WRONGS: REAL AND FANCIED
Among the many embarrassments encountered by Marquis Ito as Japanese
Resident-General in his efforts to reform and elevate Korea, there is
perhaps no one more persistent and hard to overcome than the charges of
fraud and violence made against his own countrymen. These charges come
from various sources and are promulgated in a variety of ways. Sometimes
they take the form of a book—as, for example, Mr. Hulbert’s “Passing
of Korea.” For months the _Korean Daily News_, under the editorship of
Mr. Bethell, in both its native and its English editions, filled its
daily columns with complaints, wearisomely reiterated after they had
been repeatedly disproved, or made anew on insufficient grounds and even
without any trustworthy evidence whatever. In scarcely less degree,
the same thing has been true of certain English papers printed outside
of Korea, especially in China. More effective still in producing an
impression abroad, but not more trustworthy, have been the published
letters of many travellers and newspaper correspondents. Conspicuous
among the latter class was the letter of Mr. William T. Ellis to the New
York _Tri-Weekly Tribune_, in which it was stated that, under the then
existing Japanese Government, “robbery, abuse, oppression, injustice,
and even murder are the lot of the Korean common people.”[81] Most
deplorable[82] of all are the hasty and inconsiderate charges believed
on exaggerated or wholly false accounts of the Koreans themselves,
and propagated by the relatively small body of missionaries who have
remained—for reasons to be considered subsequently—in an attitude of open
or secret hostility to the Japanese Protectorate.
The charges against the Japanese of violence and fraud in Korea may be
divided into four classes: those which are important and true; those
which are trivial and only partly true; those which are exaggerated; and
those which are wholly false. Of the first kind there are a few only;
of the second there are many; of the third there are even a greater
number; and of the fourth there are not a few. In judging the conduct of
the Japanese Government and its officials of all ranks and classes, as
distinguished from the conduct of adventurous and unscrupulous individual
Japanese, the material and social condition of affairs in the peninsula
during and immediately after the Russo-Japanese war cannot fairly be
left out of the account. One complaint brought by its most unsympathetic
critics against the Government is that it did not foresee the influx of
undesirable characters into Korea during the war and make sufficient
provision for their control. But precisely the opposite of this complaint
is true. The military and other coolies and camp-followers had given
much trouble and embarrassment to the Japanese officials in the war with
China. Accordingly, the military authorities determined at the beginning
of the war with Russia to avoid such complications by composing the
military train wholly of enlisted men. Thus many recruits—students,
professional men, and tradesmen—who did not come up to the standard set
for the soldier, or who were not ready for service in the ranks, served
as cart-pullers, burden-bearers, and in other laborious and humble ways.
The conduct of the army, and of the enlisted men generally, in Korea and
Manchuria, was so admirable as to call out the quite unexampled approval
of all candid observers. Looting was almost absolutely prevented; the
extremely rare cases of rape were punished with death as soon as the
offence was proved; violence or insult toward all non-combatants was of
rare occurrence; and the treatment of the Russian prisoners of war evoked
the gratitude of the prisoners themselves. In all these respects, the
difference between the Japanese and the Chinese and Russians was indeed
remarkable.
At the beginning of the war the Tokyo government, perceiving that
the civil authorities in Korea were already overburdened with labors
consequent upon the great influx of Japanese—many of them belonging
to the lower classes—proposed a bill to establish new courts and an
increased force of police. In the pressure of important business
connected with the life-or-death struggle in which Japan was then
engaged, the bill did not pass. A Police Adviser to the Korean Government
was, however, appointed. What must have been the complete incompetency
of the Korean magistrates and police at such a time of confusion may be
faintly imagined by one who—like the author—has seen how ineffectively
they still discharged their functions, for the protection of their own
officials and for the maintenance of order in the country, at the time
of his visit in the spring of 1907. It would have been strange, then,
if anything approaching an even-handed justice through the courts, or
a complete condition of order by fear of the police, could have been
secured in Korea in 1904 and 1905. No such justice or order has ever
existed in this land of misrule. Japan secured it during the occupation
of war, so far as its own enlisted men were concerned; but its rights as
“Protector” were not fully gained and defined until after the close of
the war.
Among the most serious of the charges which are important and, in
certain instances, true, is that made against the military authorities
for the appropriation of lands for military and railway uses, to an
unreasonable extent, and in unfair ways. “There can be no question,”
says Mr. D. W. Stevens, “that at the outset the military authorities in
Korea did intimate an intention of taking more land for these uses than
seemed reasonable. They proceeded upon the principle that the Korean
Government had bound itself to grant all land necessary for railway and
military uses, and itself to indemnify the owners—an assumption which
was technically correct. But the owners, knowing the custom of their
own government under such circumstances, were hopeless of obtaining
anything like adequate redress. This, it should be remembered, happened
during the war, when martial law was in the ascendant.” When peace
came, other counsels prevailed; the intention to appropriate additional
large tracts was abandoned; and the amount staked off for military
purposes was greatly reduced—was, indeed, in several instances, made
only a fraction of the original amount. For all the domain granted or
appropriated by the Korean Government there has already accrued to the
country, in transportation facilities and other economic and political
advantages, far more than its actual value at the time of its granting
or appropriation. For the private land owned by Koreans a fair price
was paid in the majority of cases. The prohibition of the owners within
the delimited areas to sell their lands and houses was designed to
prevent prior purchase by speculators and other indirect attempts to
obtain extravagant prices. The military authorities, under the pressure
of what they regarded as necessity, solved these difficulties in the
military way—a way that certainly does not commend itself to civilians
in times of peace, but which has been employed too often by all the other
civilized nations to enable them to cast stones freely at the Japanese.
Even by these high-handed measures they could not avoid, in certain
cases, paying much more for land owned by foreigners than it was really
worth.[83]
It must further be confessed that a considerable number of Japanese
sharpers—for the most part usurious money-lenders—have obtained land
from Koreans in unjust and oppressive ways. This species of robbery
is made the more difficult to detect and punish for the following
reasons: The Korean customs and laws concerning the transference of
titles to land are inadequate and confusing (for this reason, some of
the landed property belonging to other foreigners than the Japanese,
and even to the missionary bodies, would have no little difficulty in
establishing title); the Koreans are given to issuing false and forged
deeds, or in their ignorance claiming title and conferring title where
no such right exists; finally, in numerous instances, both Korean or
foreign “squatters” (see p. 295 _f._) and the government or some of its
officials are asserting, either honestly or fraudulently, their holding
of good title to the same piece of land. On all this class of offences
we may trust implicitly the statement of the foreign official (an
American) whose duty has led him to examine into a large number of these
cases: “The theft of land by eviction, false deeds, etc.,” says this
authority, “is another offence upon which great stress has been laid.
Undoubtedly there were a number of cases of this kind, although here
again exaggeration has been at work. The commonest instances were those
where money-lenders were concerned; and, in these cases, as in almost all
others of the kind, Koreans were associated in some way or other with
the frauds which were perpetrated. A spendthrift son or nephew would
give false title-deeds, or even pawn the genuine ones without authority;
a Korean rascal would conspire with a Japanese of the same kidney to
defraud other Koreans, and so on through the long gamut of fraud wherein
Korean connivance was an indispensable prerequisite to success. The
offences relating to land have now been rendered practically impossible
through the promulgation of land regulations by the Residency-General.”
In a word, offences of this kind committed by the Japanese against the
Koreans, however numerous and grievous they may have been, have proved
short-lived; they were formerly due to the disturbed conditions of a
period of war, and will now speedily be brought to an end. Summing them
all up, and even without making allowance for exaggerations, the cry of
the Koreans against the Japanese on the charge of fraud and oppression
touching their land is only as a drop to a good-sized bucket compared
with the cry of the Irish against the English, or of the Koreans
themselves against their own countrymen. The wrongs are small indeed as
compared with those which have characterized the behavior of Americans
against Americans in our own West.[84]
Of brutal and murderous assaults from Japanese upon Korean men and women
there are indeed instances; but the cases prove on examination to have
been by no means frequent. They have been, on the whole, fewer than such
crimes are accustomed to be between peoples of two nations similarly
placed. Indeed, they have been fewer than those occurring to-day between
different classes and different nationals in many of the civilized
countries of the Western World. They bear no comparison to the horrors
which have for centuries been familiar in most of the Orient, including
Korea itself. “Wholesale military executions,” for example, of the
Koreans who tore up the track of the military railroad have been charged
against the Japanese as virtually murders. But during the entire war
there was never a single instance of what is known as “drum-head court
martial” of a Korean for such an offence. After the trial the evidence in
each case was transmitted to the Headquarters at Seoul, where the case
was confirmed, modified, or reversed. The Japanese military authorities
consented to have a Korean official present at each trial as an _amicus
curiæ_ of the defendant; but the Korean Government declined to be
represented and claimed that all such cases should be tried before their
own officials only. What would have been the outcome of such a committal
of the most vital military interests of Japan to Korean magistrates it
needs no great amount of experience to judge. A Korean, for example, who
had been arrested by a Japanese _gendarme_ and taken before a native
magistrate was duly punished for “throwing a stone at the railway!”
But on his being rearrested and tried before a military court it was
established that the man had been repeatedly convicted of piling stones
upon the track with a view to wreck the trains conveying the Japanese
soldiers; whereupon the sentence of the military court was confirmed from
Headquarters and the man was quite properly executed.
Of the killing of Koreans, unprovoked and without the excuse of
self-defence, by Japanese, there have been at no time any considerable
number of cases. Indeed, the murders of men and women of the other
nationality, while in the quiet discharge of their official duty or in
their homes, have been far more numerous. This was especially true while
the country was stirred to riot and bloodshed by the abdication of the
Emperor in July, 1907, and by the disbandment of the Korean army, when
mistaken or feigned “patriotism” was showing itself in the customary
Korean way. But that there is nothing new about all this, a reference to
chapters which have sketched (IX and X) the history of the relations of
the countries in the past centuries will abundantly show.
Of serious and unprovoked assaults of Koreans by Japanese there have
been, doubtless, a considerable number. It would be impossible to
tell just how many, even as a result of the most patient and candid
investigation;—if for no other reason, because the Korean habit of
exaggeration and lying renders almost all the uncorroborated testimony of
the natives untrustworthy. This experience with official lying to cover
their own countrymen against the demands of foreigners for justice, or
to enforce indemnity in cases of false charges made against foreigners
for assault on Koreans, is not confined to the Japanese. It is the common
experience with all Korean judicial procedure.[85]
Among the more serious unproved charges against Japanese officials was
that of torturing Korean prisoners by Japanese gendarmes at the time
of the so-called “cleansing” of the Palace. Mr. Hulbert published this
charge and specified, on the authority of “numerous witnesses,” the exact
character of the torture—namely, by a kind of iron instrument designed
to squeeze the head. Immediately Marquis Ito took up the matter and sent
a messenger to Mr. Hulbert to express his earnest desire to probe the
matter thoroughly; and his intention, in case the charge was proved,
to punish the offenders severely. This request implied, as a matter
of course, the pledge of protection to the witnesses; and Mr. Hulbert
agreed to furnish the evidence. But when this could not be done, the
excuse was first offered that the witnesses were afraid to come forward;
and next, the “numerous witnesses” resolved themselves into one person,
who had “gone into the country.” When still further pressed to furnish
the promised evidence, the story of the iron head-rack was altogether
abandoned, and for it was substituted the charge that a certain eunuch
had been arrested and beaten by the police. But this, if it occurred,
is only according to the Korean custom of judicial procedure, still to
be allowed, after the torture of criminals had been legally abolished
under Japanese influence. Nevertheless, this confessedly false charge
was afterward included in a pamphlet by the same authority as another
instance of Japanese outrages in Korea.[86]
Of rudeness and petty assaults the Koreans have, no doubt, had much to
endure at the hands of the coolies and other low-class Japanese. But not
_so_ much as the Burmese and East Indians have had to endure from the
British soldier and petty official in their own home land; or the Chinese
and Japanese on the Pacific Coast of the United States; and, probably,
not more than the Japanese themselves during the earlier days of the
entrance of foreigners into Japan. While the atrocious treatment of the
natives by the Belgians in Africa, by the French in Madagascar, by the
Russians in many parts of Asia, is as midnight darkness to twilight or
full dawn when compared with anything done to Koreans of late years by
the Japanese.
In order to understand, but not to excuse, this harsh and bullying
attitude of the foreigner toward the native, two things need to be borne
in mind. The first is this: _Korea has never been a land where the common
people have been treated with any decency, not to say respect_. In the
old days—the days to change which the Japanese Government is planning
and doing more than any other human agency—the attendants of officials
beat every commoner who came within their reach; this was as a matter
of course; it was an evidence, not much resented by the people, of the
superiority of their master. Lieutenant Foulk describes how, when he
was travelling in the country, his chair coolies on approaching an inn
would accelerate their pace and, rushing into the yard at the top of
their speed, would begin to belabor every one in sight. “In 1885,” says
Mr. Stevens, “I was riding through the streets of Seoul on official
business. Among my attendants were several policemen armed with the
many-thonged whips carried in those days. The policemen slashed with
these at the curious who pressed around the chair, regardless of where
the blows fell. One old woman, lashed in the face until the blood came,
still pressed forward when the policeman had passed, eager to see the
foreigner close at hand, and apparently regarding the blows as a matter
of course.” To-day such cruelty is in no respect rare among the “amiable
Koreans.” Indeed, without something of this kind, it is difficult in the
country for the traveller, whether native or foreigner, to get anything
done. “During the first two days,” says Mr. Henry Norman,[87] “I was
greatly annoyed by my _mapous_, whom I could not get along at all. At
the midday halt they would lie about for a couple of hours, and in the
morning it was two or three hours after I was up before I could get them
to start. On the third morning I lost my temper, and going into their
room, I kicked them one after the other into the yard. This was evidently
what they expected, for they set to work immediately. Unless they were
kicked they could not believe the hurry was real. Afterward, by a similar
procedure, I started whenever I wished.” Again, Mr. Angus Hamilton, after
bringing a railing accusation against the Japanese for their bullying
methods with the Koreans, recommends that the Korean interpreter “be
flogged” if he suggests the employment of too many servants, asserts that
“an occasional kick” is helpful to convert the Korean into a “willing if
unintelligent servant,” and closes his book with the frank narrative of
his falling into a blind rage and taking vengeance right and left because
of his disappointment over the defeat of a scheme for an exploring and
sporting trip to the northern part of the peninsula.[88]
The second consideration to which reference was made brings out the more
humorous side of the picture. In Korea it makes a great difference,
not only whose ox is gored, but who gores the ox. Small favors of the
kind which are received uncomplainingly—almost gratefully—from their
own officials, and even from other friends, are by no means just now
received in the same way from the Japanese. Of this fact Dr. Gale gives
an admirable description: it is that of a Korean lounging along in the
middle of the road and smoking the pipe of contemplative abstraction—a
habit indulged in by almost all Koreans in the most inconvenient places.
A Japanese jinrikisha-man pushes him rudely to one side, and not being
at all firm upon his legs, he goes sprawling on the ground (comp. p.
172 _f._). Eyes raised to heaven, he calls upon the skies to fall; for
the end of all things has come. “But,” says the passing stranger, “a
missionary pushed you out of the way yesterday; another foreigner beat
you the day before; your own people have always kicked and cuffed you.”
“Yes, yes, but a _Japanese_! Only think of it—a _Japanese_!”
Among the partially true, but greatly exaggerated, charges of petty
oppression and injustice must be classed the claim that the labor on the
Japanese military railway was enforced by personal cruelties and paid for
at unfair prices. Again, it must be remembered that the prompt conclusion
of this work was a military necessity of the first importance. In the
rush and confusion which accompanied its execution, it would have been
strange if there had not been cases of harsh treatment of laborers by the
Japanese sub-contractors. Where an appeal, accompanied by trustworthy
evidence, was taken to the higher authorities, it was possible to obtain
redress in almost every instance. But there was another class of cases
where it was almost impossible to secure anything like decent reparation;
these were chiefly under the management of the Koreans themselves.
Concerning such cases, the statement of an authority, made on grounds of
personal knowledge, is quoted below:
Complaints came from various sources, all of the same tenor.
Laborers living long distances from the railway were compelled
to come to work at wages which hardly paid for their food. Yet
at this time the authorities were paying wages much higher than
any that could be earned by these men in other occupations. As
the laborers could not appeal, or did not appeal, directly to
the military authorities, but usually waited until their return
home to repeat the story of their wrongs, it was difficult to
ascertain the truth. Whenever an investigation was possible,
however, it was usually discovered that the ill-treatment was
due to a combination between interpreters, sub-contractors,
and local officials. The sub-contractors had to have men,
and, either through interpreters or directly, would make
contracts with the local officials to supply a certain number
of laborers. These were almost invariably secured one or two
day’s journey from the railway line; as it would not do to
attract too much attention by interfering with the people
living near the railway. The laborers would be compelled to
work for about one-fourth of the wages really paid, and the
balance would be divided between the interpreters and local
officials. In certain cases the people were allowed exemption
from this drafting system upon the payment of ransom, estimated
upon the basis of the number of men which they had been asked
to supply. Only recently an officer, who during the war had
charge of the construction of an important section of the
Seoul-Wiju line, related a case of this kind. He was paying
one dollar and thirty cents, Korean money, as a day’s wages;
the men were well treated, and food was cheap and abundant.
Still there was constant trouble on account of insufficient
supply of labor, the reason for which the closest investigation
failed to reveal. But only a few months ago (more than two
years, that is, after the experience) the officer met a man
who explained the reason. It seemed that the Korean Governor
of the province had an arrangement with the interpreters which
was mutually profitable even when laborers were not actually
procured for the work. The operations were carried on over a
large extent of territory distant, as was customary, several
day’s journey from the railway. As many laborers as could be
induced, or forced, to come, were paid thirty-five cents a
day—the conspirators pocketing the balance. In the majority of
cases where the people preferred to purchase exemption, these
precious rascals collected considerable sums. And, of course,
the military authorities got all the blame, as all this was
done in their name. Sometimes the sub-contractors assisted by
sending out parties, Korean and Japanese, armed with swords
and pistols, for the purpose of intimidating the unwilling or
the recalcitrant. On several occasions condign punishment was
inflicted for offences of this kind, but as actual violence
was very rarely committed and the intimidation was carried
on quietly, where it could not easily be discovered, it was
difficult to secure convincing proof against the culprits.
Fair-minded persons, familiar with the facts, know that the
military authorities did all that could have reasonably been
asked to put a stop to such practices; but, occurring during
a time of war, many of these irregularities were of a nature
which it was difficult wholly to prevent. That officers in
the field and at headquarters were always ready to listen
to complaints and, so far as lay in their power, to rectify
wrongs, is an indisputable fact.
The reputation of the Japanese—army, civil government, and the people
generally—has suffered more from the long-standing and the more recent
relations between Japan and Korea than is customary elsewhere under
similar circumstances. This is due partly to inexperience and over
self-confidence on their own part; but also in larger measure to the
untrustworthy and corrupt witness of the Korean officials and to the
ignorance and credulity of the Korean people; most of all, however, to
the prejudiced or malignant, untrue reports of certain foreigners. During
the occupation and transit of the Japanese army in the late war, the
charges of cruelty and injustice on its part were not confined to the
construction and service of the military railway. While the commissary
department was paying to the Korean contractors the full market price for
provisions and other supplies, the contractors were compelling the Korean
people to furnish the supplies, either without pay or at greatly reduced
rates. From time immemorial, the people of Korea have been accustomed to
have their rice, chickens, ponies, and service, levied upon by their own
officials; in the present case they, as a matter of course, attributed
the same manner of getting what you want by taking what you see, to the
Japanese.[89]
Ignorance of the Korean language and customs is another fruitful source
of bad repute for the Japanese. Even now, in the city of Seoul, the
Japanese who blunders into the women’s quarters, or even into their too
near vicinity, in the discharge of his duty to collect a bill, to make
an inspection or a report of some official character, or to inquire his
way, is liable to be charged with an intent to commit rape or some other
form of assault. The Japanese collector of taxes, or customs, or the
Japanese policeman who protects the obnoxious Korean official, or even
the “unpatriotic” Cabinet Minister, is a particular object of Korean
falsehood and hatred. But all these complaints, although they have been
made much of by the anti-Japanese “friends” of Korea, and in spite of
the undoubted fact that they greatly increase the feeling of bitterness
between the two peoples and interfere with the benevolent plans of the
Resident-General, are in themselves comparatively trivial.
Wholly false charges of oppression and fraud of a much more important
character have been made against the Japanese Government in Korea, either
in ignorance or with malignity, and have industriously been spread
abroad by the subsidized or the deceived “foreign friends” of the Korean
Court. One of the most notable of such charges concerned the so-called
“fisheries company.” Its history is briefly this. Certain Koreans came
to a “missionary friend” complaining that the Resident-General had
peremptorily dissolved a Korean company which had a legal concession
to develop the fisheries industry, thus involving the shareholders in
heavy losses. The presumption was that the unjust act was intended to
further in the future the Japanese interest in this same industry. But
the truth was that the Minister of Agriculture, Commerce and Industry
had in the Fall of 1906, at the solicitation of a “Korean, notorious
for previous participation in malodorous schemes,” secretly granted to
a _native company a monopoly of all the fishing rights upon the entire
Korean coasts, except the whale fisheries_. In addition to this, this
same company was given the exclusive right of control over all the fish
markets in the Empire, so that no fish could be sold except at places
designated by it and upon payment to it of such sums as it might choose
to exact. When, however, sufficient funds were not speedily available
from Korean subscribers to float this monstrous and totally illegal
monopoly, a Japanese visiting capitalist was approached by the Korean
promoter and asked to buy a half-share of the enterprise. His mention of
the investment offered to him gave to the Residency-General its first
knowledge of the scheme. The Minister of Agriculture, Commerce and
Industry was immediately informed that such a concession was in plain
violation of treaty rights and highly prejudicial to Korean private and
public interests. The Minister was also warned that the concession should
be cancelled; he promised to do this, and it was supposed that he had
kept his word. But either through cowardice or connivance at corruption,
the promise was not fulfilled. Months later, therefore, the Chief of the
Commercial Department of the Residency-General, Mr. Kiuchi, while making
a tour of inspection in Southeastern Korea, received a petition from
the fishermen of the district, complaining that this same company was
levying taxes upon them and forbidding those who did not pay the taxes
to continue their fishing. The complete dissolution of this illegal
monopoly was saved from being the object of popular resentment only by
the fact that its promoters had been ready to share their plunder with a
Japanese![90]
Another instance which illustrates, however, the habitual exaggeration
and ignorant credulity of the Koreans rather than their well-known
official capacity for fraud, is connected with the establishment of
the royal “stud-farm” near Pyeng-yang. In this case two native pastors
from this city, as members of a deputation to petition the redress of
a great wrong, came to a missionary friend in Seoul in great distress.
Their story was that the Korean officials of the Household Department,
in complicity with the Japanese officials, had enclosed in stakes a
territory having a population of fifty thousand people and comprising
a vast quantity of arable land. Within this large area, no one could
sell the land, or cut timber or grass, or plant crops, or bury the dead;
or, in brief, put the land to any of its ordinary uses. These official
prohibitions were said to have been inscribed upon the stakes—although
the petitioners, on being questioned, could not tell upon just how
many of them. At Seoul, neither the Korean nor the Japanese officials
knew of any such project in connection with the proposed stud-farm;
although it was true that such a farm was to be established, under the
joint patronage of their Majesties, the Emperors of Japan and Korea.
Communication with Marquis Ito, who was then in Tokyo, brought a
reassuring telegram from him. Investigation showed that no notice of the
kind had been put upon any of the stakes which had been erected to show
that all the government lands within the area delimited were reserved
for the uses of the farm. Nor did the placing of the stakes put any
restrictions whatever upon the people, so far as concerned their own
property. The one stake on which the mysterious notice did appear had
been driven some time previous to the very existence of the scheme for a
royal farm; and it had reference to a totally different piece of Imperial
property which it had been designed to guard against encroachments from
both Koreans and Japanese dwelling in Pyeng-yang. All this excitement
could have been avoided if the Korean officials had done their duty by
way of informing and instructing the people. But the simple truth is that
many of them and of the “foreign friends” of Korea do not wish to avoid
any popular excitement which will contribute to the embarrassment and
discredit of the Japanese Government in Korea. The rather do they welcome
all such excitement.
The truth of this last remark is amply illustrated by the treatment
given to the “Pagoda Incident”—one of the “flagrant wrongs” done to
Korea by the Japanese which was on the carpet during our entire stay
of two months in the land. Viscount Tanaka, who is described as “an
ardent virtuoso and collector,” while visiting in Seoul was approached
by a Japanese curio dealer with the suggestion that he might add to his
collection the ancient but neglected pagoda then situated near Song-do.
Mention of the matter was made to the Korean Ministers of the Interior
and of the Household, and their approval obtained; and through them the
sanction of the Emperor was gained for its removal, as a present to his
distinguished guest. The actual work of the removal was committed to the
dealer who made the unfortunate suggestion, and who executed his job
“with his characteristic skill and audacity.” Previous to its removal
this relic of former grandeur had for a long time been wholly neglected
by the Korean Government and was, in fact, in process of destruction by
the Korean people, who were in the habit of removing bits from it to
use as medicine. At once, however, a storm of indignant protest broke
out; not, indeed, among the Koreans left to themselves so much as on
the part of the “foreign friends” of Korea in their English papers and
foreign correspondence. The Viscount was called by terms applicable to a
common thief; the “robbery of the Pagoda,” the “rape of the Pagoda,” the
plunder of this “precious religious relic” of Korea’s former grandeur,
was deplored and abjurgated in the most extravagant terms. The Emperor
doubtless chuckled; for while he cared little for the Pagoda, he cared
much for the discredit which the taking away of it brought upon the
Japanese. The unwise act was virtually disowned by the Residency-General
(Marquis Ito was absent in Japan at the time of its removal), and was
severely criticised by the Japanese themselves; with the departure of Mr.
Hulbert for Russia the excitement over this act of oppression gave way to
more important political affairs.
[Illustration: The Stone-Turtle Monument.]
Most ludicrous and pathetic—but highly characteristic—of all these
popular excitements was, perhaps, that which arose through the mere
proposal of a subject of debate by a Japanese student in Waseda
University, Japan: Whether the Korean Emperor should not be made a noble
of Japan? (Thus implying, of course, his descent from his Imperial
dignity and the virtual annexation of Korea.) The proposal was indeed
never adopted, and the debate never took place. But the intolerable
insult to the Korean students at the same university, and to the whole
nation of Korea—although the authorities of Waseda at once rebuked the
unfortunate student—was dwelt upon, and exaggerated, and rubbed into the
inflamed and sensitive skins of the people, with all the vigor which the
Korean patriots and their “foreign friends” could command. And when some
obscure but self-conceited Japanese official, in Japan and not at all in
Korea, published a brochure giving fully two-score and more reasons why
Japan should promptly annex Korea, these same patriots and their friends
made all the use in their power of this insignificant document to stir
up sedition and murderous revolt. It was the issue of it as a forgery
bearing the official authorization of the Japanese Government, which
caused the excitement in Pyeng-yang—the story of which has already been
told (see p. 104 _f._).[91]
It is not necessary, however, to multiply instances under any of these
heads. All classes of wrongs done the Koreans by the Japanese—important
and trivial, real, exaggerated, or falsely claimed—are fast diminishing
and are destined in time to be reduced to a minimum. The Korean Central
Government is now more genuine, more intelligent, and more efficient—as
distinguished from the mere wilfulness of the ex-Emperor—than it has
ever been before. The reforms possible under the Convention of July,
1907, will afford a judiciary system and judicial procedure hitherto
impossible as respects the administration of justice. The control of the
local magistrate and of the policing of city and country will contribute
something quite new in the way of the blessings of peace and prosperity
to the common people. The reforms in the public finance and in taxation
will stimulate trade and commerce; the industrial and common-school
education will bring about an economic redemption. And if the teachers of
morals and religion, both native and foreign, behave with a reasonable
wisdom and self-control in the future, and with the same devotion and
enthusiasm which they have displayed in the recent years, wrongs will be
righted; justice will be done; enlightenment will be spread abroad; and
the Korea of the near future will be a quite different nation from the
Korea of the long-continued, disgraceful, and distressful past.