Korea's Fight for Freedom

by Fred A. McKenzie

"It is impossible to know whether these statements are true or false, but we feel certain that it is in Pyeng-yang, in the Church schools,—in a certain college and a certain girls' school—in the compound of these foreigners. Really this foreign community is very vile."[1]

[Footnote 1: Osaka Asahi, quoted in the Peking and Tientsin Times, March 38,1919.]

A veritable reign of terror was instituted. There were wholesale arrests and the treatment of many of the people in prison was in keeping with the methods employed by the Japanese on the Conspiracy Trial victims. The case of a little shoe boy aroused special indignation. The Japanese thought that he knew something about the organization of the demonstration—why they thought so, only those who can fathom the Japanese mind would venture to say—so they beat and burned him almost to death to make him confess. A lady missionary examined his body afterwards. There were four scars, five inches long, where the flesh had been seared with a red-hot iron. His hands had swollen to twice their normal size from beating, and the dead skin lay on the welts. He had been kicked and beaten until he fainted. Then they threw water over him and gave him water to drink until he recovered when he was again piled with questions and beaten with a bamboo rod until he collapsed.

Some of those released from prison after they had satisfied the Japanese of their innocence had dreadful tales to tell. Sixty people were confined in a room fourteen by eight feet, where they had to stand up all the time, not being allowed to sit or lie down. Eating and sleeping they stood leaning against one another. The wants of nature had to be attended to by them as they stood. The secretary of one of the mission schools was kept for seven days in this room, as part of sixteen days' confinement, before he was released.

A student, arrested at his house, was kept at the police station for twenty days. Then they let him go, having found nothing against him. His bruised body when he came out showed what he had suffered. He had been bound and a cord around his shoulders and arms pulled tight until the breastbone was forced forward and breathing almost stopped. Then he was beaten with a bamboo stick on the shoulders and arms until he lost consciousness. The bamboo stick was wrapped in paper so as to prevent the skin breaking and bleeding. He saw another man beaten ten times into unconsciousness, and ten times brought round; and a boy thrown down hard on the floor and stamped on repeatedly until he lost consciousness. Those who came out were few; what happened to those who remained within the prison must be left to the imagination.

Despite everything, the demonstrations of the people still continued. On March 7th the people of the villages of Po Paik and Kan, twenty miles north of Pyeng-yang, came out practically en masse to shout for independence. Next day four soldiers and one Korean policeman arrived, asking for the pastor of the church. They could not find him, so they seized the school-teacher, slashed his head and body with their swords and thrust a sword twice into his legs. An elder of the church stepped up to protest against such treatment, whereupon a Japanese soldier ran a sword through his side. As the soldiers left some young men threw stones at them. The soldiers replied with rifle fire, wounding four men.

Soldiers and police came again and again to find the pastor and church officers who had gone into hiding. On April 4th they seized the women and demanded where their husbands were, beating them with clubs and guns, the wife of one elder being beaten till great red bruises showed all over her body.

The police evidently made up their minds that the Christians were responsible for the demonstration, and they determined to rid the place of them. The services of some liquor sellers were enlisted to induce people to tear down the belfry of the church. On April 18th a Japanese came and addressed the crowd through an interpreter.

He told them that the Christians had been deceived by the "foreign devils," who were an ignorant, low-down lot of people, and that they should be driven out and go and live with the Americans who had corrupted them. There was nothing in the Bible about independence and "Mansei." Three thousand cavalry and three thousand infantry were coming to destroy all the Christians, and if they did not drive them out but continued to live with them, they would be shot and killed.

A number of half drunken men got together to drive out the Christians. This was done. A report was taken to the gendarmes that the Christians had been driven away, whereupon the villagers were praised. In other parts, near by, the same chief of gendarmes was ordering the families of Christians out of their homes, arresting the men and leaving the women and children to seek refuge where they might.