_Locality._--The peninsula of Korea; in Chinese, Kao-li.
_Political relations._--Subject to China.
_Chief foreign influences._--Chinese, Mantshu, and Japanese; in the thirteenth century, Mongolian.
_Physical appearance._--"The Kooraïan is superior in stature to the Japanese; yet his height seldom exceeds five-and-a-half Parisian feet: he is of strong, vigorous make, his figure well-proportioned, active, and full of life. The shape of his features bears in general the impress of the Mongolian race: the coarse broad countenance; the projecting cheek-bones; the strong under-jaw; the nose depressed at the root or upper part, and broadly-spread alæ; the large mouth, with broad lips; the peculiar position of the eyes, apparently angular in the direction of their opening; the rough, thick, black hair of the head, often inclined to a red brown colour; thick eyebrows; thin beard; with a reddish-yellow, wheat-coloured (_weitzen-farbich_), or straw-coloured complexion, announce him at once and at the first look, as an inhabitant of the north-eastern parts of Asia. This type is common to most of the Kooraïans observed by us, and they recognise it as that which is most distinctive of their nation."--SIEBOLD.[88]
The political relations towards China, the great amount of Chinese influences upon the civilization of Korea, and the physical likeness between the Koreans and the Chinese have had, in many instances, the effect of diverting the attention of ethnologists from the true affinities of this division of the Peninsular Mongolidæ; and it should be added that the last of the three facts just enumerated is a legitimate ground for looking, in the first instance, to China.
It is one which the present writer has no wish to conceal. The question, however, must be viewed in all its bearings; in which case we meet with the important fact that the Korean language is anything rather than monosyllabic. Siebold, as I learn from Prichard, thought that he perceived some analogies between the Japanese, the Korean, and the Aino. He might have done more. He might have been sure of their existence--and that to an extent sufficient to throw the three tongues in the same category.
According to Klaproth,[89] speaking on the authority of Chinese writers, the present inhabitants of Korea represent the mixture of two separate populations; the true aborigines being the Koreans of the south, called by the Chinese, the _Sam Han_=_the three tribes of Han_. The northern are a people who came originally from a country lying to the northward of the Chinese province of Tshy-li, called by the Chinese writers _Sian-pi_. Whether this mixture, supposing it to be real, represents the juxtaposition of tribes, widely different or different in little more than name, is uncertain. Prichard, however, has truly remarked that the physical characters of both must have been nearly alike, inasmuch as they were each within the region where the Turanian type prevails. It may also be added that no traces of a second philological element in the difference between the Northern and the Southern Korean dialects have yet been pointed out. In a language, however, so imperfectly understood, this is not saying much.