During the subsequent occupation the Japanese troops behaved well, and all stores obtained in the town and neighborhood were scrupulously paid for. Intensely as the people hated them, they admitted that quiet and good order had been preserved, and they were very apprehensive that on their withdrawal they would suffer much from the Kun-ren-tai, a regiment of Koreans drilled and armed by the Japanese, and these had already begun to rob and beat the people, and to defy the civil authorities. The main street on my second visit had assumed a bustling appearance. There was much building up and pulling down, for Japanese traders had obtained all the eligible business sites, and were transforming the small, dark, low, Korean shops into large, light, airy, dainty Japanese erections, well stocked with Japanese goods, and specially with kerosene lamps of every pattern and price, the Defries and Hinckes patents being unblushingly infringed.
Phyöng-yang has a truly beautiful situation on the right or north bank of the clear, bright Tai-döng, 400 yards wide at the ferry. It occupies an undulating plateau, and its wall, parallel for two miles and a half, rises from the river level at the stately Water Gate, and following its windings, mounts escarped hills to a height of over 400 feet, turning westwards at the crest of the cliff at a sharp angle marked by a pavilion, one of several, and follows the western ridge of the plateau, where it falls steeply down to a fertile rolling plain where the one real battle of the late war was fought.
This wall, which is in excellent repair, is a loopholed and battlemented structure, 20 feet high, pierced by several gates with gate towers. The city, large as it was, was once much larger, for the old wall on the west side encloses a far larger area than the modern one. The walk over the grassy undulations within the wall and up to the northern pine-clothed summit is entrancing, and the views, even in winter, are exquisite—eastwards over a rich plain to the mountains through which the Tai-döng cuts its way, or northwest to one of its affluents and the great battlefield over which in 1593 the joint forces of Chinese and Koreans poured to recover Phyöng-yang from the Japanese, or seawards where the clear bright waters wind through fertile and populous country, or the hilly area within the walls where pine-clothed knolls conceal the devastations, and the Governor’s yamen, temples, and monasteries make a goodly show.
Between the city and the Chinese frontier is the largest and richest plain in Korea; to the east where the violet shadows lay are the valleys of the two branches of the Tai-döng, rich in silk, iron, and cotton, while within 10 miles there are at least five coal-mines,[37] and for all produce there is easy communication with the sea, 36 miles distant, for vessels of light draught, by means of the river which flows below the city wall. Timber is rafted down the Tai-döng in summer. The Peking road, which I had followed thus far, and which for centuries has linked Phyöng-yang with the outer world and the capital, is another element in the former prosperity of the city. It was to photograph for the widow and family of General Tso of Mukden, the commander of the best-disciplined and best-equipped cavalry brigade in the Chinese army, the scenes connected with his last days and death that I visited the hill within the wall.
The river wall of Phyöng-yang, after 2 miles of an undulating ascent, turns sharply at a pavilion, outside of which the ground falls precipitously, to rise again in a knife-like ridge, the three highest points of which are crowned with Chinese forts. From this pavilion the wall, following the lie of the hill, slopes rapidly down to a very picturesque and narrow gate, the Chil-sung Mön or Seven Star Gate, after which it trends in a northwesterly direction to the Potong Mön.
In the pine wood, at the highest part of the angle formed by the wall, General Tso had built three mud forts or camps with walls 10 feet high. The ground under the trees is dotted with the stone-lined cooking holes of his men, blackened with the smoke of their last fires. On the afternoon of the 15th of September, 1894, General Tso and his force, which mustered 5,000 men when it left Mukden, but must have been greatly diminished by desertion and death, made his fatal sally, passing through the Chil-sung Mön and down the steep zigzag descent below it to the plain, meeting his death probably within 300 yards of the gate. The Koreans say that some of his men took up the body, but were shot by the Japanese while removing it, and that it was lost in the slaughter which ensued. A neat obelisk, railed round, was erected by the Japanese at the supposed spot, bearing on one face the inscription:—
Tso Pao-kuei, commander-in-chief of the Fengtien division. Place of death.
And on the other——
Killed while fighting with the Japanese troops at Phyöng-yang.
A graceful tribute to their ablest foe.