In Korea with Marquis Ito

by George Trumbull Ladd

Among the other foreign relations into which Japan has entered, to substitute for Korea, is the protection of Korean emigrants. Although Korea needs, and can for a long time to come support, all its own natural increase of native population, and several millions of foreign immigrants besides, the complete lack of opportunity for “getting ahead” in their native land caused a considerable exodus of her own population some six or seven years ago. At the instance of an American, about 8,000 Korean men and 400 Korean women emigrated to Hawaii. In 1905 a Mexican prevailed upon 1,300 natives to go to Mexico. This experience led the Korean Government, in April, 1905, to issue an order prohibiting the emigration of Korean laborers. Under the Japanese Protectorate, however, in July, 1906, “An Emigrant Protection Law,” with detailed rules for its operation, was enacted, which came into force on the 15th of September of the same year.

With regard to all foreign relations with Korea, whether of legitimate business, of commerce, or of emigration, the civilized world is undoubtedly much better off now that their custody is in the hands of the Japanese Residency-General. In our judgment the same thing is true of those moral and religious interests represented by the missionary bodies already established, or to be established in the future, in the Korean peninsula. This is not, indeed, the opinion of all the missionaries themselves. As regards the whole subject of the effect of the Protectorate upon mission work—past, present, and future—there is a difference of opinion among the missionaries themselves. As to the attitude of Marquis Ito there can be no reasonable doubt. His expressions of feeling and intention have been frequently mentioned in the earlier chapters of this book. The missionary problem will be discussed, apart, in a later chapter.

As to the general feeling of the Koreans themselves toward foreigners, the following quotations are believed to express the truth:

Since the inauguration of foreign intercourse the anti-foreign feeling of which the Tai Won Kun was so prominent an exponent, appears to have died out. Possibly it may linger still in the minds of some of the old-fashioned Confucian scholars, but not to any appreciable extent. Formerly it was, no doubt, possible to excite the people against foreigners for slight cause; but exhibitions of anti-foreign sentiment in recent times appear to have been officially instigated, as, for example, the massacre of the French missionaries and their converts, for which the Tai Won Kun is held responsible. More intimate intercourse with the representatives of Western civilization, and especially missionary labor which has been so genuinely successful, seem to have eliminated anything like a general feeling of dislike for foreigners.

The case of the Japanese stands by itself in this regard. Much has been written of the ancient hatred of Koreans for Japanese. Traces of that feeling may linger, but that it is an ineradicable national trait, as some would seem to hold, hardly seems possible. Koreans and Japanese have lived together in complete amity and good fellowship in the past, and there is no good reason why they should not live side by side on the best of terms in the future. Certainly none in the sentiment of dislike on one side, for the origin of which we must go back nearly three centuries. The practical difficulty, the dislike which really counts, is of more modern origin. Korea and Japan have been jostled together, as it were, by two wars in recent times, and the weaker of the two has suffered—a circumstance to be regretted, no doubt, but still inevitable. Korea has experienced some of the evils which follow in war’s train; and while they were not nearly so disastrous as has been represented, they have left a feeling of dislike and distrust for those who are held responsible. This was to have been expected and counted upon; for the remedy we must await the wider and more intelligent comprehension of the real meaning of the new order of things. When it is finally understood that even-handed justice is the rule, that the life and property of every man, no matter how humble, are safe under the law, and that the presence of the alien does not mean licensed extortion and oppression, we shall not hear anything more of that racial hatred upon which so much stress has been laid.

CHAPTER XVI
WRONGS: REAL AND FANCIED

Among the many embarrassments encountered by Marquis Ito as Japanese Resident-General in his efforts to reform and elevate Korea, there is perhaps no one more persistent and hard to overcome than the charges of fraud and violence made against his own countrymen. These charges come from various sources and are promulgated in a variety of ways. Sometimes they take the form of a book—as, for example, Mr. Hulbert’s “Passing of Korea.” For months the Korean Daily News, under the editorship of Mr. Bethell, in both its native and its English editions, filled its daily columns with complaints, wearisomely reiterated after they had been repeatedly disproved, or made anew on insufficient grounds and even without any trustworthy evidence whatever. In scarcely less degree, the same thing has been true of certain English papers printed outside of Korea, especially in China. More effective still in producing an impression abroad, but not more trustworthy, have been the published letters of many travellers and newspaper correspondents. Conspicuous among the latter class was the letter of Mr. William T. Ellis to the New York Tri-Weekly Tribune, in which it was stated that, under the then existing Japanese Government, “robbery, abuse, oppression, injustice, and even murder are the lot of the Korean common people.”[81] Most deplorable[82] of all are the hasty and inconsiderate charges believed on exaggerated or wholly false accounts of the Koreans themselves, and propagated by the relatively small body of missionaries who have remained—for reasons to be considered subsequently—in an attitude of open or secret hostility to the Japanese Protectorate.

The charges against the Japanese of violence and fraud in Korea may be divided into four classes: those which are important and true; those which are trivial and only partly true; those which are exaggerated; and those which are wholly false. Of the first kind there are a few only; of the second there are many; of the third there are even a greater number; and of the fourth there are not a few. In judging the conduct of the Japanese Government and its officials of all ranks and classes, as distinguished from the conduct of adventurous and unscrupulous individual Japanese, the material and social condition of affairs in the peninsula during and immediately after the Russo-Japanese war cannot fairly be left out of the account. One complaint brought by its most unsympathetic critics against the Government is that it did not foresee the influx of undesirable characters into Korea during the war and make sufficient provision for their control. But precisely the opposite of this complaint is true. The military and other coolies and camp-followers had given much trouble and embarrassment to the Japanese officials in the war with China. Accordingly, the military authorities determined at the beginning of the war with Russia to avoid such complications by composing the military train wholly of enlisted men. Thus many recruits—students, professional men, and tradesmen—who did not come up to the standard set for the soldier, or who were not ready for service in the ranks, served as cart-pullers, burden-bearers, and in other laborious and humble ways. The conduct of the army, and of the enlisted men generally, in Korea and Manchuria, was so admirable as to call out the quite unexampled approval of all candid observers. Looting was almost absolutely prevented; the extremely rare cases of rape were punished with death as soon as the offence was proved; violence or insult toward all non-combatants was of rare occurrence; and the treatment of the Russian prisoners of war evoked the gratitude of the prisoners themselves. In all these respects, the difference between the Japanese and the Chinese and Russians was indeed remarkable.

At the beginning of the war the Tokyo government, perceiving that the civil authorities in Korea were already overburdened with labors consequent upon the great influx of Japanese—many of them belonging to the lower classes—proposed a bill to establish new courts and an increased force of police. In the pressure of important business connected with the life-or-death struggle in which Japan was then engaged, the bill did not pass. A Police Adviser to the Korean Government was, however, appointed. What must have been the complete incompetency of the Korean magistrates and police at such a time of confusion may be faintly imagined by one who—like the author—has seen how ineffectively they still discharged their functions, for the protection of their own officials and for the maintenance of order in the country, at the time of his visit in the spring of 1907. It would have been strange, then, if anything approaching an even-handed justice through the courts, or a complete condition of order by fear of the police, could have been secured in Korea in 1904 and 1905. No such justice or order has ever existed in this land of misrule. Japan secured it during the occupation of war, so far as its own enlisted men were concerned; but its rights as “Protector” were not fully gained and defined until after the close of the war.