Chapter VI: Part 6

Its outstanding feature for most of the people is (I use the present tense because as I write it still continues) the gendarmerie and police. These are established all over the country, and they have in effect, although not in name, power of life or death. They can enter into any house, without warrant, and search it. They destroy whatever they please, on the spot. Thus if a policeman searches the room of a student, and sees a book which does not please him, he can--and does--often burn it on the spot. Sometimes he takes it into the street and burns it there, to impress the neighbours.

One of the police visits most feared by many villagers is the periodical examinations to see if the houses are clean. If the policemen are not satisfied, they do not trouble to take the people to the station, but give them a flogging then and there. This house examination is frequently used by police in districts where they wish to punish the Christians, or to prevent their neighbours from becoming Christians. The Christian houses are visited and the Christians flogged, sometimes without even troubling to examine the houses at all. This method particularly prevails in parts of the Pyengyang province.

The police can arrest and search or detain any person, without warrant. This right of search is freely used on foreigners as well as Koreans. Any Korean taken to the police station can, in practice, be kept in custody as long as wanted, without trial, and then can be released without trial, or can be summarily punished without trial by the police.

The usual punishment is flogging--only Koreans and not Japanese or foreigners are liable to be flogged. This punishment can be given in such a way as to cripple, to confine the victim to his home for weeks, or to kill. While it is not supposed to be practiced on women, on men over sixty-five or on boys under fifteen, the police flog indiscriminately.

The Japanese Government passed, some years ago, regulations to prevent the abuse of flogging. These regulations are a dead letter. Here is the official statement:

"It was decided to retain it (flogging), but only for application to native offenders. In March, 1912, Regulations concerning Flogging and the Enforcing Detailed Regulations being promulgated, many improvements were made in the measures hitherto practiced. Women, boys under the age of fifteen and old men over the age of sixty are exempt from flogging, while the infliction of this punishment on sick convicts and on the insane is to be postponed for six months. The method of infliction was also improved so that by observing greater humanity, unnecessary pain in carrying out a flogging could be avoided, as far as possible,"[1]

[Footnote 1: Annual Report of Reforms and Progress in Chosen. Keijo (Seoul), 1914.]

So much for the official claim. Now for the facts.

In the last year for which returns are available, 1916-17, 82,121 offenders were handled by police summary judgment, that is, punished by the police on the spot, without trial. Two-thirds of these punishments (in the last year when actual flogging figures were published) were floggings.

The instrument used is two bamboos lashed together. The maximum legal sentence is ninety blows, thirty a day for three days in succession. To talk of this as "greater humanity" or "avoiding unnecessary pain" gives me nausea. Any experienced official who has had to do with such things will bear me out in the assertion that it is deliberately calculated to inflict the maximum of pain which the human frame can stand, and in the most long drawn out manner.

Sick men, women and boys and old men are flogged.

In the disturbances of 1919 wounded men who were being nursed in the foreign hospitals in Seoul were taken out by the police to be flogged, despite the protests of doctors and nurses. There were many cases reported of old men being flogged. The stripping and flogging of women, particularly young women, was notorious.

Here is one case of the flogging of boys.

The following letter from a missionary in Sun-chon--where there is a Presbyterian hospital,--dated May 25, 1919, was printed in the report of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America. I have seen other communications from people who saw these boys, amply confirming the letter, if it requires confirmation.

Eleven Kangkei boys came here from ----. All the eleven were
beaten ninety stripes--thirty each day for three days, May 16, 17
and 18, and let out May 18th. Nine came here May 22nd, and two
more May 24th.

Tak Chan-kuk died about noon, May 23rd.

Kim Myungha died this evening.

Kim Hyungsun is very sick.

Kim Chungsun and Song Taksam are able to walk but are badly
broken.

Kim Oosik seemed very doubtful but afterwards improved.

Choi Tungwon, Kim Changook, Kim Sungkil, and Ko Pongsu are able
to be about, though the two have broken flesh.

Kim Syungha rode from ---- on his bicycle and reached here about
an hour before his brother died. The first six who came into the
hospital were in a dreadful fix, four days after the beating. No
dressing or anything had been done for them. Dr. Sharrocks just
told me that he feels doubtful about some of the others since
Myungha died. It is gangrene. One of these boys is a Chun Kyoin,
and another is not a Christian, but the rest are all Christians.

Mr. Lampe has photographs. The stripes were laid on to the
buttocks and the flesh pounded into a pulp.

Greater humanity! Avoiding unnecessary pain! It is obvious that the method of police absolutism is open to very great abuse. In practice it works out as galling tyranny. A quotation from the _Japan Chronicle_ illustrates one of the abuses:

"In the course of interpellations put forward by a certain member
in the last session of the Diet, he remarked on the strength of a
statement made by a public procurator of high rank in Korea, that
it was usual for a gendarme who visits a Korean house for the
purpose of searching for a criminal to violate any female inmate
of the house and to take away any article that suits his fancy.
And not only had the wronged Koreans no means of obtaining
redress for this outrageous conduct, but the judicial authorities
could take no proceedings against the offender as they must
necessarily depend upon the gendarmerie for acceptable evidence
of crime."

The police tyranny does not end with flogging. When a person is arrested, he is at once shut off from communication with his friends. He is not, necessarily, informed of the charge against him; his friends are not informed. He is not in the early stages allowed counsel. All that his friends know is that he has disappeared in the grip of the police, and he may remain out of sight or sound for months before being brought to trial or released.

During this period of confinement the prisoner is first in the hands of the police who are getting up the case against him. It is their work to extract a confession. To obtain this they practice torture, often of the most elaborate type. This is particularly true where the prisoners are charged with political offences. I deal with this aspect of affairs more in detail in later chapters, so that there is no need of me to bring proof at this point.

After the police have completed their case, the prisoner is brought before the procurator, whose office would, if rightly used, be a check on the police. But in many cases the police act as procurators in Korea, and in others the procurators and police work hand in hand.

When the prisoner is brought before the court he has little of the usual protection afforded in a British or American Court. It is for him to prove his innocence of the charge. His judge is the nominee of the Government-General and is its tool, who practically does what the Government-General tells him. The complaint of the most sober and experienced friends of the Koreans is that they cannot obtain justice unless it is deemed expedient by the authorities to give them justice.

Under this system crime has enormously increased. The police create it. The best evidence of this is contained in the official figures. In the autumn of 1912 Count Terauchi stated, in answer to the report that thousands of Korean Christians had been confined in jail, that he had caused enquiry to be made and there were only 287 Koreans confined in the various jails of the country (_New York Sun_, October 3, 1912). The Count's figures were almost certainly incorrect, or else the police released all the prisoners on the day the reckoning was taken, except the necessary few kept for effect. The actual number of convicts in Korea in 1912 was close on twelve thousand, according to the official details published later. If they were true they make the contrast with later years the more amazing.

The increase of arrests and convictions is shown in the following official return.

NUMBER OF KOREANS IMPRISONED

Convicts Awaiting trial Total

1911 7,342 9,465 16,807
1912 9,652 9,842 19,494
1913 11,652 10,194 21,846
1914 12,962 11,472 24,434
1915 14,411 12,844 27,255
1916 17,577 15,259 32,836

Individual liberty is non-existent. The life of the Korean is regulated down to the smallest detail. If he is rich, he is generally required to have a Japanese steward who will supervise his expenditure. If he has money in the bank, he can only draw a small sum out at a time, unless he gives explanation why he needs it.

He has not the right of free meeting, free speech or a free press. Before a paper or book can be published it has to pass the censor. This censorship is carried to an absurd degree. It starts with school books; it goes on to every word a man may write or speak. It applies to the foreigners as well as Koreans. The very commencement day speeches of school children are censored. The Japanese journalist in Korea who dares to criticize the administration is sent to prison almost as quickly as the Korean. Japanese newspaper men have found it intolerable and have gone back to Japan, refusing to work under it. There is only one newspaper now published in Korea in the Korean language, and it is edited by a Japanese. An American missionary published a magazine, and attempted to include in it a few mild comments on current events. He was sternly bidden not to attempt it again. Old books published before the Japanese acquired control have been freely destroyed. Thus a large number of school books--not in the least partizan--prepared by Professor Hulbert were destroyed.

The most ludicrous example of censorship gone mad was experienced by Dr. Gale, one of the oldest, most learned and most esteemed of the missionaries in Korea. Dr. Gale is a British subject. For a long time he championed the Japanese cause, until the Japanese destroyed his confidence by their brutalities in 1919. But the fact that Dr. Gale was their most influential friend did not check the Japanese censors. On one occasion Dr. Gale learned that some Korean "Readers" prepared by him for use in schools had been condemned. He enquired the reason. The Censor replied that the book "contained dangerous thoughts." Still more puzzled, the doctor politely enquired if the Censor would show the passages containing "dangerous thoughts." The Censor thereupon pointed out a translation of Kipling's famous story of the elephant, which had been included in the book. "In that story," said he ominously, "the elephant refused to serve his _second_ master." What could be more obvious that Dr. Gale was attempting to teach Korean children, in this subtle fashion, to refuse to serve _their_ second master, the Japanese Emperor!

For a Korean to be a journalist has been for him to be a marked man liable to constant arrest, not for what he did or does, but for what the police suppose he may do or might have done. The natural result of this has been to drive Koreans out of regular journalism, and to lead to the creation of a secret press.

The next great group of grievances of Koreans come under the head of Exploitation. From the beginning the Japanese plan has been to take as much land as possible from the Koreans and hand it over to Japanese. Every possible trick has been used to accomplish this. In the early days of the Japanese occupation, the favourite plan was to seize large tracts of land on the plea that they were needed for the Army or Navy; to pay a pittance for them; and then to pass considerable portions of them on to Japanese. "There can be no question," admitted Mr. W.D. Stevens, the American member and supporter of Prince Ito's administration, "that at the outset the military authorities in Korea did intimate an intention of taking more land for their uses than seemed reasonable."

The first attempt of the Japanese to grab in wholesale fashion the public lands of Korea, under the so-called Nagamori scheme, aroused so much indignation that it was withdrawn. Then they set about accomplishing the same end in other ways. Much of the land of Korea was public land, held by tenants from time immemorial under a loose system of tenancy. This was taken over by the Government-General All leases were examined, and people called on to show their rights to hold their property. This worked to the same end.

The Oriental Development Company was formed for the primary purpose of developing Korea by Japanese and settling Japanese on Korean land, Japanese immigrants being given free transportation, land for settlement, implements and other assistance. This company is an immense semi-official trust of big financial interests in direct cöoperation with the Government, and is supported by an official subsidy of £50,000 a year. Working parallel to it is the Bank of Chosen, the semi-official banking institution which has been placed supreme and omnipotent in Korean finance.

How this works was explained by a writer in the New York _Times_ (January 29, 1919). "These people declined to part with their heritage. It was here that the power of the Japanese Government was felt in a manner altogether Asiatic.... Through its branches this powerful financial institution ... called in all the specie in the country, thus making, as far as circulating-medium is concerned, the land practically valueless. In order to pay taxes and to obtain the necessaries of life, the Korean must have cash, and in order to obtain it, he must sell his land. Land values fell very rapidly, and in some instances land was purchased by the agents of the Bank of Chosen for one-fifth of its former valuation." There may be some dispute about the methods employed. There can be no doubt about the result. One-fifth of the richest land in Korea is to-day in Japanese hands.

Allied to this system of land exploitation comes the Corvee, or forced labour exacted from the country people for road making. In moderation this might be unobjectionable. As enforced by the Japanese authorities, it has been an appalling burden. The Japanese determined to have a system of fine roads. They have built them--by the Corvee.

The most convincing evidence for outsiders on this land exploitation and on the harshness of the Corvee comes from Japanese sources. Dr. Yoshino, a professor of the Imperial University of Tokyo, salaried out of the Government Treasury, made a special study of Korea. He wrote in the _Taschuo-Koron_ of Tokyo, that the Koreans have no objection to the construction of good roads, but that the official way of carrying out the work is tyrannical. "Without consideration and mercilessly, they have resorted to laws for the expropriation of land, the Koreans concerned being compelled to part with their family property almost for nothing. On many occasions they have also been forced to work in the construction of roads without receiving any wages. To make matters worse, they must work for nothing only on the days which are convenient to the officials, however inconvenient these days may be to the unpaid workers." The result has generally been that while the roads were being built for the convenient march of the Japanese troops to suppress the builders of the roads, many families were bankrupted and starving.

"The Japanese make improvements," say the Koreans. "But they make them to benefit their own people, not us. They improve agriculture, and turn the Korean farmers out and replace them by Japanese. They pave and put sidewalks in a Seoul street, but the old Korean shopkeepers in that street have gone, and Japanese have come. They encourage commerce, Japanese commerce, but the Korean tradesman is hampered and tied down in many ways." Education has been wholly Japanized. That is to say the primary purpose of the schools is to teach Korean children to be good Japanese subjects. Teaching is mostly done in Japanese, by Japanese teachers. The whole ritual and routine is towards the glorification of Japan.

The Koreans complain, however, that, apart from this, the system of teaching established for Koreans in Korea is inferior to that established for Japanese there. Japanese and Korean children are taught in separate schools. The course of education for Koreans is four years, for Japanese six. The number of schools provided for Japanese is proportionately very much larger than for Koreans, and a much larger sum of money is spent on them. The Japanese may however claim, with some justice, that they are in the early days of the development of Korean education, and they must be given more time to develop it. Koreans bitterly complain of the ignoring of Korean history in the public schools, and the systematic efforts to destroy old sentiments. These efforts, however, have been markedly unsuccessful, and the Government school students were even more active than mission school students in the Independence movement.

It was a Japanese journalist who published the case of the Principal of a Public School for girls who roused the indignation of the girls under him during a lecture on Ethics with the syllogism, "Savages are healthy; Koreans are healthy; therefore Koreans are savages." Other teachers roused their young pupils to fury, after the death of the ex-Emperor, by employing openly of him the phrase which ordinarily indicates a low-class coolie. In the East, where honorifics and exact designations count for much, no greater insults could be imagined.

The greatest hardships of the régime of the Government-General have been the denial of justice, the destruction of liberty, the shutting out of the people from all real participation in administration, the lofty assumption and display of a spirit of insolent superiority by the Japanese, and the deliberate degradation of the people by the cultivation of vice for the purpose of personal profit. In the old days, opium was practically unknown. Today opium is being cultivated on a large scale under the direct encouragement of the Government, and the sale of morphia is carried on by large numbers of Japanese itinerant merchants. In the old days, vice hid its head. To-day the most prominent feature at night-time in Seoul, the capital, is the brilliantly lit Yoshiwara, officially created and run by Japanese, into which many Korean girls are dragged. Quarters of ill fame have been built up in many parts of the land, and Japanese panders take their gangs of diseased women on tours through smaller districts. On one occasion when I visited Sun-chon I found that the authorities had ordered some of the Christians to find accommodation in their homes for Japanese women of ill fame. Some Koreans in China sent a petition to the American Minister in Peking which dealt with some moral aspects of the Japanese rule of Korea. They said:

"The Japanese have encouraged immorality by removing Korean
marriage restrictions, and allowing marriages without formality
and without regard for age. There have been marriages at as early
an age as twelve. Since the annexation there have been 80,000
divorce cases in Korea. The Japanese encourage, as a source of
revenue, the sale of Korean prostitutes in Chinese cities. Many
of these prostitutes are only fourteen and fifteen years old. It
is a part of the Japanese policy of race extermination, by which
they hope to destroy all Koreans. May God regard these facts.

"The Japanese Government has established a bureau for the sale of
opium, and under the pretext that opium was to be used for
medicinal purposes has caused Koreans and Formosans to engage in
poppy cultivation. The opium is secretly shipped into China.
Because of the Japanese encouragement of this traffic many
Koreans have become users of the drug.

"The Japanese forbid any school courses for Koreans higher than
the middle school and the higher schools established by
missionary organizations are severely regulated. The civilization
of the Far East originated in China, and was brought first to
Korea and thence to Japan. The ancient books were more numerous
in Korea than in Japan, but after annexation the Japanese set
about destroying these books, so that Koreans should not be able
to learn them. This 'burning of the books and murder of the
literati' was for the purpose of debasing the Koreans and robbing
them of their ancient culture....

"How can our race avoid extermination? Even if the Government of
Japan were benevolent, how could the Japanese understand the
aches and pains of another race of people? With her evil
Government can there be anything but racial extermination for us?"

From the time of the reopening of Korea the Japanese have treated the Koreans in personal intercourse as the dust beneath their feet, or as one might imagine a crude and vixenish tempered woman of peasant birth whose husband had acquired great wealth by some freak of fortune treating an unfortunate poor gentlewoman who had come in her employment. This was bad enough in the old days; since the Japanese acquired full power in Korea it has become infinitely worse.

The Japanese coolie punches the Korean who chances to stand in his august path. The Japanese woman, wife of a little trader, spits out the one contemptuous sentence she has learned in the Korean tongue, when a Korean man draws near on the boat or on the train. The little official assumes an air of ineffable disdain and contempt. A member of the Japanese Diet was reported in the Japanese press to have said that in Korea the Japanese gendarmes were in the habit of exacting from the Korean school children the amount of deference which in Japan would be proper to the Imperial Household.

The lowest Japanese coolie practices the right to kick, beat and cuff a Korean of high birth at his pleasure, and the Korean has in effect no redress. Had the Koreans from the first have met blow with blow, a number of them no doubt would have died, but the Japanese would have been cured of the habit. The Korean dislike of fighting, until he has really some serious reason for a fight, has encouraged the Japanese bully; but it makes the bully's offence none the less.

Japanese officials in many instances seem to delight in exaggerating their contempt on those under them. This is particularly true of some of the Japanese teachers. Like all Government officials, these teachers wear swords, symbols of power. Picture the dignity of the teacher of a class of little boys who lets his sword clang to terrify the youngsters under him, or who tries to frighten the girls by displaying his weapon.

The iron rule of Terauchi was followed by the iron rule of Hasegawa, his successor. The struggle of the rebel army in the hills had died down. But men got together, wondering what steps they could take. Christians and non-Christians found a common bond of union. Their life had come to a pass where it was better to die than to live under unchecked tyranny. Thus the Independence movement came into being.

The Koreans who, despoiled of their homes or determined to submit no longer to Japan, escaped into Manchuria, escaped as a rule by the difficult and dangerous journey across the high mountain passes. What this journey means can best be understood from a report by the Rev. W.T. Cook, of the Manchuria Christian College at Moukden.

"The untold afflictions of the Korean immigrants coming into
Manchuria will doubtless never be fully realized, even by those
actually witnessing their distress. In the still closeness of a
forty below zero climate in the dead of winter, the silent stream
of white clad figures creeps over the icy mountain passes, in
groups of tens, twenties and fifties, seeking a new world of
subsistence, willing to take a chance of life and death in a
hand-to-hand struggle with the stubborn soil of Manchuria's
wooded and stony hillsides. Here, by indefatigable efforts, they
seek to extract a living by applying the grub axe and hand hoe to
the barren mountain sides above the Chinese fields, planting and
reaping by hand between the roots the sparse yield that is often
insufficient to sustain life.

"Many have died from insufficient food. Not only women and
children but young men have been frozen to death. Sickness also
claims its toll under these new conditions of exposure. Koreans
have been seen standing barefooted on the broken ice of a
riverside fording place, rolling up their baggy trousers before
wading through the broad stream, two feet deep, of ice cold
water, then standing on the opposite side while they hastily
readjust their clothing and shoes.

"Women with insufficient clothing, and parts of their bodies
exposed, carry little children on their backs, thus creating a
mutual warmth in a slight degree, but it is in this way that the
little ones' feet, sticking out from the binding basket, get
frozen and afterwards fester till the tiny toes stick together.
Old men and women, with bent backs and wrinkled faces, walk the
uncomplaining miles until their old limbs refuse to call them
further.

"Thus it is by households they come, old and young, weak and
strong, big and little.... Babies have been born in wayside inns.

"In this way over 75,000 Koreans have entered during the past
year, until the number of Koreans now living in both the north
and western portions of Manchuria now totals nearly half a
million."[2]

[Footnote 2: Report to the Presbyterian Board of Foreign
Missions.]

XII

THE MISSIONARIES

I have had occasion in previous chapters to make occasional reference to the work of the missionaries in Korea. It is necessary now to deal with them in detail, for they had become one of the great factors, and from the Japanese point of view one of the great problems, of the country.

Long before Korea was open to the outside world, missionary pioneers tried to enter it. The French Catholics forced admission as far back as the end of the eighteenth century, and made many converts, who were afterwards exterminated. Gutzaleff, a famous Protestant pioneer, landed on an island at Basil's Bay, in 1832, and remained there a month, distributing Chinese literature. Mr. Thomas, a British missionary, secured a passage on board the ill-fated _General Sherman_ in 1866, and was killed with the rest of the crew. Dr. Ross, the Scottish Presbyterian missionary of Moukden, Manchuria, became interested in the Koreans, studied their language, talked with every Korean he could find, and built up a grammar of the language, publishing an English-Korean primer in 1876. He and a colleague, Mr. McIntyre, published Gospels in the language, and opened up a work among the Koreans on the north side of the Yalu. Those who can recall the state of that district in the days before railways were opened and order established, can best appreciate the nerve and daring needed for the task. They made converts, and one of these converts took some newly printed Christian books and set back home, reaching Seoul itself, spreading the new religion among his friends.

It was two years after the opening of Korea to the West before the first missionary arrived. In 1884 Dr. Allen, a Presbyterian physician (afterwards United States Minister to Korea), arrived at Seoul. It was very doubtful at this time how missionaries would be received, or how their converts would be treated. The law enacting death against any man who became a Christian was still unrepealed, but it was not enforced. Officialism might, however, revive it at any time. It was thought advisable, when the first converts were baptized in 1887, to perform the ceremony behind closed doors, with an earnest and athletic young American educationalist, Homer B. Hulbert, acting as guard.

Dr. Allen was soon followed by others. Dr. Underwood, brother of the famous manufacturer of typewriting machines, was the first non-medical missionary. The American and Canadian Presbyterians and Methodists undertook the main work, and the Church of England set up a bishopric. Women missionary doctors came, and at once won a place for themselves. Names like Appenzeller, Scranton, Bunker and Gale--to name a few of the pioneers--have won a permanent place in the history of missions.

The missionaries found a land almost without religion, with few temples and few monks or priests. Buddhism had been discredited by the treachery of some Japanese Buddhists during the great Japanese invasion by Hideyoshi in 1592, and no Buddhist priest was allowed inside the city of Seoul. Young men of official rank studied their Confucius diligently, but to them Confucianism was more a theory for the conduct of life and a road to high office than a religion. The main religion of the people was Shamanism, the fear of evil spirits. It darkened their souls, as the tales of a foolish nurse about goblins darken the mind of a sensitive and imaginative child. The spirits of Shamanism were evil, not good, a curse, not a blessing, bringing terror, not hope.

Christianity was very fortunate in its representatives. I have seen much of the missionaries of Manchuria and Korea. A finer, straighter lot of men I never want to meet. The magnificent climate enables them to keep at the top of form. They have initiative, daring and common sense. Those I have known are born leaders, who would have made their mark anywhere, in business or politics.

In the early days they had to be ready to set their hands to anything, to plan and build houses and churches, to open schools, to run a boat down dangerous rapids or face a dangerous mob, to overawe a haughty yang-ban or break in a dangerous horse. They were the pioneers of civilization as well as of Christianity.

Religion had to be commended by the courage of its adherents. When there came a dangerous uprising, and every one else fled, the missionary had to stay at his post. When an epidemic of cholera or yellow fever swept over a district, the missionary had to act as doctor or nurse. Sometimes the missionary died, as Dr. Heron died at Seoul and McKenzie at Sorai. Their deaths were even more effective than their lives in winning people.

Dr. Allen gained a foothold soon after his arrival by sticking to his post in Seoul during the uprising against foreigners that followed the attack by the Japanese and the reformers on the Cabinet and their seizure of the King and Queen. When Min Yung-ik, the Queen's nephew, was badly wounded, Dr. Allen attended to him and saved his life. Henceforth the King was the missionaries' friend. He built a hospital and placed Dr. Allen in charge. Women missionary doctors were appointed Court physicians to the Queen.

There were years of waiting, when the converts were few, and when it seemed that the barriers of four thousand years never would be broken down. Then came the Chino-Japanese War. Koreans were forced to see that this Western civilization, which had enabled little Japan to beat the Chinese giant, must mean something. A young man from Indiana, Samuel Moffett, with a companion, Graham Lee, had gone some time before to Pyeng-yang, reputedly the worst city in Korea. Here they had been stoned and abused. When the Chinese Army came to Pyeng-yang, and the country was devastated in the great and decisive battle between the Chinese and Japanese, these two men stayed by the Koreans in their darkest and most perilous hours. Koreans still tell how "Moksa" Moffett put on the dress of a Korean mourner and went freely around despite the Chinese, who would have almost certainly devised a specially lingering death for him, had they discovered his presence.

"There must be something in this religion," said the Koreans. Sturdy old John Newton's belief that the worst sinner makes the finest saint was borne out in the case of Pyeng-yang. It became in a few years one of the greatest scenes of missionary triumph in Asia. The harvest was ripening now. In Seoul men flung into jail for political offences turned to prayer in the darkness and despair of their torture chambers, and went to death praising God. The Secretary to the King's Cabinet preached salvation to his fellow Cabinet Ministers.

The tens of converts grew to tens of thousands. From the first, the Koreans showed themselves to be Christians of a very unusual type. They started by reforming their homes, giving their wives liberty and demanding education for their children. They took the promises and commands of the Bible literally and established a standard of conduct for church members which, if it were enforced in some older Christian communities, would cause a serious contraction of the church rolls. The first convert set out to preach to his friends. Latter converts imitated his example. From Pyeng-yang the movement spread to Sun-chon, which in a few years rivalled Pyeng-yang as a Christian centre. From here Christianity spread to the Yalu and up the Tumen River.

The Koreans themselves established Christianity in distant communities where no white man had ever been. Soon many of the missionaries were kept busy for several months each year travelling with pack-pony and mafoo, from station to station in the most remote parts of the country, fording and swimming unbridged rivers, climbing mountain passes, inspecting and examining and instructing the converts, admitting them to church membership and organizing them for still more effective work.

When I hear the cheap sneers of the obtuse stay-at-home or globe-trotter critics against missionaries and their converts, I am amused. It gives me the measure of the men, particularly of the globetrotters. When the British and American Churches seek to send out missionaries, the British and American people will have registered the sure sign of their decadence. For the Churches and nations will then cease to be alive. In travelling through the north country I employed a number of the Christian converts, I found them clean and honest, good, hard workers, men who showed their religion not by talk, but by good, straight action. It is a grief to me to know that some of these "boys" have since, because of their prominence as Christian workers, been the victims of official persecution.

Under the influence of the missionaries many schools were opened; hospitals and dispensaries were maintained, and a considerable literature, educational as well as religious, was circulated.

When the Japanese landed in Korea in 1904, the missionaries welcomed them. They knew the tyranny and abuses of the old Government, and believed that the Japanese would help to better things. The ill-treatment of helpless Koreans by Japanese soldiers and coolies caused a considerable reaction of feeling. When, however, Prince Ito became Resident-General the prevailing sentiment was that it would be better for the people to submit and to make the best of existing conditions, in the hope that the harshness and injustice of Japanese rule would pass.

Most of the Europeans and Americans in Korea at the time adopted this line. I travelled largely in the interior of Korea in 1906 and 1907. Groups of influential Koreans came to me telling their grievances and asking what to do. Sometimes big assemblies of men asked me to address them. They believed me to be their friend, and were willing to trust me. My advice was always the same. "Submit and make yourselves better men. You can do nothing now by taking up arms. Educate your children, improve your homes, better your lives. Show the Japanese by your conduct and your self-control that you are as good as they are, and fight the corruption and apathy that helped to bring your nation to its present position." Let me add that I did what I could in England, at the same time, to call attention to their grievances.

Prince Ito was openly sympathetic to the missionaries and to their medical and educational work. He once explained why, in a public gathering at Seoul. "In the early years of Japan's reformation, the senior statesmen were opposed to religious toleration, especially because of distrust of Christianity. But I fought vehemently for freedom of belief and religious propaganda, and finally triumphed. My reasoning was this: Civilization depends on morality and the highest morality upon religion. Therefore religion must be tolerated and encouraged."

Ito passed off the scene, Korea was formally annexed to Japan, and Count Terauchi became Governor-General. Terauchi was unsympathetic to Christianity and a new order of affairs began. One of the difficulties of the Christians was over the direction that children in schools and others should bow before the picture of the Japanese Emperor on feast days. The Japanese tried to maintain to the missionaries that this was only a token of respect; the Christians declared that it was an act of adoration. To the Japanese his Emperor is a divine being, the descendant of the gods.

Christians who refused to bow were carefully noted as malignants. In the famous Conspiracy Case, the official Assistant Procurator, in urging the conviction of one of the men, said: "He was head teacher of the Sin-an School, Chong-ju, and was a notorious man of anti-Japanese sentiments. He was the very obstinate member of the Society who, at a meeting on the first anniversary of the birthday of the Emperor of Japan after the annexation of Korea, refused to bow before the Imperial picture on the ground that such an act was worshipping an image." This one item was the only fact that the Assistant Procurator produced to prove the head teacher's guilt. He was convicted, and awarded seven years' penal servitude.

A strong effort was made to Japanize the Korean Churches, to make them branches of the Japanese Churches, and to make them instruments in the Japanese campaign of assimilation. The missionaries resisted this to the utmost. They declared that they would be neutral in political matters, as they were directed by their Governments to be. Having failed to win them over to their side, the Japanese authorities entered into a campaign for the breaking down of the Churches, particularly the Presbyterian Churches of the north. I am well aware that they deny this, but here is a case where actions and speeches cannot be reconciled.

Attempts were pushed to create churches of Koreans under Japanese. Son Pyung-hi, who had proved a good friend of Japan during the Chinese War, had been encouraged by the Japanese some time before to start a religious sect, the Chon-do Kyo, which it was hoped would replace Christianity, and prove a useful weapon for Japan. Here a blunder was made, for later on Son Pyung-hi flung all his influence against Japan and worked with the native Christian leaders to start the Independence movement. More important than either of these two things, however, direct persecution was begun. Several hundred Korean Christian leaders in the north were arrested, and out of them 144 were taken to Seoul, tortured, and charged with a conspiracy to murder the Governor-General. Various missionaries were named as their partners in crime. The tale of the conspiracy was a complete fabrication manufactured by the police. I describe it fully in the next chapter.

Following this came regulations aimed at the missionary schools and institutions. At the time of annexation, almost the whole of the real modern education of Korea was undertaken by the missionaries, who were maintaining 778 schools. A series of Educational Ordinances was promulgated in March, 1915, directing that no religious teaching is to be permitted in private schools, and no religious ceremonies allowed to be performed. The Japanese authorities made no secret of their intention of eventually closing all missionary schools, on the ground that even when religious teaching was excluded, pupils were influenced by their teachers, and the influence of the foreign teachers was against the Japanization of the Koreans. Mr. Komatsu, Director of the Bureau of Foreign Affairs, put this point without any attempt at concealment, in a public statement. "Our object of education is not only to develop the intellect and morality of our people, but also to foster in their minds such national spirit as will contribute to the existence and welfare of our Empire.... I sincerely hope that you will appreciate this change of the time and understand that missions should leave all affairs relating entirely to education entirely in the hands of the Government, by transferring the money and labour they have hitherto been expending on education to their proper sphere of religious propagation.... Whatever the curriculum of a school may be, it is natural that the students of that school should be influenced by the ideas and personal character of its principal and teachers. Education must be decidedly nationalistic and must not be mixed up with religion that is universal." This is a much harsher regulation against missions than prevails in Japan, where mission schools are allowed to continue their work, with freedom to carry on their religious teaching.

The Government-General agreed to allow mission schools that had already obtained Government permits to continue for ten years without having the regulations enforced. Schools that had applied for the permit but had not obtained it, owing to formal official delays, were ordered to obey or close, and police were sent to see that they closed.

The Government commanded the mission schools to cease using their own text-books and to use the officially prepared text-books. These are carefully prepared to eliminate "dangerous thoughts," _i.e._, anything that will promote a desire for freedom. They directly teach ancestral worship. The missionaries have protested in every way they can. The Government-General is adamant.

Before the start of the Independence movement the mission schools were being carefully watched. Dr. Arthur J. Brown gives one example of their experiences,[1] in connection with the graduating exercises at the Pyeng-yang Junior College last year.

[Footnote 1: "The Mastery of the Far East," by Arthur Judson Brown.]

"Four students made addresses. The foreigners present deemed them
void of offence, but the police declared that all the speakers
had said things subversive of the public good. The students were
arrested, interrogated and then released, as their previous
records had been good. The provincial chief of gendarmes,
however, summoned the students before him and again investigated
the case. The president of the college was called to the office,
and strictly charged to exercise greater care in the future. The
matter was then reported to the Governor of the Province, and
then to the Governor-General. The latter wrote to the president
of the college that the indiscretion of the students was so
serious that the Government was contemplating closing the school.
A similar communication was sent by the Governor-General to the
provincial Governor, who thereupon called the president to his
office, and said that unless he was prepared to make certain
changes the school would have to close. These changes were
enumerated as follows: (1) Appointment of a Japanese head master;
(2) dismissal of three of the boys who had spoken; relief of the
fourth from certain assignments of teaching which he was doing in
the academy, and promise not to repeat the oratorical program in
the future; (3) secure more Japanese teachers, especially those
who could understand Korean; (4) do all teaching, except the
Chinese classics, Korean language and English, through the medium
of the Japanese language; prepare syllabi of the subjects of
instruction, so as to limit it to specified points, teachers not
to deviate from them nor to speak on forbidden subjects; (6)
conform to the new regulations. (That is, eliminate all Christian
instruction.) When the president replied that he would do all
that he could to make the first five changes desired, but that as
to the sixth change, the mission preferred to continue for the
present under the old permit which entitled the college to the
ten year period of grace, the official was plainly disappointed,
and he intimated that number six was the most important of all."

The Independence movement in 1919 enormously increased the difficulties of the missionaries, although they refrained from any direct or indirect participation in it, and the Koreans carefully avoided letting them know anything ahead about it. The difficulties of the missionaries, and the direct action of the authorities against Christianity at that time is told later, in the chapters dealing with the movement.

The Japanese authorities will probably do two things. They will order the closing of schools under various pretexts where Christian teaching is still maintained. They will endeavour to secure the elimination of those missionaries who have shown a marked sympathy with the Korean people. They have ample powers to prosecute any missionary who is guilty of doing anything to aid disaffection. They have repeatedly searched missionary homes and missionaries themselves to find evidence of this. Save in the case of Mr. Mowry, who was convicted of sheltering some students wanted by the police, they have failed. Even in that case the original conviction has been quashed on appeal. Such evidence does not exist, because the missionaries have been really neutral. Neutrality does not satisfy Japan; she wants them to come out on her side. Unfortunately her action this year has turned many away from her who tried hard up to then to be her friends.

XIII

TORTURE A LA MODE

"The main thing, when you are tortured, is to remain calm."

The Korean spoke quietly and in a matter-of-fact way. He himself had suffered torture in its most severe form. Possibly he thought there was a chance that I, too, might have a personal experience.

"Do not struggle. Do not fight," he continued. "For instance, if you are strung up by the thumbs and you struggle and kick desperately, you may die on the spot. Keep absolutely still; it is easier to endure it in this way. Compel your mind to think of other things."

Torture! Who talks of torture in these enlightened days?

Let me tell you the tale of the Conspiracy Case, as revealed in the evidence given in open court, and then judge for yourself.

When the heads of the Terauchi administration had made up their minds that the northern Christians were inimical to the progress of the Japanese scheme of assimilation, they set their spies to work. Now the rank and file of spies are very much alike in all parts of the world. They are ignorant and often misunderstand things. When they cannot find the evidence they require, they will manufacture it.

The Japanese spies were exceptionally ignorant. First they made up their minds that the northern Christians were plotting against Japan, and then they searched for evidence. They attended church services. Here they heard many gravely suspicious things. There were hymns of war, like "Onward, Christian Soldiers" and "Soldiers of Christ Arise." What could these mean but that Christians were urged to become an army and attack the Japanese? Dangerous doctrines were openly taught in the churches and mission schools. They learned that Mr. McCune, the Sun-chon missionary, took the story of David and Goliath as the subject for a lesson, pointing out that a weak man armed with righteousness was more powerful than a mighty enemy. To the spies, this was nothing but a direct incitement to the weak Koreans to fight strong Japan. Mission premises were searched. Still more dangerous material was found there, including school essays, written by the students, on men who had rebelled against their Governments or had fought, such as George Washington and Napoleon. A native pastor had preached about the Kingdom of Heaven; this was rank treason. He was arrested and warned that "there is only one kingdom out here, and that is the kingdom of Japan."

In the autumn of 1911 wholesale arrests were made of Christian preachers, teachers, students and prominent church members, particularly in the provinces of Sun-chon and Pyeng-yang. In the Hugh O'Neill, Jr., Industrial Academy, in Sun-chon, one of the most famous educational establishments in Korea--where the principal had made the unfortunate choice of David and Goliath for one of his addresses--so many pupils and teachers were seized by the police that the school had to close. The men were hurried to jail. They were not allowed to communicate with their friends, nor to obtain the advice of counsel. They and their friends were not informed of the charge against them. This is in accordance with Japanese criminal law. Eventually 149 persons were sent to Seoul to be placed on trial. Three were reported to have died under torture or as the result of imprisonment, twenty-three were exiled without trial or released, and 123 were arraigned at the Local Court in Seoul on June 28, 1912, on a charge of conspiracy to assassinate Count Terauchi, Governor-General of Korea.

"The character of the accused men is significant," wrote Dr. Arthur Judson Brown, an authority who can scarcely be accused by his bitterest critics of unfriendliness to Japan. "Here were no criminal types, no baser elements of the population, but men of the highest standing, long and intimately known to the missionaries as Koreans of faith and purity of life, and conspicuous for their good influence over the people. Two were Congregationalists, six Methodists and eighty-nine Presbyterians. Of the Presbyterians, five were pastors of churches, eight were elders, eight deacons, ten leaders of village groups of Christians, forty-two baptized church members, and thirteen catechumens.... It is about as difficult for those who know them to believe that any such number of Christian ministers, elders and teachers had committed crime as it would be for the people of New Jersey to believe that the faculty, students and local clergy of Princeton were conspirators and assassins."

Baron Yun Chi-ho, the most conspicuous of the prisoners, had formerly been Vice Foreign Minister under the old Korean Government, and was reckoned by all who knew him as one of the most progressive and sane men in the country. He was a prominent Christian, wealthy, of high family, a keen educationalist, vice-president of the Korean Y.M.C.A., had travelled largely, spoke English fluently, and had won the confidence and good will of every European or American in Korea with whom he came in contact. Yang Ki-tak, formerly Mr. Bethell's newspaper associate, had on this account been a marked man by the Japanese police. He had been previously arrested under the Peace Preservation Act, sentenced to two years' imprisonment and pardoned under an amnesty. He had also previously been examined twice in connection with the charge against the assassin of Prince Ito, and twice on account of the attack made on Yi, the traitor Premier, but had each time been acquitted. "I am not very much concerned as to what happens to me now," he said, "but I do protest against being punished on a charge of which I am innocent."

The case for the prosecution was based on the confessions of the prisoners themselves. According to these confessions, a body of Koreans, in association with the New People's Society, headed by Baron Yun Chi-ho, plotted to murder General Terauchi, and assembled at various railway stations for that purpose, when the Governor-General was travelling northwards, more particularly at Sun-chon, on December 28, 1910. They were armed with ready revolvers, short swords or daggers, and were only prevented from carrying out their purpose by the vigilance of the gendarmerie.

A number of missionaries were named as their associates or sympathizers. Chief of these was Mr. McCune, who, according to the confessions, distributed revolvers among the conspirators and told them at Sun-chon that he would point out the right man by shaking hands with him. Dr. Moffett of Pyeng-yang, Dr. Underwood of Seoul, Bishop Harris, the Methodist Bishop for Japan and Korea who had long been conspicuous as a defender of the Japanese Administration, and a number of other prominent missionaries were implicated.

When the prisoners were faced by these confessions in the open court they arose, one after another, almost without exception, and declared either that they had been forced from them by sustained and intolerable torture, or that they had been reduced by torture to insensibility and then on recovery had been told by the Japanese police that they had made the confessions. Those who had assented under torture had in nearly every case said "Yes" to the statements put to them by the police. Now that they could speak, they stoutly denied the charges. They knew nothing of any conspiracy. The only man who admitted a murder plot in court was clearly demented.