There were old women in far mountain villages who looked on the beggar woman by my side, the lost Lady Om, and sighed and shook their heads while their eyes dimmed with tears.

And there were young women whose faces warmed with compassion as they gazed on the bulk of my shoulders, the blue of my eyes, and my long yellow hair--I who had once been a prince of Koryu and the ruler of provinces.

And there were rabbles of children that tagged at our heels, jeering and screeching, pelting us with filth of speech and of the common road.
Beyond the Yalu, forty miles wide, was the strip of waste that constituted the northern frontier and that ran from sea to sea.

It was not really waste land, but land that had been deliberately made waste in carrying out Cho-Sen's policy of isolation.

On this forty-mile strip all farms, villages and cities had been destroyed.