This article examines late-19th-century Russian travel records describing the Korean Peninsula as a land stripped of vegetation long before Japanese annexation, exposing a historical contradiction to modern claims of past abundance.

Since antiquity, all greenery had been thoroughly stripped away, leaving nothing but graves and barren mountains.
2016-10-30
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Amid these circumstances, interest in Korea also increased.
Foreign explorations of Korea were undertaken, and many records were left behind, one of which is Travel Accounts of Korea (compiled by G. de Chagay, translated by Inoue Koichi, Heibonsha Toyo Bunko).
This work is a compilation of plain diaries written by Russian officials, merchants, and military personnel, and given the circumstances described above, it cannot be denied that it also functioned as intelligence records intended to benefit Russian military and diplomatic interests.
One of the contributors to Travel Accounts of Korea, the explorer Dzherotkevich, spent more than two months from the end of 1885 traveling by ship from Nagasaki, Japan, entering the peninsula, traversing Seoul and northern Korea, and finally reaching Posyet in the Maritime Province.
What he saw on the peninsula was truly a land of withering and death.
“There are cemeteries and stone monuments in the mountains and rivers, but no trees or grass to be found, because everything is cut down or mown as soon as it is discovered.”
“Wherever one goes, there are only barren mountains and red earth, and all the grass is cut for fuel.”
“The mountains are emaciated, and last year there were many deaths from starvation.”
“This is an exceedingly dreary land, with barren mountains and almost no vegetation to be seen.”
“The Koreans complain that the land is impoverished. Trees are almost entirely absent, and straw and grass are used for fuel.”
Modern Koreans claim that their country “was once the richest nation in the world, but was plundered by Imperial Japan and reduced to the poorest,” yet the condition of the peninsula seen by Dzherotkevich before the Japan–Korea annexation was exactly as described above.
Since antiquity, all greenery had been stripped away, leaving nothing but graves and barren mountains.
Omitted.