Korea's Fight for Freedom

by Fred A. McKenzie

The Japan Mail, as usual, echoed the same sentiments from Yokohama. "The policy of conciliation is all very well in the hands of such a statesman as the late Prince Ito," it declared. "But failing a successor to Prince Ito, more ordinary methods will be found safer as well as more efficacious."

Viscount Terauchi settled in the capital, and it was as though a chill had passed over the city. He said little, in public. Callers, high and low, found him stern and distant. "He has other things to think of than pleasant words," awed Secretaries repeated. Things suddenly began to happen. Four Japanese papers were suspended in a night. An item in their columns was objectionable. Let others be very careful. The police system was reversed. The gendarmerie were to be brought back again in full force. Every day brought its tale of arrests. Fifteen students were arrested this morning; the old Korean President of the Railway Board had been hurried to prison; the office of a paper in Pyeng-yang had been raided. It was as though the new Governor-General had deliberately set himself to spread a feeling of terror.

The Korean must not so much as look awry now. Police and gendarmes were everywhere. Spies seemed to catch men's thoughts. More troops were coming in. Surely something was about to happen.

Yet there were some smiling. They were called to the Residency-General to hear good news. This man was to be made a peer; he had served Japan well. This man, if he and his kin were good, was to be suitably rewarded. Bribes for the complaisant, prison for the obstinate.

Men guessed what was coming. There were mutterings, especially among the students. But the student who spoke bravely, even behind closed doors to-day, found himself in jail by evening. The very walls seemed to have ears.

Then it was remarked that the Ministers of State had not been seen for some days. They had shut themselves in, refusing to see all callers. They feared assassination, for they had sold their country. Policemen and troops were waiting within easy calls from their homes, lest mobs should try to burn them out, like rats out of their holes.

And then the news came. Korea had ceased to exist as an even nominally independent or separate country. Japan had swallowed it up. The Emperor—poor fool—was to step off his throne. After four thousand years, there was to be no more a throne of Korea. The Resident-General would now be Governor-General. The name of the nation was to be wiped out—henceforth it was to be Chosen, a province of Japan. Its people were to be remade into a lesser kind of Japanese, and the more adept they were in making the change, the less they would suffer. They were to have certain benefits. To mark the auspicious occasion there would be an amnesty—but a man who had tried to kill the traitor Premier would not be in it. Five per cent of taxes and all unpaid fiscal dues would be remitted. Let the people rejoice!

The Japanese expected an uprising, and were all ready for one. "Every man should be ready to fight and die in the cause of his nation's independence," they said tauntingly to the Koreans. But the people's leaders kept them in. Up on the hills, the Righteous Army was still struggling. The people must wait for better times.

One man stuck a proclamation on the West Gate, threatening death to the traitors. Man after man, scholars, old soldiers, men who loved Korea, committed suicide, after telling of their grief. "Why should we live when our land is dead?" they asked.

The Japanese sneered because the people did nothing. "We may assume, indeed, that all fear of a national uprising is now past," declared a semi-Government organ. "The nation obviously has no leaders competent to execute and direct a crusade in the cause of independence. Whether that lack is due to adroit management on the part of the Japanese or to unpatriotic apathy on the part of the Koreans we cannot pretend to judge."