Korea's Fight for Freedom

by Fred A. McKenzie

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.