In Korea with Marquis Ito

by George Trumbull Ladd

All these appointments have hitherto been dependent on the “gracious favor” of His Majesty and have been dispensed without regard to moral character or any form of fitness, or to the real interests of the nation. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that they have often been sold to those who offered the highest percentage of squeezes for the outstretched royal hand. To secure them, access to the ear of the Emperor is indispensable in most cases. Not a few of the most low-lived and unscrupulous of his subjects and of foreigners have been recipients of royal favors in this way. To quote the words of one who knows: “Now it was the interpreter of a foreign legation, now a common police spy, now a minister or ex-minister of State, and now some comparatively humble member of the Imperial entourage. The soothsayers, geomancers, and others of that ilk, were always present, and frequently influential in devising grotesque schemes which spelled profit to themselves and to other hangers-on of the court. But the most constant influence at court of late years was that exercised by some of the eunuchs. Among these, the chief eunuch Kang, was probably the most powerful. He grew rich upon the perquisites of office, and would undoubtedly be flourishing still, had it not been for the famous house-cleaning which the-court underwent some time ago. He then fled, and report has it (seemingly with good reason) that he was harbored nearly two weeks for a substantial consideration, in the house of a foreigner connected in a subordinate capacity with an American business concern. When in his heyday he exercised great personal influence with the Emperor, and there are well authenticated instances of cabinet ministers having bribed him in order to secure access to the Imperial presence.”

It should also be remembered that this state of things in the Court of Korea was not at all in spite of the Emperor, but was rather of his own choosing. Indeed, his character and habit of conducting his Imperial office was the principal effective reason for the perpetuation of such corruption. The signs of this stream of evil influence are by no means all concealed. Every day of my stay in Seoul I was witness to the line of jinrikishas, and the procession of pedestrians—many of a by no means prepossessing appearance—along the lane on which stands the gate through which those seeking audience were passing in to the palace enclosure. As to foreigners who, in person, are introduced to the Emperor, the Japanese Government had then a practically efficient control. But for Korean subjects, and for foreigners using Koreans to further their schemes, there was at that time still abundant access. And the number of those who visited this “prisoner in his palace” was frequently advertised in the daily news as counted by scores and by hundreds. To leave his “prison” and go out upon the streets of Seoul otherwise than on those rare ceremonial occasions when everything is prepared beforehand, would have been for His Majesty to break with the etiquette of centuries. Now, however, that the Japanese are in much more complete control, the freedom of the Emperor’s movements is greatly enlarged.

I shall not easily forget how the contrast between the new forces of spiritual uplift and the old forces of intellectual and moral degradation came over me, as I was present one Sunday at the morning service of the Methodist church, which stands just across the way from the palace enclosure. The combined congregations gathered here numbered an audience of more than one thousand, nearly one half of which were children. Bishop Ross preached a short and simple sermon, Dr. Jones interpreting. Several of the American delegates to the great missionary Conference in China, on their way homeward, were present, surprised and rejoicing in the size and enthusiasm of the Korean multitude of hearers. The girls from one of the schools patronized by Lady Om (whose true history is told in Mr. Angus Hamilton’s book, and who is now euphemously styled the “Emperor’s consort”), which had recently been complained of by the English edition of the Korean Daily News for “being used to foster allegiance to Japan,” were singing “I surrender all to Jesus.” But what was then being done a few yards distant, just over the palace wall, where were living a collection of as vulgar, ignorant, corrupt, and murderous men and women as were to be found anywhere in so-called “heathendom”?

How the intrigue and deceitfulness, combined with weakness, of the Korean Emperor and his Korean and foreign friends, terminated with the commission to The Hague Peace Conference is now a matter of history. As such, it demands a further study in its historical origins and historical setting.

The impression which I received as to the capacity and character of the Korean official and Yang-ban (or “gentry”) class was, on the whole, not reassuring in regard to their real willingness or ability to inaugurate and support governmental and industrial reforms in Korea. It is indeed difficult for one born and fostered under an Occidental—and, perhaps, especially an American—system of civilization justly to appreciate the institutions and the personal characteristics of the men of the Orient. Of this difficulty I had had an initial experience on my first visit to Japan fifteen years ago. Repeated visits to Japan, and intimate intercourse with Japanese of various classes, together with painstaking observation of the people, had enabled me to overcome this difficulty to a considerable extent, so far as the Land of the Rising Sun is concerned. But, as has already been indicated, Old Japan was really more like Mediæval Europe in many of its most essential psychological and social characteristics, than like either modern India, or China, or Korea. A winter spent in travel and lecturing rather widely over India was of more important service in coming to an understanding of the upper classes in Korea. This, too, is insufficient for a standard of comparison. With the high-caste Hindu a Westerner of reflective mind will, of course, have many intellectual interests in common. With the Korean Yang-ban, except in the very rarest cases, there can be no common interests of this kind. The problems of life and destiny, the Being of God, the constitution of the universe, the fundamental principles of ethics, politics, and law are of little concern to him. It is doubtful, indeed, whether it has ever dawned upon his mind that there are such questions worthy of patient consideration by the reflective powers. A few, but a few only—such, at any rate, was the impression made upon me—have a genuine, unselfish, and fairly intelligent sentiment of patriotism as distinguished from a desire to use office and influence for the promotion of their own self-interested ends. And these few—even that still smaller number who to the sentiment of patriotism add manly courage, strength of purpose, and readiness to suffer—are incapable of combining their forces so as to carry through in their own land any policy to secure the most imperatively needed reforms. After discussing this matter repeatedly with one of Korea’s most appreciative and respected foreign friends, I forced him to this admission: namely, there were not, then, so far as he knew, two leaders of men in all Korea who could come together, trust each other, agree together, and stand together, to fight and work for the good of their country to the bitter end. Moreover, had it been possible to find two, or even twenty, such strong and trusted political leaders, under his late Majesty and the unpurged court of his rule, the reformers could not have escaped exile or assassination, so far as Majesty and Court were permitted to have their own way. Indeed, it was during all that spring only the determined purpose of the Japanese Government, as administered by Marquis Ito, that made possible the inauguration and progress of any measure of reform. It was the same wise policy that stood between the Emperor and a fate similar to that endured by his royal consort at dawn of October 8, 1895. And only after his friend, the Resident-General, hoping for a long time against the repeated violation of the grounds of hope, had reached the sad conclusion that the Emperor’s “disease was incurable,” and that the vital interests of Korea as well as of Japan demanded the termination of his unfortunate and disgraceful career, did the event take place. Even then, however, it was forced by his own cabinet ministers.

As to the general character of the administration of the magistrates throughout the country of Korea, in the winter and spring of 1906 and 1907, there can be no difference of intelligent opinion. It was essentially the same which it had been for hundreds of years. With rare exceptions, which were liable to make the magistrate suspected and traduced to the Emperor and his court, the local jurisdiction in Korea was a system of squeezes and acts of oppression, capable of classification only under two important specific differences. These differences were, first, the marks of strength and corruption combined with cruelty, and, second, of weakness and corruption without obvious cruelty. The following extracts from the Korean Daily News—the paper which (with its native edition) Mr. Hulbert and Mr. Bethell, its editor, were employing to excite foreign and native opposition to the Japanese—are only a small number of the items of news on which this impression was based:

As a high official was passing through the streets heavily guarded, a number of men belonging to the chain-gang were passed. One of them was heard to remark that if the official were not a criminal himself he would not need the heavy guard, and he added that after his term of penal labor was over the first thing he would do would be to kill that official and a few more like him. These words were heard by all and they continued until the minister was out of sight.

A man of Ma-chun (near Chemulpo) was recently arrested by order of the local magistrate and tortured without cause. After confinement and torture for a period of eight days the man expired and his relatives are now asking the Supreme Court to look into the matter and punish the magistrate.

A report from South Chul-la Province states that the people in a certain section there do not look with favor on the new tax-collectors; on the contrary, they say that they will tie up the collectors with ropes and make life hard for them.

A Japanese report from the far Northeast says that a band of 500 Koreans attacked the Japanese at Whang-hai-po and some people were wounded by the Koreans; they were repulsed by Japanese gendarmes from Kyung-heung.