Korea's Fight for Freedom

by Fred A. McKenzie

He admitted that the men were in anything but a good way. "We may have to die," he said. "Well, so let it be. It is much better to die as a free man than to live as the slave of Japan."

He had not been gone long before still another called on me, a middle-aged Korean gentleman, attended by a staff of officials. Here was a man of rank, and I soon learned that he was the Commander-in-Chief for the entire district. I was in somewhat of a predicament. I had used up all my food, and had not so much as a cigar or a glass of whiskey left to offer him. One or two flickering candles in the covered courtyard of the inn lit up his care-worn face. I apologized for the rough surroundings in which I received him, but he immediately brushed my apologies aside. He complained bitterly of the conduct of his subordinate, who had risked an engagement that morning when he had orders not to. The commander, it appeared, had been called back home for a day on some family affairs, and hurried back to the front as soon as he knew of the trouble. He had come to me for a purpose. "Our men want weapons," he said. "They are as brave as can be, but you know what their guns are like, and we have very little ammunition. We cannot buy, but you can go to and fro freely as you want. Now, you act as our agent. Buy guns for us and bring them to us. Ask what money you like, it does not matter. Five thousand dollars, ten thousand dollars, they are yours if you will have them. Only bring us guns!"

I had, of course, to tell him that I could not do anything of the kind. When he further asked me questions about the positions of the Japanese I was forced to give evasive answers. To my mind, the publicist who visits fighting forces in search of information, as I was doing, is in honour bound not to communicate what he learns to the other side. I could no more tell the rebel leader of the exposed Japanese outposts I knew, and against which I could have sent his troops with the certainty of success, than I could on return tell the Japanese the strength of his forces.

All that night the rebels dribbled in. Several wounded men who had escaped from the fight the previous day were borne along by their comrades, and early on the following morning some soldiers came and asked me to do what I could to heal them. I went out and examined the men. One had no less than five bullet-holes in him and yet seemed remarkably cheerful. Two others had single shots of a rather more dangerous nature. I am no surgeon, and it was manifestly impossible for me to jab into their wounds with my hunting-knife in the hope of extracting the bullets. I found, however, some corrosive sublimate tabloids in my leather medicine case. These I dissolved, and bathed the wounds with the mixture to stop suppuration. I had some Listerine, and I washed their rags in it. I bound the clean rags on the wounds, bade the men lie still and eat little, and left them.

Soon after dawn the rebel regiments paraded in the streets. They reproduced on a larger scale the characteristics I had noted among the few men who came to visit me the evening before, poor weapons and little ammunition. They sent out men in advance before I departed in the morning to warn their outposts that I was an Englishman (really I am a Scots-Canadian, but to them it was all the same) who must not be injured. I left them with mutual good wishes, but I made a close inspection of my party before we marched away to see that all our weapons were in place. Some of my boys begged me to give the rebels our guns so that they might kill the Japanese!

We had not gone very far before we descended into a rocky and sandy plain by the river. Suddenly I heard one of my boys shout at the top of his voice, as he threw up his arms, "Yong guk ta-in." We all stopped, and the others took up the cry. "What does this mean?" I asked. "Some rebel soldiers are surrounding us," said Min-gun, "and they are going to fire. They think you are a Japanese." I stood against the sky-line and pointed vigorously to myself to show that they were mistaken. "Yong guk!" I shouted, with my boys. It was not dignified, but it was very necessary. Now we could see creeping, ragged figures running from rock to rock, closer and closer to us. The rifles of some were covering us while the others advanced. Then a party of a couple of dozen rose from the ground near to hand, with a young man in a European officer's uniform at their head. They ran to us, while we stood and waited. At last they saw who I was, and when they came near they apologized very gracefully for their blunder. "It was fortunate that you shouted when you did," said one ugly-faced young rebel, as he slipped his cartridge back into his pouch; "I had you nicely covered and was just going to shoot." Some of the soldiers in this band were not more than fourteen to sixteen years old. I made them stand and have their photographs taken.

By noon I arrived at the place from which the Korean soldiers had been driven on the day before. The villagers there were regarded in very unfriendly fashion by the rebels, who thought they had betrayed them to the Japanese. The villagers told me what was evidently the true story of the fight. They said that about twenty Japanese soldiers had on the previous morning marched quickly to the place and attacked two hundred rebels there. One Japanese soldier was hurt, receiving a flesh wound in the arm, and five rebels were wounded. Three of these latter got away, and these were the ones I had treated earlier in the morning. Two others were left on the field, one badly shot in the left cheek and the other in the right shoulder. To quote the words of the villagers, "As the Japanese soldiers came up to these wounded men they were too sick to speak, and they could only utter cries like animals—'Hula, hula, hula!' They had no weapons in their hands, and their blood was running on the ground. The Japanese soldiers heard their cries, and went up to them and stabbed them through and through and through again with their bayonets until they died. The men were torn very much with the bayonet stabs, and we had to take them up and bury them." The expressive faces of the villagers were more eloquent than mere description was.

Were this an isolated instance, it would scarcely be necessary to mention it. But what I heard on all sides went to show that in a large number of fights in the country the Japanese systematically killed all the wounded and all who surrendered themselves. This was not so in every case, but it certainly was in very many. The fact was confirmed by the Japanese accounts of many fights, where the figures given of Korean casualties were so many killed, with no mention of wounded or prisoners. In place after place also, the Japanese, besides burning houses, shot numbers of men whom they suspected of assisting the rebels. War is war, and one could scarcely complain at the shooting of rebels. Unfortunately much of the killing was indiscriminate, to create terror.

I returned to Seoul. The Japanese authorities evidently decided that it would not be advisable to arrest me for travelling in the interior without a passport. It was their purpose to avoid as far as possible any publicity being given to the doings of the Righteous Army, and to represent them as mere bands of disorderly characters, preying on the population. They succeeded in creating this opinion throughout the world.

But as a matter of fact the movement grew and grew. It was impossible for the Koreans to obtain arms; they fought without arms. In June, 1908, nearly two years afterwards, a high Japanese official, giving evidence at the trial of Mr. Bethell before a specially convened British court at Seoul, said that about 20,000 troops were then engaged in putting down the disturbances, and that about one-half of the country was in a condition of armed resistance. The Koreans continued their fight until 1915, when, according to Japanese official statements, the rebellion was finally suppressed. One can only faintly imagine the hardships these mountaineers and young men of the plains, tiger hunters, and old soldiers, must have undergone. The taunts about Korean "cowardice" and "apathy" were beginning to lose their force.