Russian tactics.... murder of An Kyŭng-su.... the Boxer troubles....
evidences of advancement.... the career of Kim Yŭng-jin.... the rise
of Yi Yong-ik.... his methods of collecting money.... sale of Roze
Island to Japanese.... attempt to remove J. McLeavy Brown....
establishment of Greek Church Mission.... French interests in Korea
growing.... the French Loan.... Yi Yong-ik makes a nickel
currency.... the famine of 1901.... the import of Annam rice....
tension between Russia and Japan increasing.... material advances of
1901.... deterioration.... Buddhism on the increase.... the
centralization of all power.... the use of special tax
commissioners.... the Russo-Korean agreement about Masanpo....
useless employees.
The return to Seoul of M. Pavlow on Jan. 15, 1900, marked the definite
beginning of that train of events which led up to the declaration of war
by the Japanese in 1904. The Russians had been induced, two years
previously, to remove the heavy pressure which they had brought to bear
upon the government, but it was only a change of method. They were now
to adopt a policy of pure intrigue and by holding in power Koreans who
were hostile to the Japanese to harrass and injure Japanese interests in
every way possible.
At this same time we see a clear indication of the trend of events in
the return to Korea of An Kyŭng-su and Kwan Yŭng-jin, two of the best
men that late years had developed in Korea. They had been charged with
connection with the plot to compass the abdication of His Majesty, and
had taken refuge in Japan. Now on the promise of the government that
they should have a perfectly fair trial and on the guarantee of
protection by the Japanese they returned boldly to Korea and presented
themselves for trial. They were strong men and they had to be reckoned
with. They strongly favored Japanese influence and the reforms that that
influence was supposed to embody. In fact they were thoroughly in
sympathy with the best motives of the defunct Independence Club. An
Kyŭng-su returned on January fifteenth and was held in detention until
May sixteenth when Kwan Yŭng-jin returned. They were to stand a fair
trial, but on the night of the twenty-seventh of May they were both
strangled secretly in the prison. No more dastardly crime ever stained
the annals of this or any other government. Induced to return on the
promise of a fair trial they were trapped and murdered. The reactionists
looked upon this as a signal victory, and indeed it was such, for it
indicated clearly that a man was not safe even when he had the guarantee
of the Japanese authorities. Nor would it be difficult to indicate the
source from which the government obtained the courage thus to flout the
Japanese.
As the summer came on, all interest in things Korean was held in
suspension while the great uprising in China swelled to such monstrous
proportions and the investment of Peking and the siege of the foreign
legations there left the world no time to care for or think of other
things. There were fears that the boxer movement would be contagious and
that it would spread to Korea. Indeed it was reported in the middle of
July that the infection had reached northern Korea; but fortunately this
proved false.
In spite of the reactionary policy of the government progress continued
to be made on certain lines, just as the momentum of a railway train
cannot be checked the moment the brakes are applied. A distinguished
French legalist was employed as adviser to the Law Department; mining
concessions were granted to British, French and Japanese syndicates; the
Government Middle School was established; the Seoul-Chemulpo Railway was
formally opened; a French teacher was engaged to open a School of Mines;
a representative was sent to the great Paris Exposition.
This year 1900 was the heyday of another _parvenu_ in the person of Kim
Yŭng-jun. He was a man without any backing except his own colossal
effrontery. He had acquired influence by his ability to get together
considerable sums of money irrespective of the methods employed. Scores
of wealthy men were haled to prison on one pretext or another and were
released only upon the payment of a heavy sum. He was a man of
considerable force of character but like so many adventurers in Korea he
was lured by his successes into a false feeling of security and he
forgot that the history of this country is full of just such cases and
that they inevitably end in violent death. Even the fate of Kim
Hong-nyuk did not deter him, though his case was almost the counterpart
of that victim of his own overweening ambitions. Against Kim Yŭng-jun
was ranged the whole nobility of the country who waited with what
patience they could until his power to extort money began to wane, and
then fell upon him like wolves upon a belated traveler at night. But it
was not until the opening of the new year 1901 that he was deposed,
tried and killed in a most horrible manner. After excruciating tortures
he was at last strangled to death.
But even as this act was perpetrated and the fate of all such
adventurers was again illustrated, another man of the same ilk was
pressing to the fore. This was Yi Yong-ik, who had once been the _major
domo_ of one of the high officials and in that capacity had learned how
to do all sorts of interesting, if unscrupulous, things. He was
prominent in a felonious attempt to cheat the ginseng farmers of Song-do
out of thousands, back in the eighties. He was an ignorant boor and even
when rolling in opulence failed to make himself presentable in dress or
manner. He was praised by some for his scorn of luxury and because he
made no attempt to hoard the money that he bled from the veins of the
people. The reason he did not hoard it was the same that makes the
farmer sow his seed, that he may reap a hundred-fold. Yi Yong-ik sowed
his golden seed in fertile soil and it yielded him a thousand-fold.
One of his favorite methods of obtaining money for his patron was to
cause the arrest of shoals of former prefects who for one cause or
another had failed to turn into the public treasury the complete amount
nominally levied upon their respective districts. These arrears went
back several years and many of them were for cause. Either famine or
flood or some other calamity had made it impossible for the people to
pay the entire amount of their taxes. There were many cases, without
doubt, in which it was right to demand the money from the ex-prefects,
for they had “eaten” it themselves; but there were also many cases in
which it was a genuine hardship. Literally hundreds of men were haled
before a court and made to pay over large sums of money, in default of
which their property was seized as well as that of their relatives. In
exact proportion as the huge sums thus extorted paved his way to favor
in high places, in that same proportion it drove the people to
desperation. The taking off of Kim Yŭng-jin, so far from warning this
man, only opened a larger door for the exercise of his peculiar
abilities, and it may be said that the official career of Yi Yong-ik
began with the opening of 1901.
In March a Japanese resident of Chemulpo claimed to have purchased the
whole of Roze Island in the harbor of Chemulpo. The matter made a great
stir, for it was plain that someone had assumed the responsibility of
selling the island to the Japanese. This was the signal for a sweeping
investigation which was so manipulated by powerful parties that the real
perpetrators of the outrage were dismissed as guiltless, but a
side-issue which arose in regard to certain threatening letters that
were sent to the foreign legations was made a peg upon which to hang the
seizure, trial and execution of Kim Yŭng-jun as before mentioned. Min
Yŭng-ju was the man who sold the island to the Japanese and he finally
had to put down Y35,000 and buy it back.
Russia made steady advances toward her ultimate goal during the year
1901. In the Spring some buildings in connection with the palace were to
be erected and the Chief Commissioner of Customs, J. McLeavy Brown, C.
M. G., was ordered to vacate his house on the customs compound at short
notice. Soldiers even forced their way into his house. This affront was
a serious one and one that the Koreans would never have dared to give
had they not felt that they had behind them a power that would see them
through. The British authorities soon convinced the government that such
tactics could be easily met and it had to retreat with some loss of
dignity.
The Russian Church established itself in Seoul at this time and took
active steps to start a propaganda in Korea. Considerable disturbance
was caused in the Southern provinces by Koreans who had become Russian
subjects pretending to be agents of the Russian church and collecting
from the people large sums of money by intimidation. For many months the
Russians tried to induce the Koreans to allow the Korean telegraph lines
in the North-east to be connected with the Russian line from
Vladivostock. Why this should not be done we cannot see but evidently
the Koreans considered it a national danger and, try as they might, the
Russians never really succeeded in making the connection.
The Russians and French were naturally working together in the peninsula
and when Russia adopted the principle of withdrawing her military
instructors from Korea she so manipulated the wires that the government
threw many positions into the hands of the French. For the next three
years the French population of Seoul increased many-fold. Many of the
French gentlemen employed by the government were thoroughly competent
and rendered good service but their presence tended to add to the
tension between Japan and Russia, for it was quite plain that all their
influence would be thrown in the scale on Russia’s side. The attempt to
loan the Korean Government Y5,000,000 was pushed with desperate vigor
for many months by the French, but divided counsels prevented the final
consummation of the loan and the French thus failed to secure the strong
leverage which a heavy loan always gives to the creditor. Yi Yong-ik who
had become more or less of a Russian tool was pointedly accused by the
Japanese of being in favor of the French loan but he vigorously denied
it. It is generally admitted that Yi Yong-ik was something of a mystery
even to his most intimate acquaintances and just how far he really
favored the Russian side will never be known, but it is certain that he
assumed a more and more hostile attitude toward the Japanese as the
months went by, an attitude which brought him into violent conflict with
them, as we shall see.
Yi Yong-ik posed as a master in finance, whatever else he may or may not
have been, and in 1901 he began the minting of the Korean nickel piece.
No greater monetary disaster ever overtook this country. Even the
desperate measures taken by the Regent thirty years before had not
shaken the monetary system as this did. The Regent introduced the
wretched five-cash piece which did enormous harm but that five-cash
piece was of too small face value to be worth counterfeiting. The nickel
was the ideal coin to tempt the counterfeiter, for its intrinsic value
was not so great as to require the employment of a large amount of
capital and yet its face value was sufficient to pay for the labor and
time expended. The effects of this departure will be noted in their
place.
In the summer of 1901 Yi Yong-ik performed one act that, in the eyes of
the people, covered a multitude of other sins. It was a year of great
scarcity. The Korean farmers raised barely enough grain for domestic
consumption and in order to prevent this grain from being taken out of
the country the government proclaimed an embargo on its export. In spite
of the fact that Japan was enjoying an unusually good crop and did not
really need the Korean product, the Japanese authorities, in the
interest of the Japanese exporters in Korea, brought pressure to bear
upon the Korean government to raise the embargo, utterly regardless of
the interests of the Korean people. As it turned out however, the
enhanced price in Korea due to the famine and the cutting of a full crop
in Japan prevented the export of rice. But Yi Yong-ik saw that there
would inevitably be a shortage in Seoul and with much forethought he
sent and imported a large amount of Annam rice and put it on the market
at a price so reasonable that the people were highly gratified. From
that time on whenever the mistakes of Yi Yong-ik were cited there was
always someone to offer the extenuation of that Annam rice. It was a
most clever and successful appeal to popular favor.
All through this year 1901 were heard the distant rumblings of that
storm that was to break three years later. Every movement of the
Russians by land or sea was watched with a fascinated attention and
every proposition of the Japanese was closely scrutinized. As a fact the
war was already in existence, only it had not been declared. Even then
Japanese agents were swarming all over Manchuria gaining exact
information of its geography and products and Japan was hastening the
preparation of her navy for the struggle that she felt to be inevitable.
As the year 1901 came to a close the tension was beginning to be felt.
People were asking how much longer Japan would acquiesce in the insolent
encroachments of Russia. But the time was not yet. As for material
advances the year had seen not a few. Seoul had been supplied with
electric light. The Seoul-Fusan Railway had been begun. Plans for the
Seoul-Wiju Railway had been drawn up. Mokpo had been supplied with a
splendid sea-wall. Building had gone on apace in the capital and even a
scheme for a system of water-works for the city had been worked out and
had received the sanction of the government. Education had gone from bad
to worse and at one time when retrenchment seemed necessary it was even
suggested to close some of the schools, but better counsels prevailed
and this form of suicide was rejected.
With the opening of the year 1902 there were several indications that
the general _morale_ of the government was deteriorating. The first was
a very determined attempt to revive the Buddhist cult. The Emperor
consented to the establishment of a great central monastery for the
whole country in the vicinity of Seoul, and in it was installed a
Buddhist High Priest in Chief who was to control the whole Buddhist
Church in the land. It was a ludicrous attempt, for Buddhism in Korea is
dead so far as any genuine influence is concerned. Mixed with the native
spirit-worship it has its millions of devotees, but so far as becoming a
fashionable cult is concerned nothing is more unlikely. But it has been
the case for over a thousand years that when things have gone badly in
the government there has been a harking back to the old Buddhist
mummery, to fortune-tellers, geomancers and the like, and the only
significance of this attempt was to prove that there was something
“rotten in Denmark.”
Another evidence was the constant and successful attempt to centralize
the power of the Government in the hands of the Emperor. The overthrow
of the Independence Party, whose main tenet was curtailment of the
Imperial prerogative, gave a new impulse to the enlargement of that
prerogative so that in the year 1901 we find almost all the government
business transacted in the Palace itself. The various ministers of state
could do nothing on their own initiative. Everything was centered in the
throne and in two or three favorites who stood near the throne. Of these
Yi Yong-ik was the most prominent.
A third evidence of deterioration was the methods adopted to fill the
coffers of the Household treasury. The previous year had been a bad one.
Out of a possible twelve million dollars of revenue only seven million
could be collected. There was great distress all over the country and
the pinch was felt in the palace. Special inspectors and agents were
therefore sent to the country armed with authority from the Emperor to
collect money for the Household treasury. These men adopted any and
every means to accomplish their work and this added very materially to
the discontent of the people. The prefects were very loath to forego a
fraction of the taxation, because they saw how previous prefects were
being mulcted because of failure to collect the full amount, and so
between the prefect and the special agents the people seemed to be
promised a rather bad time. In fact it caused such an outcry on every
side that the government at last reluctantly recalled the special
agents.
Early in the year the fact was made public that Korea had entered into
an agreement with Russia whereby it was guaranteed that no land at
Masanpo or on the island of Kö-je at its entrance should ever be sold or
permanently leased to any foreign Power. Russia had already secured a
coaling station there and it was generally understood, the world over,
that Russia had special interest in that remarkably fine harbor.
Avowedly this was merely for pacific purposes, but the pains which
Russia took to make a secret agreement with Korea debarring other Powers
from privileges similar to those which she had acquired, naturally
aroused the suspicions of the Japanese and of the Koreans themselves,
those of them that had not been in the secret; and this step, inimical
to Japan as it undoubtedly was, probably helped to hasten the final
catastrophe. Meanwhile Russian subjects were taking advantage of the
influential position of their Government in Seoul and through
ministerial influence some glass-makers, iron-workers and weavers were
employed by the Government without the smallest probability of their
ever doing anything in any of these lines. In fact at about this time
the Government was induced to take on quite a large number of Russians
and Russian sympathisers who never were able to render any service
whatever in lieu of their pay. In many cases the most cursory
investigation would have shown that such would inevitably be the result.
It is difficult to evade the conclusion that the Government was
deliberately exploited.
It was in the spring of this year that the project began to be seriously
discussed in Japan of colonizing portions of Korea with Japanese, and a
society or company was formed in Tokyo with this as its avowed purpose.
This naturally evoked a good deal of feeling in Korea where the Japanese
were not at the time enjoying any considerable influence at court. The
fact then came out for the first time, and has been further emphasized
since, that the Korean, whatever he may feel for his Government, is
passionately attached to the soil.
But at this time another and a far greater surprise was in store for the
world. It was the announcement of a defensive alliance between Japan and
Great Britain. By the terms of this agreement Japan and Great Britain
guaranteed to insure the independence of Korea and the integrity of the
Chinese Empire. The tremendous influence of this historic document was
felt at once in every capital of Europe and in every capital, port and
village of the Far East. It stung the lethargic to life and it caused
the rashly enthusiastic to stop and think. There can be no manner of
doubt that this alliance was one of the necessary steps in preparing for
the war which Japan already foresaw on the horizon. It indicated clearly
to Russia that her continued occupation of Manchuria and her continued
encroachments upon Korea would be called in question at some not distant
day. But she was blind to the warning. This convention bound Great
Britain to aid Japan in defensive operations and to work with her to the
preservation of Korean independence and the integrity of China. It will
be seen, therefore, that Japan gave up once and for all any thought that
she might previously have had of impairing the independence of this
country and any move in that direction would absolve Great Britain from
all obligations due to the signing of the agreement.
The year had but just begun when the operations of counterfeiters of
nickel coins became so flagrant as to demand the attention of all who
were interested in trade in the peninsula. Japan had most at stake and
Russia had least, and this explains why the Russian authorities
applauded the work of Yi Yong-ik and encouraged him to continue and
increase the issue of such coinage. In March matters had come to such a
pass that the foreign representatives, irrespective of partisan lines,
met and discussed ways and means for overcoming the difficulty. After
careful deliberation they framed a set of recommendations which were
sent to the Government. These urged the discontinuance of this nickel
coinage, the withdrawal from circulation of spurious coins and stringent
laws against counterfeiting. But this was of little or no avail. The
Government was making a five cent coin at a cost of less than two cents
and consequently the counterfeiters with good tools could make as good a
coin as the Government and still realize enormously on the operation. It
was impossible to detect the counterfeited coins, in many cases, and so
there was no possibility of withdrawing them from circulation. The heavy
drop in exchange was not due so much to the counterfeiting as to the
fact that the intrinsic value of the coin was nothing like as much as
the face value, and by an immutable law of finance as well as of human
nature it fell to a ruinous discount. But even this would not have
worked havoc with trade if, having fallen, the discredited coinage would
stay fallen, but it had the curious trick of rising and falling with
such sudden fluctuations that business became a mere gamble, and the
heavy interests of Japanese and Chinese merchants were nearly at a
standstill.