On February 23d a protocol was signed by Japan and Korea, by virtue of which Korea practically allied herself with Japan. She granted the latter the right to use her territory as a road to Manchuria and engaged to give them every possible facility for prosecuting the war. On the other hand, Japan guaranteed the independence of Korea and the safety of her imperial family. It was, of course, on Korea’s side a case of necessity, though many Koreans really accepted the Japanese as their friends and believed they would preserve their independence. However, willy-nilly, there was nothing to do under the circumstances but to acquiesce for the time being, though the government and court were still assured that Russia would undoubtedly be the ultimate victor and the Russians were continually making use of corrupt Korean officials who served only to complicate affairs with Japan.
It is more than doubtful whether this protocol, backed by arms, wrung out of the unwilling Koreans, was ever worth the paper on which it was written, even to keep up appearances to a people so unsophisticated at that time as the Koreans. The Japanese were ready at almost any moment during the war to enforce it and punish its violation, and the native government were very likely quite as ready to avail themselves of every opportunity which might offer to break it openly, could either Russia or China have been depended on to assist. But let us not forget that these were the acts of a corrupt government and not of the people, and that their sprightly neighbor had long odds, thanks to the almost forcible opening of their country thirty years earlier.
Mr. Hulbert says, “The Japanese handled the situation in Korea with great circumspection,” which they certainly did. The expected punishment did not fall on the pro-Russian officials. The perturbation of the court was quieted and Marquis Ito was sent with friendly messages to the Emperor. The northern ports of Wi Ju and Yonganpo were opened and soon Yi Yong Ik who was a large factor in the conspiracies against Japan was invited to visit that country. The Japanese soldiers were remarkably orderly and well behaved, a great contrast in this respect to the Cossacks and Russian guard who had been at the Legation, who conducted themselves most outrageously, so that they won the hate and fear of the whole native community, and the disgust and horror of all western foreigners.
The Japanese soldiers, we are told by Mr. Hulbert, all belong to the upper middle classes. “No low class man can stand in the ranks,” and this being the fact, the wide difference between their behavior and that of the colonists can be well understood. Suffice it to say that in the main they did great credit to their country and their conduct reassured the Koreans and won for them as a rule tolerance and often real good will.
However, the reforms which the pro-Japanese had so hopefully expected did not come. The monetary affairs about which the Japanese had complained as being so bad were not altered when they came into power, and in addition they now began to demand all sorts of privileges which became no small hardship to the Koreans. In Fusan the Japanese Board of Trade asked their government to secure the maritime customs service, permission for extra territorial privileges, the establishment of Japanese agricultural stations, etc.
In the meanwhile the tide of Japanese immigration was daily rising higher and higher as to quantity, but the friends of Japan would certainly like to think that the people who came could have represented only her worst classes. This is not the place, nor are missionaries the people to animadvert upon them or their conduct; nor perhaps did it seem possible with the war on their hands at first, and a hostile native people to keep in check later, for the few Japanese officials to look into the cases brought before them, and deal out justice to their own offending countrymen. But I do say that had they been able to do so, their task in Korea would be an easier one to-day, for Koreans are a long-suffering people. Moreover, when loud complaints concerning the Koreans’ unwillingness to yield to “legally constituted authority” (?) are heard, let the reader bear in mind that this same “legally constituted authority” seldom, if ever, so far as the writer is aware, has protected the Korean in his rights, or made him safe and inviolate in his home, when a home was left to him. We are not accusing the Japanese. They have undertaken a difficult task, in which older and more civilized, more Christian nations have failed, and when we look at Poland and elsewhere, we do not see that they are more to be blamed than the illustrious examples they have followed, but we do say, “Do not judge the Korean too hardly if he rises in self defense to do what he can to make reprisals on invaders and to defend his own rights.”
In connection with the laying of the railroads, large tracts of some of the best land in the country were practically confiscated, and in Seoul large blocks of the most valuable property in the city were taken at a merely nominal price, and hundreds of people lost practically all they had in the world. In the north, where soldiers were quartered on Koreans, many of the women, whose custom it is never to be seen by strangers, fled to the mountain recesses at a most inclement season and incurred untold suffering. Still the Koreans bore all these trials with remarkable patience and few complaints.
Many, however, of the malcontents and those who had suffered loss joined the robbers, and large bands made frequent and destructive raids upon the smaller towns and villages, adding to the general distress of the poor people who actually had no one to look to but the missionaries and Americans whom they regarded as their only friends, who could do little enough, alas, to help, but who could point them to God who pities the helpless, and bid them hope in Him.
Although many of the best Koreans who had trusted in the Japanese had been disappointed to see none of the promised reforms, great was their added anger and alarm when on the seventeenth of June the Japanese authorities made the suggestion “that all uncultivated land in the Peninsula as well as all other national resources should be open to the Japanese. The Koreans now indeed raised a storm of protest. The time was unpropitious. Koreans recognized that the carrying out of this would result in a Japanese protectorate, though the latter had probably not believed the Koreans capable of following out the logic of this.”[7]
[7] Hulbert’s “History of Korea.”