In education, progress was hampered by the general prevalence of fanaticism on the subject of “race suicide” and in the absurd measures taken for its prevention—measures that largely tend to hinder the end in view. In Corea the marriage and birth rate may possibly be in excess of that of any country in the world, while, almost as matter of course, and as a scientific corollary, the same may be said of the death rate, which, owing to superstition, ignorance, and dirt, is appalling. Corea, despite shining white clothes, is not a land of bath-tubs. In the schools, nearly all the boys were found to be married, and to girls older than themselves. These over-mature youths, of antediluvian frame of mind, too often seem to have eyes set too far back in their heads, which fix their gaze on duties appropriate to the time of Confucius rather than of the twentieth century.
We have glanced at this subject before. Yet even to-day, with all the advantages afforded them, there is danger. Expecting, like their fathers before them, to be verse-makers, to quote from the ancient Chinese, to be literary, and to hold office, because of a knowledge of the characters, the young Corean yang-ban are indifferent to useful progress and scorn manual labor. Having already [[516]]lost nearly everything, they will, unless radically changed in mind, lose all. The one hope of Chō-sen is the raising up in a generation, now under new influences, of a new type of humanity. The Christian schools and churches are supplying this need.
Indeed, the fall of yang-banism and the extinction of Corea’s sovereignty means Buddhism’s opportunity. It will be both logical and natural that one of the first effects of Christian missions will be, as in Japan, to quicken the spirit and improve the form and power of the older religion. Nor ought missionaries fear its vigorous competition, should it become potent for the abolition of demon-worship and the moral uplift of the masses otherwise neglected, especially in out-of-the-way places.
Unfortunately, Corea of mediæval mind, like barbarous Japan of not so many years ago, sought a remedy for supposed wrongs in assassination. Rashly unintelligent, sword and bullet were resorted to in order to stop the car of progress. Quick to misjudge and impatient to wait for results, the assassin selected as his first victims his country’s best friends. The weak and disappointed tried suicide as a remedy and deterrent. The insurgents in the so-called Righteous Army, too often were robbers of their own people. In the name of patriotism they attempted redress, seeking to turn back “modern civilization which rides on a powder cart.” The list of Coreans who in cowardice or discouragement died by their own hands, who were slaughtered by their own compatriots, who fell beneath the bullets or the swords of rebels in civil strife, or who were mown down by the resistless fire of the Japanese infantry, is sadly great.[3]
The Mikado’s soldiers were perhaps frequently unable to distinguish between the deserving and the undeserving. Their actions are not absolutely free from criticism. Yet with unrestrained frankness the statistics of the military operations are given in the Annual Reports on Reforms and Progress in Korea, in 1907, 1908–9, and 1909–10. From July, 1907, when the riots broke out in Seoul, on account of the disbanding of the Corean army, to the end of 1908, there were of Japanese soldiers 179 killed and 277 wounded, besides 67 Japanese residents killed in 1907 and 16 in 1908. Of Corean [[517]]insurgents, 14,566 were “killed.” Besides positive military measures, the Corean Emperor’s rescripts urging those in arms to submit quietly were effective, and the total of those who surrendered and were pardoned to December 13, 1907, was 8,728. During the fiscal year 1909 the Japanese lost 38 men, but the number of insurgents killed (3,001), wounded, captured, or surrendered was 6,131. Those in arms who yielded or asked pardon were given employment in road-making and other useful occupations. By 1911, most of the activity of native insurgent bands had degenerated into the work of mere banditti. Military movements on a large scale were not required, and much of the desolation of villages was repaired with better hope of more comfortable existence. Frightful as is this frank showing, it is doubtful whether more lives were lost in the suppression of rebellion, from 1907 to 1911, than in the nearly chronic anarchy that prevailed in the southern provinces during the previous decade and a half.
The Annual Reports above referred to show by text, pictures, and statistics, not only the purpose and results of the Japanese Government, but also the fearful cost of restoring order, a cost of life and treasure aggravated both by natives who have not scrupled to use the torch, the mulct, and the assassin’s weapon on their own native soil, and by foreigners who, in the name of liberty, abused the freedom of the press and kept the useless and dangerous embers of sedition in a flame. Not satisfied with murder at home, Coreans have made the United States, already the happy hunting ground of the Black Hand and the lyncher, the arena of their cowardly exploits.
After Mr. Durham White Stevens, an American of long experience in the Far East, and Diplomatic Adviser to the Corean Government, had been shot and killed in San Francisco by a Corean, the most shining mark was Corea’s best friend, Ito. Made a prince and rewarded with every mark of honor possible to a subject by the Emperor of Japan, this man who, in unquailing discharge of his duty, had already braved the Japanese feudal sword wielded by cowards in Choshiu, and the infuriated Tokio mob in constitutional Japan, and who seemed immune from the assassins of which old Japan raised such a luxuriant crop, fell in Manchuria at the Harbin railway station, on October 26, 1909, before the [[518]]bullets of the petty revenger, who shot from behind. Amid the grief and the honor of the whole world, on November 4, 1909, Ito was given a State funeral such as has been bestowed upon few subjects of Japan. Ito shed his blood in the cause of peace. Whether these assassinations hastened the absorption of Corea by Japan, and the blotting out of a sovereignty unknown to the world until Japan, by peaceful diplomacy, conferred it in 1876, is not known. The Emperor at once appointed General Viscount Terauchi, then Minister of War, and already famous for his brilliant military record and notable organizing abilities, to be the successor of Ito in Corea. The record for energetic action, consummate tact, and ceaseless toil already made by Terauchi places his name very near that of Ito as a modern civilizer and lover of the victories of peace even more than those of war.
Despite all the instances of individual wrong, private injustices, and public mistakes made by the Japanese in Corea, and in view of the severe criticisms of Terauchi by such leading Japanese newspapers as the Kokumin and Kochi, it is nevertheless manifest that the policy of the Tokio Government is antipodally the reverse of that of Hidéyoshi. Instead of the Ear-tomb, and the scooping of Corea clean of her artists, artisans, potters, and art treasures, there rise to-day the school, the hospital, and the temples of justice and finance. Plans are being perfected for the development of the soil and of the wealth of the nation, in the interest of the people, while to the missionary and alien philanthropist is given all encouragement. A new land survey is in operation for the equalization of taxes. Light-houses have reduced the dangers of a foggy and treacherous coast. Harbor works are in course of construction; well-made common roads are decreasing the difficulty of transport; while these and the highways of steel continually increase the value of the arable lands and of town lots. Rivers, even the wide Yalu and Han, are spanned by bridges. Many a place, historic because of war, is now famous for its commercial and industrial development. Piracy gives way before policemen in steam launches, and chronic brigandage is dying out. In all that relates directly to humanity, the reform of the judiciary methods of justice, prison procedure, the codification of laws, etc., the progress is marvellous. At the head of the judicial department is a Christian, Judge Watanabé, [[519]]and many men of this faith, Japanese and Corean, fill other high offices. Special schools, of medicine, surgery, nursing, scientific agriculture, forestry, live-stock improvement and manual training, are preparing young men and women to raise the standard of human life in Chō-sen and to reclaim the sixty-six per cent. of the arable land in the peninsula which has lain waste.
The absorption of Corea by Japan has given the astonishingly successful Christian missionary work a new environment, and one for the better, despite the manifest dangers of misunderstanding arising temporarily from the political situation and the eager readiness of a few Japanese press correspondents to misrepresent. With full religious liberty, and under the protection of a firm, orderly, and impartial government, the great work of raising up the new type of man and woman in Chō-sen, now one of the most promising of mission fields, proceeds. In the Christian household, numbering roughly about 200,000, we discern the best promise for Chō-sen’s future. Into his new world of hope and cheer, the native, when enlightened and converted, brings the richest inheritances of the national culture, the best results of his training, and the most winning traits of his character. This is strikingly shown in the general eagerness to read and study the Holy Scriptures, in the wonderful powers of memory, and in the committing of large portions of the Bible, which is now accessible in the vernacular. The native’s generosity, good-nature, power of self-support, mutual desire and practice of helpfulness, patience, and power to endure persecution of any and all sorts fit him admirably for Christian service.
Christianity has come to Corea to reveal the national treasures that are enduring. For centuries the beautiful phonetic alphabet, en-mun, and syllabary Nido (p. 47), lay neglected and scorned by the learned. Yet this was but one of many elements of potency for good that lay unused like barren rocks. At the smiting of the missionaries’ hand of faith gushed forth the waters of life and healing. The new messages of hope and salvation came to the people not only in their own tongue, but in their own script. Christian teachers, after long years of discouragement, have made, through the patience of hope, of love and sympathy, a real conquest of the Corean heart. The faces of men and women are lighted up with [[520]]a new glow of interest in life here and hereafter as they find both body and soul ministered to by their friends from afar. With this spiritual invitation and challenge to enter into the promised land fully accepted by the Coreans, it is not too wild a dream to imagine even the strong conqueror conquered by the weaker. Samson’s experience and his riddle may be the Corean’s. Chō-sen may yet be to Nippon what Palestine was to Greece and Rome. Bereft of political sovereignty, from the land of the Hebrews went forth that salvation which “is of the Jews” to conquer Europe and the world. Already, by closer contact of the humbler classes of the two nations on Corean soil, the paganism of rustic Japan—hitherto almost untouched by the gospel—begins to disintegrate and ferment because of the leaven brought from Christian Chō-sen. This has the Corean left—and perhaps more abundantly than ever before—“power to become” the spiritual regenerator of Japan. [[521]]