In Korea with Marquis Ito

by George Trumbull Ladd

Protests and petitions followed the enactment of the Treaty of November, 1905. The Emperor refused to receive the petitions or to give audience to the petitioners. And when two men, among the most sincere and blameless of his subjects—General Min Yung-whong and Mr. Choi Ik-hiun—persisted in petitioning to be punished (as would have been in accordance with Korean custom under similar circumstances) for their disobedience to the Emperor’s commands in refusing to accept the Treaty, the Emperor declined to punish them. The petitioners then transferred their efforts from the Palace to the Supreme Court, and were disappointed there also. One of them, perhaps both, undertook to punish themselves by suicide. General Min thus became the typical martyr of the period. He is described by one who knew him well as “a man of amiable character, of dignified manners, and pleasing address. He was known at one time as the ‘good Min,’ to distinguish him from the other members of the family to which the late Queen belonged.” But it has already been shown that, during the entire course of Korea’s history, such men have almost always been without sufficient influence, or strength of character, to serve their country well and escape death—usually, at the hands of the Emperor or their rivals, sometimes, however, by their own hands. For a time the air was full of rumors of suicide and uprisings; but in fact there was little of anything of the kind, even in Seoul; the stories of wholesale suicides are false. Beyond Seoul, and outside of a few of the larger towns in which greater numbers of the Yang-bans resided, there was scarcely any excitement of any kind. The Treaty then went into effect, on the whole quietly, under Marquis Ito who had negotiated it as the Representative of Japan.

In this way the Japanese Government in Korea was substituted for the Korean Government in all matters affecting the relations of foreign countries, and their nationals, to the peninsula. The retirement of the Foreign Legations followed logically and as a matter of course. It is needless to say that this change of responsibility for the conduct of these relations was accepted without dissent or formal protest from the Governments of the civilized world. Indeed, with the exception of Russia, all the nations supremely interested had acknowledged already that, under the Protocols of 1904, Korea had lost its claim to be recognized as an independent state in respect of its foreign affairs.

CHAPTER XII
RULERS AND PEOPLE

A just appreciation of the mental and moral characteristics of alien races is a delicate and difficult task to achieve, even for the experienced student of such subjects. From others it is scarcely fair, no matter how favorable the opportunities for observation may have been, to expect any large measure of real success in the accomplishment of this task. The more important reasons for the failure of most attempts in race psychology may be resolved into the following two: a limitation of the observer’s own experiences, which prevents sympathy and, therefore, breadth of interpretation; and the inability to rise above the more strictly personal point of view. In both these respects, women are on the whole decidedly inferior to men; accordingly, their account of the ethnic peculiarities—of the ideas, motives, and morals—of foreign peoples is customarily less trustworthy. The inquirer after a judicial estimate of the native character will find this fact amply illustrated in Korea. But what is more weighty in its influence as bearing upon such a problem as that now under discussion is this: all the inherent difficulties are enhanced when it is required to understand and appreciate an Oriental race by a member of a distinctively Western civilization. It is without doubt true that all men, of whatever race or degree of civilization, are essentially alike; they constitute what certain authorities in anthropology have fitly called “a spiritual unity.” But for the individual who cannot expect to find within himself whatever is necessary to understand and interpret this unity, and especially for the observer who does not care even to detect and recognize the existence of such a unity, the difference between Orient and Occident is a puzzle—perpetually baffling and seemingly insoluble.

Now in some not wholly unimportant aspects of Korean character and Korean civilization, these difficulties exist in an exaggerated form. Korea is old in its enforced ignorance, sloth, and corruption; but Korea is new to rawness, in its response to the stimulus of foreign and Western ideas, and in its exposure to the observation, either careless and casual or patient and studious, of visitors and residents from abroad. Korea has not yet been awakened to any definite form of intelligent, national self-consciousness. At the same time, neither its material resources, nor its physical characteristics, nor its history and antiquities, nor its educational possibilities, nor the distinctive spirit of its people, have ever been at all thoroughly investigated by others. No wonder, then, that the views expressed by the “oldest residents” in Korea regarding the characteristics of its rulers and its people—Emperor, late Queen, Yang-bans, pedlers, and peasants (for there is almost no middle class)—are strangely conflicting. Diverse and even contradictory traits of character are, with equal confidence and on the basis of an equally long and intimate acquaintance, ascribed by different persons to all these classes.

The true and satisfactory account of these differences of opinion is not, however, to be found by wholly denying the justness of either of the opposite points of view. Contradictions are inherent in that very type of character of which the Koreans afford so many striking examples. Indeed, all peoples, when at ascertain stage of race-culture, and the multitudes in all civilizations, are just that—bundles of confused and conflicting ideas, impulses, and practices, which have never been unified into a consistent “character.” The average Korean is not only liable to be called, he is liable actually to be, kindly and yet cruel, generous and yet intensely avaricious, with a certain sense of honor and yet hopelessly corrupt in his official relations. Accordingly, as one puts emphasis on this virtue to the exclusion or suppression of that vice, or turns the eye upon the dark and disgusting side of the picture and shuts out the side that might afford pleasure and hope, will one’s estimate be made of the actual condition and future prospects of the nation.

But let us begin our brief description with the man who has been for more than a generation the chief ruler of Korea, the now ex-Emperor. He is a typical Korean—especially in respect of his characteristic weakness of character, his taste for and adeptness at intrigue, his readiness to deceive and corrupt others, and himself to be deceived and corrupted. For all this no specially occult reasons need to be assigned. With a weak nature, his youth spent under the pernicious influence of eunuchs and court concubines and hangers-on, his manhood dominated by an unceasing and bloody feud between his wife and his father, his brief period of “independence” one orgy of misrule, and his latest years controlled by sorceresses, soothsayers, low-born and high-born intriguers, and selfish and unwise foreign advisers: what but incurably unsound character, uncontrollable instability of conduct, and a destiny fated to be full of disaster, could be expected from such a man so placed?

The father of the ex-Emperor was Yi Ha-eung, Prince of Heung Song, who was long the so-called “Regent” or “Prince-Parent,” and is best known in history as the “Tai Won Kun.” It has been said of him that “he was the grandson of a great and unfortunate crown prince, the great-grandson of a famous king, the nephew of another king, and the father of still another king.” The lineal ancestor of the Tai Won Kun was Yong-jong, who reigned from 1724 to 1776. This sovereign quarrelled with his own son and had him put to death as insane; but other issue failing, the crown descended through the murdered crown prince, and from him through three lines of monarchs. Until his son was chosen to occupy the throne, the Tai Won Kun, although he had married into the powerful Min family, does not seem to have exercised much influence in politics. But in 1864, on the death of the king, without male issue the Dowager Queen Cho, by what is reported to have been a not altogether legitimate procedure, proclaimed the second son of the Tai Won Kun, then a boy of only twelve years, as the successor to the throne.

Little is exactly known as to the care or education of the boyish king during his earliest years. It is commonly reported that he was fond of outdoor sports, especially of archery, and disinclined to study. Yet he is reputed to be a fine Chinese penman and to be well acquainted with the Chinese classics. His father was a strict disciplinarian and, although he was never legally in control of affairs during his son’s minority, his influence was dominant so long as he kept on good terms with the wily Queen Dowager and the Ministers of her selection. The failure of all foreign attempts to enter into friendly relations with the Koreans, and the persecution and slaughter of foreign Christian priests and of thousands of Korean Christians during this period, are customarily attributed to the influence of the Tai Won Kun.