In Korea with Marquis Ito

by George Trumbull Ladd

When thirteen years of age, the new king was married to a girl selected for him from the Min family. But until 1873 his position as ruler was only nominal; on the attainment of his majority, however, the deadly struggle between the wife and the father, the Queen and the Prince Parent, began to be revealed. A word as to the character of the woman is necessary in this place, in order to understand the conduct of the King and, as well, the recent history of Korea. The Queen was, without doubt, an unusually gifted and attractive woman, with the ability to attach others to her, both men and women, in a powerful way. But a more unscrupulous and horribly cruel character has rarely disgraced a throne, whether in ancient or in modern times. Her rivals among the women of the court were tortured and killed at her command; the adherents of the Tai Won Kun were decapitated and their bodies thrown into the streets or their heads used to festoon the gateway. One of the Koreans acquainted with court affairs during her reign informed a friend of the writer that, by careful calculation, he had reckoned the number of 2,867 persons put to death as the victims of her personal hatred and ambition. The number seems incredible, and there is no way to verify it; but no one who knows the history of the Korean Court, even down to very recent years, will assert that it cannot be correct. The tragic death of this woman, not improperly, drew temporarily a veil over these atrocities. But their existence is a part of the proof that, pernicious as was much of the father’s influence over the king, the influence of the wife and her family was yet more pernicious.

It was under influences such as these that the royal character of Yi-Hy-eung, now ex-Emperor, developed, and that all the earlier part of his reign was concluded. The result was to be expected—namely, an amiable and weak nature rendered deceitful, cruel, and corrupt. The impression made by his presence—as already described (see [p. 46 f.])—is not one of dignity and strength of character; but the voice is pleasant, the smile is winsome, the willingness to forgive and to do a good turn, if either or both can be done without too much sacrifice or inconvenience, is prompt and motived by kindly feeling. His Majesty is usually ready to listen without malignant anger or lasting resentment to unwelcome advice and even to stern rebuke. On the other hand, as already said, he is a master of intrigue; and more than once, until very lately, he has succeeded in quite surpassing at their own tricks the wily foreigners who thought to get an advantage over him. On the other hand, his ignorance and credulity have often rendered him an easy victim to the intrigue of others. As one foreign minister, a stanch friend, said of him: “You may give His Majesty the best advice, the only sensible advice possible under the circumstances; he will assent cordially to all you say, and you leave him confident that your advice will be followed. Then some worthless fellow comes in, tells him something else, and what you have said is all wiped off the slate.”

The Ex-Emperor and Present Emperor.

In spite of his natural amiability this ruler has frequently shown a cold-blooded and calculating cruelty, made more conspicuous by ingratitude and treachery; and his reign has been throughout characterized by a callous disregard of the sufferings of the people through the injustice of his own minions. To quote again the estimate of a foreign minister: “His Majesty loves power, but seems color-blind when it comes to the faculty of distinguishing between the true and the false. He would rather have one of the Government Departments pay 20,000 yen in satisfaction of a debt which he owes than pay 5,000 yen out of his own purse.[43] And he allows himself to be cheated with the same sense of toleration which he has for those who cheat the Government, provided that the culprit has the saving grace of a pleasing deportment.” One of his most able and upright Korean officials once declared: “It is true I am devoted to His Majesty, and I am sure he likes me; but if I were to be executed for some crime of which I was completely innocent, and a friend were to come to His Majesty, while he was at dinner, and implore his intercession, if it meant any danger, even the slightest, to him, he would leave me to my fate and go on eating with a good appetite.” During the Boxer troubles in China a plot was devised by the reigning favorite of the Emperor, Yi Yong-ik, to kill all the foreigners in Korea; the plot was exposed, but the favorite did not suffer in his influence over the Emperor. Over and over again, in earlier days, the missionaries have appealed to him in vain to secure their converts against robbery and death at the hands of imperial favorites. It was formerly his custom to have at stated intervals large numbers of persons executed—inconvenient witnesses, political suspects, enemies of men in power. This custom of indiscriminate “jail-cleaning” was, as far as it was safe and allowable under the growing foreign influences, continued down toward the present time.

That the foregoing account of the character of the man who came to the throne of Korea, as a boy of twelve, in 1864, and abdicated this throne in 1907, is a true picture needs no additional evidence to that now available by the world at large. Strangely inconsistent in some of its features as it may seem to be, the portrait is unmistakably true to life. No wonder then, that, after exhausting all his resources of advice, rebuke, and warning, the Resident-General was regretfully forced to this conclusion: no cure for the temperament and habits of His Majesty of Korea could possibly be found. But this had long been the conclusion of his own Cabinet Ministers and all others among the wiser of the Korean officials. It was finally by these Ministers, without the orders, consent, or even knowledge of the Marquis Ito, that in order to save the country from more serious humiliation and disaster, movements were initiated to secure his abdication of the throne he had disgraced for more than forty years.

As to the Korean ruling classes generally, the Yang-bans so-called, it may be said that for centuries they have been, with few exceptions, of a character to correspond with their monarchs. The latter have also been, with few exceptions, such in character as to represent either the weak side or the corrupt and cruel side, or both, of the ruler just described. This truth of “like king, like nobles,” was amply illustrated by the case of Kwang-ha, in the early years of the seventeenth century. When the monk Seung-ji induced this king to build the so-called “Mulberry Palace,” thousands of houses were razed, the people oppressed with taxation, and the public offices sold in order to raise the funds. When the same monarch, yielding to the influences of his concubine and her party, committed the infamy of expelling the Queen-Dowager from Seoul, only one prominent courtier, Yi Hang-bok, with eight others, stood out against 930 officials and 170 of the king’s relatives who were ready to vote for the shameful deed.[44]

The proportion of courageous and honest officials connected with the Korean Court had not greatly increased up to the time when Marquis Ito undertook the task of its purification. This fact, in itself, so discouraging to the effort at instituting reforms from above downward on the part of the Koreans themselves, is made obvious in a striking way by the analysis of a brief, confidential description (a sort of official Korean “Who is Who?”) of ninety-six persons, prepared by one well acquainted with the men and their history, but favorably disposed toward—even prejudiced in favor of—the side of Korea. Of these ninety-six officials, only five are pronounced thoroughly honorable and trustworthy characters; twenty-seven are classed as fairly good; the remainder are denominated very weak, or very bad. Subsequent developments have revealed the weakness or corruption of most of those whom this paper less than ten years ago pronounced to be on the whole either hopeful or positively good. What this means for Korea to-day can be judged by the following selected examples: (1) “A rather proud and rich member of the ⸺ Clan; a notorious squeezer, and one whose services may always be had for a price; absolutely unreliable and incapable of patriotic impulses.” (2) “A contemptible but rich member of the ⸺ Clan; a most detestable oppressor of the people as shown in Pyeng Yang; incapable of good impulses apparently.” (3) “A slippery self-made man; Emperor’s private treasurer; Vice-Minister of Interior for many years; rose through influence of his cousin, but not loyal to latter’s memory; cannot be influenced except through fear or favor.” (4) “A self-made man who might better have let out the job; has courage, and is unmercifully, cruel and oppressive; is the most ignorant official in high office during twenty years.” Yet this low-born and ignorant fellow had almost absolute control of the Emperor and of the country’s finances for several years.

The examples given above may serve to describe the one-third of the ninety-six officials characterized by extreme immorality. Of the other one-third, whose services to their country are rendered available only for evil on account of their weakness, the following examples afford a sufficiently accurate description: (1) “Foreign Minister repeatedly; very deficient in intelligence, but says little and looks wise; too feeble to be dishonest, but an easy tool for one who cares to use him.” (2) “Governor of ⸺; a weak, abominable man, who has done well at ⸺, because kept in check by the Japanese; would be a scoundrel if the opportunity offered; a tool of Yi Yong-ik” (a man notorious for his corruption and oppression, on account of which some of the highest officials knelt before the Palace gate during the entire day and night of November 28, 1902, praying for his trial and punishment; but he was saved by the Emperor, who feared him; he was even subsequently brought back from banishment and restored to his post as “Director of the Imperial Estates”). (3) “An old man of remarkable history; has been on all sides of the political fence; is good at times, and apparently a patriot, and then he will turn up on quite the opposite side.”