CHAPTER LIV.
CHŌ-SEN: A PROVINCE OF JAPAN.
Chō-sen is the official name of the country described in this volume and now a province of Japan, as declared in the Act of Annexation of August, 1910. Thus its oldest name, now to be better known to the world, is also its newest. Since 1392 the natives have known no other. The Chinese characters for Chō-sen, or Morning Calm, were stamped on the first and earlier editions of this book. The Japanese name of the capital is Kéijo.
By the Russo-Japanese war, Corea was saved from being a Russian province and the king and court given the supreme occasion of reform, which, if carried out, would mean new national life. Corea would have remained a sovereign state, had the chief ruler and the governing classes risen to their opportunity.
It was not to be. With despotism in the palace and a lettered class bound in cast-iron traditions, but profoundly ignorant of the world and the century, there lay beneath an oppressed populace, steeped in superstition, for which the Government did nothing. Lacking an intelligent middle class between, reform in Corea, except from without, was perhaps morally impossible.
Old Corea, an unreformed Oriental state, with all the features inseparably associated with such a society, was thus described by Lord Curzon in 1894:
“A royal figure-head, enveloped in the mystery of the palace and the harem, surrounded by concentric rings of eunuchs, Ministers of State, officials and retainers, and rendered almost intangible by the predominant atmosphere of intrigue; a hierarchy of office-holders and office-seekers, who are leeches in the thinnest disguise; a feeble and insignificant army, an impecunious exchequer, a debased currency, and an impoverished people—these are the invariable [[508]]symptoms of the fast-vanishing régime of the older and unredeemed Oriental type. Add to these the first swarming of the flock of foreign practitioners who scent the enfeebled constitution from afar and from the four winds of Heaven come pressing their pharmacopœia of loans, concessions, banks, mints, factories, and all the recognized machinery for filling Western purses at the expense of Eastern pockets, and you have a fair picture of Korea as she stands after ten years of emergence from her long seclusion and enjoyment of the intercourse of the nations.”
Corea as represented by the yang-ban, or ruling class, numbering with their families 200,000 souls, was dragged suddenly out into the world’s light and confronted with vital problems. Without that long interior intellectual preparation which enabled Japan in the nick of time to meet her new duties, the Coreans were neither able nor willing to grapple with the colossal tasks awaiting them. Yet this was no fault of the plain people, for it is to their credit that they welcomed foreigners. Except a morbid curiosity as to alien persons and ways, they have ever shown kindness, and politeness so far as they knew it. With amazing promptness the spiritually hungry and thirsty masses have responded with grateful appreciation to what their foreign teachers brought them. One secret of their readiness and docility lies in the fact that they were glad to be delivered from the oppression of rulers, whose one idea of government meant the grinding of the people for private benefit.
After the treaty of November 17, 1905, by which a Resident-General from Japan was established in Seoul, and which took control of the foreign relations and affairs of the little kingdom, it was found that few of those who could have effected national reform gave any indication of their desire to do so. In 1907 a fresh agreement was made, “with the object of speedily providing for the wealth of Corea and of promoting its welfare,” and the Japanese Government spent millions of dollars in schemes of practical advantage to the Coreans. When, after four years, it was found that the age-old abuses continued, and reform by natives seemed impossible, the formal annexation of Corea was consummated on August 29, 1910. The full text of the treaty, in eight articles, with preamble, etc., and English translation, is printed in the [[509]]Journal of International Law (Revue de Droit International) for December, 1910, published in Tokio.
The Amalgamation Convention provides:[1]