 feet at Gensan—it increases on the south and west coast in a north direction, rising to 33 feet at Chemulpo. The rapid rise and fall of tides and the vast area of mud left bare at low-water cause frequent fogs, and render the numerous inlets little available except for native craft. On the west coast the rivers are frozen in winter, but the east coast is open the whole winter through. Quelpaert, the largest island, 40 by 17 miles, lies 60 miles S. of the mainland. Port Hamilton, between Quelpaert and Corea, was for a time an English possession, but in 1886 was given to China. The Russians have been credited with a desire to possess the magnificent harbour of Port Lazaref, on the Korean mainland. See the map of CHINA.
Occupying about the same latitude as Italy, Corea is also like Italy hemmed in on the north by alpine ranges, and traversed from north to south by a branch chain. From the north the chain runs close to the coast, till, about the 37th parallel, it trends inland. The chain rises in elevation from the north to the centre, throwing out feelers to the west which break up the country into a series of narrow valleys debouching on the sea. Precipitous on the east, the chain slopes towards the broader west side, which is accordingly the more developed part; though Kyöng-sang province in the south-east is one of the richest in Corea. Corea is on the whole very mountainous. Among the summits are Hien-fung, measured from sea at 8114 feet high, though later travellers deem this height an exaggeration; Mount Popoff, at 37th parallel; Coxcomb, north-east of Seoul (Sŏul), rises to 4800 feet. The mountains are mostly of primary rock; those of Hwang-hai-do are, however, mesozoic, and about the centre are lava and volcanic rocks. The chief rivers on the west coast are Keum, navigable for boats drawing 4½ feet 30 miles up; Han, navigable to a little above Seoul, 80 miles; Tai-dong, navigable to Phyöng-yang, 75 miles; Am-nok, far the greatest, navigable to above Wi-wŏn, 175 miles. Flowing through beautiful well-timbered mountains, the Am-nok has many affluents, and in the summer floods its waters rise to full 40 feet even where a mile or more wide. In the south-east the Nak-tong is navigable for boats drawing 4½ feet for 140 miles up.
The climate is healthy, bracing in the north, but colder in winter and hotter in summer than in corresponding European latitudes. The heat is tempered by sea-breezes, but in the narrow inclosed valleys becomes very intense. The Han is frozen in winter so as to be available at Seoul, where it is 400 yards broad, for cart traffic three months in the year. The Tu-man is usually frozen five months in the year. Various kinds of timber-trees abound, except in the west, where wood is scarce, and is sparingly used; and in other parts the want of coal has caused the wasteful denudation of many hillsides. The fauna is very considerable, and besides tigers, leopards, deer, includes pigs, tiger-cats, badgers, foxes, beavers, otters, martens, and a great variety of birds. Among the products are rice, wheat, beans, cotton, hemp, maize, millet, sesame, perilla. Ginseng grows wild in the Kange mountains, and is also much cultivated about Kai-sông, the duties upon it, notwithstanding much smuggling, yielding about half a million dollars annually. The domestic animals are few. The cattle are excellent (the bull being the usual beast of burden), the ponies very small but hardy, fowls good, pigs inferior. Iron ores of excellent quality are mined; and there are copper-mines in several places. The output of silver is very small; in some years a good deal of gold is exported. The principal industries are the manufacture of paper, mats woven of grass, split bamboo blinds, oil-paper, and silk. The total value of the foreign imports in some years has amounted to about £500,000, two-thirds representing cotton goods; the native exports reached £136,666, chiefly beans and cowhides. The foreign vessels entering the treaty ports number between 500 and 600 in an average year, with a total tonnage of 150,000 tons or more. Three-fourths of the trade is with Japan, and over a fifth with China; British goods go by way of these countries. Business has hitherto been done chiefly by barter, imports being exchanged largely for gold dust, and Japanese silk piece goods being a current exchange for trade inland; but in 1888 the mint at Seoul was approaching completion, and a beneficial effect on commerce is anticipated from the introduction of a convenient and sufficient coinage. Seoul is connected with Taku and Port Arthur by telegraph.
The population is variously estimated at from eight to ten millions, of a mainly Mongolian type, though some assume that there is a Caucasian element in the stock. Hair not quite black, and even blue eyes and an almost English style of face are met with. The language is intermediate between Mongolo-Tartar and Japanese, polysyllabic and agglutinating. It has an alphabetic system of its own; but Chinese characters have taken the place of Korean in official writing and correspondence. A grammar and dictionary by Ridel were published at Yokohama in 1879. The philosophy of Corea is Confucian, but in spite of great restrictions on Buddhism there are numerous Buddhist monasteries. Evidence of other religion exists in the mirok, half-length human figures carved in stone. The government is an hereditary and absolute monarchy, and carried on through three ministers, besides whom are ministers of six departments. Caste is very powerful, and no office of even only local importance is held by others than a noble. There is strictly no well-to-do middle class, those who are not officials being cultivators. In some districts the lower classes live in a very squalid condition, and mud-hovels thatched with straw are the usual houses everywhere; but beggars are rare, and absolute distress is seldom met with. Corea is divided into eight provinces or Do; three on the east and five on the west coast. Seoul, the capital, has a pop. of about 240,000. Phyông-yang, 36 miles from the sea, on the Tai-dong, has a pop. of over 20,000. It is the centre of a silk industry, and 20 miles off, at Keum-san, are gold-washings. Kai-sông is important as the capital of the old dynasty, and for its cultivation of ginseng.
The earliest records of Corea carry us back to 1122 B.C., when Ki-tze with 5000 Chinese colonists brought to Corea Chinese arts and politics. Down to modern times Corea has remained secluded (see JAPAN). Almost the first knowledge of Corea obtained by Europe was through the shipwreck of some Dutchmen on the coast in 1653. The mis- sionary De Cespedes had, however, entered Corea at the end of the 16th century, and from 1777 other missionaries followed. In 1835 M. Maubant gained a footing in Corea, but in 1866, after thousands of converts had been put to death, the only three Catholic missionaries left had to flee for their lives. To avenge the death of the Catholics the French sent an expedition, which was, however, repulsed. Corea was tributary to China, though practically independent. But Japan steadily increased its influence in the country, especially after 1876, and in 1894 made internal dissensions in the Korean state a reason for proposing to China a joint intervention. China declining (as Japan had hoped) to interfere with its vassal state, the Japanese thereupon invaded and occupied Corea, defeated the Chinese at Phông-Yang and in a naval battle on the Yalu, and, invading China, forced the Chinese to submit to a humiliating peace (1895). Russian influence is now dominant. See CHINA.
See Dallet, Histoire de l'Église de Corée (1874); Oppert, A Forbidden Land (1880); J. Ross, History of Corea (1880); two works by Griffis (New York, 1882 and 1885); and other works on Corea by Lowell (1886), Carles (1888), Gilmore (1893), Captain Cavendish (1894), A. H. Savage Landor (1895), and Mrs Bishop (1898), besides Curzon's Problems of the Far East (1895). There are Korean Dictionaries by Underwood (Shanghai, 1890) and Scott (Shanghai, 1891). And see JAPAN.