Korea's Fight for Freedom Part 13

"The j.a.panese have encouraged immorality by removing Korean marriage restrictions, and allowing marriages without formality and without regard for age. There have been marriages at as early an age as twelve. Since the annexation there have been 80,000 divorce cases in Korea. The j.a.panese encourage, as a source of revenue, the sale of Korean prost.i.tutes in Chinese cities. Many of these prost.i.tutes are only fourteen and fifteen years old. It is a part of the j.a.panese policy of race extermination, by which they hope to destroy all Koreans. May G.o.d regard these facts.

"The j.a.panese Government has established a bureau for the sale of opium, and under the pretext that opium was to be used for medicinal purposes has caused Koreans and Formosans to engage in poppy cultivation. The opium is secretly shipped into China.

Because of the j.a.panese encouragement of this traffic many Koreans have become users of the drug.

"The j.a.panese forbid any school courses for Koreans higher than the middle school and the higher schools established by missionary organizations are severely regulated. The civilization of the Far East originated in China, and was brought first to Korea and thence to j.a.pan. The ancient books were more numerous in Korea than in j.a.pan, but after annexation the j.a.panese set about destroying these books, so that Koreans should not be able to learn them. This 'burning of the books and murder of the literati' was for the purpose of debasing the Koreans and robbing them of their ancient culture....

"How can our race avoid extermination? Even if the Government of j.a.pan were benevolent, how could the j.a.panese understand the aches and pains of another race of people? With her evil Government can there be anything but racial extermination for us?"

From the time of the reopening of Korea the j.a.panese have treated the Koreans in personal intercourse as the dust beneath their feet, or as one might imagine a crude and vixenish tempered woman of peasant birth whose husband had acquired great wealth by some freak of fortune treating an unfortunate poor gentlewoman who had come in her employment. This was bad enough in the old days; since the j.a.panese acquired full power in Korea it has become infinitely worse.

The j.a.panese coolie punches the Korean who chances to stand in his august path. The j.a.panese woman, wife of a little trader, spits out the one contemptuous sentence she has learned in the Korean tongue, when a Korean man draws near on the boat or on the train. The little official a.s.sumes an air of ineffable disdain and contempt. A member of the j.a.panese Diet was reported in the j.a.panese press to have said that in Korea the j.a.panese gendarmes were in the habit of exacting from the Korean school children the amount of deference which in j.a.pan would be proper to the Imperial Household.

The lowest j.a.panese coolie practices the right to kick, beat and cuff a Korean of high birth at his pleasure, and the Korean has in effect no redress. Had the Koreans from the first have met blow with blow, a number of them no doubt would have died, but the j.a.panese would have been cured of the habit. The Korean dislike of fighting, until he has really some serious reason for a fight, has encouraged the j.a.panese bully; but it makes the bully's offence none the less.

j.a.panese officials in many instances seem to delight in exaggerating their contempt on those under them. This is particularly true of some of the j.a.panese teachers. Like all Government officials, these teachers wear swords, symbols of power. Picture the dignity of the teacher of a cla.s.s of little boys who lets his sword clang to terrify the youngsters under him, or who tries to frighten the girls by displaying his weapon.

The iron rule of Terauchi was followed by the iron rule of Hasegawa, his successor. The struggle of the rebel army in the hills had died down. But men got together, wondering what steps they could take. Christians and non-Christians found a common bond of union. Their life had come to a pa.s.s where it was better to die than to live under unchecked tyranny. Thus the Independence movement came into being.

The Koreans who, despoiled of their homes or determined to submit no longer to j.a.pan, escaped into Manchuria, escaped as a rule by the difficult and dangerous journey across the high mountain pa.s.ses. What this journey means can best be understood from a report by the Rev. W.T. Cook, of the Manchuria Christian College at Moukden.

"The untold afflictions of the Korean immigrants coming into Manchuria will doubtless never be fully realized, even by those actually witnessing their distress. In the still closeness of a forty below zero climate in the dead of winter, the silent stream of white clad figures creeps over the icy mountain pa.s.ses, in groups of tens, twenties and fifties, seeking a new world of subsistence, willing to take a chance of life and death in a hand-to-hand struggle with the stubborn soil of Manchuria's wooded and stony hillsides. Here, by indefatigable efforts, they seek to extract a living by applying the grub axe and hand hoe to the barren mountain sides above the Chinese fields, planting and reaping by hand between the roots the spa.r.s.e yield that is often insufficient to sustain life.

"Many have died from insufficient food. Not only women and children but young men have been frozen to death. Sickness also claims its toll under these new conditions of exposure. Koreans have been seen standing barefooted on the broken ice of a riverside fording place, rolling up their baggy trousers before wading through the broad stream, two feet deep, of ice cold water, then standing on the opposite side while they hastily readjust their clothing and shoes.

"Women with insufficient clothing, and parts of their bodies exposed, carry little children on their backs, thus creating a mutual warmth in a slight degree, but it is in this way that the little ones' feet, sticking out from the binding basket, get frozen and afterwards fester till the tiny toes stick together.

Old men and women, with bent backs and wrinkled faces, walk the uncomplaining miles until their old limbs refuse to call them further.

"Thus it is by households they come, old and young, weak and strong, big and little.... Babies have been born in wayside inns.

"In this way over 75,000 Koreans have entered during the past year, until the number of Koreans now living in both the north and western portions of Manchuria now totals nearly half a million."[2]

[Footnote 2: Report to the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions.]

XII

THE MISSIONARIES

I have had occasion in previous chapters to make occasional reference to the work of the missionaries in Korea. It is necessary now to deal with them in detail, for they had become one of the great factors, and from the j.a.panese point of view one of the great problems, of the country.

Long before Korea was open to the outside world, missionary pioneers tried to enter it. The French Catholics forced admission as far back as the end of the eighteenth century, and made many converts, who were afterwards exterminated. Gutzaleff, a famous Protestant pioneer, landed on an island at Basil's Bay, in 1832, and remained there a month, distributing Chinese literature. Mr. Thomas, a British missionary, secured a pa.s.sage on board the ill-fated _General Sherman_ in 1866, and was killed with the rest of the crew. Dr. Ross, the Scottish Presbyterian missionary of Moukden, Manchuria, became interested in the Koreans, studied their language, talked with every Korean he could find, and built up a grammar of the language, publishing an English-Korean primer in 1876. He and a colleague, Mr.

McIntyre, published Gospels in the language, and opened up a work among the Koreans on the north side of the Yalu. Those who can recall the state of that district in the days before railways were opened and order established, can best appreciate the nerve and daring needed for the task.

They made converts, and one of these converts took some newly printed Christian books and set back home, reaching Seoul itself, spreading the new religion among his friends.

It was two years after the opening of Korea to the West before the first missionary arrived. In 1884 Dr. Allen, a Presbyterian physician (afterwards United States Minister to Korea), arrived at Seoul. It was very doubtful at this time how missionaries would be received, or how their converts would be treated. The law enacting death against any man who became a Christian was still unrepealed, but it was not enforced. Officialism might, however, revive it at any time. It was thought advisable, when the first converts were baptized in 1887, to perform the ceremony behind closed doors, with an earnest and athletic young American educationalist, Homer B. Hulbert, acting as guard.

Dr. Allen was soon followed by others. Dr. Underwood, brother of the famous manufacturer of typewriting machines, was the first non-medical missionary.

The American and Canadian Presbyterians and Methodists undertook the main work, and the Church of England set up a bishopric. Women missionary doctors came, and at once won a place for themselves. Names like Appenzeller, Scranton, Bunker and Gale--to name a few of the pioneers--have won a permanent place in the history of missions.

The missionaries found a land almost without religion, with few temples and few monks or priests. Buddhism had been discredited by the treachery of some j.a.panese Buddhists during the great j.a.panese invasion by Hideyoshi in 1592, and no Buddhist priest was allowed inside the city of Seoul. Young men of official rank studied their Confucius diligently, but to them Confucianism was more a theory for the conduct of life and a road to high office than a religion. The main religion of the people was Shamanism, the fear of evil spirits. It darkened their souls, as the tales of a foolish nurse about goblins darken the mind of a sensitive and imaginative child.

The spirits of Shamanism were evil, not good, a curse, not a blessing, bringing terror, not hope.

Christianity was very fortunate in its representatives. I have seen much of the missionaries of Manchuria and Korea. A finer, straighter lot of men I never want to meet. The magnificent climate enables them to keep at the top of form. They have initiative, daring and common sense. Those I have known are born leaders, who would have made their mark anywhere, in business or politics.

In the early days they had to be ready to set their hands to anything, to plan and build houses and churches, to open schools, to run a boat down dangerous rapids or face a dangerous mob, to overawe a haughty yang-ban or break in a dangerous horse. They were the pioneers of civilization as well as of Christianity.

Religion had to be commended by the courage of its adherents. When there came a dangerous uprising, and every one else fled, the missionary had to stay at his post. When an epidemic of cholera or yellow fever swept over a district, the missionary had to act as doctor or nurse. Sometimes the missionary died, as Dr. Heron died at Seoul and McKenzie at Sorai. Their deaths were even more effective than their lives in winning people.

Dr. Allen gained a foothold soon after his arrival by sticking to his post in Seoul during the uprising against foreigners that followed the attack by the j.a.panese and the reformers on the Cabinet and their seizure of the King and Queen. When Min Yung-ik, the Queen's nephew, was badly wounded, Dr.

Allen attended to him and saved his life. Henceforth the King was the missionaries' friend. He built a hospital and placed Dr. Allen in charge.

Women missionary doctors were appointed Court physicians to the Queen.

There were years of waiting, when the converts were few, and when it seemed that the barriers of four thousand years never would be broken down. Then came the Chino-j.a.panese War. Koreans were forced to see that this Western civilization, which had enabled little j.a.pan to beat the Chinese giant, must mean something. A young man from Indiana, Samuel Moffett, with a companion, Graham Lee, had gone some time before to Pyeng-yang, reputedly the worst city in Korea. Here they had been stoned and abused. When the Chinese Army came to Pyeng-yang, and the country was devastated in the great and decisive battle between the Chinese and j.a.panese, these two men stayed by the Koreans in their darkest and most perilous hours. Koreans still tell how "Moksa" Moffett put on the dress of a Korean mourner and went freely around despite the Chinese, who would have almost certainly devised a specially lingering death for him, had they discovered his presence.

"There must be something in this religion," said the Koreans. St.u.r.dy old John Newton's belief that the worst sinner makes the finest saint was borne out in the case of Pyeng-yang. It became in a few years one of the greatest scenes of missionary triumph in Asia. The harvest was ripening now. In Seoul men flung into jail for political offences turned to prayer in the darkness and despair of their torture chambers, and went to death praising G.o.d. The Secretary to the King's Cabinet preached salvation to his fellow Cabinet Ministers.

The tens of converts grew to tens of thousands. From the first, the Koreans showed themselves to be Christians of a very unusual type. They started by reforming their homes, giving their wives liberty and demanding education for their children. They took the promises and commands of the Bible literally and established a standard of conduct for church members which, if it were enforced in some older Christian communities, would cause a serious contraction of the church rolls. The first convert set out to preach to his friends. Latter converts imitated his example. From Pyeng-yang the movement spread to Sun-chon, which in a few years rivalled Pyeng-yang as a Christian centre. From here Christianity spread to the Yalu and up the Tumen River.

The Koreans themselves established Christianity in distant communities where no white man had ever been. Soon many of the missionaries were kept busy for several months each year travelling with pack-pony and mafoo, from station to station in the most remote parts of the country, fording and swimming unbridged rivers, climbing mountain pa.s.ses, inspecting and examining and instructing the converts, admitting them to church membership and organizing them for still more effective work.

When I hear the cheap sneers of the obtuse stay-at-home or globe-trotter critics against missionaries and their converts, I am amused. It gives me the measure of the men, particularly of the globetrotters. When the British and American Churches seek to send out missionaries, the British and American people will have registered the sure sign of their decadence. For the Churches and nations will then cease to be alive. In travelling through the north country I employed a number of the Christian converts, I found them clean and honest, good, hard workers, men who showed their religion not by talk, but by good, straight action. It is a grief to me to know that some of these "boys" have since, because of their prominence as Christian workers, been the victims of official persecution.

Under the influence of the missionaries many schools were opened; hospitals and dispensaries were maintained, and a considerable literature, educational as well as religious, was circulated.

When the j.a.panese landed in Korea in 1904, the missionaries welcomed them.

They knew the tyranny and abuses of the old Government, and believed that the j.a.panese would help to better things. The ill-treatment of helpless Koreans by j.a.panese soldiers and coolies caused a considerable reaction of feeling. When, however, Prince Ito became Resident-General the prevailing sentiment was that it would be better for the people to submit and to make the best of existing conditions, in the hope that the harshness and injustice of j.a.panese rule would pa.s.s.

Most of the Europeans and Americans in Korea at the time adopted this line.

I travelled largely in the interior of Korea in 1906 and 1907. Groups of influential Koreans came to me telling their grievances and asking what to do. Sometimes big a.s.semblies of men asked me to address them. They believed me to be their friend, and were willing to trust me. My advice was always the same. "Submit and make yourselves better men. You can do nothing now by taking up arms. Educate your children, improve your homes, better your lives. Show the j.a.panese by your conduct and your self-control that you are as good as they are, and fight the corruption and apathy that helped to bring your nation to its present position." Let me add that I did what I could in England, at the same time, to call attention to their grievances.

Prince Ito was openly sympathetic to the missionaries and to their medical and educational work. He once explained why, in a public gathering at Seoul. "In the early years of j.a.pan's reformation, the senior statesmen were opposed to religious toleration, especially because of distrust of Christianity. But I fought vehemently for freedom of belief and religious propaganda, and finally triumphed. My reasoning was this: Civilization depends on morality and the highest morality upon religion. Therefore religion must be tolerated and encouraged."

Ito pa.s.sed off the scene, Korea was formally annexed to j.a.pan, and Count Terauchi became Governor-General. Terauchi was unsympathetic to Christianity and a new order of affairs began. One of the difficulties of the Christians was over the direction that children in schools and others should bow before the picture of the j.a.panese Emperor on feast days. The j.a.panese tried to maintain to the missionaries that this was only a token of respect; the Christians declared that it was an act of adoration. To the j.a.panese his Emperor is a divine being, the descendant of the G.o.ds.

Christians who refused to bow were carefully noted as malignants. In the famous Conspiracy Case, the official a.s.sistant Procurator, in urging the conviction of one of the men, said: "He was head teacher of the Sin-an School, Chong-ju, and was a notorious man of anti-j.a.panese sentiments. He was the very obstinate member of the Society who, at a meeting on the first anniversary of the birthday of the Emperor of j.a.pan after the annexation of Korea, refused to bow before the Imperial picture on the ground that such an act was worshipping an image." This one item was the only fact that the a.s.sistant Procurator produced to prove the head teacher's guilt. He was convicted, and awarded seven years' penal servitude.

A strong effort was made to j.a.panize the Korean Churches, to make them branches of the j.a.panese Churches, and to make them instruments in the j.a.panese campaign of a.s.similation. The missionaries resisted this to the utmost. They declared that they would be neutral in political matters, as they were directed by their Governments to be. Having failed to win them over to their side, the j.a.panese authorities entered into a campaign for the breaking down of the Churches, particularly the Presbyterian Churches of the north. I am well aware that they deny this, but here is a case where actions and speeches cannot be reconciled.

Attempts were pushed to create churches of Koreans under j.a.panese. Son Pyung-hi, who had proved a good friend of j.a.pan during the Chinese War, had been encouraged by the j.a.panese some time before to start a religious sect, the Chon-do Kyo, which it was hoped would replace Christianity, and prove a useful weapon for j.a.pan. Here a blunder was made, for later on Son Pyung-hi flung all his influence against j.a.pan and worked with the native Christian leaders to start the Independence movement. More important than either of these two things, however, direct persecution was begun. Several hundred Korean Christian leaders in the north were arrested, and out of them 144 were taken to Seoul, tortured, and charged with a conspiracy to murder the Governor-General. Various missionaries were named as their partners in crime. The tale of the conspiracy was a complete fabrication manufactured by the police. I describe it fully in the next chapter.

Following this came regulations aimed at the missionary schools and inst.i.tutions. At the time of annexation, almost the whole of the real modern education of Korea was undertaken by the missionaries, who were maintaining 778 schools. A series of Educational Ordinances was promulgated in March, 1915, directing that no religious teaching is to be permitted in private schools, and no religious ceremonies allowed to be performed. The j.a.panese authorities made no secret of their intention of eventually closing all missionary schools, on the ground that even when religious teaching was excluded, pupils were influenced by their teachers, and the influence of the foreign teachers was against the j.a.panization of the Koreans. Mr. Komatsu, Director of the Bureau of Foreign Affairs, put this point without any attempt at concealment, in a public statement. "Our object of education is not only to develop the intellect and morality of our people, but also to foster in their minds such national spirit as will contribute to the existence and welfare of our Empire.... I sincerely hope that you will appreciate this change of the time and understand that missions should leave all affairs relating entirely to education entirely in the hands of the Government, by transferring the money and labour they have hitherto been expending on education to their proper sphere of religious propagation.... Whatever the curriculum of a school may be, it is natural that the students of that school should be influenced by the ideas and personal character of its princ.i.p.al and teachers. Education must be decidedly nationalistic and must not be mixed up with religion that is universal." This is a much harsher regulation against missions than prevails in j.a.pan, where mission schools are allowed to continue their work, with freedom to carry on their religious teaching.

The Government-General agreed to allow mission schools that had already obtained Government permits to continue for ten years without having the regulations enforced. Schools that had applied for the permit but had not obtained it, owing to formal official delays, were ordered to obey or close, and police were sent to see that they closed.

The Government commanded the mission schools to cease using their own text-books and to use the officially prepared text-books. These are carefully prepared to eliminate "dangerous thoughts," _i.e._, anything that will promote a desire for freedom. They directly teach ancestral worship.

The missionaries have protested in every way they can. The Government-General is adamant.