Korea's Fight for Freedom

by Fred A. McKenzie

XI

"I WILL WHIP YOU WITH SCORPIONS"

The Japanese administration of Korea from 1910 to 1919, first under Count Terauchi and then under General Hasegawa, revealed the harshest and most relentless form of Imperial administration. When formal annexation was completed in 1910 all the hindrances which had hitherto stood in the way of the complete execution of Japanese methods were apparently swept on one side. The Governor-General had absolute power to pass what ordinances he pleased, and even to make those ordinances retroactive. Extra-territoriality was abolished, and foreign subjects in Korea were placed entirely under the Japanese laws.

Japanese statesmen were ambitious to show the world as admirable an example of efficiency in peace as Japan had already shown in war. Much thought had been given to the matter for a long time ahead. The colonial systems of other countries had been carefully studied. Service in Korea was to be a mark of distinction, reserved for the best and most highly paid. National pride and national interest were pledged to make good. Money was spent freely and some of the greatest statesmen and soldiers of Japan were placed at the head of affairs. Ito, by becoming Resident-General, had set an example for the best of the nation to follow.

Between the annexation in 1910 and the uprising of the people in 1919, much material progress was made. The old, effete administration was cleared away, sound currency maintained, railways were greatly extended, roads improved, afforestation pushed forward on a great scale, agriculture developed, sanitation improved and fresh industries begun.

And yet this period of the Japanese administration in Korea ranks among the greatest failures of history, a failure greater than that of Russia in Finland or Poland or Austria-Hungary in Bosnia. America in Cuba and Japan in Korea stand out as the best and the worst examples in governing new subject peoples that the twentieth century has to show. The Japanese entered on their great task in a wrong spirit, they were hampered by fundamentally mistaken ideas, and they proved that they are not yet big enough for the job.

They began with a spirit of contempt for the Korean. Good administration is impossible without sympathy on the part of the administrators; with a blind and foolish contempt, sympathy is impossible. They started out to assimilate the Koreans, to destroy their national ideals, to root out their ancient ways, to make them over again as Japanese, but Japanese of an inferior brand, subject to disabilities from which their overlords were free. Assimilation with equality is difficult, save in the case of small, weak peoples, lacking tradition and national ideals. But assimilation with inferiority, attempted on a nation with a historic existence going back four thousand years is an absolutely impossible task. Or, to be more exact, it would only be possible by assimilating a few, the weaklings of the nation, and destroying the strong majority by persecution, direct killing and a steady course of active corruption, with drugs and vice.

The Japanese overestimated their own capacity and underestimated the Korean. They had carefully organized their claque in Europe and America, especially in America. They engaged the services of a group of paid agents—some of them holding highly responsible positions—to sing their praises and advocate their cause. They enlisted others by more subtle means, delicate flattery and social ambition. They taught diplomats and consular officials, especially of Great Britain and America, that it was a bad thing to become a persona non grata to Tokyo. They were backed by a number of people, who were sincerely won over by the finer sides of the Japanese character. In diplomatic and social intrigue, the Japanese make the rest of the world look as children. They used their forces not merely to laud themselves, but to promote the belief that the Koreans were an exhausted and good-for-nothing race.

In the end, they made the fatal mistake of believing what their sycophants and flatterers told them. Japanese civilization was the highest in the world; Japan was to be the future leader, not alone of Asia, but of all nations. The Korean was fit for nothing but to act as hewer of wood and drawer of water for his overlord.

Had Japan been wise and long-sighted enough to treat the Koreans as America treated the Cubans or England the people of the Straits Settlements, there would have been a real amalgamation—although not an assimilation—of the two peoples. The Koreans were wearied of the extravagances, abuses and follies of their old administration. But Japan in place of putting Korean interests first ruled the land for the benefit of Japan. The Japanese exploiter, the Japanese settler were the main men to be studied.

Then Japan sought to make the land a show place. Elaborate public buildings were erected, railroads opened, state maintained, far in excess of the economic strength of the nation. To pay for extravagant improvements, taxation and personal service were made to bear heavily on the people. Many of the improvements were of no possible service to the Koreans themselves. They were made to benefit Japanese or to impress strangers. And the officials forgot that even subject peoples have ideals and souls. They sought to force loyalty, to beat it into children with the stick and drill it into men by gruelling experiences in prison cells. Then they were amazed that they had bred rebels. They sought to wipe out Korean culture, and then were aggrieved because Koreans would not take kindly to Japanese learning. They treated the Koreans with open contempt, and then wondered that they did not love them.

Let us examine the administration more closely in detail.

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.]