KOREA UNDER JAPANESE RULE
Those of us who travel often wonder about the names by which we know
countries and cities. Where do they come from? If you mentioned the name
Korea to a Korean he would have no idea what you were talking about,
unless he had studied English in school. It seems that centuries ago the
word “Korai” was used for a while, but even that meant only a part of
the peninsula. Our custom of calling all the people Koreans is much like
that of the South Americans in calling all of us in the United States
“Yankees,” even those who live in Virginia or Texas. The real name of
the country is Chosen, which means “The Land of Morning Calm.” That has
been the correct name of the peninsula for hundreds of years, yet the
Japanese are having a hard time getting the rest of the world to accept
it.
The Koreans themselves and the foreigners in Korea—who are mostly
missionaries—have much trouble about names. This has come about in a
curious way. The Koreans have a very old civilization. Most of that
civilization they got from the Chinese, and much of it they passed on to
the Japanese, centuries ago. Therefore all three of these peoples have
the same written language, made up of the queer Chinese characters that
you all have seen. Each character means one particular thing, but as
there are no letters in it there is no way of telling by looking at it
how it should be pronounced. So the Koreans, and the Chinese, and the
Japanese all pronounce those characters to suit themselves, and while
they can write to one another they cannot talk to one another at all. It
is very amusing to see a Japanese and a Korean, or a Chinese and an
Annamese (from French Indo-China), talking to each other by pretending
to write characters with a forefinger in the palms of their hands. In
fact many a Japanese servant tries to talk that way to Americans who
cannot understand his spoken words.
Two Names for Each Town
Now when the Japanese came to Korea they found each city and town with a
name of one or two Chinese characters. But the Koreans pronounced those
characters one way and the Japanese quite another. So each race
continues to give them its own pronunciation, and the names in the
Japanese time-tables are often so entirely different from those by which
the Koreans and the missionaries know the same places that the poor
traveler might easily lose himself entirely. Thus the Japanese call
Seoul “Keijo”; Chemulpo is “Jinsen” to them; Song-do is “Kaijo,” and so
on through every city and town and province in the peninsula. I once
asked an old American missionary if he had ever been in Heijo. “Never
heard of it,” he replied. “Oh, come!” I could not help saying; “it is
the second largest city in Korea.” “Oh,” exclaimed the missionary, “you
mean Pingyang! Why of course, I have lived there most of my life.”
It is hardly flattering to us to know that the ancient nations of the
Far East did not at all want to be introduced to us upstart people of
the West. Japan, Korea, even China, had to be pried open like oysters
before they would have anything to do with Occidentals (that is,
Westerners). You remember that it was our Commodore Perry who induced
Japan to open her ports to American trade and travelers in 1854. Well,
it was the United States again that opened Korea to the world, by the
Treaty of Chemulpo, as recently as 1883. It is not strange if in some
ways the Koreans are still more different from the rest of the world
than are the Japanese. Chosen was shut up so long and so thoroughly that
it was once known as the Hermit Kingdom. There was a time when
foreigners were not welcome. But nowadays they can travel anywhere in
the peninsula just as safely as in their own country, more safely in
fact than in some American cities after dark. The Koreans may not love
the Japanese, and some of them may even dream of driving out the
conquerors and regaining their independence, but they are learning so
much about good government that they would never again allow themselves
to be ruled as corruptly as they were under the old emperors. They know
more about sanitation, too, and about reforesting their treeless hills,
and they realize how much better it is to have good schools than bad.
The Japanese have done some foolish things in Korea, just as we have in
our island possessions. They tried, for instance, to force the Korean
men to cut off their topknots. The Japanese now admit this was a
mistake. What does it matter, after all, how people wear their hair? To
many foreigners it seems just as unnecessary for the Japanese to try to
make all Koreans Shintoists, building Japanese temples and _torii_
(square arches of evergreen logs) all over the peninsula. For while
Shintoism means patriotism, loyalty to the Mikado, it is also a
religion. Religion cannot be forced upon people, and patriotism is not
worth much if there is no feeling behind it. You stand up and take off
your hat when “The Star-Spangled Banner” is played because you respect
and love your country, not because a policeman might arrest you if you
did not.
Some Japanese Improvements
Many Koreans already realize that Japanese rule has done them much good.
They have good railroads, some good highways and bridges, modern
streets, courts, and schools. Japanese and Korean policemen keep order
in even the small towns. In Korea the Japanese find good commercial
opportunities for their own people, but it should be said, in fairness,
that the Koreans themselves now have better opportunities and are in
less danger of being robbed of what they earn than they were under their
old corrupt imperial government.
[Illustration:
An old-fashioned Korean school is a sad place. The boys sit on the
floor and rock back and forth reciting the classics, which they do
not understand, from dawn until dark, while the teacher drowses or
smokes, and the flies swarm.
]
The difference between old Korea and the Chosen of Japan can quickly be
seen in the two kinds of schools in the peninsula. You would be greatly
interested to see one of the old-fashioned Korean schools, but you would
certainly be glad you did not have to try to get an education there.
Some such schools are still left, for a few old fathers in every large
town think their boys should study the way they once did. These schools
are miserable little hovels, with dirty floors and walls, swarming with
flies in summer and bitterly cold in winter. The teacher squats at one
end of the room, with a row of boys on the floor on either side. (Girls
do not need an education, say old-time Koreans.)
The boys come as soon as it is daylight and usually stay until dark,
seven days a week, with sometimes no recess at all. Each has a
tissue-paper book filled with those intricate Chinese characters which
it takes so many years to learn. The books are not on subjects such as
American boys are interested in, but are ancient Chinese classics, older
than our Bible. Yet the teacher does not teach them; he merely squats at
the end of the room, smoking his long pipe and sometimes dozing off to
sleep. The boys rock back and forth, each one shouting at the top of his
voice the characters before him. They may all be shouting different
ones, and most of the pupils may not know what the characters mean. The
only requirement is to keep on shouting. If the deafening chorus dies
down for a moment, the teacher wakes up and rushes at the boys with a
stick until they begin to shout again.
You can hear one of these old-time Korean schools blocks away. Is it any
wonder that the boys who came out into the sunlight for me to photograph
them looked pale and tired, and bewildered with the constant uproar in
which they were expected to learn? Every week or every month each boy
must bring the teacher some money, for the town does not pay him, and
the teacher must have something with which to buy his rice and tobacco
and a new white grass-cloth suit now and then.
The Japanese schools in Korea, in contrast, are big modern brick
buildings. They have seats and desks, and laboratories and gymnasiums,
and the teaching is very much as it is in your own schools. It is true
that the Japanese have not yet built enough such schools to care for all
the Korean children who want to attend. These have to take what room is
left after the Japanese boys and girls are provided for. The language of
the classes is Japanese, too, rather than Korean. For these reasons the
American and British missionaries insist that they also be allowed to
have schools for the Koreans. The Japanese, however, are building more
and more modern schools, the teachers being paid by the government, and
they say that the time will come when all Korean children will have the
same educational opportunities as the Japanese children.
[Illustration:
The primary school at Antung, built and owned by the South Manchuria
Railway.
]