CHAPTER XVI
Furloughs—Chong Dong Church—Romanists in Whang Hai—Missionaries to the Rescue—Romanists Annoy and Hinder the Judge—Results—Interview between Governor and Priest—The Inspector’s Report—Women’s Work in Hai Ju—Deaths of Mr. and Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Miller.
In 1901 we took another furlough, during which we were brought in touch with American Christians in nearly every large city in the country, and thus were able to make the church aware of God’s wonderful dealings in Korea and to enlighten the public on the needs of this country. On our return, we missed among the faces of dear old friends who came to welcome us that of our work-fellow and beloved brother, Rev. H. G. Appenzeller. Mr. Appenzeller, the first evangelistic worker of his mission, had labored with my husband, heart and hand, for over sixteen years, and they had taken their earliest itinerations to the country in company. The loss fell heavily upon both native and foreign community, and seems to grow, as we feel the need of the enthusiastic and ready service everywhere. On our return our first attention was given to our dear Chong Dong (city) church, the members of which have from the first been marked as energetic, generous and full of faith. With a membership, as has been said, of two hundred and nineteen, they carry on five missions near the city, within a radius of five miles. These are places where chapels have been built—but they have also several other missions in districts where services are held in private dwellings. The church members conduct and take charge of all these services. They have contributed during the past year (1902-1903), reckoned in gold dollars:
| For their school | $75.80 |
| Church running expenses | 75.40 |
| Evangelistic work | 45.82 |
| Charity | 20.66 |
| Gifts of City Mission Society | 50.50 |
| Total | $268.18 |
This total, however, is not a complete report, not including the gifts of the largest mission, that of Chandari, a (from a Korean standpoint) prosperous little farming community outside the city. For the women and girls, beside Sabbath services and regular prayer meetings, six weekly Bible classes are held in different neighborhoods, all but two of which are well attended. There are a number of these women well fitted for Christian teaching, and one or another of them has repeatedly gone off on a six-weeks’ trip, with some of the lady missionaries, asking nothing more than her bare expenses. They often go away on evangelistic trips quite at their own instance, visiting village after village, distributing tracts which they themselves have bought for the purpose, and teaching the country women who cannot read.
Very soon after our return to Korea my husband was requested by the American minister and the members of our mission to visit Hai Ju, in the province of Whang Hai, on a mission of very serious importance. We were sent to Hai Ju in February, and since the preceding September, it had come to be a matter of common report that the native Romanists (of whom there are said to be twenty thousand in that province) had, under the lead of the French priests, been robbing, torturing and blackmailing the poor people of the province “for money to build churches,” resisting with arms, maiming, beating and even imprisoning officers of the law sent to stop them, and establishing a veritable reign of terror through the whole district; so that the weaker magistrates dared not lift a finger against any criminal favored by the priests, or belonging to that church, and fairly trembled for fear of them, obeying with the alertness of terror their slightest behest.
The state of affairs grew so bad at length that the governor sent a manifesto to Seoul, saying he could no longer carry on the government of the province in such a state of insurrection and anarchy. The following is a translation, made for the Korea Review, of the official copy of a part of the governor’s complaint:
“In the counties of Sin-ch’un, Cha-ryung, An-ak, Chang-yun, Pong-san, Whang-ju, and Su-heung, disturbances created by the Roman Catholics are many in number, and petitions and complaints are coming in from all quarters.
“In some cases it is a question of building churches and collecting funds from the villages about. If any refuse to pay, they are bound and beaten and rendered helpless. When certain ones, in answer to petition, have been ordered arrested, the police have been mobbed and the officers of the law have been unable to resist it. While investigating a case on behalf of the people, I sent police to arrest Catholics in Cha-ryung. They raised a band of followers, beat off the police, arrested them, and dismissed them with orders not to return. Then I sent a secretary to remonstrate with them. At that the Sin-ch’un Catholics, a score or more of them, armed with guns, arrested the secretary, insulted him, etc.”
One of the priests, who is apparently most influential and has been most notorious, whose Korean name is Hong, and who is known among foreigners as Father Wilhelm, told my husband that the native Romanists were not to be blamed for all this, for they had only obeyed his orders. Mr. Underwood had had a slight acquaintance with this priest for some years, meeting him occasionally and knowing little of his life, but supposing he was doing an earnest if mistaken work of self-sacrifice, he was unable to believe that the priest was cognizant of all that was being done by his followers, until he had both written and had a personal interview with him, when he was sorrowfully forced to see that rumor had not misrepresented his conduct.
This sad condition of things might have gone on, no one knows how long, but some of the people so robbed and tortured were Presbyterian Christians, and there is something about Protestant Christianity that resists oppression and favors a growth of sturdy independence and a love of freedom and fair play. One of these men was a particularly determined fellow who had been persistently seeking justice ever since, and would not be discouraged or daunted. He first went to the missionaries, who told him to take the matter to the Korean courts, but as the provincial courts were quite helpless against such a giant evil, he went up to the capital. The officials at the capital, probably in awe of the French, dared not interfere. He and his companion, another sturdy farmer like himself, went from one missionary to another in Seoul, all of whom put them off, disliking to take up native quarrels, and on principle opposed to using influence with Korean officials, and none of them realizing to what threatening dimensions the affair had grown.
These poor men were not eloquent, they could only tell a plain, simple story, but they knew that they and thousands of others were deeply wronged and were able to do one thing well, namely, to persist. Persist they did with unwearied resolution.
Failing to obtain any help or satisfaction, they at length decided to go directly to the French legation and seek justice and relief there. They were received, attentively heard, carefully questioned, given a promise of redress, and sent politely away. They waited long and patiently, but no redress came, nor any sign of it. Again and again they sought the fulfilment of the promises of the representative of France, only to be put off repeatedly with fair words and indefinite assurances.
So at length they published their whole story in the leading Korean newspaper in Seoul. Then the French minister did indeed begin to act. He immediately requested the Korean Foreign Office to have the men beaten and imprisoned, on the ground that conduct like theirs had caused the Boxer trouble in China.
When affairs came to this crisis, the Protestant missionaries awoke to the situation. Rev. Mr. Gale and Mr. Underwood went to the office of Foreign Affairs and pled for the men, and also laid the matter before the American minister, Dr. Allen. He gave it his careful attention and succeeded in having a commission appointed by the Korean government to go to Hai Ju and investigate the charges. Dr. Moffett, of Pyeng Yang, and Mr. Underwood were also requested to be present and attend the trials. From the beginning to the end of this attempt to bring the truth to light, the French priests by every art in their power tried to block and delay the proceedings of the judge, to annoy and overawe him in Hai Ju, and (we were informed) by letters, special messengers and telegrams, to limit his power, hinder his plans, and undermine him in Seoul.
CARRIERS WITH JIKAYS. [PAGE 184]
WOMAN WITH BUNDLE OF WASHING ON HER HEAD. [PAGE 246]
He was a sturdy, clear-headed, determined man, who had had long intercourse with Europeans in his post in the Foreign Office, and held his own with much self-possession and sang-froid. It was said of him that he carried on the trials more fairly and more in accordance with equity than had ever been seen before in Korea.
The priests arrested and tortured a policeman who had been sent to bring some of the accused to the court, hanging him by his wrists. They used all the influence they possessed in Seoul, through the French, to force the Korean government to order the commission to yield to their demands for the release of prisoners already in the hands of the law, and for the remittance of punishment as they should dictate.
They induced the commissioner to promise that he would not try to arrest any one for a week, on the solemn assurance that they would themselves bring all the accused to court, and then, although they had two of the most notorious malefactors in their house for several days before the week expired, they allowed them to escape.
They forced themselves into the commissioner’s presence and with bluff and reiterated demands wearied him into sending his resignation to Seoul, which, however, the king refused to accept.
“Father Wilhelm’s” church is in a valley about ten miles from Hai Ju, entirely surrounded by high hills. The entrance to the valley at that time was guarded by sentinels, and the points of vantage on the hill tops were occupied in the same way. When any one is seen approaching, a signal is given, and the people (for the village is full of fugitives from justice) flee into the church, which it will be seen serves the triple purpose of a court with torture chamber, a citadel, and a place of worship.
When police were sent there with warrants of arrest for some of the worst miscreants, Father Wilhelm met them at the door with a revolver, demanding what they wanted. When told, he requested to see the warrants, denied that any such persons were there, would not allow them to enter, nor would he return the warrants, but with threats bade them begone. On more than one occasion posses of armed men were sent by him to rescue criminals who had been seized.
The cruelest forms of torture, such as are used only by Korean officials in cases of murder and treason, were used by the priests in their churches to force poor peasants to give over their money or the deeds of their houses and farms. Mr. Underwood and Dr. Moffett spent some weeks in Hai Ju, carefully studying these matters and in close attendance at the trials. In addition to the above facts they discovered that this was not a persecution waged upon Protestants by Catholics, but a system of blackmail laid on the whole community, and that the number of complaints brought in by non-Christian natives were, compared to those from Christians, as twenty to one. Again, that the French priests were (in the present instance, at least) demanding, as in China, a right to sit with a judge in a court of justice and modify sentences. We learned further that the people were tormented to the verge of insurrection, and had planned to rise on a certain day, when the news that a commission had been appointed, and that the missionaries had come down to see fair play at the investigations, calmed and decided them to await further developments.
The results of the trials were very unsatisfactory. With the small force of men at his command, with the priests foiling every effort to make arrests, few men were apprehended. Those who were brought to trial, by their own admissions and self-contradictions, and by the consistent and overwhelming testimony of many witnesses, were all proved guilty of the charges laid against them. The priests, and by far the majority of the miscreants, including the ringleaders, who could not be caught, went scot free. The commissioner made a report to the Korean government, asking for the deportation of the two priests, Wilhelm and Le Gac, which the Korean government did not ask, but which it would have been thought should hardly have been necessary. Were not the Koreans long suffering to a remarkable degree, as well as a feeble power, they would long since have risen and cast out all foreigners from their desecrated shores. In the light of what we have seen and heard here, the cause of the Boxer troubles in China is not far to seek. Thus is national sentiment aroused against us; for long persistence in conduct similar to this was foreign blood spilled like water there, and for such reasons are the gates of Thibet barred to the gospel.
The following official report of the interview between the priest and the governor of Whang Hai province, in the presence of the inspector sent by the king, will show what a state of affairs existed.
“Translation of the official report of the interview held between the governor of Whang Hai Do and Father Wilhelm, in the presence of the Inspector Yi Eung Ik. Eighth day 2d Moon Koang Mu.
“In the seventh year of Quang Mo in the second moon and eighth day, the governor of Whang Hai Do, Yi Yung Chick, and the French teacher, Hong Sok Ku (Mons. Wilhelm), conferred. Hong Sok Ku said, ‘The controversy between the governor and myself arose from the governor’s not appeasing my wrath by arresting Mr. Pak Chang Mou of Whang Ju, and punishing him. This Pak, at night after dark, had thrown stones at the church of Han Sinpu (a native Korean priest), and I therefore had spoken to the local magistrate of Whang Ju and asked to have him arrested and imprisoned, but Pak, through his local influence, had returned undisturbed to his home, and as there seemed no other means of having him punished, I wrote a letter to the governor, asking that he would have Pak brought up to the provincial town of Hai Ju and severely punished. The governor replied that he could not have the people of local magistracies brought up to Hai Ju, and I therefore supposed that the governor had no power to arrest the people of outside local magistracies, and when I learned to my surprise that there was an order for the arrest of some of the Christians (Romanist) of Shinampo by the governor, feeling sure that it was a false order, I released by force all those whom the police were arresting, and at once ordered all my Christians, if any one came out to arrest them again, to resist it utterly.’”
The governor replied: “As for the business of Pak of Whang Ju, since he had been already arrested and imprisoned in Whang Ju, and there was therefore no reason why he should be brought up to Hai Ju, I did not do so as you had asked, and as for my reply in my former letter, that I could not arrest him, it was in accordance with the Chibang Cheido (Book of Laws) in regard to local and provincial jurisdiction, and the reason why, after my people have appealed, I can order them arrested to try the case, is in accordance with the Chaipan Chang Chung, or book of rules for courts of justice, and if you had any doubts about the earlier or later affair, while it would not have been out of the way to have asked a question, is it right with your followers to gather a crowd and organize a band to arrest and carry off policemen, to release and set free those who have broken the laws, and to order your followers to resist authority, so making your people fall into sin, and making it impossible for the appointed authorities to administer justice?
“Desirous of instructing these ignorant people, I sent one of the Chusas (high official next to the governor) attached to this governorship, but you sent out a company of men with firearms, twelve miles, and after dark seized and carried off this official. A Chusa is a national government officer, military arms are outrageous things; leaning upon what authority did you do such things as these, and by whose authority do you arrest and carry off Koreans and try to administer justice?”
Mons. Wilhelm replied: “I myself know that these things are not right, and did them purposely. As far as the book Chaipan Chang Chung is concerned, I know nothing about it, but I simply relied upon the previous letter which you had sent. I desired to understand the matter, and sent you another letter, and because you sent my letter back to me I still feel very angry.”
The governor replied: “But your saying that you only recognized my first letter shows you simply know one thing and cannot know two; as for your letter and my returning it without an answer, it was because, after the arrest of my Chusa, I had sent by special messenger a letter to you, and you had given no answer and sent the man back emptyhanded, I was indignant. As I had no reply to my letter to you in regard to the Chang Yung affair, why should I only answer letters? Because I thought it would be wrong for me to keep your letter that I did not answer, I returned it.”
Father Wilhelm replied: “Because in the governor’s last letter on the envelope he had written Saham I did not answer the letter.” Saham is written outside of letters which are replies from one slightly superior in rank.
The governor replied: “Is it right to allow questions to go unanswered; is it because you have nothing to say that you fail to answer all these questions?”
Father Wilhelm replied: “When Pak Chang Mou’s wrong-doings had not yet been punished, is it right that he should have been made one of the tax collectors? When you have arrested and brought him to Hai Ju and severely punished him, then only will my wrath be appeased.”
The governor then said: “In the eighth moon of last year when I went to Whang Ju, I looked carefully into this affair of Pak’s. Although it was stated that he had thrown stones, there was no sure proof, and yet he had been locked up in the local jail and had been punished, during the investigation, how, then, can you say that he has gone unpunished? How can you claim that giving him a petty office several months later is an injustice? Then, too, you took this man to your church and there beat him, and still claim that your wrath has not been appeased. Would you have me arrest him, bring him here and make him and the complainants face each other?”
Père Wilhelm answered: “Although I did have him beaten with ten strokes, it was not a punishment for his main crime, but because when his magistrate sent Pak to confess his sins he was on the contrary impudent, and therefore I punished him, but his former offence still existed.”
The governor replied: “When you are not a Korean official, is it right that you should arrest and beat Koreans?”
Father Wilhelm said: “It is because if I did not beat them I could not hold my position as superior that I do it.”
The governor answered: “You, a private citizen, arresting and beating Koreans and doing wrong, and your written orders to your people, have caused them to break the laws in eight different ways. They resist the authority of the government, beat the underlings, and refuse to pay their taxes.
“In addition, at their churches and meeting places they establish courts of justice.
“Still further, without order, in companies they rush into the presence of magistrates to terrify them.
“Still again, of their own accord they arrest, beat and imprison the people.
“Again, calling it money for the building of churches, they extort contributions by force from the people.
“Furthermore, at their own desire they cut down trees used for Korean spirit worship, they organize bands to forcibly bury the dead and move graves; and still further, they force people, who have no desire to do so, to enter their church.”
Father Wilhelm replied: “I will with great care stop these eight offences and will not allow them to do as before; have no fear.”
Thus ends the report of this unique interview between the governor of one of the most populous provinces of Korea and the French missionary. It is to be regretted, however, that his ready promise in regard to nearly all the eight offenses was repeatedly broken within a very short time after it was made. I will add one or two other transcriptions from the official documents, which came directly from the commissioner’s office to our hands, and which translations appeared in the Korea Review, March, 1903. The first report of the imperial inspector to the government:
“I have looked carefully into the disturbances among the people in the different counties, and the various crimes up to this date noted in the public records are only one or two in hundreds. Outside of two or three counties, all the magistrates have been under this oppression, and with folded hands, are unable to stir. The poor helpless people sit waiting for doom to overtake them. Receiving imperial orders to look into the matter, I have undertaken the task, and daily crowds with petitions fill the court. There are no words to express the sights one sees, the stories one hears. Depending on the influence of foreigners (French), the Catholics’ issuing of orders to arrest is of daily occurrence; their runners are fiercer than leopards, and the torture they inflict is that reserved for only thieves and robbers; life is ground out of the people, goods and livelihood are gone. Unless this kind of thing is put down with strong hand, thousands of lives will be lost in the end.
“A French priest by the name of Wilhelm, living in Chang-ke-dong in Sin-ch-un, a retired spot among the hills, has gathered about him a mob of lawless people. Their houses number several hundred. Many of them carry foreign guns, so that country people are afraid, and dare not take action. A number of those already arrested have been set free by this priest. Most of those who have slipped the net have escaped there, and now form a band of robbers. There is no knowing where trouble will next arise, and it is a time of special anxiety. Those who assemble there at the ‘call of the whistle’ (bandit) are outlaws, and must be arrested. They may, however, make use of dangerous weapons, so we cannot do otherwise than be prepared for them. This is my report. Look carefully into it. Send word to the office of generals. Wire me permission to use soldiers, and as occasion offers lend me a helping hand.”
While this painful business was on, and my husband was daily attending the trials and listening to the harrowing tales of the poor, tortured and robbed people, and seeing heartrending evidences of the cruelties inflicted upon them, I was holding meetings with the Christian women who came every morning to study the Bible. One visit only was made to a small village a short distance outside the city, where there were quite a number of Christian families.
All the Christian women quickly assembled at the house of my hostess, a wholesome farmer’s wife, who came out to the road to welcome me, took both my hands in hers with a long gentle pressure, and a look of gladness as bright as if I had been a radiant angel from heaven, or a returned apostle. Her small rooms were soon filled with Christians and others, who listened while we held a service and talked of the things concerning the kingdom.
Then they, with bounteous hospitality, brought in a store of the best their homes contained of dainties. They feasted my two native companions and myself and all the visitors, both Christians and mere sightseers, and even my chair coolies were given as much as they could eat, which is no mean amount.
One woman said that her eldest son had just returned from Sorai and was urging his father to sell his good farm and home and move there with his family, so that he and his brothers might attend that school and church and learn more about God and his will.
The work in this hamlet all started through the instrumentality of a young girl in Hai Ju, not seventeen years old, who, having formerly lived here, after her marriage into a Christian household in the city, and after her conversion, often returned to her old home and begged her family to believe and accept Christ.
Though they scoffed and reviled at first, after a while they began to listen, and finally one, then another, yielded their hearts. After the manner of Korean Christians, they “passed on the word,” and so at length seven families were trusting Christ.
After seven weeks in Hai Ju we returned to Seoul, having done all that was possible in the matters we had been sent there to look after, and having made it plain that Americans would not stand by and see the natives persecuted and wronged without a strong protest; for while we try not to interfere between them and their rulers (and this is at times extremely difficult), we do not feel the same obligation in the case of French priests. Our hope now is that these outrages will henceforth be somewhat restricted and that Protestants will at least remain unmolested, as the mere advertisement and bringing to the light of the evil would do much to prevent its repetition, the children of darkness having an ancient dislike of the light.
Before we returned from Hai Ju we learned of the death by smallpox of our dear brother, Mr. W. V. Johnson, who had arrived early in February of that year, his consecrated young wife having died on the way to the field, in Kobe, Japan.
We all felt the sweet devoted spirit of the earnest young brother, and knew that these two valuable lives were not given in vain, but that God has accepted their sacrifice as if they had done all they planned, and has chosen to call them to reward a little earlier, because they will better so fulfil his purpose, for, through and in them. Again, only a few months later, we were all called to part with a dear sister, Mrs. F. S. Miller, whose loving sympathy and patient endurance of sickness and pain had endeared her to missionaries and native Christians alike. Not a month before her own death, her hands prepared the casket for the cold little form of one of the dear little missionary babies, of whom so many are now in heaven. And so, as was said at the time of her release, “Korea seems a gate to heaven.” Sure it is good to go from service to the vision of the King.
This little chain of reminiscences is now at an end. Its object has simply been to interest Christian people in this most interesting country, and to show what God is working here.
It has been necessarily limited, mainly to the experience of one pair of missionaries, because the writer has neither the knowledge nor the liberty to speak freely of the lives and work of all, and neither the ability nor the space to write a complete history of mission work in Korea. It is hoped that although so restricted, as to be a mere glimpse of a small fraction of what is being done, it will serve to make plain what grand opportunities are theirs (at present) who would lead a nation out of bondage into liberty, the only liberty worth calling the name, or that sinful mortals can use, “the liberty of Christ.”
Korea, lying as she does so close to China (whose future is fraught with such mighty possibilities of good or evil to the whole world), with such close affinities and wide sympathies for that people, is, we hope, to be a polished shaft in God’s quiver in conquering that great nation for his kingdom. But whatever his eternal purpose may be, there is no doubt as to our present privilege and “power to the last particle is duty.”
If in these pages you have seen much that leads you to think the land is a difficult one in which to live, if you have read of political unrest, bad government, riots, robbers and plagues; if you have learned that missionaries have died of typhus fever, smallpox, dysentery and other violent forms of disease, this will only serve to remind you that the more valuable the prize to be won, the greater the difficulty and cost. If you desire to share in the joy of this great harvest, and are worthy, you will fear no danger, shrink from no obstacles, either for yourselves or for your loved ones, whom you are asked to give to the work.
God placed an angel with a flaming sword which turned every way at the gate of paradise. Is the kingdom still thus guarded? Must we all who would enter follow him who was made perfect through suffering? What was our Lord’s meaning when he said, “The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.” Some of us are ready to pray that God would place another such flaming sword at the gate of our mission fields, so that no man or woman who could or would not brave such baptism of fire should enter. There is no more place on the mission field for the fearful and unbelieving than in heaven itself. Like Gideon’s army, let the applicants be reduced till only the resolute, the consecrated, those who believe in God, the people and themselves, are accepted for this mighty privilege, this high calling.
Let it only be remembered by all who would enter the Lord’s army to wrest the kingdom of heaven from the rulers of darkness, that he, whose we are, and whom we serve, he who never faltered on the thorny road that led to Calvary, who trod the wine press alone, who came with dyed garments through the conflict to victory, has bidden those who profess to love him, as one of his last commands, thrice repeated, feed his sheep.
“Lovest thou me? Feed my sheep.”
“Lovest thou me? Feed my sheep.”
“Lovest thou me? Feed my lambs.”