In Korea with Marquis Ito

by George Trumbull Ladd

The paradox involved in the last sentences requires further explanation. In her interesting but highly colored and by no means altogether trustworthy book on Korea, Mrs. Bishop makes the following declarations: “The idea of a nation destitute of a religion and gladly accepting one brought by a foreigner, must be dropped. The religion the Korean would accept is one which would show him how to get money without working for it. The indifference is extreme; the religious faculty is absent; there are no religious ideas to appeal to, and the moral teachings of Confucius have little influence with any class.”[92] Of these declarations the last is the only one which is wholly true. Moral teachings of any kind have had little effect hitherto in Korea. Briefly stated, and as seen from the point of view afforded through a survey of the history of man’s religious experience and of the progress of Christian missionary enterprise, the condition of the Korean people is this. They are a nation by no means indifferent to religion, or destitute of religious faculty and religious ideas. But the religion almost universally prevalent has been for centuries a low form of spiritism—largely, devil-worship. Even Korean ancestor-worship, unlike that in Japan, is still almost exclusively motived and characterized by superstitious and degrading fears rather than by the spirit of reverence, loyalty, and affection. Among the so-called civilized nations of the world there is probably not another where the prevalent native religion is of a more depressing and degrading character than in Korea.

Now it is an experience very easy to explain from the psychological point of view that where the other elements of “uplift” begin to work powerfully among a people of a low form of religion, any imported religious faith and worship which seems to offer help to, or to be in conformity with, this work, may speedily secure the adherence of great multitudes of the people. In Korea, for example, there is absolutely no religion to compete with an imported Christianity. There is no developed Confucianism as there is in China; no reformed or reflectively elaborated Buddhism, as there is in Japan; no refined religious philosophy and complicated caste system as there is in India. Any kind of ferment in the ancient but deplorably sad and oppressive conditions of the popular life will inevitably, therefore, prove favorable to the rapid spread of a modern and improved form of religion. For the people must have some religion; and in Korea, what is there to rival, for what it promises and performs, the religion of the American and English missionaries? It is this kind of nation which, so far as statistics that can boast millions of converts are concerned, may under favorable conditions be “born in a day.” At the same time, however, it is this kind of nation whose multitude of converts will almost surely fail to apprehend or to appreciate the really important things about the new faith which they hasten to profess. It is this kind of nation that most needs, through three or more generations, the solid work of education, and the purifying process of severe discipline, in order to secure the genuine spirit and true practice of the religion of Christ. Education and prolonged moral discipline are imperative for the establishment of a trustworthy Christian population in Korea. Here the necessity for careful sifting and severe pruning is exaggerated beyond most precedents, because of the undoubted fact that the underlying motives for a first adherence to Christianity are, in a large percentage of the so-called converts, economic and political rather than moral and spiritual. And, indeed, how can the Korean common people, with their low intellectual, material, and moral ideals, rise en masse from the condition of superstitious and immoral devil-worshippers to the faith and practice of a pure Christianity? The most fundamental conceptions of God, of Christian duty and Christian character, of the spiritual life, and of the Divine relations to man, are as yet almost totally lacking. If the number of recent converts in Korea furnishes just cause for hope and rejoicing, the character of these converts and of their environment gives also cause for foreboding.

Closely connected with this temptation is another which is less obvious and therefore more subtle and dangerous. It is the temptation to a wrong which has done more by far than all the heresies to disgrace and damage the Christian Church during the centuries of its history. This is the temptation, even unconsciously, to make use for one’s self, or for one’s converts, of the “double ethical standard.” Neither in Korea nor elsewhere can the missionary permit himself to be betrayed into words and conduct which he would consider unworthy of a “heathen” gentleman; or allow his disciples, without rebuke and discipline, in the practice of the very vices for which he despises the Japanese or Chinese coolie or tradesman. There are no two standards of morality—one for the American or English teacher of religion and another for the Korean or Japanese official; one for the priest and another for the layman; one for the Korean confessor and another for the foreign oppressor. It is true that for a long time to come great discretion and much leniency must be shown toward the Korean convert who continues in the beliefs, or who relapses into the practices, of the low-grade spiritism out of which he emerged when he became a Christian adherent. It is not impossible, however, that there has been up to the present time too much of praise and too little of rebuke and instruction meted out to the “adherents” of Christianity in Korea. Indulgence in the vices of lying, dishonesty, intrigue, avarice, impurity, and race-hatred, cannot be condoned by a display of amiability. Flagrant cases of sexual misdemeanors have, indeed, in comparatively few cases been made subjects for the severer discipline. But the prophetic voice, raised unmistakably in evidence of the high standard of morality characteristic of “the religion of Christ” is required under all such circumstances as those which prevail among the Korean Christians—thousands of whom, during the religious awakening of the winter of 1906 and 1907, confessed to having lived for years in the habitual practice of the vices enumerated above.

All of this, and even more of similar experiences connected with the planting and growth of Christian missions in Korean soil, is by no means necessarily discreditable to the missionaries themselves. On the contrary, much of it is inevitable; it is the same thing which has been the accompaniment of the early stages of Christian propagandism in all ages, when conducted in the midst of similar conditions. So-called “conversions” may be rapid; the process of selection and the labor of instruction and edifying follow more slowly, in due time. The lower the existing religious condition of the multitude, when the higher form of religion appeals to them, the more prompt and extensive is the religious uplift of this multitude; but the larger the number of the converts, the more need of discretion and diligence for the process of improving their quality. It is a reasonable hope that the same workmen who have in the main proved so successful in the one form of Christian work will prove equally successful in the somewhat different work which the future development of Christian institutions in Korea imposes upon them.

There is another form of temptation against which it is much easier for the religious propagandist to guard, but which has been rather unusually strong and pervasive in the recent history of Korean missions. This is the temptation to under-estimate, or even despise, the auxiliaries which are offered by an improved condition of the material, legal, and educational facilities to the more definitively religious uplift of the people. The missionary can contribute the share of religion to progress and reform; and he can make that a large share. But it is safe and wise for him not to under-estimate or despise the support of the civil arm. Korea is to-day, as has been already shown in detail, a land unblessed by any of the institutions of a prosperous and equitable civil government of the modern Christian type, established and fostered by its own ruling classes. The multitude of its people are even more than its rulers incapable of taking the initiative in founding such institutions. The dawning of the very idea of good government has scarcely as yet risen upon them.

Early Christianity was propagated in the Roman world largely by making available for its uses the means furnished by the Roman Empire. And the early Christians were expressly enjoined to welcome all the support offered from, and to offer their support to, whatever was good and helpful in the existing civil government. It is then a conceit which is unwarranted by the history of the Christian church that makes the missionary think, by “preaching the Gospel” to effect all which is necessary toward reforming a nation in the condition of Korea at the present time. Moreover, the claim that it was Christianity—especially in the form of a so-called preaching of the Gospel—which, unaided by other historical and moral forces, gave to the Western world its “democratic” advantages, is no longer tenable. The experience with Coptic Christianity in Egypt, with Armenian Christianity in Western Asia, with the Greek Church in Holy Russia, and with Roman Catholicism in Spain and South America (not to mention other notable examples) contradicts this claim. In Korea itself it is not the Christian Missionary who is building railways, making harbors, planting lighthouses, devising a legal code, introducing a sound currency, and attempting the task of reforming the finances, the judiciary, the police, and the local magistracy. Even granted that he is setting at work moral and spiritual forces which will ultimately bring to pass all these public benefits, it would take five hundred years for Korea without foreign assistance from other forms of civilizing energy, to secure these benefits. It is with no intention to depreciate the work of missions in Korea that attention is called to this obvious fact; its workmen had very unusual opportunities to assist in improving the moral character of the Emperor, the late Queen, the Court, and the other officials; and yet they signally failed in this regard. Nor could they, unaided by the civil arm of foreign powers, accomplish much toward relieving the miserable and oppressed and immoral conditions of living prevalent among the common people of Korea. Just here, however—that is, in the sphere of moral and spiritual influence upon personal character, whether of prince or peasant—is where the influence of religion ought to show itself supreme. The “purification” of Korea required, and still requires, the firm, strong hand of the civil power. We cannot, then, credit any such sentiment as that expressed in the following statement:[93] “The influence of Christianity, so largely and rapidly increasing in the country, holds out a better prospect of spontaneous reform than the outside, violent interference of a money-grabbing and hated heathen enemy.” In answer to every such expression of sentiment, the protestation of the Resident-General has been perfectly clear; and as fast and as far as his influence could make itself felt, the conduct of affairs has confirmed the protestation: “It is Japan’s honest and sincere purpose to make of the Koreans a self-reliant and respectable people. Let there be an end, then, to the malign and mischief-making efforts to alienate the Koreans from those who to-day are through the sure work of History charged with responsibility for this nation.”[94]

It would seem, then, that prompt, open, and hearty co-operation with all the efforts, of every kind, made by the Japanese Protectorate to lift up the Korean people is the only truly wise and Christian policy on the part of the missions in Korea.[95]

How far the Korean missionaries have yielded to these and other temptations and have behaved unwisely toward the Japanese Government and before their Korean converts, it is not our purpose to discuss in detail. And yet we cannot avoid all reference to this delicate and unwelcome theme. Wholesale charges of political intrigue and other unbecoming conduct directed against the Residency-General have been met by emphatic and equally wholesale denials—especially during the troubled times of 1906 and 1907. The charges, on the one hand, have been made not simply by an irresponsible Japanese press, but by several of the more reputable and generally trustworthy of its papers. On the other hand, all similar charges are met by Bishop M. C. Harris[96] with the assurance “because of full knowledge of the situation in Korea covering the space of three years,” “that no American missionary has been identified with political movements,” ... but that “in all the far-reaching plans of the Residency-General to promote the welfare of Korea and Japan as well, the missionaries are in hearty accord.” Yet again, on the other side, repeated representations of a quite opposite character to that of Bishop Harris have frequently appeared, both in letters and papers, in the United States and in England.

The exact truth is with neither of these contentions; to appreciate it one must bear in mind the difficult situation in which the missionaries in Korea have been placed. All the wrongs (as their story has been told in the last chapter), real or fancied, important and trivial but true, or important and trivial but falsely alleged, have been appealed to them by their Korean converts and also by Korean adventurers, with claims for sympathy and for assistance. What was said of the Cretans in old times may be said of the Koreans to-day: they are liars quite generally. Even when they do not intend deliberately to deceive, they find it impossible to refrain from gross exaggeration. On the other hand, the missionaries, where their sympathies are wrought upon by their own children in the faith—all the more on account of the mental and moral weakness of those children—are apt to be over-credulous, and are not always sane in judgment or prudent in conduct. These virtues are perhaps too much to expect; perhaps they are not even the appropriate virtues for a Christian woman when one of her own sex exposes bruises which she alleges to have been inflicted by the hands of a “heathen coolie.” At such moments it is not easy to remember the deeds of her own countrywomen in the South, or of her own countrymen in San Francisco, in the Philippines, or in South Africa.