This ethnographical work by young N. I. Konrad was a result of his travel to Korea in 1914-1915; he wrote about it: ‘I will mention just the main points, which I passed: Gwangju, Chungju, Cheongju, Chochiwon, Gongju, Gunsan – I mention only big cities. All that space was passed by me partly on foot, partly on the horse. In many villages I have stayed for more or less long time. On the way I tried to make possible observations and notes, like legends, folk tales, songs, proverbs, historical tales, and so on’. For the first time, the ‘Essays’ were published in 1996; before it, they were preserved in typewriting copy in the archive of the Russian Ac. of Sc. The manuscript testifies, that the author numerously returned to those travel-reports through all his life, and prepared them for publication, but failed to do it. The work was based on his travel diaries, which are a precious source for studying culture and common-day life of Koreans at the edge of the nineteenths and twentieth centuries.

This work is especially noteworthy, because R. was the last one of Russian orientalists and historian of religion, who made field research in Korea before the transformation of the country into two. He succeeded in collecting cultural layers, which are lost by now. The third chapter was on religious conceptions of Koreans; it contains a description of their sanctuaries – home ones (sadan), state ones (sa), and local ones (nen’nje); it gives a characteristic of monuments for generous and careful low clerk – son’dokin, on the temples of Confucius and his disciples (philosophers, wizards, scholars) in the so called munmjo – provincial schools, and on the disappearing by the early twentieth century groups of Confucian scholars – jurim, and Confucian libraries – sovon. In the ‘Essays’, there is a survey of religions of Korea: Confucian doctrine, Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, the religion of the Heavens Way – and its branches, and of the mostly venerated gods of Korean pantheon with mentioning their functions and peculiarities of their cults. That block is completed with a description of customs and rites of the agrarian cycle and family rituals, as well as an information of the Korean mythology of tiger.