In Korea with Marquis Ito

by George Trumbull Ladd

Water-Gate at Pyeng-Yang.

The boat landed us at the foot of the celebrated “Peony Hill,” part way up which is situated the decayed pavilion in which royalty used to be fed and given to drink on the occasion of excursions from the city to this sightly place. From this point the views bring the past history and the present prospects of Pyeng-yang together in an interesting way. For, looking to the right, one sees an ancient pagoda and the remains of a Buddhist temple. Looking forward and downward, the eye is well pleased by taking in at once the pleasant prospect of water and rock and fields which the ascent has given only bit by bit, as it were. Looking upward one sees the difficult heights which the Japanese troops stormed so unexpectedly but successfully in the invasion of more than three centuries ago; and also in the war with China, when they turned the guns of the Chinese forces from their own fortifications upon themselves and slaughtered the unfortunate until the streets of the city were choked with corpses. But to the left, and lying just below, is the green island on which the pumping-works to supply the foul city with cleansing streams are soon to be erected. Beyond the island across the river are the pastures, where the breeding of improved horses is to be carried on by a partnership of both governments; and still further beyond are the coal fields which the Residency-General is trying to preserve for the Crown against the efforts of both native and foreign promoters, to exploit them to their own rather than to the nation’s advantage. But the story of these and similar efforts will be told in other places of our narrative; and for the moment we will forget the interests of history and of present adventures, and will just thoughtlessly submit ourselves to the pleasure of being rowed down the beautiful river to the dirty and seditious city.

For it is a story of a nearly successful attempt at a seditious outbreak which would have had a most unfortunate and surely unsuccessful ending, that must now engage the attention. This story also, illustrates the Korean character, the Korean situation, and the relations of the two peoples, in no doubtful way.

The evening before, on Tuesday, April 9th, a committee of students from the missionary theological school had requested an interview with me on the following day; and the morning hour of eight o’clock had been appointed. At the time set they arrived—three in number—and the interview was held in Dr. Noble’s study or “work-shop.” My visitors began, Korean fashion, far off from their final goal, and meandered around it rather than toward it, like poachers feeling their way in the dark. An awkward pause was finally broken by my exhorting them to speak plainly and freely; at which they replied that their country’s condition was much misunderstood and that it was hoped that I would understand and sympathize with them. Of my desire to do this I at once assured them; but when the request seemed to be taking a more political turn, I replied that my interests, influence, and work, were all directed along the lines of morals, education, and religion. As a teacher, it was only as my teaching could get a hearing and have an influence on life, that my stay in Korea could benefit the Koreans themselves. At the same time, I could assure them of my confidence in Marquis Ito’s intention to administer his office in the interests of their countrymen.

During all this conversation there was the appearance, in general characteristic of all similar interviews between natives and foreigners, of a mixture of suspicion and duplicity which is well calculated to betray the unwary into serious mistakes. Certainly, the real motive for their coming was being kept back; the suppressed undercurrent of feeling that could be detected was such as by no means to encourage the confidence that the feeling of race-hatred had been thoroughly purged away from these theological students by the meeting for prayer and confession of the night before. But just as I was obliged to excuse myself in order to keep another engagement the true cause of their request for an interview suddenly sprang into the light. All the night before, they said, the Korean city of Pyeng-yang had been in a state of the most intense excitement over the report from Seoul that their Emperor was going to be deposed by the Japanese! There was just then only time for me to learn from my Japanese companion that he had not the slightest suspicion of how the report, even, could have originated, and to send word to this committee of interviewers that neither he nor I gave the slightest credence to so absurd a rumor.

But this matter did not end with a single interview conducted by the deputation of Christian students. Word had previously been sent that the Korean governor of Pyeng-yang desired to call upon me, and the promise had been made that he should be received in appropriate manner at noon of the same day. Soon after our return from the trip up the river, His Excellency appeared, accompanied by his secretary and by one of the committee of the morning who acted also as spokesman of this second deputation. For such it really was, rather than a merely friendly call from the chief native magistrate of the city. The Governor seemed exceedingly ill at ease; there was in even greater degree than had been the case with my visitors of the early morning, an appearance of mingled suspicion and suppressed excitement, of fear and of hatred. In this case, however, the real matter of concernment did not come at all to the fore. The conversation ended when there had been repeated declarations of my visitor’s interest in the improvement of education among his own countrymen, to which I had replied that I believed this to be the important work which should occupy all Korean patriots and all the wise and true foreign friends of Korea.

It afterward came to my knowledge that the Governor, although not himself a Christian, on leaving the house, went with his secretary and the theological student into the adjoining church of the Methodist mission, and there fell upon his face and began to beat his forehead on the floor and bewail the threatening situation for himself as the responsible magistrate, and the sad fate awaiting his country at the hands of the Japanese. The thought of the enormous interval between this conduct and that of any Japanese official, similarly situated, remains with me to reveal in vivid colors the difference of the two peoples. But all this was only in the small, essentially the same thing which has been going on in the large, throughout the centuries of Korean history.

On my return from the address to the Japanese I was almost immediately visited by a third deputation which consisted of the same theological student who had called twice before on this same day, and of two others whom I did not recognize. This time also the conversation began in similar roundabout fashion; indeed, this time the point of starting was even more remote in character from the real end which it was intended to reach. There was a preliminary recital of their country’s weakness, poverty, and need of foreign assistance; this was accompanied by the suggestion that possibly I might have some rich friend willing to contribute liberally to their mission school, or to the much needed enlargement of the church edifice. Again, the visitors were assured of my deep interest in the welfare of Korea and of my sincere desire to do what lay within my power to promote this welfare. It must be remembered, however, that I myself belonged to the class of teachers who, even in rich America, have little wealth at their disposal. To the best of my knowledge, I had not a single friend among the American millionaires. Should it ever be possible, however, nothing would be more to my mind than to direct some of the overflow of my country’s wealth into the channels of educational and religious work in needy Korea. I was sincerely impressed with the need and with the opportunity.