and better-class families had disappeared. The shops were shut and
barricaded by their owners before leaving, but many of them had been forced
open and looted. The destruction in other towns paled to nothing, however,
before the havoc wrought in Chee-chong. Here was a town completely
destroyed.
Chee-chong was, up to the late summer of 1907, an important rural centre,
containing between 2,000 and 3,000 inhabitants, and beautifully situated in
a sheltered plain, surrounded by high mountains. It was a favourite resort
of high officials, a Korean Bath or Cheltenham. Many of the houses were
large, and some had tiled roofs--a sure evidence of wealth.
When the "Righteous Army" began operations, one portion of it occupied the
hills beyond Chee-chong. The Japanese sent a small body of troops into the
town. These were attacked one night on three sides, several were killed,
and the others were compelled to retire. The Japanese despatched
reinforcements, and after some fighting regained lost ground. They then
determined to make Chee-chong an example to the countryside. The entire
town was put to the torch. The soldiers carefully tended the flames, piling
up everything for destruction. Nothing was left, save one image of Buddha
and the magistrate's yamen. When the Koreans fled, five men, one woman, and
a child, all wounded, were left behind. These disappeared in the flames.
It was a hot early autumn when I reached Chee-chong. The brilliant sunshine
revealed a Japanese flag waving-over a hillock commanding the town, and
glistened against the bayonet of a Japanese sentry. I dismounted and walked
down the streets and over the heaps of ashes. Never have I witnessed such
complete destruction. Where a month before there had been a busy and
prosperous community, there was now nothing but lines of little heaps of
black and gray dust and cinders. Not a whole wall, not a beam, and not an
unbroken jar remained. Here and there a man might be seen poking among the
ashes, seeking for aught of value. The search was vain. Chee-chong had been
wiped off the map. "Where are your people?" I asked the few searchers.
"They are lying on the hillsides," came the reply.
Up to this time I had not met a single rebel soldier, and very few
Japanese. My chief meeting with the Japanese occurred the previous day at
Chong-ju. As I approached that town, I noticed that its ancient walls were
broken down. The stone arches of the city gates were left, but the gates
themselves and most of the walls had gone. A Japanese sentry and a gendarme
stood at the gateway, and cross-examined me as I entered. A small body of
Japanese troops were stationed here, and operations in the country around
were apparently directed from this centre.
I at once called upon the Japanese Colonel in charge. His room, a great
apartment in the local governor's yamen, showed on all sides evidences of
the thoroughness with which the Japanese were conducting this campaign.
Large maps, with red marks, revealed strategic positions now occupied. A
little printed pamphlet, with maps, evidently for the use of officers, lay
on the table.
The Colonel received me politely, but expressed his regrets that I had
come. The men he was fighting were mere robbers, he said, and there was
nothing for me to see. He gave me various warnings about dangers ahead.
Then he very kindly explained that the Japanese plan was to hem in the
volunteers, two sections of troops operating from either side and making a
circle around the seat of trouble. These would unite and gradually drive
the Koreans towards a centre.
The maps which the Colonel showed me settled my movements. A glance at them
made clear that the Japanese had not yet occupied the line of country
between Chee-chong and Won-ju. Here, then, was the place where I must go if
I would meet the Korean bands. So it was towards Won-ju that I turned our
horses' heads on the following day, after gazing on the ruins of
Chee-chong.
It soon became evident that I was very near to the Korean forces. At one
place, not far from Chee-chong, a party of them had arrived two days before
I passed, and had demanded arms. A little further on Koreans and Japanese
had narrowly escaped meeting in the village street, not many hours before I
stopped there. As I approached one hamlet, the inhabitants fled into the
high corn, and on my arrival not a soul was to be found. They mistook me
for a Japanese out on a shooting and burning expedition.
It now became more difficult to obtain carriers. Our ponies were showing
signs of fatigue, for we were using them very hard over the mountainous
country. It was impossible to hire fresh animals, as the Japanese had
commandeered all. Up to Won-ju I had to pay double the usual rate for my
carriers. From Won-ju onwards carriers absolutely refused to go further,
whatever the pay.
"On the road beyond here many bad men are to be found," they told me at
Won-ju. "These bad men shoot every one who passes. We will not go to be
shot." My own boys were showing some uneasiness. Fortunately, I had in my
personal servant Min-gun, and in the leader of the pack-pony two of the
staunchest Koreans I have ever known.
The country beyond Won-ju was splendidly suited for an ambuscade, such as
the people there promised me. The road was rocky and broken, and largely
lay through a narrow, winding valley, with overhanging cliffs. Now we would
come on a splendid gorge, evidently of volcanic origin; now we would pause
to chip a bit of gold-bearing quartz from the rocks, for-this is a famous
gold centre of Korea. An army might have been hidden securely around.
Twilight was just gathering as we stopped at a small village where we
intended remaining for the night The people were sullen and unfriendly, a
striking contrast to what I had found elsewhere. In other parts they all
came and welcomed me, sometimes refusing to take payment for the
accommodation they supplied. "We are glad that a white man has come," But
in this village the men gruffly informed me that there was not a scrap of
horse food or of rice to be had. They advised us to go on to another place,
fifteen li ahead.
We started out. When we had ridden a little way from the village I chanced
to glance back at some trees skirting a corn-field. A man, half-hidden by a
bush, was fumbling with something in his hands, something which he held
down as I turned. I took it to be the handle of a small reaping-knife, but
it was growing too dark to see clearly. A minute later, however, there came
a smart "ping" past my ear, followed by the thud of a bullet striking
metal.
I turned, but the man had disappeared. It would have been merely foolish to
blaze back with a .380 Colt at a distance of over a hundred yards, and
there was no time to go back. So we continued on our way.
Before arriving at Won-ju we had been told that we would certainly find the
Righteous Army around there. At Won-ju men said that it was at a place
fifteen or twenty miles ahead. When we reached that distance we were
directed onwards to Yan-gun. We walked into Yan-gun one afternoon, only to
be again disappointed. Here, however, we learned that there had been a
fight that same morning at a village fifteen miles nearer Seoul, and that
the Koreans had been defeated.
Yan-gun presented a remarkable sight. A dozen red crosses waved over houses
at different points. In the main street every shop was closely barricaded,
and a cross was pasted on nearly every door. These crosses, roughly painted
on paper in red ink, were obtained from the elder of the Roman Catholic
church there. A week before some Japanese soldiers had arrived and burned a
few houses. They spared one house close to them waving a Christian cross.
As soon as the Japanese left nearly every one pasted a cross over his door.
At first Yan-gun seemed deserted. The people were watching me from behind
the shelter of their doors. Then men and boys crept out, and gradually
approached. We soon made friends. The women had fled. I settled down that
afternoon in the garden of a Korean house of the better type. My boy was
preparing my supper in the front courtyard, when he suddenly dropped
everything to rush to me. "Master," he cried, highly excited, "the
Righteous Army has come. Here are the soldiers."
In another moment half a dozen of them entered the garden, formed in line
in front of me and saluted. They were all lads, from eighteen to
twenty-six. One, a bright-faced, handsome youth, still wore the old uniform
of the regular Korean Army. Another had a pair of military trousers. Two of
them were in slight, ragged Korean dress. Not one had leather boots. Around
their waists were home-made cotton cartridge belts, half full. One wore a
kind of tarboosh on his head, and the others had bits of rag twisted round
their hair.
I looked at the guns they were carrying. The six men had five different
patterns of weapons, and none was any good. One proudly carried an old
Korean sporting gun of the oldest type of muzzle-loaders known to man.
Around his arm was the long piece of thin rope which he kept smouldering as
touch-powder, and hanging in front of him were the powder horn and bullet
bag for loading. This sporting gun was, I afterwards found, a common
weapon. The ramrod, for pressing down the charge, was home-made and cut
from a tree. The barrel was rust-eaten. There was only a strip of cotton as
a carrying strap.
The second man had an old Korean army rifle, antiquated, and a very bad
specimen of its time. The third had the same. One had a tiny sporting gun,
the kind of weapon, warranted harmless, that fathers give to their fond
sons at the age of ten. Another had a horse-pistol, taking a rifle
cartridge. Three of the guns bore Chinese marks. They were all eaten up
with ancient rust.
These were the men--think of it--who for weeks had been bidding defiance to
the Japanese Army! Even now a Japanese division of regular soldiers was
manoeuvring to corral them and their comrades. Three of the party in front
of me were coolies. The smart young soldier who stood at the right plainly
acted as sergeant, and had done his best to drill his comrades into
soldierly bearing. A seventh man now came in, unarmed, a Korean of the
better class, well dressed in the long robes of a gentleman, but thin,
sun-stained and wearied like the others.
A pitiful group they seemed--men already doomed to certain death, fighting
in an absolutely hopeless cause. But as I looked the sparkling eyes and
smiles of the sergeant to the right seemed to rebuke me. Pity! Maybe my
pity was misplaced. At least they were showing their countrymen an example
of patriotism, however mistaken their method of displaying it might be.
They had a story to tell, for they had been in the fight that morning, and
had retired before the Japanese. The Japanese had the better position, and
forty Japanese soldiers had attacked two hundred of them and they had given
way. But they had killed four Japanese, and the Japanese had only killed
two of them and wounded three more. Such was their account.
I did not ask them why, when they had killed twice as many as the enemy,
they had yet retreated. The real story of the fight I could learn later. As
they talked others came to join them--two old men, one fully eighty, an old
tiger-hunter, with bent back, grizzled face, and patriarchal beard. The two
newcomers carried the old Korean sporting rifles. Other soldiers of the
retreating force were outside. There was a growing tumult in the street.
How long would it be before the triumphant Japanese, following up their
victory, attacked the town?
I was not to have much peace that night. In the street outside a hundred
noisy disputes were proceeding between volunteers and the townsfolk. The
soldiers wanted shelter; the people, fearing the Japanese, did not wish to
let them in. A party of them crowded into an empty building adjoining the
house where I was, and they made the place ring with their disputes and
recriminations.
Very soon the officer who had been in charge of the men during the fight
that day called on me. He was a comparatively young man, dressed in the
ordinary long white garments of the better-class Koreans. I asked him what
precautions he had taken against a night attack, for if the Japanese knew
where we were they would certainly come on us. Had he any outposts placed
in positions? Was the river-way guarded? "There is no need for outposts,"
he replied. "Every Korean man around watches for us."
I cross-examined him about the constitution of the rebel army. How were
they organized? From what he told me, it was evident that they had
practically no organization at all. There were a number of separate bands
held together by the loosest ties. A rich man in each place found the
money. This he secretly gave to one or two open rebels, and they gathered
adherents around them.
He admitted that the men were in anything but a good way. "We may have to
die," he said. "Well, so let it be. It is much better to die as a free man
than to live as the slave of Japan."
He had not been gone long before still another called on me, a middle-aged
Korean gentleman, attended by a staff of officials. Here was a man of rank,
and I soon learned that he was the Commander-in-Chief for the entire
district. I was in somewhat of a predicament. I had used up all my food,
and had not so much as a cigar or a glass of whiskey left to offer him. One
or two flickering candles in the covered courtyard of the inn lit up his
care-worn face. I apologized for the rough surroundings in which I received
him, but he immediately brushed my apologies aside. He complained bitterly
of the conduct of his subordinate, who had risked an engagement that
morning when he had orders not to. The commander, it appeared, had been
called back home for a day on some family affairs, and hurried back to the
front as soon as he knew of the trouble. He had come to me for a purpose.
"Our men want weapons," he said. "They are as brave as can be, but you know
what their guns are like, and we have very little ammunition. We cannot
buy, but you can go to and fro freely as you want. Now, you act as our
agent. Buy guns for us and bring them to us. Ask what money you like, it
does not matter. Five thousand dollars, ten thousand dollars, they are
yours if you will have them. Only bring us guns!"
I had, of course, to tell him that I could not do anything of the kind.
When he further asked me questions about the positions of the Japanese I
was forced to give evasive answers. To my mind, the publicist who visits
fighting forces in search of information, as I was doing, is in honour
bound not to communicate what he learns to the other side. I could no more
tell the rebel leader of the exposed Japanese outposts I knew, and against
which I could have sent his troops with the certainty of success, than I
could on return tell the Japanese the strength of his forces.
All that night the rebels dribbled in. Several wounded men who had escaped
from the fight the previous day were borne along by their comrades, and
early on the following morning some soldiers came and asked me to do what I
could to heal them. I went out and examined the men. One had no less than
five bullet-holes in him and yet seemed remarkably cheerful. Two others had
single shots of a rather more dangerous nature. I am no surgeon, and it was
manifestly impossible for me to jab into their wounds with my hunting-knife
in the hope of extracting the bullets. I found, however, some corrosive
sublimate tabloids in my leather medicine case. These I dissolved, and
bathed the wounds with the mixture to stop suppuration. I had some
Listerine, and I washed their rags in it. I bound the clean rags on the
wounds, bade the men lie still and eat little, and left them.
Soon after dawn the rebel regiments paraded in the streets. They reproduced
on a larger scale the characteristics I had noted among the few men who
came to visit me the evening before, poor weapons and little ammunition.
They sent out men in advance before I departed in the morning to warn their
outposts that I was an Englishman (really I am a Scots-Canadian, but to
them it was all the same) who must not be injured. I left them with mutual
good wishes, but I made a close inspection of my party before we marched
away to see that all our weapons were in place. Some of my boys begged me
to give the rebels our guns so that they might kill the Japanese!
We had not gone very far before we descended into a rocky and sandy plain
by the river. Suddenly I heard one of my boys shout at the top of his
voice, as he threw up his arms, "Yong guk ta-in." We all stopped, and the
others took up the cry. "What does this mean?" I asked. "Some rebel
soldiers are surrounding us," said Min-gun, "and they are going to fire.
They think you are a Japanese." I stood against the sky-line and pointed
vigorously to myself to show that they were mistaken. "Yong guk!" I
shouted, with my boys. It was not dignified, but it was very necessary. Now
we could see creeping, ragged figures running from rock to rock, closer and
closer to us. The rifles of some were covering us while the others
advanced. Then a party of a couple of dozen rose from the ground near to
hand, with a young man in a European officer's uniform at their head. They
ran to us, while we stood and waited. At last they saw who I was, and when
they came near they apologized very gracefully for their blunder. "It was
fortunate that you shouted when you did," said one ugly-faced young rebel,
as he slipped his cartridge back into his pouch; "I had you nicely covered
and was just going to shoot." Some of the soldiers in this band were not
more than fourteen to sixteen years old. I made them stand and have their
photographs taken.
By noon I arrived at the place from which the Korean soldiers had been
driven on the day before. The villagers there were regarded in very
unfriendly fashion by the rebels, who thought they had betrayed them to the
Japanese. The villagers told me what was evidently the true story of the
fight. They said that about twenty Japanese soldiers had on the previous
morning marched quickly to the place and attacked two hundred rebels there.
One Japanese soldier was hurt, receiving a flesh wound in the arm, and five
rebels were wounded. Three of these latter got away, and these were the
ones I had treated earlier in the morning. Two others were left on the
field, one badly shot in the left cheek and the other in the right
shoulder. To quote the words of the villagers, "As the Japanese soldiers
came up to these wounded men they were too sick to speak, and they could
only utter cries like animals--'Hula, hula, hula!' They had no weapons in
their hands, and their blood was running on the ground. The Japanese
soldiers heard their cries, and went up to them and stabbed them through
and through and through again with their bayonets until they died. The men
were torn very much with the bayonet stabs, and we had to take them up and
bury them." The expressive faces of the villagers were more eloquent than
mere description was.
Were this an isolated instance, it would scarcely be necessary to mention
it. But what I heard on all sides went to show that in a large number of
fights in the country the Japanese systematically killed all the wounded
and all who surrendered themselves. This was not so in every case, but it
certainly was in very many. The fact was confirmed by the Japanese accounts
of many fights, where the figures given of Korean casualties were so many
killed, with no mention of wounded or prisoners. In place after place also,
the Japanese, besides burning houses, shot numbers of men whom they
suspected of assisting the rebels. War is war, and one could scarcely
complain at the shooting of rebels. Unfortunately much of the killing was
indiscriminate, to create terror.
I returned to Seoul. The Japanese authorities evidently decided that it
would not be advisable to arrest me for travelling in the interior without
a passport. It was their purpose to avoid as far as possible any publicity
being given to the doings of the Righteous Army, and to represent them as
mere bands of disorderly characters, preying on the population. They
succeeded in creating this opinion throughout the world.
But as a matter of fact the movement grew and grew. It was impossible for
the Koreans to obtain arms; they fought without arms. In June, 1908, nearly
two years afterwards, a high Japanese official, giving evidence at the
trial of Mr. Bethell before a specially convened British court at Seoul,
said that about 20,000 troops were then engaged in putting down the
disturbances, and that about one-half of the country was in a condition of
armed resistance. The Koreans continued their fight until 1915, when,
according to Japanese official statements, the rebellion was finally
suppressed. One can only faintly imagine the hardships these mountaineers
and young men of the plains, tiger hunters, and old soldiers, must have
undergone. The taunts about Korean "cowardice" and "apathy" were beginning
to lose their force.
X
THE LAST DAYS OF THE KOREAN EMPIRE
Prince Ito--he was made Prince after the abdication of Yi Hyeung--was
Resident-General of Korea from 1906 to 1908, and was followed by Viscount
Sone, who carried on his policies until 1910. Ito is still remembered as
the best of the Japanese administrators.
He had an exceedingly difficult task. He had to tear up an ancient
administration by the roots, and substitute a new. This could not fail to
be a painful process. He had the best and the worst instincts of a nation
aroused against him, the patriotism and loyalty of the Korean people, and
also their obstinacy and apathy. He was hampered by the poor quality of
many of the minor officials who had to carry out his orders and still more
by the character of the settlers from his own land. The necessities of
Japanese Imperial policy compelled the infliction of much injustice on the
Korean people. The determination to plant as many Japanese on Korean soil
as possible involved the expropriation of Korean interests and the harsh
treatment of many small Korean landowners and tenants. The powerful and
growing commercial interests of Japan were using every possible pressure to
exploit Korea, to obtain concessions and to treat the land as one to be
despoiled for their benefit. Ito meant well by Korea, and had vision enough
to see that the ill-treatment of her people injured Japan even more than it
did them. It was his misfortune to be committed to an impossible policy of
Imperial absorption. He did his utmost to minimize its evils and promote
reforms.
Unfortunately, all of his subordinates did not see eye to eye with him. His
military chief, Hasegawa, believed in the policy of the strong hand, and
practiced it. A large majority of the Japanese immigrants acted in a way
fatal to the creation of a policy of good-will. The average Japanese
regarded the Korean as another Ainu, a barbarian, and himself as one of the
Chosen Race, who had the right to despoil and roughly treat his inferiors,
as occasion served.
Some Koreans stooped to the favourite Oriental weapon of assassination.
In 1907 Mr. W.D. Stevens, Foreign Adviser to the Korean Government, was
murdered by a Korean when passing through San Francisco. In October, 1909,
Prince Ito, when making a journey northwards, was killed by another Korean
at Harbin. Both of the murderers were nominal Christians, the first a
Protestant and the second a Catholic. A deadly blow was struck at the
Korean cause by the men who thus sought to serve her.
This book will probably be read by many Koreans, young men and women with
hearts aflame at the sufferings of their people. I can well understand the
intense anger that must fill their souls. If my people had been treated as
theirs have, I would feel the same.
I hope that every man guilty of torturing, outraging or murder will
eventually be brought to justice and dealt with as justice directs. But for
individuals, or groups of individuals to take such punishment into their
own hands is to inflict the greatest damage in their power, not on the
person they attack, but on the cause they seek to serve.
Why?