In Korea with Marquis Ito

by George Trumbull Ladd

Viscount Hayashi arrived at Seoul on the evening of July 18th. In the afternoon of the same day Marquis Ito visited the Palace at the request of the Korean Emperor. He found that His Majesty had no suggestions to make as to the solution of the grave problem before the two governments: His Majesty continued, however, to disavow the Hague delegation and to suggest the severe punishment of its members.[102] The more important reason for the request for this interview appeared when the Emperor stated that his Cabinet were urging him to abdicate and suggested that he supposed they were prompted to do so by Marquis Ito. This the Marquis emphatically denied: so far as the Resident-General was concerned, the Korean Cabinet were in all respects acting on their own initiative. His Excellency was himself still awaiting the decision of his own Government at Tokyo; and until that was announced he had nothing to say as to what Japan was likely to do. Moreover, since he was not a subject of the Emperor of Korea he should refrain from advising His Majesty in any way about the matter of his abdication.[103]

Meantime the Korean Cabinet continued to press upon the Emperor the necessity of his abdication in the interests of the country at large. On Wednesday, July 17th, they proceeded in a body to the Palace, where His Majesty is said to have kept them waiting for their audience with him for nearly three hours. At this audience, however, they again explained the nature of the present crisis, and again besought him to save his country by sacrificing the crown for himself. After a prolonged interview they are said to have left the Emperor much enraged and still refusing. But on the next day the Cabinet Ministers repaired again to the Palace at a quarter to five in the afternoon. Before this meeting could be over the train bearing the Viscount Hayashi would roll into the South-Gate Station. The whole affair was culminating; the national crisis was imminent. For more than three hours the Ministers pressed for their Sovereign’s abdication, with a most bold and insistent attitude. It was after eleven o’clock that evening when the Emperor began to show signs of giving way, and ordered summons to be issued to assemble the Elder Statesmen. These men soon arrived at the Palace and held a secret conference among themselves, during which they, too, arrived at the decision that there was really no alternative for the Emperor; he should yield to the advice of his Ministers; and the throne was at once memorialized to this effect. At three o’clock on the morning of the nineteenth the Emperor agreed to retire in favor of the Crown Prince, and a decree announcing this fact was published in the Official Gazette at a later hour the same morning.

From about ten o’clock on Thursday night the people began to assemble in front of the Palace. By one o’clock in the morning of Friday the crowd had become dense and began to show threatening signs of a riotous character; but they dispersed by degrees without serious incidents, until at dawn scarcely one hundred men were remaining in the neighborhood. Rumors of the Emperor’s abdication were spread abroad after sunrise; and again the crowd of excited people increased in front of the main gate of the Palace and in the streets adjoining. A hand-bill, circulated from the same source of so much pernicious misinformation—namely, the native edition of the Korean Daily News—which asserted that the Emperor had been deposed and was going to be carried off to Japan by Viscount Hayashi, added greatly to the popular excitement. The Korean police, under Police Adviser Maruyama, however, had the matter well in hand; and having been earnestly advised by the Resident-General to avoid all unnecessary harshness, they succeeded in dispersing the people with only a few trifling encounters. In the work of restoring order and preventing riot and bloodshed, the police were doubtless greatly assisted by a timely downpour of rain. For of all people under the sun it is probable that a Korean crowd of men, with their expensive and cherished crinoline hats and their lustrous white raiment, most object to getting thoroughly wet. Patriotism of the intensest heat can scarcely bear this natural process of cooling.

At 7.15 P. M. on July 19th the Korean Minister of Justice called on the Resident-General and delivered to him the following message from His Majesty:

In abdicating my throne I acted in obedience to the dictate of my conviction; my action was not the result of any outside advice or pressure.

During the past ten years I have had an intention to cause the Crown Prince to conduct the affairs of State, but, no opportunity presenting itself, my intention has to this day remained unrealized. Believing, however, that such opportunity has now arrived, I have abdicated in favor of the Crown Prince. In taking this step I have followed a natural order of things, and its consummation is a matter of congratulation for the sake of my dynasty and country. Yet I am grieved to have to observe that some of my ignorant subjects, laboring under a mistaken conception of my motives and in access of wanton indignation, may be betrayed into acts of violence. In reliance, therefore, upon the Resident-General, I entrust him with the power of preventing or suppressing such acts of violence.

This appeal to the Residency-General to preserve order in Seoul was made in view of events which had occurred earlier in the afternoon of the same day. About a quarter to four a Japanese military officer on horseback was stopped by the mob while passing in front of the main gate of the Palace; and when the Japanese policemen in the Korean service came to his rescue and attempted to open a path for him through the crowd, both they and the officer were more or less seriously wounded by stones. The mob, on being dispersed, retreated in the neighborhood of Chong-no. Here a party of Korean soldiers, who had deserted from the barracks since the previous night, joined the crowds under the command of an officer. Soon after five o’clock these soldiers, without either provocation or warning, fired a succession of volleys upon a party of police officers, killing and wounding more than a score; whereupon the fury of the mob broke out anew, and several more were killed and wounded on both sides. The total number of police officers who lost their lives in this way was ten, and some thirty or more others were more or less severely wounded.[104] After this dastardly action the Korean soldiers ran away.

As to the unprovoked character of this deplorable incident the testimony of eye-witnesses is quite conclusive. Dr. George Heber Jones, who was on the spot soon after the first sound of firing, says: “In fact all through the excitement I was impressed with the moderation and self-control shown by the public officers in dealing with the crowds which had been surging about them since Thursday night. Their conduct was admirable.” After narrating the experiences of himself and his companion as they came upon the dead and wounded lying in the streets and alleys of the district, the wrecked police-boxes and the officers covered with blood, this witness goes on to say: “The Pyeng-yang soldiers in the barracks just north of Chong-no, becoming restive, in the afternoon broke into the magazine of their barracks and supplied themselves with ammunition. One company of them then broke out, and under command—it is said, of a captain who was mounted—suddenly appeared at Chong-no and without warning began firing on the policemen who were trying to preserve order in the crowds.... A mania of destruction took possession of the people for a time, and there are reports of assaults on Japanese civilians in various parts of the city; and from what I personally witnessed there is little doubt of this, that the scenes of violence which occurred in 1884 were repeated yesterday.”[105]

As a result of the Emperor’s request following upon this outbreak of serious disorder, the city of Seoul was put in charge of Japanese police and gendarmes. A strong body of Japanese troops was posted outside the Palace, and four machine guns were placed in front of the Taihan or Main Gate. A battalion of infantry was summoned from Pyeng-yang, and a squadron of the artillery regiment at Yong-san. The riotous outbreaks were now mainly directed against those Korean officials who had brought about the abdication of the Emperor. Over one thousand rioters assembled near the Kwang-song Gate and, after a short debate, proceeded to assault and set on fire the residence of the Prime Minister, Mr. Yi Wan-yong. In spite of the efforts of the Japanese troops and gendarmes, as well as of the fire brigades, a large portion of the residence was destroyed. Part of a Korean battalion also assaulted the prison at Chong-no, where the headquarters of the Japanese police had been established, but were driven away. At 6 P. M. of Tuesday, July 23d, a huge crowd assembled and “passed resolutions” that at sunset the headquarters of the Il Chin-hoi, or party most prominent in its demand for reforms, should be set on fire, and after this several other buildings were marked for destruction. These attempts were, however, frustrated; but the villas of Mr. Yi Kun-tak and Mr. Yi Chi-yung, the former Ministers of War and of Home Affairs, outside the small East Gate, were burned. Finally, these demonstrations of rowdyism came to a point of cessation, and the usual order of Seoul was restored. During the period of rioting the Korean crowd was, as usual, tolerably impartial in the distribution of its favors; in addition to Japanese and Koreans, a few Chinese and other foreigners were assaulted or shot at.

All these events made it entirely obvious, even to the most prejudiced observer, that the Korean Government was still as incapable of securing and preserving order in times of popular excitement as it has ever been. It could not guarantee the safety of its own officials or of foreigners of any nationality, without outside assistance. Unless the controlling influence of the Japanese authorities had been exercised, there cannot be the slightest doubt that a frightful reign of anarchy and bloodshed would have ensued upon the abdication of the Emperor; and no one acquainted with the Korean mob, when once let loose, will venture to predict how many, and whom, it might have involved. Thus far these authorities had done nothing beyond lending an indispensable support and assistance to the Korean Government. They were acting wholly in its interests as centralized in the newly declared Emperor and in the Cabinet Ministers. One other thing, however, was also made equally obvious. The Korean army could not be trusted; its continuance as at present constituted was an intolerable menace to both governments, as well as to the interests of the people at large. It was intrinsically worthless for the legitimate purposes of an army, and dangerous in the extreme as a force to provoke and to intensify all manner of lawlessness. If it had not been for the mutinous action of these undisciplined troops, who became centres of all the forces of sedition, arson, and murder, there would probably have been little or no bloodshed connected with the events of July, 1907.