In Korea with Marquis Ito

by George Trumbull Ladd

From the principal centres of this religious movement it spread to surrounding places—sometimes through those who returned home from these centres, sometimes through delegates sent out from the same centres. One of the most remarkable of the latter cases was the experience of the delegates deputed from Pyeng-yang to visit Chemulpo. At first, when the church at the latter place saw the brethren from the northern city, heard their tale, and witnessed their testimony and procedure, they were greatly alarmed. It was even suggested that one of the visiting brethren should be put to death as an emissary of the devil, if not a devil himself. But the zeal of the preachers from Pyeng-yang finally triumphed; and the church at Chemulpo itself became the scene of similar confessions and convulsions of penitence.

The student of similar phenomena in the past will have no difficulty in understanding and appreciating at their true value the experiences of the “great revival” in Korea. Similar emotional manifestations are common enough on a variety of occasions, as well in the Korea of the past as in the Korea of to-day. Indeed, at the very time that the native Christians of Pyeng-yang were wailing and sobbing, and beating their heads on the mats, on account of their sins, the multitude of the same city were doing the same things because they had been deceived into believing that their Emperor was to be dethroned and carried off to Japan. From time immemorial, the proper official way to attract the attention of His Majesty to any request of his officials, or of the people, has been to make somewhat similar demonstrations before the palace gates or inside the palace walls. In a word, such is the Korean mode of manifesting any strong emotional excitement.

But to discredit altogether the sincerity of these confessions or the genuineness of the following conversion would be a no less grave mistake, from every point of view, than to place a specially high value on them because of their abnormal[99] psychological character. It is not strange that the Korean populace is Korean still, when it suddenly takes to some new kind of reform, or adopts some new kind of religion. Such strong and contradictory, and even convulsive, reactions characterize the native in his politics, his morals, his religion, and his behavior generally. The amiably cruel Emperor, the smiling and good-natured but, on occasion, atrociously barbarous court official, the peasant who seems as gentle as his ox until he turns upon the ox, or upon his neighbor, or upon the local magistrate, to tear in pieces, reveal essentially the same psychical characteristics.

But how, it may be asked, as to the kind of Christian father or mother, Christian citizen, Christian leader, which will be evolved from this multitude of converts? Here, again, the only fair and reasonable answer will avoid the two alike tempting but, in the end, disappointing extremes. During the writer’s stay in Korea, Dr. George Heber Jones, who fifteen years before had been barred outside of the gates, preached at Kang Wha to a congregation of fifteen hundred willing hearers, about one thousand of whom were professing Christians. Multitudes in the whole Island were just then turning toward Christianity—entire schools and, in some instances, almost entire villages, were professing the new faith. In their burning zeal the converts were even resorting to a sort of boycott in order to compel recalcitrants to the adoption of this foreign religion. Yet when a colleague of this missionary, a member of the same mission, was a few weeks later urged to baptize some sixty converts in one village, he refused to comply with the request in the case of a single person, because examination showed that none of the sixty had as yet sufficient knowledge of what was really meant by proclaiming themselves Christians.

Here, again, however, the student wise in the things of man’s religious experience will not depreciate the value of such early but ignorant steps, wherever they are taken from a motive not too degradedly selfish, toward a higher spiritual life. The infancy of the Church in Korea will, as a matter of course, be characterized by the infantile condition of the Korean mind, united, alas! with a morality that is far removed from the innocence customarily attributed to the human infant. But already the later experiences of modern missions fully authorizes the expectation that what Roman Catholicism earlier did to fit the Koreans for martyrdom under the Tai Won Kun, will be much surpassed in what the combined efforts of all the Christian institutions now planted in Korea will do to fit her children for a nobler and happier life under the Japanese Protectorate.

In fine, the Japanese Protectorate under the present Resident-General, and the foreign Christian missionaries with their native converts, command the two sources of power and influence which must unitedly work for the uplift of the Korean nation. That His Excellency, the Marquis Ito, takes this view of the matter, he has both by speech and action made sufficiently clear. That the majority of the missionary body are taking the same view of the same matter is becoming every day more clear. If, through any honest difference of opinion upon important matters of policy, the leaders of these two forces should fail to co-operate in the future, it would be deplorable indeed. But if either one of the two should, whether through avoidable misunderstanding or because of the decline in an intelligent and conscientious desire for the good of Korea, refuse to co-operate, the refusal would be no less of a misfortune; it would be also worthy to be called a crime.

CHAPTER XVIII
JULY, 1907, AND AFTERWARD

A telegram from The Hague to the Orient, bearing date of July 1, 1907, announced the arrival of three Koreans at the place of Peace Conference, and the publication over their signatures, in a French paper called The Peace Conference Times, of an open letter addressed to the delegates of all the Powers. In their letter these men claimed to have been authorized by the Emperor, in a document bearing his seal, to take part in the Conference as the delegates of Korea. In this connection they repeated the time-worn falsehoods as to the conditions under which the Treaty of November, 1905, was signed, and as to the present treatment accorded by the Japanese to the ruler and people of Korea. In view of these alleged facts they made in behalf of their country an appeal for pity and for relief to all the foreign delegates. As was inevitable from the beginning, the efforts of this deputation at The Hague came to naught; and after the death of one of their number they departed to carry on their mission of appeal, first in England and afterward in the United States. So thoroughly discredited, however, had the word of such Koreans and of their “foreign friends” already become in the hearing of all acquainted with the facts, that the mission met with as little real success in these other foreign countries as at The Hague. So far as its original purpose was concerned, it ended in failure—miserable and complete. But in Korea itself the results were by no means transient or trivial.

The news of the appearance of the so-called Korean delegates at the World’s Peace Conference was received in Seoul on July 3d. It will be remembered (see [p. 83 f.]) that—to quote from the Seoul Press of the next day—“when Mr. H. B. Hulbert left for Europe under peculiar circumstances, there were rumors that he was charged by the Emperor of Korea with some political mission to The Hague.” This paper then goes on to say that it did not attach much importance to the rumor at the time, being unable to reconcile such an enterprise with the reputation for shrewdness of the chief foreign commissioner, and also “with the expressions of good will and friendship which the Emperor of Korea has repeated to Japan and her Representative over and over again.” But there were even more important reasons why the rumor should seem antecedently incredible. No one of the present Cabinet, or of the previously existing Cabinet, appeared to have any knowledge of so serious an affair of State; no one of either of these bodies had even been consulted by His Majesty about the possibility of such an undertaking. “Even the best informed did not dream that a step so palpably useless and treacherous would be taken.” The conclusion followed that, if the rumor proved true, the act was ascribable to the Emperor alone, as “instigated no doubt by the coterie of irresponsible native counsellors and their obscure foreign coadjutors whose mischievous advice has already so often led His Majesty astray.” Such a movement was rendered all the more untimely, not to say unnecessary, because under the new Ministry and the wise and kindly leadership of the Residency-General, all the foreign and domestic affairs of the country were now proceeding in the most orderly and satisfactory manner. Whatever ground for protest and appeal against the treatment of Korea by the Japanese Government may have existed in the past, everything in the situation of the spring and early summer of 1907 called for hopeful and active co-operation on the part of all forces interested in the welfare of the land. The stirring of the elements always ready for riot, sedition, arson, and bloodshed, was, under the circumstances, both a folly and a crime.