in the last session of the Diet, he remarked on the strength of a
statement made by a public procurator of high rank in Korea, that
it was usual for a gendarme who visits a Korean house for the
purpose of searching for a criminal to violate any female inmate
of the house and to take away any article that suits his fancy.
And not only had the wronged Koreans no means of obtaining
redress for this outrageous conduct, but the judicial authorities
could take no proceedings against the offender as they must
necessarily depend upon the gendarmerie for acceptable evidence
of crime."
The police tyranny does not end with flogging. When a person is arrested,
he is at once shut off from communication with his friends. He is not,
necessarily, informed of the charge against him; his friends are not
informed. He is not in the early stages allowed counsel. All that his
friends know is that he has disappeared in the grip of the police, and he
may remain out of sight or sound for months before being brought to trial
or released.
During this period of confinement the prisoner is first in the hands of the
police who are getting up the case against him. It is their work to extract
a confession. To obtain this they practice torture, often of the most
elaborate type. This is particularly true where the prisoners are charged
with political offences. I deal with this aspect of affairs more in detail
in later chapters, so that there is no need of me to bring proof at this
point.
After the police have completed their case, the prisoner is brought before
the procurator, whose office would, if rightly used, be a check on the
police. But in many cases the police act as procurators in Korea, and in
others the procurators and police work hand in hand.
When the prisoner is brought before the court he has little of the usual
protection afforded in a British or American Court. It is for him to prove
his innocence of the charge. His judge is the nominee of the
Government-General and is its tool, who practically does what the
Government-General tells him. The complaint of the most sober and
experienced friends of the Koreans is that they cannot obtain justice
unless it is deemed expedient by the authorities to give them justice.
Under this system crime has enormously increased. The police create it. The
best evidence of this is contained in the official figures. In the autumn
of 1912 Count Terauchi stated, in answer to the report that thousands of
Korean Christians had been confined in jail, that he had caused enquiry to
be made and there were only 287 Koreans confined in the various jails of
the country (_New York Sun_, October 3, 1912). The Count's figures were
almost certainly incorrect, or else the police released all the prisoners
on the day the reckoning was taken, except the necessary few kept for
effect. The actual number of convicts in Korea in 1912 was close on twelve
thousand, according to the official details published later. If they were
true they make the contrast with later years the more amazing.
The increase of arrests and convictions is shown in the following official
return.
NUMBER OF KOREANS IMPRISONED
Convicts Awaiting trial Total
1911 7,342 9,465 16,807
1912 9,652 9,842 19,494
1913 11,652 10,194 21,846
1914 12,962 11,472 24,434
1915 14,411 12,844 27,255
1916 17,577 15,259 32,836
Individual liberty is non-existent. The life of the Korean is regulated
down to the smallest detail. If he is rich, he is generally required to
have a Japanese steward who will supervise his expenditure. If he has money
in the bank, he can only draw a small sum out at a time, unless he gives
explanation why he needs it.
He has not the right of free meeting, free speech or a free press. Before a
paper or book can be published it has to pass the censor. This censorship
is carried to an absurd degree. It starts with school books; it goes on to
every word a man may write or speak. It applies to the foreigners as well
as Koreans. The very commencement day speeches of school children are
censored. The Japanese journalist in Korea who dares to criticize the
administration is sent to prison almost as quickly as the Korean. Japanese
newspaper men have found it intolerable and have gone back to Japan,
refusing to work under it. There is only one newspaper now published in
Korea in the Korean language, and it is edited by a Japanese. An American
missionary published a magazine, and attempted to include in it a few mild
comments on current events. He was sternly bidden not to attempt it again.
Old books published before the Japanese acquired control have been freely
destroyed. Thus a large number of school books--not in the least
partizan--prepared by Professor Hulbert were destroyed.
The most ludicrous example of censorship gone mad was experienced by Dr.
Gale, one of the oldest, most learned and most esteemed of the missionaries
in Korea. Dr. Gale is a British subject. For a long time he championed the
Japanese cause, until the Japanese destroyed his confidence by their
brutalities in 1919. But the fact that Dr. Gale was their most influential
friend did not check the Japanese censors. On one occasion Dr. Gale learned
that some Korean "Readers" prepared by him for use in schools had been
condemned. He enquired the reason. The Censor replied that the book
"contained dangerous thoughts." Still more puzzled, the doctor politely
enquired if the Censor would show the passages containing "dangerous
thoughts." The Censor thereupon pointed out a translation of Kipling's
famous story of the elephant, which had been included in the book. "In that
story," said he ominously, "the elephant refused to serve his _second_
master." What could be more obvious that Dr. Gale was attempting to teach
Korean children, in this subtle fashion, to refuse to serve _their_ second
master, the Japanese Emperor!
For a Korean to be a journalist has been for him to be a marked man liable
to constant arrest, not for what he did or does, but for what the police
suppose he may do or might have done. The natural result of this has been
to drive Koreans out of regular journalism, and to lead to the creation of
a secret press.
The next great group of grievances of Koreans come under the head of
Exploitation. From the beginning the Japanese plan has been to take as much
land as possible from the Koreans and hand it over to Japanese. Every
possible trick has been used to accomplish this. In the early days of the
Japanese occupation, the favourite plan was to seize large tracts of land
on the plea that they were needed for the Army or Navy; to pay a pittance
for them; and then to pass considerable portions of them on to Japanese.
"There can be no question," admitted Mr. W.D. Stevens, the American member
and supporter of Prince Ito's administration, "that at the outset the
military authorities in Korea did intimate an intention of taking more land
for their uses than seemed reasonable."
The first attempt of the Japanese to grab in wholesale fashion the public
lands of Korea, under the so-called Nagamori scheme, aroused so much
indignation that it was withdrawn. Then they set about accomplishing the
same end in other ways. Much of the land of Korea was public land, held by
tenants from time immemorial under a loose system of tenancy. This was
taken over by the Government-General All leases were examined, and people
called on to show their rights to hold their property. This worked to the
same end.
The Oriental Development Company was formed for the primary purpose of
developing Korea by Japanese and settling Japanese on Korean land, Japanese
immigrants being given free transportation, land for settlement, implements
and other assistance. This company is an immense semi-official trust of big
financial interests in direct cöoperation with the Government, and is
supported by an official subsidy of £50,000 a year. Working parallel to it
is the Bank of Chosen, the semi-official banking institution which has been
placed supreme and omnipotent in Korean finance.
How this works was explained by a writer in the New York _Times_ (January
29, 1919). "These people declined to part with their heritage. It was here
that the power of the Japanese Government was felt in a manner altogether
Asiatic.... Through its branches this powerful financial institution ...
called in all the specie in the country, thus making, as far as
circulating-medium is concerned, the land practically valueless. In order
to pay taxes and to obtain the necessaries of life, the Korean must have
cash, and in order to obtain it, he must sell his land. Land values fell
very rapidly, and in some instances land was purchased by the agents of the
Bank of Chosen for one-fifth of its former valuation." There may be some
dispute about the methods employed. There can be no doubt about the result.
One-fifth of the richest land in Korea is to-day in Japanese hands.
Allied to this system of land exploitation comes the Corvee, or forced
labour exacted from the country people for road making. In moderation this
might be unobjectionable. As enforced by the Japanese authorities, it has
been an appalling burden. The Japanese determined to have a system of fine
roads. They have built them--by the Corvee.
The most convincing evidence for outsiders on this land exploitation and on
the harshness of the Corvee comes from Japanese sources. Dr. Yoshino, a
professor of the Imperial University of Tokyo, salaried out of the
Government Treasury, made a special study of Korea. He wrote in the
_Taschuo-Koron_ of Tokyo, that the Koreans have no objection to the
construction of good roads, but that the official way of carrying out the
work is tyrannical. "Without consideration and mercilessly, they have
resorted to laws for the expropriation of land, the Koreans concerned being
compelled to part with their family property almost for nothing. On many
occasions they have also been forced to work in the construction of roads
without receiving any wages. To make matters worse, they must work for
nothing only on the days which are convenient to the officials, however
inconvenient these days may be to the unpaid workers." The result has
generally been that while the roads were being built for the convenient
march of the Japanese troops to suppress the builders of the roads, many
families were bankrupted and starving.
"The Japanese make improvements," say the Koreans. "But they make them to
benefit their own people, not us. They improve agriculture, and turn the
Korean farmers out and replace them by Japanese. They pave and put
sidewalks in a Seoul street, but the old Korean shopkeepers in that street
have gone, and Japanese have come. They encourage commerce, Japanese
commerce, but the Korean tradesman is hampered and tied down in many ways."
Education has been wholly Japanized. That is to say the primary purpose of
the schools is to teach Korean children to be good Japanese subjects.
Teaching is mostly done in Japanese, by Japanese teachers. The whole ritual
and routine is towards the glorification of Japan.
The Koreans complain, however, that, apart from this, the system of
teaching established for Koreans in Korea is inferior to that established
for Japanese there. Japanese and Korean children are taught in separate
schools. The course of education for Koreans is four years, for Japanese
six. The number of schools provided for Japanese is proportionately very
much larger than for Koreans, and a much larger sum of money is spent on
them. The Japanese may however claim, with some justice, that they are in
the early days of the development of Korean education, and they must be
given more time to develop it. Koreans bitterly complain of the ignoring of
Korean history in the public schools, and the systematic efforts to destroy
old sentiments. These efforts, however, have been markedly unsuccessful,
and the Government school students were even more active than mission
school students in the Independence movement.
It was a Japanese journalist who published the case of the Principal of a
Public School for girls who roused the indignation of the girls under him
during a lecture on Ethics with the syllogism, "Savages are healthy;
Koreans are healthy; therefore Koreans are savages." Other teachers roused
their young pupils to fury, after the death of the ex-Emperor, by employing
openly of him the phrase which ordinarily indicates a low-class coolie. In
the East, where honorifics and exact designations count for much, no
greater insults could be imagined.
The greatest hardships of the régime of the Government-General have been
the denial of justice, the destruction of liberty, the shutting out of the
people from all real participation in administration, the lofty assumption
and display of a spirit of insolent superiority by the Japanese, and the
deliberate degradation of the people by the cultivation of vice for the
purpose of personal profit. In the old days, opium was practically unknown.
Today opium is being cultivated on a large scale under the direct
encouragement of the Government, and the sale of morphia is carried on by
large numbers of Japanese itinerant merchants. In the old days, vice hid
its head. To-day the most prominent feature at night-time in Seoul, the
capital, is the brilliantly lit Yoshiwara, officially created and run by
Japanese, into which many Korean girls are dragged. Quarters of ill fame
have been built up in many parts of the land, and Japanese panders take
their gangs of diseased women on tours through smaller districts. On one
occasion when I visited Sun-chon I found that the authorities had ordered
some of the Christians to find accommodation in their homes for Japanese
women of ill fame. Some Koreans in China sent a petition to the American
Minister in Peking which dealt with some moral aspects of the Japanese rule
of Korea. They said:
"The Japanese have encouraged immorality by removing Korean
marriage restrictions, and allowing marriages without formality
and without regard for age. There have been marriages at as early
an age as twelve. Since the annexation there have been 80,000
divorce cases in Korea. The Japanese encourage, as a source of
revenue, the sale of Korean prostitutes in Chinese cities. Many
of these prostitutes are only fourteen and fifteen years old. It
is a part of the Japanese policy of race extermination, by which
they hope to destroy all Koreans. May God regard these facts.
"The Japanese Government has established a bureau for the sale of
opium, and under the pretext that opium was to be used for
medicinal purposes has caused Koreans and Formosans to engage in
poppy cultivation. The opium is secretly shipped into China.
Because of the Japanese encouragement of this traffic many
Koreans have become users of the drug.
"The Japanese forbid any school courses for Koreans higher than
the middle school and the higher schools established by
missionary organizations are severely regulated. The civilization
of the Far East originated in China, and was brought first to
Korea and thence to Japan. The ancient books were more numerous
in Korea than in Japan, but after annexation the Japanese set
about destroying these books, so that Koreans should not be able
to learn them. This 'burning of the books and murder of the
literati' was for the purpose of debasing the Koreans and robbing
them of their ancient culture....
"How can our race avoid extermination? Even if the Government of
Japan were benevolent, how could the Japanese understand the
aches and pains of another race of people? With her evil
Government can there be anything but racial extermination for us?"
From the time of the reopening of Korea the Japanese have treated the
Koreans in personal intercourse as the dust beneath their feet, or as one
might imagine a crude and vixenish tempered woman of peasant birth whose
husband had acquired great wealth by some freak of fortune treating an
unfortunate poor gentlewoman who had come in her employment. This was bad
enough in the old days; since the Japanese acquired full power in Korea it
has become infinitely worse.
The Japanese coolie punches the Korean who chances to stand in his august
path. The Japanese woman, wife of a little trader, spits out the one
contemptuous sentence she has learned in the Korean tongue, when a Korean
man draws near on the boat or on the train. The little official assumes an
air of ineffable disdain and contempt. A member of the Japanese Diet was
reported in the Japanese press to have said that in Korea the Japanese
gendarmes were in the habit of exacting from the Korean school children the
amount of deference which in Japan would be proper to the Imperial
Household.
The lowest Japanese coolie practices the right to kick, beat and cuff a
Korean of high birth at his pleasure, and the Korean has in effect no
redress. Had the Koreans from the first have met blow with blow, a number
of them no doubt would have died, but the Japanese would have been cured of
the habit. The Korean dislike of fighting, until he has really some serious
reason for a fight, has encouraged the Japanese bully; but it makes the
bully's offence none the less.
Japanese officials in many instances seem to delight in exaggerating their
contempt on those under them. This is particularly true of some of the
Japanese teachers. Like all Government officials, these teachers wear
swords, symbols of power. Picture the dignity of the teacher of a class of
little boys who lets his sword clang to terrify the youngsters under him,
or who tries to frighten the girls by displaying his weapon.
The iron rule of Terauchi was followed by the iron rule of Hasegawa, his
successor. The struggle of the rebel army in the hills had died down. But
men got together, wondering what steps they could take. Christians and
non-Christians found a common bond of union. Their life had come to a pass
where it was better to die than to live under unchecked tyranny. Thus the
Independence movement came into being.
The Koreans who, despoiled of their homes or determined to submit no longer
to Japan, escaped into Manchuria, escaped as a rule by the difficult and
dangerous journey across the high mountain passes. What this journey means
can best be understood from a report by the Rev. W.T. Cook, of the
Manchuria Christian College at Moukden.
"The untold afflictions of the Korean immigrants coming into
Manchuria will doubtless never be fully realized, even by those
actually witnessing their distress. In the still closeness of a
forty below zero climate in the dead of winter, the silent stream
of white clad figures creeps over the icy mountain passes, in
groups of tens, twenties and fifties, seeking a new world of
subsistence, willing to take a chance of life and death in a
hand-to-hand struggle with the stubborn soil of Manchuria's
wooded and stony hillsides. Here, by indefatigable efforts, they
seek to extract a living by applying the grub axe and hand hoe to
the barren mountain sides above the Chinese fields, planting and
reaping by hand between the roots the sparse yield that is often
insufficient to sustain life.
"Many have died from insufficient food. Not only women and
children but young men have been frozen to death. Sickness also
claims its toll under these new conditions of exposure. Koreans
have been seen standing barefooted on the broken ice of a
riverside fording place, rolling up their baggy trousers before
wading through the broad stream, two feet deep, of ice cold
water, then standing on the opposite side while they hastily
readjust their clothing and shoes.
"Women with insufficient clothing, and parts of their bodies
exposed, carry little children on their backs, thus creating a
mutual warmth in a slight degree, but it is in this way that the
little ones' feet, sticking out from the binding basket, get
frozen and afterwards fester till the tiny toes stick together.
Old men and women, with bent backs and wrinkled faces, walk the
uncomplaining miles until their old limbs refuse to call them
further.
"Thus it is by households they come, old and young, weak and
strong, big and little.... Babies have been born in wayside inns.
"In this way over 75,000 Koreans have entered during the past
year, until the number of Koreans now living in both the north
and western portions of Manchuria now totals nearly half a
million."[2]
[Footnote 2: Report to the Presbyterian Board of Foreign
Missions.]
XII
THE MISSIONARIES
I have had occasion in previous chapters to make occasional reference to
the work of the missionaries in Korea. It is necessary now to deal with
them in detail, for they had become one of the great factors, and from the
Japanese point of view one of the great problems, of the country.
Long before Korea was open to the outside world, missionary pioneers tried
to enter it. The French Catholics forced admission as far back as the end
of the eighteenth century, and made many converts, who were afterwards
exterminated. Gutzaleff, a famous Protestant pioneer, landed on an island
at Basil's Bay, in 1832, and remained there a month, distributing Chinese
literature. Mr. Thomas, a British missionary, secured a passage on board
the ill-fated _General Sherman_ in 1866, and was killed with the rest of
the crew. Dr. Ross, the Scottish Presbyterian missionary of Moukden,
Manchuria, became interested in the Koreans, studied their language, talked
with every Korean he could find, and built up a grammar of the language,
publishing an English-Korean primer in 1876. He and a colleague, Mr.
McIntyre, published Gospels in the language, and opened up a work among the
Koreans on the north side of the Yalu. Those who can recall the state of
that district in the days before railways were opened and order
established, can best appreciate the nerve and daring needed for the task.
They made converts, and one of these converts took some newly printed
Christian books and set back home, reaching Seoul itself, spreading the new
religion among his friends.
It was two years after the opening of Korea to the West before the first
missionary arrived. In 1884 Dr. Allen, a Presbyterian physician (afterwards
United States Minister to Korea), arrived at Seoul. It was very doubtful at
this time how missionaries would be received, or how their converts would
be treated. The law enacting death against any man who became a Christian
was still unrepealed, but it was not enforced. Officialism might, however,
revive it at any time. It was thought advisable, when the first converts
were baptized in 1887, to perform the ceremony behind closed doors, with an
earnest and athletic young American educationalist, Homer B. Hulbert,
acting as guard.
Dr. Allen was soon followed by others. Dr. Underwood, brother of the famous
manufacturer of typewriting machines, was the first non-medical missionary.
The American and Canadian Presbyterians and Methodists undertook the main
work, and the Church of England set up a bishopric. Women missionary
doctors came, and at once won a place for themselves. Names like
Appenzeller, Scranton, Bunker and Gale--to name a few of the pioneers--have
won a permanent place in the history of missions.
The missionaries found a land almost without religion, with few temples and
few monks or priests. Buddhism had been discredited by the treachery of
some Japanese Buddhists during the great Japanese invasion by Hideyoshi in
1592, and no Buddhist priest was allowed inside the city of Seoul. Young
men of official rank studied their Confucius diligently, but to them
Confucianism was more a theory for the conduct of life and a road to high
office than a religion. The main religion of the people was Shamanism, the
fear of evil spirits. It darkened their souls, as the tales of a foolish
nurse about goblins darken the mind of a sensitive and imaginative child.
The spirits of Shamanism were evil, not good, a curse, not a blessing,
bringing terror, not hope.
Christianity was very fortunate in its representatives. I have seen much of
the missionaries of Manchuria and Korea. A finer, straighter lot of men I
never want to meet. The magnificent climate enables them to keep at the top
of form. They have initiative, daring and common sense. Those I have known
are born leaders, who would have made their mark anywhere, in business or
politics.
In the early days they had to be ready to set their hands to anything, to
plan and build houses and churches, to open schools, to run a boat down
dangerous rapids or face a dangerous mob, to overawe a haughty yang-ban or
break in a dangerous horse. They were the pioneers of civilization as well
as of Christianity.