CHŌ-SEN: A PROVINCE OF JAPAN.
Chō-sen is the official name of the country described in this volume
and now a province of Japan, as declared in the Act of Annexation of
August, 1910. Thus its oldest name, now to be better known to the
world, is also its newest. Since 1392 the natives have known no other.
The Chinese characters for Chō-sen, or Morning Calm, were stamped on
the first and earlier editions of this book. The Japanese name of the
capital is Kéijo.
By the Russo-Japanese war, Corea was saved from being a Russian
province and the king and court given the supreme occasion of reform,
which, if carried out, would mean new national life. Corea would have
remained a sovereign state, had the chief ruler and the governing
classes risen to their opportunity.
It was not to be. With despotism in the palace and a lettered class
bound in cast-iron traditions, but profoundly ignorant of the world and
the century, there lay beneath an oppressed populace, steeped in
superstition, for which the Government did nothing. Lacking an
intelligent middle class between, reform in Corea, except from without,
was perhaps morally impossible.
Old Corea, an unreformed Oriental state, with all the features
inseparably associated with such a society, was thus described by Lord
Curzon in 1894:
“A royal figure-head, enveloped in the mystery of the palace and the
harem, surrounded by concentric rings of eunuchs, Ministers of State,
officials and retainers, and rendered almost intangible by the
predominant atmosphere of intrigue; a hierarchy of office-holders and
office-seekers, who are leeches in the thinnest disguise; a feeble and
insignificant army, an impecunious exchequer, a debased currency, and
an impoverished people—these are the invariable symptoms of the
fast-vanishing régime of the older and unredeemed Oriental type. Add to
these the first swarming of the flock of foreign practitioners who
scent the enfeebled constitution from afar and from the four winds of
Heaven come pressing their pharmacopœia of loans, concessions, banks,
mints, factories, and all the recognized machinery for filling Western
purses at the expense of Eastern pockets, and you have a fair picture
of Korea as she stands after ten years of emergence from her long
seclusion and enjoyment of the intercourse of the nations.”
Corea as represented by the yang-ban, or ruling class, numbering with
their families 200,000 souls, was dragged suddenly out into the world’s
light and confronted with vital problems. Without that long interior
intellectual preparation which enabled Japan in the nick of time to
meet her new duties, the Coreans were neither able nor willing to
grapple with the colossal tasks awaiting them. Yet this was no fault of
the plain people, for it is to their credit that they welcomed
foreigners. Except a morbid curiosity as to alien persons and ways,
they have ever shown kindness, and politeness so far as they knew it.
With amazing promptness the spiritually hungry and thirsty masses have
responded with grateful appreciation to what their foreign teachers
brought them. One secret of their readiness and docility lies in the
fact that they were glad to be delivered from the oppression of rulers,
whose one idea of government meant the grinding of the people for
private benefit.
After the treaty of November 17, 1905, by which a Resident-General from
Japan was established in Seoul, and which took control of the foreign
relations and affairs of the little kingdom, it was found that few of
those who could have effected national reform gave any indication of
their desire to do so. In 1907 a fresh agreement was made, “with the
object of speedily providing for the wealth of Corea and of promoting
its welfare,” and the Japanese Government spent millions of dollars in
schemes of practical advantage to the Coreans. When, after four years,
it was found that the age-old abuses continued, and reform by natives
seemed impossible, the formal annexation of Corea was consummated on
August 29, 1910. The full text of the treaty, in eight articles, with
preamble, etc., and English translation, is printed in the Journal of
International Law (Revue de Droit International) for December, 1910,
published in Tokio.
The Amalgamation Convention provides: [64]
“(1) The Emperor of Corea shall concede to the Emperor of Japan the
Corean sovereignty, together with all territorial rights.
“(2) The Sovereign Imperial Household is to be treated as a
quasi-Imperial Family of Japan, continuing to have the annual allowance
of 1,500,000 yen, while members of the Imperial Family and meritorious
persons of the country are to be created peers, or endowed with certain
grants.
“(3) The name Corea shall be changed into ‘Chō-sen.’
“(4) The Corean Cabinet being abolished, the Residency-General shall be
changed into a government of Governor-General, while as to the
administrative business and customs tariff, there will be no change for
the present.”
The cost to Japan of the amalgamation is estimated at yen, 30,000,000,
or $15,000,000. Seventy-five Coreans of distinguished families were
created peers of Japan, and the monetary grants in yen were conferred
as follows: to a baron, 50,000; to a viscount, 100,000; to a count,
150,000; and to a marquis, 200,000. As with the kugé, or court nobles,
to prevent waste, the principal is retained in the Imperial Treasury,
and the interest promptly paid at frequent intervals. Provision has
been made for other meritorious persons, and the military conscription
will not be put in force for ten years yet. Meanwhile, besides
thousands of Corean students in Tokio, delegations of leading men and
women of Chō-sen have visited and travelled in Japan.
It has always been a sore spot with the Coreans that the United States
refused to intervene, though in the first article of the treaty of May
22, 1882, promise was made that “if other Powers deal unjustly or
oppressively with either Government, the other will exert their good
offices, on being informed of the case, to bring about an amicable
arrangement, thus showing their friendly feeling.” Yet apart from the
settled policy of non-intervention in the affairs of foreign nations,
the United States was but one of several nations that, with a
significant promptness and unanimity, gladly called home their
legations and handed over the control of Corea to Japan.
There is nothing mysterious to the student in the loss of Corea’s
sovereignty and her absorption in the Japanese Empire. A survey of her
history and a view of the world’s movement since 1866 shows inexorably
the law of cause and effect. It was the weakness of Corea to be not
only shut off from the world, but in her hermitage so to exaggerate
antiquity and its importance as to leave the nation helpless in the
modern clash of civilizations, when Orient and Occident are meeting to
merge into one world society. The first infirmity of the Coreans of
insular mind arises from long contact with the history and literature
of the Chinese. Stimulating to the intellect, this has paralyzed mental
initiative and swamped originality. The Corean imagined that China’s
was the beginning and end of all wisdom. Added to this was the delusion
that a knowledge of letters was in itself sufficient to preserve both
society and national sovereignty.
Old Japan suffered frightfully, but not fatally, from the same disease.
In Corea’s case, this insanity of literary pride was exaggerated into a
crime when, after 1392, the popular religion was ruthlessly destroyed,
the people robbed of their teachers, and the country given over to
superstition and ignorance by a Government which Lieutenant Foulk, in
1883, after prolonged tours within the country and study of the details
of administration, declared was but armed robbery.
There was no political or social unity in the Corean peninsula until
the tenth century. The chief force in welding together the various
tribes and peoples into the astonishing unity and similarity now
visible among the people and villages from Quelpart to the Ever White
Mountain was Buddhism. The missionaries of this faith, coming from
Thibet and China, gave the peninsulars art, architecture, literature,
folk-lore, a noble path of morals for guidance in this life, vast
consolations for the future, and pretty much everything that means
culture, refinement, and civilization. In very early days, before
Mikadoism in Japan was formulated into a militant dogma, the islanders
and the peninsulars, the Japanese and the Coreans, were virtually one
and the same people, and in about the same stage of civilization. In
the reaction of nature upon man and of man upon nature, during ten
centuries, the two peoples were differentiated, and the two
languages—almost exactly the same in structure, thus proving their
common origin—developed their vocabulary and local pronunciation. The
two nations, according to their ethnic mixtures, heredity and
environment, grew further and further apart. Nevertheless, to-day,
after a millennium of separation, the underlying elements are so much
greater than the surface differences that the prospects of an
amalgamation of the two peoples are decidedly promising.
In the main, the history of Corea is like its landscape. Her political
annals, as thus far studied, seem like monotonous undergrowth among
which loom indistinct figure-heads. As bare as her desolated coast or
denuded mountains, the scene in historic perspective reminds one of the
peninsula’s lava beds, her square leagues of disintegrated granite, or
her waste lands, out of which rise sculptured rocks, and whence emerge
the Miryeks, or stone colossi, amid ruins surrounded with forests. To a
native scholar his nation’s chronicles are not without a rugged
grandeur of their own, besides a rich coloring that recalls the
rock-scenery of Corea when looked at in the sunlight.
To the alien student, Buddhism looms as the chief civilizer and the
mother of popular culture. It is certain that during its thousand years
of growth and prosperity in the peninsula the people were as one flock
led by one shepherd. They were trained in what was at least beautiful
and human. Corea’s debt to Buddhism is unspeakable. Even to-day, in the
land so often invaded, desolated, peeled, and scraped by Tartar,
Chinese, and Japanese marauders, and raided by men from countries
called Christian, almost everything that remains to touch the
imagination, whether in architecture, rock sculpture, stone colossus,
pagoda, in art, and even in literature, apart from erudition, is of
Buddhist origin.
When, after A.D. 1392, the popular faith was banned, its temples,
schools, monasteries, and works of art destroyed or doomed to decay,
its priesthood socially outlawed and oppressed even to beggary, the
people were left to ignorance and superstition and were as sheep
without shepherds. They became the prey alike of the ruling classes and
of sorcerers and fortune-tellers, who, though densely ignorant, lived
by their wits and wickedness. Parasitic spoilers of all sorts, from the
palace to the hovel, thrived, while the people, the foundation of the
state, existed on life’s narrowest margins. Confucianism, as made into
a state ritual since 1392, and as interpreted and developed by the
yang-ban, or educated and office-holding classes, meant neglect of the
land, the grinding of the people’s faces, the permanent destruction of
popular wealth and comfort, the paralysis of the motives to industry,
and the creation of a standing army of inquisitors, office-seekers, and
office-holders, and their satellites and hangers-on, with headquarters
in Seoul. In place of the spiritual bread of Buddhism, the new régime
offered a stone. In government, instead of the egg for nourishment,
they proffered a scorpion—even chronic extortion. A great gulf was
fixed socially between the men to whom education meant the stifling of
original thought, a ban on mental initiative and the oppression of the
people. Monopoly of office and privilege, as held by one class, meant
systematic robbery of the populace, the Government itself being an
engine of oppression by which fewer than one-quarter million yang-ban
subsisted upon eleven million of the common folk.
When reform was called for which meant public benefit, apart from
private rapine or individual advantage, manual as well as clerkly
labor, continuous and unselfish toil with only slight pecuniary reward,
the average high-class native proved a total failure. Despite the
purging from the palace of several hundred women, and over a thousand
male persons who drew salaries, the remainder within, or parasitic to
royalty, proved worthless for the remaking of the nation.
Ever under the spell of the Chinese characters, saturated with the
ideas of Confucianism run to seed, having only one ideal of
life—selfish advantage and the subordination of the lower
classes—devoted to their sensual enjoyments, their long pipes, and
their liquor, to checker-playing, gossip, and elaborate idleness, the
yang-ban during five centuries did nothing to develop the soil or the
resources of the country. On the contrary, the office-holding class
systematically hindered the development of wealth, or even thrift, by
extortion, unjust taxes, and dishonest manipulation of imposts, which
were paid in kind instead of in coin, by exactions or forced loans
never repaid—usually under the menace and reality of beating, torture,
and imprisonment. One innovation under the Japanese rule, which made
taxes payable in cash and not in kind, wrought infinite blessing to the
people and carried consternation to the army of extortioners.
In the modern world-life, Japan and Corea are as necessary to each
other as are man and woman. It soon became evident to the Tokio
Government, after every step, that some stronger remedy than advice
would be necessary to heal the age-old and deep-seated Corean disease
that seemed as incurable as leprosy. Hence the measures of 1907, which
put into the hands of the Mikado’s Resident-General still greater
powers.
To this work of reforming Corea, Nippon gave her ablest son, one who,
both in feudal and constitutional Japan, had dedicated his life to
promoting the evolution of the modern man. The statesmanship of Ito was
that of a lover of humanity, who might well, after long and
multifarious labors, have taken the rest which he craved and which his
physical condition demanded. Nevertheless, with his unique experience
and amazing abilities, he applied himself with unremitting toil to lead
the once hermit nation into the twentieth century. According to Ito’s
motto, “The secret of statesmanship consists in securing the
contentment of the people.” He was all the better fitted for his
colossal task by having known so well the late feudal Nippon with its
political diseases. Neglect of the people and of the soil, official
falsehood, and class oppression were characteristic of both countries.
Ito took all the more encouragement because life in Chō-sen was but the
mirror of that in old Japan. Having fought belated feudalism and
grappled with the new problems of a modern state in Asia, none was
better equipped than he for the task of making a progressive nation out
of a people whose mental eyes were set even further back in their heads
than those of the Chinese.
For while China boasts of Confucius, Corea penetrates further into the
primitive. She hails as the founder of her social order, Kija (Ki-Tsze,
or Kishi, pp. 11–15), the distant ancestor of the Chinese sage. On this
nursery fairy tale of the nation—since the peninsulars knew nothing of
writing until, long after the Christian era, they obtained the Chinese
ideographs—every Corean for a thousand years or more has been brought
up. The early mythology and legend of the peninsulars are about as
trustworthy as those of the neighboring islanders, whose conceit of
antiquity was once fully as great and whose official and orthodox
chronology was fixed and published so long ago as A.D. 1872!
This myth of Kija, as the actual founder of civilization east of the
Yalu, took its literary form only in the eighth century, when the
Coreans had become saturated with Chinese ideas. Then the peninsulars,
made acquainted with Chinese historiography, and having but one model
before them, faithfully followed it (as did the Japanese also), the
Coreans surpassing even the greater nation in pride of antiquity and in
the glorification of heroes, who loom up in vaster proportions
according as the unrecorded centuries multiply and recede into the
past. Historical science has already begun to change this perspective
of antiquity as surely as hospitals have furnished object-lessons in
the law of cause and effect. Corean gods and demons, more numerous even
than old Japan’s mythical menagerie and pantheon, are being steadily
banished to the realms of fairy-land. [65]
Ito, scorning delights and living laborious days, continued the labors,
but vastly enlarged the plans of his predecessors. First of all, having
deported hundreds of the bad subjects of the Mikado and curbed the
rapacity and brutality of his own countrymen, he applied himself
unceasingly to healing the wounds of war, to indemnifying the unjustly
impoverished natives, and to giving Corea what she never had—or, if
possessed of, had allowed to lapse during the five hundred years of the
dynasty that had destroyed the people’s religion and had done nothing
for national development. A system of good roads, honest coinage and
currency, courts and justice, popular education, afforestation of the
mountains, improvement of the soil through scientific agriculture and
reclamation of waste land, preventive hygiene, honest taxation and
collection now exists. Ito cleansed the palace, separating the
functions of Court and Government, lessening by fifty per cent. the
number of persons paid from the public treasury, both male and female,
removing as far as possible the king and his advisers from the great
mob of sorcerers, fortune-tellers, geomancers, and others who prey upon
the Corean people. The deposition of the incompetent emperor and the
installation of his son in power were followed by the education of the
crown prince in Tokio.
The difficulties in the way of reform were appalling. The principal
obstacles existed in the two classes of which Corean society is
composed—oppressors and oppressed. The yang-ban, or privileged men,
with more or less scholarship of a Chinese kind, seemed to have no
conception of patriotism apart from pelf. Their chief trait was
political vampirism. On the other hand, the supine attitude of the
common people, accustomed for centuries to systematic oppression, was
discouraging. To them even decent government, that is, the kind which
could be tolerated to the point of rebellion, meant the grace of their
masters and rule without robbery. One of the striking features of
nearly every Corean town or city is seen in the long rows of tablets in
stone or iron that celebrate the merits of “good,” that is, fairly
decent, governors. A collection of all the local instruments of
torture, stacked in one museum, would be impressive and furnish fuel
for a vast conflagration.
In education, progress was hampered by the general prevalence of
fanaticism on the subject of “race suicide” and in the absurd measures
taken for its prevention—measures that largely tend to hinder the end
in view. In Corea the marriage and birth rate may possibly be in excess
of that of any country in the world, while, almost as matter of course,
and as a scientific corollary, the same may be said of the death rate,
which, owing to superstition, ignorance, and dirt, is appalling. Corea,
despite shining white clothes, is not a land of bath-tubs. In the
schools, nearly all the boys were found to be married, and to girls
older than themselves. These over-mature youths, of antediluvian frame
of mind, too often seem to have eyes set too far back in their heads,
which fix their gaze on duties appropriate to the time of Confucius
rather than of the twentieth century.
We have glanced at this subject before. Yet even to-day, with all the
advantages afforded them, there is danger. Expecting, like their
fathers before them, to be verse-makers, to quote from the ancient
Chinese, to be literary, and to hold office, because of a knowledge of
the characters, the young Corean yang-ban are indifferent to useful
progress and scorn manual labor. Having already lost nearly everything,
they will, unless radically changed in mind, lose all. The one hope of
Chō-sen is the raising up in a generation, now under new influences, of
a new type of humanity. The Christian schools and churches are
supplying this need.
Indeed, the fall of yang-banism and the extinction of Corea’s
sovereignty means Buddhism’s opportunity. It will be both logical and
natural that one of the first effects of Christian missions will be, as
in Japan, to quicken the spirit and improve the form and power of the
older religion. Nor ought missionaries fear its vigorous competition,
should it become potent for the abolition of demon-worship and the
moral uplift of the masses otherwise neglected, especially in
out-of-the-way places.
Unfortunately, Corea of mediæval mind, like barbarous Japan of not so
many years ago, sought a remedy for supposed wrongs in assassination.
Rashly unintelligent, sword and bullet were resorted to in order to
stop the car of progress. Quick to misjudge and impatient to wait for
results, the assassin selected as his first victims his country’s best
friends. The weak and disappointed tried suicide as a remedy and
deterrent. The insurgents in the so-called Righteous Army, too often
were robbers of their own people. In the name of patriotism they
attempted redress, seeking to turn back “modern civilization which
rides on a powder cart.” The list of Coreans who in cowardice or
discouragement died by their own hands, who were slaughtered by their
own compatriots, who fell beneath the bullets or the swords of rebels
in civil strife, or who were mown down by the resistless fire of the
Japanese infantry, is sadly great. [66]
The Mikado’s soldiers were perhaps frequently unable to distinguish
between the deserving and the undeserving. Their actions are not
absolutely free from criticism. Yet with unrestrained frankness the
statistics of the military operations are given in the Annual Reports
on Reforms and Progress in Korea, in 1907, 1908–9, and 1909–10. From
July, 1907, when the riots broke out in Seoul, on account of the
disbanding of the Corean army, to the end of 1908, there were of
Japanese soldiers 179 killed and 277 wounded, besides 67 Japanese
residents killed in 1907 and 16 in 1908. Of Corean insurgents, 14,566
were “killed.” Besides positive military measures, the Corean Emperor’s
rescripts urging those in arms to submit quietly were effective, and
the total of those who surrendered and were pardoned to December 13,
1907, was 8,728. During the fiscal year 1909 the Japanese lost 38 men,
but the number of insurgents killed (3,001), wounded, captured, or
surrendered was 6,131. Those in arms who yielded or asked pardon were
given employment in road-making and other useful occupations. By 1911,
most of the activity of native insurgent bands had degenerated into the
work of mere banditti. Military movements on a large scale were not
required, and much of the desolation of villages was repaired with
better hope of more comfortable existence. Frightful as is this frank
showing, it is doubtful whether more lives were lost in the suppression
of rebellion, from 1907 to 1911, than in the nearly chronic anarchy
that prevailed in the southern provinces during the previous decade and
a half.
The Annual Reports above referred to show by text, pictures, and
statistics, not only the purpose and results of the Japanese
Government, but also the fearful cost of restoring order, a cost of
life and treasure aggravated both by natives who have not scrupled to
use the torch, the mulct, and the assassin’s weapon on their own native
soil, and by foreigners who, in the name of liberty, abused the freedom
of the press and kept the useless and dangerous embers of sedition in a
flame. Not satisfied with murder at home, Coreans have made the United
States, already the happy hunting ground of the Black Hand and the
lyncher, the arena of their cowardly exploits.
After Mr. Durham White Stevens, an American of long experience in the
Far East, and Diplomatic Adviser to the Corean Government, had been
shot and killed in San Francisco by a Corean, the most shining mark was
Corea’s best friend, Ito. Made a prince and rewarded with every mark of
honor possible to a subject by the Emperor of Japan, this man who, in
unquailing discharge of his duty, had already braved the Japanese
feudal sword wielded by cowards in Choshiu, and the infuriated Tokio
mob in constitutional Japan, and who seemed immune from the assassins
of which old Japan raised such a luxuriant crop, fell in Manchuria at
the Harbin railway station, on October 26, 1909, before the bullets of
the petty revenger, who shot from behind. Amid the grief and the honor
of the whole world, on November 4, 1909, Ito was given a State funeral
such as has been bestowed upon few subjects of Japan. Ito shed his
blood in the cause of peace. Whether these assassinations hastened the
absorption of Corea by Japan, and the blotting out of a sovereignty
unknown to the world until Japan, by peaceful diplomacy, conferred it
in 1876, is not known. The Emperor at once appointed General Viscount
Terauchi, then Minister of War, and already famous for his brilliant
military record and notable organizing abilities, to be the successor
of Ito in Corea. The record for energetic action, consummate tact, and
ceaseless toil already made by Terauchi places his name very near that
of Ito as a modern civilizer and lover of the victories of peace even
more than those of war.
Despite all the instances of individual wrong, private injustices, and
public mistakes made by the Japanese in Corea, and in view of the
severe criticisms of Terauchi by such leading Japanese newspapers as
the Kokumin and Kochi, it is nevertheless manifest that the policy of
the Tokio Government is antipodally the reverse of that of Hidéyoshi.
Instead of the Ear-tomb, and the scooping of Corea clean of her
artists, artisans, potters, and art treasures, there rise to-day the
school, the hospital, and the temples of justice and finance. Plans are
being perfected for the development of the soil and of the wealth of
the nation, in the interest of the people, while to the missionary and
alien philanthropist is given all encouragement. A new land survey is
in operation for the equalization of taxes. Light-houses have reduced
the dangers of a foggy and treacherous coast. Harbor works are in
course of construction; well-made common roads are decreasing the
difficulty of transport; while these and the highways of steel
continually increase the value of the arable lands and of town lots.
Rivers, even the wide Yalu and Han, are spanned by bridges. Many a
place, historic because of war, is now famous for its commercial and
industrial development. Piracy gives way before policemen in steam
launches, and chronic brigandage is dying out. In all that relates
directly to humanity, the reform of the judiciary methods of justice,
prison procedure, the codification of laws, etc., the progress is
marvellous. At the head of the judicial department is a Christian,
Judge Watanabé, and many men of this faith, Japanese and Corean, fill
other high offices. Special schools, of medicine, surgery, nursing,
scientific agriculture, forestry, live-stock improvement and manual
training, are preparing young men and women to raise the standard of
human life in Chō-sen and to reclaim the sixty-six per cent. of the
arable land in the peninsula which has lain waste.
The absorption of Corea by Japan has given the astonishingly successful
Christian missionary work a new environment, and one for the better,
despite the manifest dangers of misunderstanding arising temporarily
from the political situation and the eager readiness of a few Japanese
press correspondents to misrepresent. With full religious liberty, and
under the protection of a firm, orderly, and impartial government, the
great work of raising up the new type of man and woman in Chō-sen, now
one of the most promising of mission fields, proceeds. In the Christian
household, numbering roughly about 200,000, we discern the best promise
for Chō-sen’s future. Into his new world of hope and cheer, the native,
when enlightened and converted, brings the richest inheritances of the
national culture, the best results of his training, and the most
winning traits of his character. This is strikingly shown in the
general eagerness to read and study the Holy Scriptures, in the
wonderful powers of memory, and in the committing of large portions of
the Bible, which is now accessible in the vernacular. The native’s
generosity, good-nature, power of self-support, mutual desire and
practice of helpfulness, patience, and power to endure persecution of
any and all sorts fit him admirably for Christian service.
Christianity has come to Corea to reveal the national treasures that
are enduring. For centuries the beautiful phonetic alphabet, en-mun,
and syllabary Nido (p. 47), lay neglected and scorned by the learned.
Yet this was but one of many elements of potency for good that lay
unused like barren rocks. At the smiting of the missionaries’ hand of
faith gushed forth the waters of life and healing. The new messages of
hope and salvation came to the people not only in their own tongue, but
in their own script. Christian teachers, after long years of
discouragement, have made, through the patience of hope, of love and
sympathy, a real conquest of the Corean heart. The faces of men and
women are lighted up with a new glow of interest in life here and
hereafter as they find both body and soul ministered to by their
friends from afar. With this spiritual invitation and challenge to
enter into the promised land fully accepted by the Coreans, it is not
too wild a dream to imagine even the strong conqueror conquered by the
weaker. Samson’s experience and his riddle may be the Corean’s. Chō-sen
may yet be to Nippon what Palestine was to Greece and Rome. Bereft of
political sovereignty, from the land of the Hebrews went forth that
salvation which “is of the Jews” to conquer Europe and the world.
Already, by closer contact of the humbler classes of the two nations on
Corean soil, the paganism of rustic Japan—hitherto almost untouched by
the gospel—begins to disintegrate and ferment because of the leaven
brought from Christian Chō-sen. This has the Corean left—and perhaps
more abundantly than ever before—“power to become” the spiritual
regenerator of Japan.
NOTES
[1] There are colossal stone images at Pe-chiu (Pha-jiu) in the capital
province, and at Un-jin in Chung-chong Dō. The former, discovered by
Lieutenant J. G. Bernadon, U.S.N., are in the midst of a fir-wood, and
are carved in half-figure out of bowlders in place, the heads and caps
projecting over the tops of the trees. One wears a square cap and the
other a round one, from which Mr. G. W. Aston conjectures that they
symbolize the male and female elements in nature (p. 329). At Un-jin in
Chung-chong Dō Mr. G. C. Foulke, U.S.N., saw, at a distance of fifteen
miles, what seemed to be a lighthouse. On approach, this half-length
human figure proved to be a pinnacle of white granite, sixty-four feet
high, cut into a representation of Buddha. Similar statues may perhaps
be discovered elsewhere. Coreans call such figures miryek (stone men,
as the Chinese characters given in the French-Corean dictionary read),
or miriok, from the Chinese Mi-lē, or Buddha. (In Japanese, the Buddha
to come is Miroku-butsu—a verbal coincidence.) Professor Terrien de
Lacouperie has written upon this theme with great learning. Besides the
lop-ears, forehead-mark, and traditional countenance seen in the
Buddhas of Chinese Asia, there is on the Un-jin figure a very high
double cap, on which are set two slabs of stone joined by a central
column, suggesting both the ceremonial cap of ancient Chinese ritual
and the Indian pagoda-like umbrella. These miriok stand in what was
once Hiaksai. In his “Life in Corea,” Mr. Carles gives a picture of the
one at Un-jin. Smaller ones exist near monasteries and temples.
[2] The story, told in full in the Heiké Monogatari, is given in
English in “Japanese Fairy World.”
[3] The Mikado’s Empire, Chapters XIII. and XIV.
[4] The Identity of the Great Conqueror, Genghis Khan, with the
Japanese Hero Yoshitsuné, by K. Suyematz of Japan. London, 1879.
[5] See Howorth’s History of the Mongols, London, 1876.
[6] Beginning at the most northern and eastern, and following the sea
line south around up to the northeast, they are:
Corean. Japanese. English.
1. Ham-kiung, or Kan-kiō dō. Perfect Mirror, or Complete View
Province.
2. Kang-wen, or Ko-gen dō. Bay Meadow Province.
3. Kiung-sang, or Kei-shō dō. Respectful Congratulation
Province.
4. Julla, or Zen-ra dō. Completed Network Province.
5. Chung-chong, or Chiu-sei dō. Serene Loyalty Province.
6. Kiung-kei, or Kei-ki dō. The Capital Circuit, or Home
Province.
7. Whang-hai, or Ko-kai dō. Yellow Sea Province.
8. Ping-an, or Hei-an dō Peace and Quiet Province.
In this table we have given the names in English which approximate the
sounds of the Chinese characters, with which names of the provinces are
written, and as they are heard to-day in Chō-sen. The modern Coreans
use the modern Chinese sounds of the characters, while the Japanese
cling to the ancient Chinese pronunciation of the same characters as
they received them through Hiaksai and Shinra, eleven or twelve
centuries ago. The old pure Corean sounds were Teru-ra tai for Zen-ra
dō, Tsiku-shaku tai for Chiu-sei dō, Keku-shaku tai for Kei-ki dō, etc.
[7] Their line of march, as shown in the Japanese histories, was to
Sen-ken, October 11th; to Kumu-san, where they experienced the first
frost; to Kumui, October 12th; to Chin-zon; to Funki; to Shaku-shiu; to
Koran; to Chin-zen. These are names of places in Chulla and
Chung-chong, expressed in the Japanese and old Corean pronunciation.
[8] Mr. Pierre L. Jouy, of the Smithsonian Institute, who in 1884 spent
six months in Corea in zoological collecting and research, says: “No
monkeys or alligators are found in Corea. I am at a loss to understand
how the alligator story originated.” Was the alleged animal the giant
salamander, or the aké? Japanese art and legend refer often to
alligators.
[9] Hun-chun is in Chinese Manchuria. The Russian possessions south of
Victoria Bay extend but a few miles from the mouth of the Tumen.
[10] See “The Meeting of the Star Lovers,” in Japanese Fairy World.
[11] This flag was presented by its captors to Commodore Homer C.
Blake, by whose courtesy the writer had the sketch made for the cut
given above.
[12] This word, pronounced in a slightly different way in Corean, is
the term which Dr. James Legge, in his “Religions of China,” and many
missionaries of Reformed Christianity, translate God (Jehovah, Theos),
but which the Roman Catholic missionaries are forbidden to use. Dr.
Legge holds that Shang Ti is the most ancient title of Deity in the
language of the Chinese, and was used by their ancestors when they held
to primitive monotheism. “In the ceremonies at the altars of heaven and
earth, they served God” (Confucius).
[13] Dr. D. Bethune McCartee, a well-known American scholar, writing on
Riu Kiu, says: “The art of spelling was invented neither by the Chinese
nor by the Japanese. Its introduction into both these countries (and,
as we are convinced, into Corea as well) was the result of the labors
of ... the early Buddhist missionaries. In all the three countries ...
the system of spelling is most undoubtedly of Sanskrit origin.”
[14] The equipment of this first native missionary propagandist of
Roman Christianity in Corea, deserves notice, as it brings out in sharp
contrast the differing methods of Roman and Reformed Christianity. The
convert brought back numerous tracts, didactic and polemic treatises,
catechisms and commentaries, prayer-books, lives of the saints, etc.,
etc. These were for the learned, and those able to master them. For the
simple, there was a goodly supply of crosses and crucifixes, images,
pictures, and various other objects to strike the eye. It is not stated
that the Bible, or any part of the Holy Scriptures, was sent for the
feeding of hungry souls.
[15] It was during the summer of this year, 1787, that La Perouse
sailed along the eastern coast of Chō-sen, discovered the straits which
bear his name, between Yezo and Saghalin, demonstrated that the Gulf of
Tartary divided Saghalin from the Asian mainland, and that Corea was
not sea-girt, and named Dagelet Island and its companion Boussole. He
had a copy of Hamel’s book with him. He noticed the signal-fires along
the coast, which from headland to headland, telegraphed to the capital
the news of the stranger with his “black ships.” Not as yet, however,
as afterward, did the government connect the appearance of European
vessels with the activity of the Christians within the realm, although
La Perouse sailed under the flag which ever afterward was indissolubly
associated in Corean minds with Christianity.
[16] This rapid spread of Christian ideas may be understood if we
consider, as Dallet points out, the customs of the people. In every
house there is the room open to the street, where everybody, friend or
stranger, known or unknown, may come and talk or hear the news and
discuss events. Nothing is kept secret, and being a nation of gossips
and loungers, the news of any event, or the expression of a fresh idea,
spreads like fire on the prairie. A doctrine so startlingly new, and
preached as it was by men already famous for their learning, would at
once excite the public curiosity, set all tongues running, and fire
many hearts. Though in most cases the new flame would soon die out,
leaving hardly enough ashes to mark a fire, yet the steady glow of
altered lives would not pale even before torture and death.
[17] “Some priests proposed to the late Queen of Portugal to send an
embassy hither [to Corea] with some gentlemen versed in mathematics,
that they might benefit the country both in a religious and scientific
way.... This plan never succeeded.” Gutzlaff, 1834. Voyages to China,
page 261.
[18] Captain Broughton was impressed with “the gorgeous Corean
dresses,” and the umbrella-hats, a yard in diameter. He asked for beef,
but they gave him only wood, and he was tantalized with the sight of
fat cattle grazing near by, which he was unable to get or purchase. He
cruised in the Sea of Japan and the Gulf of Tartary, naming several
places on the Corean coast. See p. 203.
[19] See page 226.
[20] Or, as the natives say, “she proceeded to pull down the blinds.”
This phrase, which is highly suggestive of American street slang,
refers to the curtain of bamboo which veils the sovereign of Chō-sen;
as in Old Japan the mikado was thus screened from the vulgar, and even
noble, gaze during state councils. Whoever, therefore, is “behind the
curtain,” is on the throne.
[21] This highly logical conclusion was reached by pondering upon the
doctrine of Romanism that celibacy is a more perfect state than
marriage; and that “the world,” which, with the flesh and the devil,
was to be regarded as one of the true believers’ enemies, could mean
only the king and country of Chō-sen. To this day, most of the pagans
accept the magistrates’ decision as a complete epitome of the gospel of
Christ.
[22] Dallet, vol. i., p. 205.
[23] Timkowski’s Travels of the Russian Mission through Mongolia to
China, and Residence in Peking, London, 1827.
[24] In 1793, the first British and the first European vessel entered
the Yellow Sea. It was the ship of the line Lion, on board of which was
Lord Macartney, the ambassador of King George III. to Peking, the first
English envoy to China. The ship did not visit or approach Corean
shores.
[25] This date is that given by Dallet, who perhaps refers to the
uprising in 1829 at Ozaka, of suspected believers in the “Jesus
doctrine,” when six men and one old woman were crucified by the
Japanese authorities. The leader of the so-called conspiracy fled to
sea with his companions.
[26] While off the island of Wen-san, according to Dallet, some of the
native Christians, attracted by the legend in Chinese characters on the
flag “The Religion of Jesus Christ,” came on board. “A Protestant
minister saluted them with the words which are sacramental among the
pagans, ‘May the spirits of the earth bless you!’ At these words the
neophytes, seeing that they had been deceived, and that a snare had
been laid for their good faith, retired in all haste without ever
returning the salute, and made no further visits to the ships.”
[27] By poetic justice, the chief instigators of this persecution came
each to a bad end. Of the court ministers, one, having provoked the
king’s jealousy, was obliged by royal order to poison himself at a
banquet, in December, 1845, and the other, falling into disgrace, was
sent to exile, in which he shortly died. The chief informer, who had
hoped for reward in high office, obtained only a minor position, with
little honor and less salary. He was afterward exiled, and in 1862,
having headed a local uprising, was put to death, his body was minced
up, and the fragments were exhibited through the provinces.
[28] So fearless and generous a soul as Andrew Kim, who could yet
follow the ethics and example of his teachers in repeatedly practising
deception and violating his country’s laws at Ai-chiu, scrupled not to
lie to the mandarin at Shanghae, and tell him that he and his crew had
been accidentally driven out to sea. As in the later case of the
robbery of the regent’s tomb, “the end justified the means.”
[29] The voyage of this officer, which added so much to science,
resulted in making Quelpart and Beaufort Islands, Port Hamilton, and
Mount Auckland as well known in geography as the names of Her Majesty’s
servants were known in British politics. The visitors were treated with
courtesy, and even their survey-marks, stakes, and whitewashed stones
were carefully set up when washed away by the storm, or disturbed by
cattle. The Coreans, however, drove their beeves well away from the
Englishmen, who longed for fresh meat.
[30] These were the first official relations of France with Corea; or,
as a native would say, between Tai-pep-kuk and Chō-sen; the expression
for France being Tai-pep, and for a Frenchman—curiously enough—Pepin.
[31] Inside the country, the frequent appearance of the foreign ships
was the subject of everyday talk, and the news in this nation of
gossips spread like a prairie fire, or a rolling avalanche. By the time
the stories reached the northern provinces whole fleets of French ships
lay off the coast. Their moral effect was something like that among the
blacks in the Southern States during the civil war, when the “Lincoln
gunboats” hove in sight. The people jestingly called the foreign
vessels “The authorities down the River.”
[32] For changing their name and garments, sleeping by day, going
abroad at night, associating with rebels, criminals and villains, and
entering the kingdom clandestinely, the missionaries were put to death;
and no comparison could be drawn to mitigate their sentence between
them and innocent shipwrecked men.
[33] Other nations besides France now began to learn something of the
twin hermits of the East, Chō-sen and Nippon. During 1852, the Russian
frigate Pallas sailed along the east coast up to the Tumen River,
making no landing, but keeping at a distance of from two to five miles
from the shore in order to avoid shoals and rocks. The object of the
Pallas was to trace and map the shore line. In 1855, the French
war-vessel Virginie continued the work begun by the Pallas, and at the
end of her voyage the whole coast from Fusan to the Tumen was known
with some accuracy, and mapped out with European names, at once
numerous and prophetic. The coast line of Tartary or Manchuria—at that
time a Chinese province—was also surveyed, mapped, and made ready for
the Czar’s use and that of his ambassador in 1860.
Pallas and Virginie! The names are suggestive of the maiden diplomatic
victory of General Ignatieff, of whom more anon.
[34] A noble of high rank presented to the council of ministers a
memorial, setting forth the dangers that then menaced Chō-sen, and
urging that extraordinary means be put forth to meet the emergencies.
He proposed that the national policy of armed neutrality should be
preserved, that the conquered emperor of China should not enter
Chō-sen, that the frontier should be strengthened against a possible
invasion of the border-ruffians inhabiting the neutral strip. Taking
advantage of the situation, these men, banding together with Chinese
adventurers and Corean refugees, might make a descent in force into the
kingdom. Finally, the supreme danger that filled all minds was the
threatened invasion of the French. He recommended that the castle of
Tong-nai, near Fusan, and the western strongholds of Nam-an, Pu-pion,
and In-chiŭn (the port opened in 1882), should be strongly garrisoned
and strengthened; and that a new citadel be built on the island of
Kang-wa, to command the river and the entrance to the capital. (See
map, page 190.)
[35] July 13, 1866.
M. de Bellonet to Prince Kung.
Sir: I grieve to bring officially to the knowledge of your Imperial
Highness a horrible outrage committed in the small kingdom of Corea,
which formerly assumed the bonds of vassalage to the Chinese empire,
but which this act of savage barbarity has forever separated from it.
In the course of the month of March last, the two French bishops who
were evangelizing Corea, and with them nine missionaries and seven
Corean priests, and a great multitude of Christians of both sexes and
of every age, were massacred by order of the sovereign of that country.
The government of His Majesty cannot permit so bloody an outrage to be
unpunished. The same day on which the king of Corea laid his hands upon
my unhappy countrymen was the last of his reign; he himself proclaimed
its end, which I, in turn, solemnly declare to-day. In a few days our
military forces are to march to the conquest of Corea, and the Emperor,
my august Sovereign, alone has now the right and the power to dispose,
according to his good pleasure, of the country and the vacant throne.
The Chinese government has declared to me many times that it has no
authority over Corea, and it refused on this pretext to apply the
treaties of Tien-tsin to that country, and give to our missionaries the
passports which we have asked from it. We have taken note of these
declarations, and we declare now that we do not recognize any authority
whatever of the Chinese government over the kingdom of Corea.
I have, etc.,
H. de Bellonet.
His Imperial Highness, Prince Kung.
Spurning with irritating, not to say insulting, language, the
suggestion of Prince Kung that Bellonet might do well to inquire into
the causes and merits of the execution of the missionaries, the
representative of France, November 11th, again addressed the Chinese
statesman. In this missive occurs the following: “As for the fate of
the former king of Corea, it is now subject to the decision of the
Emperor, my august Sovereign.”
Monsieur Bellonet’s method is one specimen of the manner in which the
envoys of European nations are accustomed to bully the governments of
Asiatic countries. In a long communication to Prince Kung, dated
November 11, 1866, Mr. Bellonet charges upon the Chinese government:
1st. Complicity with Corea. 2d. That the Corean embassy, during the
previous winter, had stated the project of the massacre, and had
received the tacit official authorization of the Chinese government.
3d. The direct approval of several high members of it. 4th. That the
recruiting and mobilization of Mauchiu troops, beyond the Great Wall,
was for the purpose of assisting Corea against the French. He writes,
in addition to the above, an amazing amount of nonsense, which shows of
what magnifying powers the human eye is capable when enlarged by
suspicion.
Among other tidbits of rodomontade, is this one—which is a truthful
picture of the France of Napoleon III.—“War for us is a pleasure which
the French passionately seek;” and this—“The people of Corea address us
as deliverers, ... we shall inaugurate the reign of order, justice, and
prosperity.”
[36] The results of this expedition were disastrous all over the East.
Happening at a time when relations between foreigners and Chinese were
strained, the unexpected return of the fleet filled the minds of
Europeans in China with alarm. It was the unanimous verdict of press
and people that the return of the French in sufficient force to Corea
in the spring was a measure of absolute safety to foreigners in the far
East. If not, since both British and American citizens were among the
crew of the General Sherman, murdered at Ping-an, the fleets of Great
Britain and the United States should proceed to Seoul. This, however,
was not done; the English let well enough alone, the French soon had
their hands full in attending to the Germans at home, and the Americans
went later only to follow Admiral Roze’s example. Meanwhile the
smothered embers of hostility to foreign influence steadily gathered
vigor, as the report spread like a gale through China that the hated
Frenchmen had been driven away by the Coreans. The fires at length
broke out in the Tien-tsin massacre, June 21, 1870. “It is believed by
many thoughtful observers in China that this frightful event gained its
first serious impetus from the unfortunate issue of Admiral Roze’s
campaign in Corea.”
[37] The Min or Ming family is largely Chinese in blood and origin,
and, besides being pre-eminent among all the Corean nobility in social,
political, and intellectual power, has been most strenuous in adherence
to Chinese ideas and traditions, with the purpose of keeping Corea
unswerving in her vassalage and loyalty to China. Their retainers
constitute a large portion of the population of Seoul. Besides the
queen, the king on his mother’s side, the wife of the heir apparent,
and several of the highest officers of the government belong to the
house of Min. For centuries this family has practically governed the
kingdom. Their social and personal influence in Peking has always been
very great, while at home their relations to the treasury and the army
have been very close. The plot of 1882 was in effect an ineffectual
attempt to destroy their power. When China commanded, they approved of
the treaty with the United States.
[38] The Honorable Gideon Nye, of China, from whose article in “The Far
East” these facts are drawn concerning the first consul of the United
States to China, has effectually disproved the oft-quoted statement of
Sir John Davis in his “History of China,” that “It was in the year 1802
that the American flag was first hoisted at Canton.” Dr. William Speer
in his excellent book—fair to the Chinese as well as to foreigners—has
told the story of Jonathan Edwards and his troubles over ginseng and
the drink which his Indian pupils bought with it.
[39] These shroffs are experts in handling money. They can detect
counterfeits by the touch, and, with incredible celerity, can reckon
amounts to thousandths of a cent on the abacus. One or more of them are
found in nearly every one of the banks and hongs in Eurasian ports.
[40] Some weeks before, he had offered to penetrate the peninsula as
missionary and agent of the Scottish National Bible Society. The
Coreans who had accompanied Bishop Ridel to Chifu, and who had met Dr.
Williamson, volunteered to be his guides, and he had decided to go with
them. When the opportunity of going by the American vessel offered
itself, he changed his plan. Against the advice of his friends, who
suspected the character of the expedition, he joined the party.
[41] A broad streak of light was thrown upon at least one possible
cause of the Sherman tragedy, by the statement of the natives that
Chinese pirates frequently descend on the coast and kill and rob the
Coreans. During the previous year, several natives had been killed by
Chinese pirates near the Wachusett’s anchorage. As ten of the crew of
the Sherman were Canton Chinamen, it is probable that the very sight of
them on an armed vessel would inflame the Coreans to take their
long-waited for revenge.
[42] In 1884, Lieutenant J. B. Bernadon, U.S.N., made a journey from
Seoul to Ping-an, and, being able to speak Corean, learned the
following from native Christians. The Sherman, arriving during the
heavy midsummer rains, which make the river impassable to native boats,
was seen from the city walls and caused great excitement. When the
waters subsided the governor sent officers to inquire her mission.
Unfortunately, to gratify their curiosity, the common people set out
also in a large fleet of boats, which the Sherman’s crew mistook for a
hostile demonstration, and fired guns in the air to warn them off. Then
all the boats returned. When the river fell the Sherman grounded and
careened over, which being seen from the city walls a fleet of boats
set out with hostile intent and were fired upon. Officers and people,
now enraged, started fire-rafts, and soon the vessel, though with white
flag hoisted, was in flames. Of those who leaped in the river most were
drowned. Of those picked up one Tchoi-nan-un (Rev. Mr. Thomas), who was
able to talk Corean, explained the meaning of the white flag, and
begged to be surrendered to China. His prayer was in vain. In a few
days all the prisoners were led out and publicly executed.
[43] Mr. Low, who had served one term in Congress and as governor of
California from 1864 to 1868, had been chosen by President Grant to be
minister to China the year before, 1869, was new to his duties. He was
in the prime of life, being fifty-two years of age. All his despatches
show that Chō-sen was as unknown to him as Thibet or Anam, and from the
first he had scarcely one ray of hope in the success of the mission.
[44] Admiral Rodgers left New York, April 9, 1869, with the Colorado
and Alaska. The Benicia had left Portsmouth March 2d, and the Palos set
sail from Boston June 20th. These vessels, with the Monocacy and
Ashuelot, were to form the Asiatic squadron of Admiral Rodgers. Of our
vessels on the station during the previous year, two had returned home,
two had been sold, the rotten Idaho was moored at Yokohama as a
store-ship, and the Oneida, which had been sunk by the British
mail-steamer Bombay, lay with her uncoffined dead untouched and
neglected by the great Government of the United States. Admiral Rodgers
was so delayed by repairs to the Ashuelot, that finally, in order to
gain the benefit of the spring tides, had to sail without this vessel.
[45] Rear-Admiral John Rodgers, who commanded the fleet, was a veteran
in war, in naval science, and in polar research. He had served in the
Seminole and Mexican campaigns, and through the civil war on the
iron-clad monitors. He had visited the Pacific in 1853, when in command
of the John Hancock. He had cruised in the China seas and sailed
through Behring’s Straits. He, too, was in the prime of life, being at
this time fifty-eight years of age. His whole conduct of the expedition
displayed consummate skill, and marked him in this, as in his many
other enterprises, as “one of the foremost naval men of the age.” Yet
princes in naval science are not always princes in diplomacy.
[46] The first appearance of the flag of North Germany in Corean waters
was at the mast-head of the China, when plunder and dead men’s bones
were the objects sought. Its second appearance, on the Hertha
man-of-war, was in peace and honorable quest of friendly relations. Its
third appearance, in May, 1871—while, or shortly before, the American
fleet were in the Han River—was on the schooner Chusan, which was
wrecked on one of the islands of Sir James Hall group, the Chinese crew
only, it appears, being saved. On June 6th, a party of three foreigners
left Chifu in a junk to bring back salvage from the wreck. These men
were not heard from until July 6th, when the Chinese crew returned
without them. On the same day the British gunboat Ringdove, with the
consul of Chifu, left for the Hall group. It was found that the
foreigners had landed to bring away the crew of the Chusan, when the
Chinamen, pretending or thinking that they had been taken prisoners,
put off to sea without them. The consul found them in good health and
spirits, and the Ringdove brought away for them whatever was worth
saving from the Chusan. Again the Corean policy of kindness toward the
shipwrecked was illustrated. The two foreigners—a Scotchman and a
Maltese—had been well fed and kindly treated.
[47] These men simply acted as the catspaws for the monkey in the
capital to pull out as many hot chestnuts from the fire as possible. It
is part of Asiatic policy to send official men of low rank and no
authority to dally and prelude, and, if possible, hoodwink or worry out
foreigners. Their chief weapons are words; their main strength,
cunning. When these are foiled by kindness, and equal patience,
firmness, and address, the Asiatics yield, and send their men of first
rank to confer and treat. Perry knew this, so did Townsend Harris in
Japan; so have successful diplomats known it in China. Was it done in
the American expedition to Corea in 1871? Let us see.
These Coreans had no right to say either “yes” or “no” to any
proposition of the Americans. Had they committed themselves to anything
definite, degradation, crushed shin-bones, and perhaps death, might
have been their fate. The only thing for the Americans to do—who came
to ask a favor which the Coreans were obstinately bent on not
giving—was to feast them, treat them with all kindness, get them in
excellent good humor, send them back, and wait till accredited envoys
of high rank should arrive. In the light of the French failure, this
was the only course to pursue. There were even men of influence in the
American fleet who advised this policy of patience. As matter of fact,
such a course was urged by Captain H. S. Blake.
In such an emergency, patience, kindness, tact, the absence of any
burning idea of “wiping out insults to the flag,” and an antiseptic
condition toward fight were most needed—the higher qualities, of
resolution and self-conquest rather than valor. Even if it had been
possible to inflict ten times the damage which was afterward actually
inflicted, and win tenfold more “glory,” the rear-admiral must have
known that nature and his “instructions” were on the side of the
Coreans, and that the only end of the case must be a retreat from the
country. And the only possible interpretation the people could put upon
the visit of the great American fleet would be a savage thirst for
needless vengeance, a sordid greed of gain, and the justification of
robbers and invaders. In spite of all the slaughter of their
countrymen, they would read in the withdrawal of their armies, defeat,
and defeat only.
[48] These are the rear-admiral’s own words. Here was the mistake! From
what may be easily known of the Corean mind, it must have seemed to
them that the advance of such an armed force up the river, leading to
the capital—following exactly the precedent of the French—was nothing
more than a treacherous beginning of war in the face of assurances of
peace. To enter into their waters seemed to them an invasion of their
country. To do it after fair words spoken in friendship seemed basest
treachery. Had a Corean officer counselled peace in the face of the
advancing fleet, he would undoubtedly have been beheaded at once as a
traitor. There were men on the American side who saw this. Some spoke
out loud of it to others, but it was not “theirs to make reply.”
[49] In the chapel of the Naval Academy, at Annapolis, a tasteful mural
tablet, “Erected by his brother officers of the Asiatic squadron,” with
the naval emblems—sword, belt, anchor, and glory-wreath—in medallion,
and inscription on a shield beneath, keeps green the memory of an
unselfish patriot and a gallant officer.
[50] The Japanese refused to have the Mikado designated by any title
but that of Whang Ti (Japanese Kōtei) showing that he was peer to the
Emperor of China; while the Coreans would not, in the same document,
have their sovereign written down as Wang (Japanese Ō) because they
wished him shown to be an equal of the Mikado, though ceremonially
subordinate to the Whang Ti or Emperor of China. The poor Coreans were
puzzled at there being two suns in one heaven, and two equal and
favorite Sons of Heaven.
The commissioners from Seoul attempted to avoid the dilemma by having
the treaty drawn up in the names of the respective envoys only; this
the Japanese refused to do. A compromise was attempted by having the
titles of the Mikado of Japan, and the Hap-mun of Chō-sen inserted at
the beginning; and, in every necessary place thereafter, “the
government” of Dai Nippon (Great Japan), or of Dai Chō-sen (Great
Corea); this also failed. Finally, neither ruler was mentioned by name
or title, nor was reference made to either, and the curious document
was drawn up in the name of the respective “Governments.”
[51] This fu city, called by the Japanese Ninsen, or Nii-gawa, was well
known by the Japanese, as is shown on their maps of the sixteenth
century. The name means Two Rivers. The rise and fall of the tides here
is very great, sometimes amounting to a difference of twenty-nine feet;
and in winter the shore-water is frozen. Large vessels cannot anchor
within a mile of the shore. The port Chi-mul-po is at some distance
from the city.
[52] In this and the following chapter the names of Corean noblemen
have been given in their Japanese form, i.e., Bin for Min, etc., but in
the Supplementary Chapter according to Corean pronunciation.
[53] Commodore B. W. Shufeldt was born in Dutchess County, New York, in
1822, and entered the navy in 1839, serving ten years on foreign
stations and in the coast survey. One cruise to the west coast of
Africa interested him in the negro colony of Liberia, in which he has
ever since felt concern. From 1850 to 1860, our navy being in a
languishing state, he was engaged in the mercantile marine service, and
in organizing a transit route across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. In
1860 an article of his on the slave trade between the Island of Cuba
and the coast of Africa, drew the attention of the government to him,
and led to his appointment of Consul-General at Havana. The slave-trade
was soon effectually broken up, and through the trying period of the
first half of the civil war, he was occupied in his civil duties, at
one time going to Mexico on a confidential mission to President Juarez,
passing unrecognized through the French lines. He was on blockade duty
during the last two years of the civil war. In 1865 he went to China,
as flag-captain of the Hartford, and commanding the Wachusett visited
Corea. In 1870 he organized a party for the survey of the Isthmus of
Tehuantepec, his report being made the basis of Captain Eads’
ship-railway project. The official history of the semi-diplomatic
cruise of the Ticonderoga round the world (1878–1880) has been written,
but has not yet been published.
[54] On which tablets erected to the memory of the slain have been
erected by the Coreans. See the article, Kang-wha, by Rev. M. N.
Trollope, (Corean) Asiatic Society Transactions, Vol. II, Part I.
[55] At that time I was engaged in editing and annotating Hamel’s
Narrative, which is the first account in any European language of
Corea. Hamel and his party of Dutchmen were shipwrecked and spent
fourteen years in Corea (see pp. 167–76). I have examined and read
several copies in the original Dutch editions, printed in cheap
pamphlet form at Rotterdam in Holland in 1668, and now preserved in the
Royal Library at The Hague. The full narrative in English is given in
the book Corea Without and Within. Philadelphia, 1884. Mr. Percival
Lowell, the Secretary of the Corean Special Mission, returned with Han
Yong Sik, and as the guest of the king spent a winter in Seoul, the
literary fruit of which is the charming volume Chosen, the Land of
Morning Calm, in which the proper names are transliterated according to
Aston’s Manual of Corean Geographical and Other Proper Names Romanized.
Yokohama, 1883.
[56] Nevertheless, in 1886 there were unearthed in Seoul two Dutch
vases, as described in Mr. Scott’s paper in Vol. XXVIII, 1893–94, of
the Transactions of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic
Society. The figures of Dutch farm-life told their own story, and the
well-worn rings of the handles bore evidence of constant use for years.
Mr. Scott suggests that the presence of these Dutchmen might perhaps
explain the anomaly often noticed in Corea—namely, blue eyes and fair
hair.
[57] See his biography by Lane-Poole and Dickens, 1894.
[58] See the forthcoming Korean History, by Homer B. Hulbert, in the
Korean Review (April, 1904, p. 180). This work is a complete survey of
the story of Chō-sen from prehistoric to recent times.
[59] See Sectarianism and Religious Persecution in China, by J. J. de
Groot. Amsterdam, 1904.
[60] See in the Korean Repository for July, 1898, a sketch of his life
by Rev. G. H. Jones.
[61] See Fifteen Years Among the Topknots, by L. H. Underwood (1904).
[62] See “The Mikado’s Empire,” pp. 533–535, and p. 682, of the
eleventh edition, 1906, for the five points of prediction made at
Hartford, Conn., February 8, 1904.
[63] See the long letter in the London Times of August 8, 1906, from an
unimpeachable authority—the author of the Oriental Series, nearly forty
years in the Far East.
[64] The Japan Mail, August 27, 1910.
[65] See “The Unmannerly Tiger and Other Korean Fairy Tales,” by W. E.
Griffis, New York, 1911.
[66] See also “The Tragedy of Korea,” by H. A. McKenzie, London, 1908.