MINING: Chosen Gold

In the 504th Year 2nd 5th Moon, 10th Day (July 2. 1895), harassed King Li-Hsi of Chosen (Korea) signed away the mineral rights to 600 square miles of the Uhn San district of his sparse North Peng-Yang Province to a brilliant, Columbia City, Ind. promoter named Leigh S. J. Hunt. Three months later Li-Hsi was imprisoned, his wife assassinated by a Japanese-Korean junta. But by 1897 he was back, despotic as ever, under the advanced title of Emperor.

By that time, too, Promoter Hunt, a former president of Iowa State Agricultural College, had...

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