If the crime has been only of the minor degree the culprit undergoes the plank-walk, a punishment tiresome enough, but not too harsh for Coreans.  The following is a rough description of it.  A heavy wooden plank, about twelve feet long and two feet wide, with an aperture in the centre, is used, the man’s head being passed through the aperture and then secured in it in such a way that he cannot remove it.  Thus arrayed he is made to walk through the streets of the town, his head distorted by the weight he has to carry, and his body restrained by the dragging of the plank either in front of him or at his back.  The passers-by point at him the finger of scorn, as, in his helpless state, he is made to swing from one side of the road to the other with the slightest push, or else is pulled along mercilessly by people who seize the plank and begin to run.  He is poked in the ribs with sticks, and gets his head smacked and smeared with dirt; yet has to bear it all patiently, until, twirled round, knocked about, and with his neck skinned by the friction of the heavy plank, he sometimes falls down in a dead faint.

[Illustration:  THE PLANK-WALK]

Little or no compassion is shown to criminals by the Coreans.  Rather than otherwise, they are cruel to them; and children, besides being cautioned not to follow their bad example, are encouraged to annoy and torture the poor wretches.

A more severe punishment still is the square board, a piece of wood too heavy to allow of the man standing for any length of time, too wide to allow of his arms reaching his face, too big to allow of him resting his head on the ground and going to sleep, and too thick to allow of his smashing it and getting rid of it.  Instances are on record of people thus punished having become lunatics after the fourth or fifth day.  During the fly season I should think such an occurrence cannot be uncommon.  Imagine half a dozen flies disporting themselves in a tickling walk on a man’s nose, eyelids and forehead, without his being able to reach them, owing to this huge square wooden collar!  It must be dreadful!  Merely the thought of it is enough to give one the shivers.

This last mode of punishment has, I think, been imported from China, for I have also seen it frequently in the Empire of Heaven.  The other, which I first described, may also be a modification of this one, but I do not remember having seen it, as I have described it, anywhere except in Corea, at Seoul.  There is also in Corea another machine of torture, in which the head and feet are tied between heavy blocks of wood.