"The mother country and Chosen, now merging in one body, makes a State. Its population and strength were found adequate enough to enter upon a League with the Powers and conduct to the promotion of world peace and enlightenment, while at the same time the Empire is going faithfully to discharge its duty as an Ally by saving its neighbour from difficulty. This is the moment of time when the bonds of unity between the Japanese and Koreans are to be more firmly tightened and nothing will be left undone to fulfill the mission of the Empire and to establish its prestige on the globe. It is evident that the two peoples, which have ever been in inseparably close relations from of old, have lately been even more closely connected. The recent episodes are by no means due to any antipathy between the two peoples. It will be most unwise credulously to swallow the utterances of those refractory people who, resident always abroad, are not well informed upon the real conditions in the peninsula, but, nevertheless, are attempting to mislead their brethren by spreading wild fictions and thus disturbing the peace of the Empire, only to bring on themselves the derision of the Powers for their indulgence in unbridled imagination in seizing upon the watchword 'self-determination of races' which is utterly irrelevant to Chosen, and in committing themselves to thoughtless act and language. The Government are now doing their utmost to put an end to such unruly behaviour and will relentlessly punish anybody daring to commit offences against the peace. The present excitement will soon cease to exist, but it is to be hoped that the people on their part will do their share in restoring quiet by rightly guarding their wards and neighbours so as to save them from any offence committing a severe penalty."[1]
[Footnote 1: Quoted from the Seoul Press.]
The new era of relentless severity began by the enactment of various fresh laws. The regulations for Koreans going from or coming into their country were made more rigid. The Regulations Concerning Visitors and Residents had already been revised in mid-March. Under these, any person who, even as a non-commercial act, allowed a foreigner to stay in his or her house for a night or more must hereafter at once report the fact to the police or gendarmes. A fresh ordinance against agitators was published in the Official Gazette. It provided that anybody interfering or attempting to interfere in the preservation of peace and order with a view to bringing about political change would be punished by penal servitude or imprisonment for a period not exceeding ten years. The ordinance would apply to offences committed by subjects of the Empire committed outside its domains, and it was specially emphasized in the explanations of the new law given out that it would apply to foreigners as well as Japanese or Koreans.
The Government-General introduced a new principle, generally regarded by jurists of all lands as unjust and indefensible. They made the law retroactive. People who were found guilty of this offence, their acts being committed before the new law came into force, were to be sentenced under it, and not under the much milder old law. This was done.
The Koreans were quickly to learn what the new military regime meant. One of the first examples was at Cheamni, a village some miles from Suigen, on the Seoul-Fusan Railway. Various rumours reached Seoul that this place had been destroyed, and a party of Americans, including Mr. Curtice of the Consulate, Mr. Underwood, son of the famous missionary pioneer, and himself a missionary and a correspondent of the Japan Advertiser, went to investigate. After considerable enquiry they reached a place which had been a village of forty houses. They found only four or five standing. All the rest were smoking ruins.
"We passed along the path," wrote the correspondent of the Japan Advertiser, "which ran along the front of the village lengthwise, and in about the middle we came on a compound surrounded by burnt poplars, which was filled with glowing ashes. It was here that we found a body frightfully burned and twisted, either of a young man or a woman. This place we found later was the Christian church, and on coming down from another direction on our return I found a second body, evidently that of a man, also badly burned, lying just outside the church compound. The odour of burned flesh in the vicinity of the church was sickening.
"We proceeded to the end of the village and climbed the hill, where we found several groups of people huddled under little straw shelters, with a few of their pitiful belongings about them. They were mostly women, some old, others young mothers with babes at breast, but all sunk in the dull apathy of abject misery and despair.
"Talking to them in their own language and with sympathy, Mr. Underwood soon won the confidence of several and got the story of what happened from different groups, and in every case these stories tallied in the essential facts. The day before we arrived, soldiers came to the village, some time in the early afternoon, and ordered all the male Christians to gather in the church. When they had so gathered, to a number estimated to be thirty by our informers, the soldiers opened fire on them with rifles and then proceeded into the church and finished them off with sword and bayonets. After this they set fire to the church, but as the direction of the wind and the central position of the church prevented the upper houses catching, soldiers fired these houses individually, and after a time left.
"As we passed down the ruined village, returning to our rikishas, we came on the last house of the village, which was standing intact, and entered in conversation with the owner, a very old man. He attributed the safety of his house to its being slightly removed, and to a vagary of the wind. He was alive because he was not a Christian and had not been called into the church. The details of his story of the occurrence tallied exactly with the others, as to what had happened."
One example will serve to show what was going on now all over the country. The following letter was written by a cultured American holding a responsible position in Korea: