MOVEMENT IN KOREA AND MANCHURIA
One of the movements which will affect Christianity all over the East has had its origin in Korea. Just as the suffering and miserable heart of the individual man is that which Christianity finds most suitable for its home, so it is with a nation. It is at the moment of national adversity and humiliation that religious movements most readily rise. Korea had looked upon herself as the equal of Japan. From Korea came much of the civilisation which adorned Japan before the great Western movement. When Prince Ito with the eyes of a statesman was realising that Japan must either accept the domination of the West or its civilisation, Korea was immovably entrenched in her belief in her national greatness and in her contempt for the Western world. So Westernised Japan has overcome her ancient rival and teacher, and Korea is humbled to the very dust.
In many ways that humiliation is rendered more poignant owing to the lack of sympathy between the races. Though they both have taken their civilisation from China and have a common classical literature, they are diametrically opposed in many things. The Japanese are essentially a clean race. They wash constantly; they will not enter a house with their shoes on their feet. No one who knows them will accuse the Koreans of excess in cleanliness. On the other hand, the Japanese very frequently lack modesty. Many are the stories that residents will tell; and we have seen the Japanese women clothed in the garb of Eve appear in the public bath and even in the street. On the other hand, the Koreans may be corrupt and immoral, but they are modest. The women of Seoul as they walk through the streets cover their faces with their green cloaks, till one almost thinks one must be in a Mohammedan land. Those green cloaks are a perpetual reminder of the ancient hostility between the races.
The picturesque story is worth telling. The Japanese, knowing of the absence of the Korean armies, determined to surprise Seoul. They thought they had succeeded, when to their amazement they saw the walls of Seoul covered with what they took for warlike Koreans. The ready wit of the women had saved their town. They had dressed themselves in their husbands' clothes and so deceived their hereditary foes. The Emperor rewarded them by giving them the right to wear the man's green coat, which they wear not in coat fashion, but over their heads, the sleeves partially veiling their faces; and as one wanders down the main street of Seoul and watches the modest but gaily-dressed crowd of Koreans—the women in their green coats with red ribbons, the men in white garments wearing their curious top-knots and quaint hats—one understands the antipathy they must feel for the short, muscular, soberly-dressed Japanese who by his courage and daring has subdued them and now tramples on their national susceptibilities and ignores their national rights.
There are several missions in Korea, but there is one which, primâ facie, would call for no special remark. It ministers to the white-robed Koreans in the same way that many another mission ministers to these Eastern peoples—teaching and preaching. Externally there is nothing exceptional about the missionaries. I will not say that their mission is uninteresting, but it is unexciting. They are Americans by nationality and Scotch by name and blood, and they follow the national Presbyterian faith with all its cautious teaching, with all its prim simplicity. No one would regard them as the mission that was likely to create a great excitement or raise a great enthusiasm, neither indeed do they so regard themselves. Their conception of mission work was the sensible and reasonable plan of converting a sufficient number to make them teachers and preachers, and then having educated them, to send them out to convert their own fellow-countrymen. In 1906 and the beginning of 1907 they were filled with dark forebodings for the future of Korea. The temporary occupation of Korea by the Japanese was obviously going to be changed into a permanency. The murder of the Queen had shown what the Japanese would do, and the victory over Russia had shown what they could do. Korea was at their mercy. Subdued yet not conquered in spirit, the missionaries, knowing their people well, foresaw that a bitter friction must arise between the two races; that rebellions and the consequent fierce repression must bring to their infant church a time of great trouble; and so, like the wise Christian men that they were, they took themselves to the Christian's weapon, namely, prayer. They earnestly prayed that in some way a great blessing should fall on their converts. That prayer was seemingly unanswered, the grasp of Japan was not relaxed. Except for the wisdom and gentleness of the great Prince Ito, there was nothing but oppression and sufferings for the Koreans. The Japanese army had learnt not only their military art but their statecraft in Germany, and the latter is traditionally harsh. Break, crush, and bully are the maxims which find general acceptance in the Prussian Court. Prince Ito, however, was a great admirer of English imperial policy with its maxims of justice to the weak, mercy to the conquered, and reverence for all national traditions; but Prince Ito could not control the Japanese soldiers, and the moans of the oppressed Koreans echoed throughout her land.
In the spring of 1907 the Presbyterian Mission held what is called its country class—that is to say, that the men who had been converted were summoned from all the country villages to the town of Pyeng-Yang, and there they attended for several days' instructions in the Christian faith. This excellent rule enables Christians who believe but who are ignorant to acquire a more ultimate knowledge of the truths of Christianity. These meetings are wholly unemotional; they are in no sense revival meetings, nor even devotional; they are essentially educational. Their object is to teach and not to excite. For the Scottish-American has a double national tradition that knowledge is strength. These meetings had been held one or two days; they had followed their usual uneventful if beneficial course, and showed every probability of ending as they had begun, when one of the Koreans rose from the centre of the room and interrupted the ordinary course of the meeting by asking leave to speak. As he insisted, permission was given him. He declared that he had a sin on his conscience that forbade him listening to the teaching of the missionaries in peace, and that further he must declare this sin. The Presbyterian missionaries do not encourage this kind of open confession of sin, but still to get on with the meeting and to quiet him they gave him leave to speak. He then declared that he had felt some months ago a feeling of bitterness towards one of the missionaries, a Mr. Blair, who was our informant. Mr. Blair assured him that so far from feeling that there was any need for this confession he regarded the matter as trivial, and hoping again to bring the meeting back to the point he suggested that they should say the Lord's Prayer. Hardly had he uttered in Korean the words "Our Father," when a sudden emotion seemed to rush over all those who were there present. The missionaries described it as at once one of the most awful and one of the most mysterious moments of their lives. They were not revivalists; they had not encouraged it; they did not believe in it; they disliked an emotional religion with which they had no sympathy; and here they were in the face of a movement which was beyond, not only their experience, but that of the greatest revivalists. They tried to stop it, but unavailingly. The Koreans, unlike the Chinese, always sit upon the floor, and as the missionaries looked out over the meeting from the platform on which they stood, they saw the faces of their converts racked with every form of mental anguish. Some were swinging themselves forward striking their heads on the ground, hoping, as it were, to obtain by insensibility peace from their torturing thoughts; some were in the presence of an awful terror; some were leaping up demanding to be heard, longing to free their souls from the weight they felt would crush them; others with set faces were resolutely determined not to yield to the inspiration of the spirit which suggested that they should gain relief by frank confession. The missionaries having failed to bring the meeting to a close, submitted to what they felt was the will of a higher Being, and the meeting went on till fatigue produced a temporary and a partial rest. Though the meeting was closed, the missionaries learnt afterwards that many Koreans went on all through the night in agonised prayer.
The next day they hoped the thing was over, and that the incident might be reckoned among those strange experiences which workers in the mission field must occasionally expect to encounter; but not so—the meeting next night was the same as its predecessor. They noticed several interesting facts. One, for instance, was, that the women were far less affected than the men. The movement did not reach them till later, and never so fully. Another remarkable thing about this movement was that though the Methodists are by tradition a revivalist body, and though they have a vigorous mission working in that town, yet the revival only spread to their converts after many days, and then neither with the spontaneity nor the fire with which it had been manifested in the Presbyterian Mission.
Of the reality of the confession of sin there could be no doubt. One man, for instance, confessed to having stolen gold from a local gold-mining company, and produced the wedge of gold which he had stolen, and asked them to treat him as he deserved. The manager of the company luckily was a European, who wisely refused to punish a man who had so spontaneously confessed his theft. Many of the sins that were confessed would not bear repetition. Some confessed even to such awful sins as that of murder of parents. One man in particular, a trusted servant of the mission, resisted confession, and day by day became more and more racked with mental agony, till the missionaries feared that his health would not endure the terrible strain of such mental anguish, and they advised him to make a free confession of his sins. At last he came to them with a sum of money in his hand; he had raised it by selling some houses which he had bought as a provision for his old age, and he confessed to the sin that was torturing him. He had done what is constantly done in the East—he had peculated. His position had been that of an agent whom the missionaries employ to make many of their small payments, and out of each of these payments he had taken "a squeeze." With these he had bought the houses which now he had sold. He left the missionaries happy in heart though empty in pocket.
This movement spread more or less over the Presbyterian missions in Korea, but never with such intensity as manifested at Pyeng-Yang. We heard it spoken of by a non-Christian Korean, a member of the Court of the Emperor of Korea. He had heard of it, and said men were saying this movement is a wonderful thing, for under its influence men confessed crimes of which even torture would not have induced them to own themselves guilty. A Chinese merchant also heard of it in Manchuria. The man came down to Pyeng-Yang, and happened to stop with the Chinese merchants. He mentioned that there were Christians in Manchuria, and the Chinese merchants immediately took an interest. When he asked what they knew of the Christians, they answered, "Good men, good men." One of them was owed by a Korean twenty dollars, who would only allow that he owed ten, and the merchant having no means of redress, had written off the debt; but when this revival took place, the Korean came with the other ten dollars together with interest, and what of course would appeal even more to the Eastern mind, with the frank confession that he had lied. This practical illustration of the effects of Christianity greatly impressed the Chinese.
When we arrived at Pyeng-Yang the movement was over. We went to some of their meetings. They were very common-place ordinary meetings. All that struck us was that there was a tone of reverence, a sense of reality, which made one feel that Christianity was as sincere in Korea as it is in our own land.