As may be expected in an Oriental country, the administration of law in Korea is on the whole infamous. It may be said that a body of law has yet to be created, as well as the judges who shall administer it equably. A mixed Committee of Revision has been appointed, but the Korean members show a marked tendency to drop off, and no legal reform, solely the work of foreigners, would carry weight with the people. Mr. Greathouse, a capable lawyer and legal adviser to the Law Department, has been able to prevent some infamous transactions, but on the whole the Seoul Law Court does little more than administer injustice and receive bribes. Of the two Law Courts of the capital the Supreme Court, under the supervision of the Minister and Vice-Minister of Justice, and in which the foreign adviser sits with the judges to advise in important cases, is the most hopeful; yet one of the most disgraceful of late appointments has been in connection with this department. The outrageous decisions, the gross bribery, and the actual atrocities of the Seoul Court are likely to bring about its abolition, and I will not enlarge upon them.
One of the most striking changes introduced into the Seoul of 1897 is the improvement in the prison, which is greatly owing to Mr. A. B. Stripling, formerly of the Shanghai Police, who, occupying a position as adviser to the Police Department, is carrying out prison reforms, originally suggested by the Japanese, in a humane and enlightened manner. Torture has disappeared from the great city prison, but there were dark rumors that some of the political prisoners, so lately as January, 1897, were subjected to it elsewhere.
My experience of Eastern prisons, chiefly in Asia Minor, China, Persia, and a glimpse of a former prison in Seoul, have given me a vivid impression of the contrast presented by the present system. Surrounding a large quadrangle, with the chief jailer’s house in the centre, the rooms, not to be called cells, are large, airy, light, and well-ventilated, with boarded floors covered with mats, and plenty of air space below. It is true that on the day I visited them some of the prisoners were shivering, and shivered more vigorously as an appeal to my compassion, but then the mercury was at 18° F., and this is not a usual temperature. They have a large bathroom with a stove on the Japanese plan. Their diet consists of a pint of excellent soup twice a day, with a large bowl of rice, and those who go out to work get a third meal. This ample diet cost 1¹⁄₄d. per day.
There were from twelve to eighteen prisoners in each ordinary room, and fifty were awaiting trial in one roomy hall. A few under sentence, two of them to death, wore long wooden cangues, but I did not see any fetters. They are allowed to bring in their own mattresses, mats, and pillows for extra comfort. On the whole they were clean, cleaner than the ordinary coolies outside. A perforated wooden bar attached to the floor, with another with corresponding perforations above it, secures the legs of the prisoners at night. The sick were lying thickly on the hot floor of a room very imperfectly lighted, but probably the well would have been glad to change with them.
There were 225 prisoners altogether, all men. Classification is still in the future. Murderers and pilferers occupied the same room, and colonels of regiments accused of a serious conspiracy were with convicted felons, who might or might not be acting as spies and informers; a very fine-looking man, sentenced for life, the first magistrate in Korea ever convicted and punished for bribery, and that on the complaint of a simple citizen, was in a “cell” with criminals wearing cangues. Some of the sentences seemed out of proportion to the offences, as, for instance, a feeble old man was immured for three years for cutting and carrying off pine brush for fuel, and an old blind man of some position was incarcerated for ten years for the violation of a grave under circumstances of provocation.
Much has been done in the way of prison reform, and much remains to be done, specially in the direction of classification, but still the great Seoul prison contrasts most favorably with the prisons of China and other unreformed Oriental countries. Torture is at least nominally abolished, and brutal exposures of severed heads and headless trunks, and beating and slicing to death, were made an end of during the ascendency of Japan. After an afternoon in the prison of Seoul, I could hardly believe it possible that only two years before I had seen several human heads hanging from tripod stands and lying on the ground in the throng of a business street, and headless bodies lying in their blood on the road outside the East Gate.
To mention the changes in Seoul would take another chapter. Dr. Allen, now U.S. Minister to Korea, said that the last four months of 1896 had seen more alterations than the previous twelve years of his residence in the country, and the three months of my last visit brought something new every week.
As a foil to so much that is indicative of progress, I conclude this chapter by mentioning, on the authority of the Governor of Seoul, that in January, 1897, there were in the capital a thousand mu-tang, or sorceresses, earning on an average fifteen dollars a month each, representing an annual expenditure by that single city of a hundred and eighty thousand dollars on dealings with the spirits, exclusive of the large sums paid to the blind sorcerers for their services, and to the geomancers, whose claims on the occasion of the interment of any one of rank and wealth are simply monstrous.
Old Régime