Japan's Policy in Korea

I

ON a sultry August afternoon in 1905, four men, — two burly, bearded Russians and two slight, suave Japanese, — bending over a table in an unimpressive red-brick building within the walls of the Navy Yard at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, scrawled their signatures at the bottom of a closely written parchment, thereby bringing to an end the stupendous struggle between their respective countries for the mastery of the Farther East. But, in thus concluding a peace between their own great empires, the plenipotentiaries were signing the death-warrant of a third nation, a nation which had kept its independence for upward of two thousand years; for, by the terms of the Treaty of Portsmouth, Russia recognized Japan’s ‘paramount political, military, and economic interests’ in Korea. Thus guaranteed complete freedom of action in the peninsula, Japan proclaimed a protectorate over the ancient little kingdom before the ink on the treaty was fairly dry, and Korea passed into the limbo of subject nations.

The Koreans and their champions have never ceased to denounce the methods employed by Japan in the establishment of the protectorate, asserting, and probably with some degree of truth, that the Emperor of Korea and his ministers were intimidated into signing away the independence of their country. But, though the methods which Japan employed in effecting this step may be open to criticism, that the step was imperative and inevitable cannot seriously be questioned. Korea’s loss of independence was primarily due to her unfortunate geographical position. Her internal condition, bad as it was, was only contributory in bringing about her downfall. Glance at the map, and you will see that the peninsula of Korea is a pistol pointed straight at the heart of Japan. So long as that weapon remained, unloaded, on the table, Japan fell tolerably secure. But when she saw an unfriendly hand moving stealthily to grasp it, she was forced to take decisive action in order to ensure her own safety. For with nations, as with individuals, self-preservation is the first law of nature.

In 1894, China, which had long claimed a shadowy suzerainty over Korea, — a suzerainty not recognized by Japan, — dispatched a military force to the peninsula, for the ostensible purpose of stabilizing the government of the little empire and effecting internal reforms. In reality it was a move to bring Korea under the rule of Peking. China’s curt refusal to withdraw her troops forced Japan to choose between a permanent Chinese occupation of the peninsula and war. She chose the latter and, by continuous and easy victories, won an overwhelming triumph. By the terms of the treaty of peace China abandoned her pretensions to the suzerainty of Korea, which remained, in theory at least, an independent empire. This was Japan’s first modern war, and it was fought to keep China from obtaining possession of the Korean pistol.

Scarcely was Japan rid of the Chinese menace, however, when another and far more formidable enemy reached down from the North to snatch the weapon so temptingly displayed. In 1903 the Emperor of Korea granted permission to a Russian lumber company to fell timber on the Korean side of the Yalu River. This seemingly innocent commercial concession provided the land-hungry Muscovite with a pretext for demanding the cession of a Korean harbor — Yongampo — on the Yellow Sea. The Bear was coming down to the Warm Water.

Fully awake to her peril, Japan promptly and vigorously protested against, this aggression, insisting that Russia should keep out of Korea, and demanding that her own special interests in the peninsula should be recognized. Russia, made overconfident by her huge army and enormous resources, contemptuously refused. Thus Japan found herself confronted by the same problem with the Muscovite that she had fought out with the Celestial a decade before. The announcement of her decision came with paralyzing suddenness in the dimness of a February dawn in 1904, when she launched a torpedo attack against the Russian squadron lying under the guns of Port Arthur. The struggle that followed cost the Island Empire 135,000 lives and eight hundred million dollars; but in eighteen months the men from the little islands, who in their youth had worn skirts and carried painted fans and drunk their tea from eggshell cups the size of thimbles, whipped to a standstill the Colossus of the North.

Having thus waged two wars on account of Korea, Japan emerged from the second conflict fully convinced that her national security depended upon her preventing the peninsula from falling under the dominance of a third power. Nor could she permit the little empire to drift into a condition of such internal chaos as to imperil foreign interests and thereby provide an excuse for foreign interference. There seemed only one way for Japan to dispel, for good and all, the threatening cloud which had so long overshadowed her: she must herself assume supervision of Korea’s affairs.

The establishment of the protectorate placed Korea in much the same relation to Japan that Egypt bore to England when the latter intervened in the Nile country in 1882. Japan could no more take the risk of another power gaining a foothold in Korea, and thereby threatening her causeway to the Asian mainland, than England could take the risk of another power gaining a foothold in Egypt, and threatening her sea-road to India. England intervened in Egypt in order, by reforming its government and ameliorating the condition of its people, to avert foreign complications. Japan intervened in Korea for precisely the same reasons.

England sent to Egypt, as proconsul, her greatest administrator, Evelyn Baring, later Lord Cromer. Japan sent to Korea her greatest administrator, the Marquis Ito. Each was confronted by the same problem: to reform a government rotten to the very core, and to effect the regeneration of a people reduced to the lowest depths of misery and degradation by centuries of spoliation and oppression. Had Ito not fallen by the bullet of a Korean assassin, at the very moment when the patient, tactful, sympathetic administration which he had established was beginning to show results, there is little doubt that he would have met with as astonishing success in rehabilitating the Land of the Morning Calm as Cromer did in the Land of the Valley of the Nile.

When the Japanese undertook the task of regenerating Korea there were but two classes in that unhappy country — the spoilers and the spoiled. The Korean officials had forgotten more about graft than Tammany Hall ever knew. Tweed and Croker were amateurs at the game, when compared to the Korean Yangbans. The peasantry had neither rights nor privileges, save that of being the ultimate sponge. The court at Seoul was permeated with treachery and intrigue. Foreigners found, as the natives had long known, that no man’s life or property was safe from the rapacity of the Court party and its henchmen. Political assassinations were so common as scarcely to provoke comment . Never, perhaps, has there existed a weaker government, one more degraded and corrupt, one more utterly incapable of governing. No government more richly deserved its fate.

In June, 1907, the weak, intrigueloving old Emperor, notwithstanding his agreement not to engage in any act of an international character save through the medium of Japan, secretly dispatched three emissaries to The Hague, where the Second Peace Conference was sitting, in an attempt to bring about foreign intervention. In order to save their country from the consequences of the Emperor’s indiscretion, which the Japanese regarded as treachery, the Korean cabinet, composed, for a wonder, of patriotic and farseeing men, virtually insisted on the sovereign’s abdication. He was succeeded by the Crown Prince, a youth who, if popular report is to be believed, has been mentally incompetent from birth; but his tenure of the puppetship was destined to be of brief duration.

Meanwhile, political conditions in Seoul were going from bad to worse. Plot and counterplot followed each other in rapid succession. To avert anarchy, the Japanese put down these conspiracies with an iron hand. And to protect the peasantry, who were powerless to protect themselves, they suppressed extortion and oppression with equal firmness. The firm attitude of the government so alarmed and infuriated the corruptionists and conspirators, that they had recourse to the Korean’s traditional method of political retaliation — assassination. This campaign of terrorism, which culminated in the brutal murder of the Marquis Ito, Korea’s staunchest friend, served only to hasten the end, which came on the twenty-second of August, 1910, when Korea was formally annexed to the Empire of Japan.

II

The imperial rescript proclaiming the annexation was the signal for the systematic Japanization of Korea to begin. And it was begun with all the method and thoroughness so characteristic of the people of Nippon. The conciliatory policy of Marquis Ito gave way to a Bismarckian policy of blood and iron. Instead of being farsighted enough to grant the Koreans the large measure of autonomy which we have given to the Filipinos and the Porlo Ricans, which England has given to the Boers and the Egyptians, they made the mistake of attempting to extirpate the language and the literature of the Koreans, to destroy their national ideals, to root out their ancient manners and customs. In short, they tried to mould these new subjects over again, mistakenly believing that, were sufficient pressure applied, they would emerge from the process as Japanese; though I imagine that it was never intended that they should be anything save an inferior grade of Japanese, subject to restrictions and disabilities from which the islanders themselves were immune. I may be doing these who were responsible for this policy a grave injustice; but, judging their aims by their actions, I am tempted to believe that they dreamed of eventually bringing the Koreans to a status not far removed from that of the American negro, thereby giving to the Empire twenty millions of patient, uncomplaining, and submissive subjects, hewers of wood and drawers of water, who would accept without remonstrance the rôle of social, political, and economic inferiority assigned to them.

In adopting this policy, they committed the first of the series of psychological and political blunders which have caused such grave criticism of Japanese rule in Korea, and which have provided the enemies of Japan with so much ammunition. I am not suggesting that progressive Japanese opinion approved this policy, for it did not. The Korean programme represented the views of the military party alone. Indeed, there was a very considerable element in Japan which disapproved of the annexation altogether, holding that a resentful and rebellious Korea, annexed against her will, standing at Japan’s very door, would prove a source of weakness rather than of strength to the Empire.

Korea was now an integral part of the Japanese Empire. But, though the instrument which brought the two peoples together specifically and impliedly provides that Koreans shall have a share in the public affairs of Japan, the Japanese proceeded to treat Korea as a conquered nation. It was at once placed under military rule, General Count Terauchi, a grim soldier of the old Samurai school, being appointed Resident-General, and clothed with almost sovereign powers. Soldiery, gendarmerie, and police were poured int o the new province, until it assumed the appearance of a great armed camp.

Then, with the stage set, the curtain rose on the tragic spectacle of the denationalization of a people.

What I now have to say cannot but prove distasteful reading for the Japanese and their friends. Yet to minimize, or apologize for, or ignore the deplorable blunders which marred Japan’s administrative record in Korea during the decade immediately following the annexation, as certain American champions of Japan have done, would only impair the value of this paper in the eyes of thinking and impartially minded men, without rendering any corresponding service either to the Japanese or to the Koreans. Were I to attempt to make the picture more flattering to Japanese pride, by leaving out the blemishes, I should be failing in that duty which every self-respecting writer owes to his readers and to himself. On the other hand, I shall not permit myself to be influenced by the usually exaggerated and frequently untruthful charges made against the Japanese administration by the Koreans and their champions. I believe that every statement contained in the succeeding pages can be fully substantiated, in many cases by the Annual Report of the Government-General of Korea itself.

One of the first steps taken by the Japanese in their organized campaign of denationalization was the enactment of legislation denying freedom of the press, of speech, and of assembly to the Koreans. In pursuance of this policy, all the papers and periodicals owned or managed by Koreans were suppressed. ‘At the end of the fiscal year 1916 there were twenty newspapers published in Chosen, of which eighteen were in Japanese, one in Korean, and one in English,’ says the Annual Report, which might have added that they were all Japanese, and that three of them, including the last two, were government organs. During the reign of repression the only non-Japanese publications in Korea were certain newspapers printed secretly, while their publishers were ‘on the run,’ and distributed from hand to hand, like the famous Belgian journals issued during the German occupation. The hand-presses and type were conveyed from hiding-place to hiding-place under cover of night, the lives of the editors being as thrilling as the Japanese police and spies could make them.

It having been determined that the Korean language, like Korean literature, should die, an attempt was made to destroy it by making Japanese the official tongue, not only in public documents and court proceedings, but, wherever possible, in the schools. It is instructive to compare this with our own policy in the Philippines, where Spanish is taught as freely and as widely as English. The textbooks used in the schools were printed in Japanese, under the supervision of Japanese censors; the teachers were either Japanese or Japanese-speaking Koreans. And, as if to impress the children with the military might of Japan, the teachers wore sabres. Imagine the effect on a class of little girls, when their teacher emphasized his authority by rattling his sword!

Though Korea has a history reaching back into the past for two thousand years, its teaching in the schools was forbidden. Nor, with the exception of certain specially favored individuals, were Koreans permitted to go abroad for study, save to Japan; and those who had been studying abroad were not permitted to return. Moreover, those who succeeded in obtaining permission to attend the Imperial University at Tokyo were discouraged, if not actually forbidden, from specializing in such subjects as law, constitutional government, history, and economics, it being the Japanese policy to encourage industrial education along practical lines for their new subjects, to the exclusion of everything else. The Japanese have always held that England, in encouraging a purely academic education for the higher class Hindus in India, was breeding discontent and agitation, and they had no intention of trying a similar experiment in Korea.

’The holding of public meetings in connection with political affairs, or the gathering of crowds out of doors, was also prohibited, except open-air religious gatherings, or school excursion parties, permission for which might be obtained of the police authorities.’ Thus reads a passage in the Annual Report, which states further that ‘most of the political associations and similar bodies were ordered to dissolve themselves at the time of annexation . . . since then there has been no political party or association, as such, among the Koreans.’ This regulation was even more comprehensive than its wording would suggest: a Y.M.C.A. had to submit to the police the date, hour, speaker, and topic of discussion of a proposed meeting, before it could obtain permission to hold it; the same prohibitive principle applied to interscholastic fieldmeets, in which two or more schools proposed participating.

Another source of Korean resentment was provided by the Japanese attitude toward religion. Broadly speaking, religious instruction was forbidden in Korean schools. Religious gatherings of more than five persons were required to obtain a permit from the police, and native Christians had to obtain special authorization to hold religious services. This interference with religious liberty was in itself the height of political unwisdom; but the overzealous police, by their harsh and unintelligent methods of enforcement, turned it into something perilously close to religious persecution. For example, such hymns as ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’ were forbidden, on the ground that they tended to develop a militaristic spirit among the Koreans — an inhibition only equaled in recent times, in its patent absurdity, by Abdul Hamid’s famous dictum against the importation into Turkey of dynamos, because they sounded like dynamite!

Prominent churchmen, leaders in Korean thought and education, were arrested, and sometimes thrown into prison, on charges so ridiculous that they sounded more like a passage from a Gilbert and Sullivan opera than a serious court proceeding. For example, the pastor of one of the native churches was arrested for having referred in his sermon to the Kingdom of Heaven. He was freed with an admonition not to repeat the offense, the police magistrate warning him that the only kingdom in which the Koreans should display an interest was the Kingdom of Japan! Mr. C. W. Kendall, in The Truth About Korea, cites the case of Pastor Kil of Ping-Yang, who, for preaching against the evils of cigarette-smoking by boys, was charged by the Japanese authorities with treason. The argument of the Japanese prosecutor, according to Mr. Kendall, ran something after this fashion: —

Though, upon annexation, Korea became, in theory at least, a province of the Empire, the Koreans were permitted neither a national assembly nor representation in the Japanese Diet, thus giving them justification for adopting the slogan, ‘Taxation without representation is tyranny.’ Had the Japanese been more familiar with American history, they would have realized that the same slogan cost England her American colonies. Though, in principle, the Koreans were to be accorded the same treatment as other subjects of the Emperor, discrimination of the most flagrant character was practised against them everywhere. For example, corporal punishment could be legally administered only to Koreans. Hence, if a Japanese was convicted of a misdemeanor, he was imprisoned or fined. If a Korean was convicted of the same offense, he was flogged — sometimes into insensibility. If a Japanese was killed by the Seoul street-railways, his family was paid two hundred yen. If the victim was a Korean, the indemnity was half that sum. A Japanese common laborer received over half again as much pay as a Korean laborer engaged in the same task; and the same rule applied to skilled workmen, and, for that matter, to government officials. While eleven years were allowed the Japanese youths for primary and secondary education, only eight years were allowed the Koreans. It has been suggested, incidentally, that this discrimination in the curricula was the highest unintentional compliment the Japanese could pay to the exceptional intellectual ability of the sons and daughters of Korea.

Even more humiliating and degrading were the various forms of social discrimination practised against the Koreans. I can assert, from personal observation, that the great majority of Japanese treat the Koreans in personal intercourse as the dirt beneath their feet. It is only fair to add, however, that this disregard of Korean susceptibilities is confined, in the main, to Japanese of the lower and middle classes. Every nation has its gentlemen.

Immediately upon annexation the peninsula was flooded with gendarmes, police, spies, and informers, who promptly proceeded to inaugurate a reign of terror. On the pretext of searching for arms or seditious literature, the police entered private residences without search warrants, still further irritating the Koreans by invading the apartments of the women. Spies, usually low-class Koreans, were everywhere, adding to the general demoralization. No one knew when, or in what form, the most harmless acts or words might be reported to the authorities. Yet the Koreans had no appeal from these oppressions, because, with no newspapers, they had no way of making themselves heard.

The police, in addition to their regular functions of crime-prevention and the apprehension of criminals, were given judicial power. They could sentence prisoners to fines, flogging, imprisonment, or exile. The extreme unwisdom of granting such wide powers to the police, who were totally incompetent to exercise them with discretion, and who, to make matters worse, were for the most part men of petty minds and narrow sympathies, requires no comment. Add to this the fact, of which there exists indubitable proof, that the police frequently tortured innocent persons in order to extract testimony from them, and it will be seen that the Koreans had abundant ground for complaint.

That the police had gendarmes and soldiers associated with them in the enforcement of the law led the Koreans to regard the police, not as civil servants and protectors, but as oppressors. This feeling was intensified by the multitude of petty and vexatious regulations, many of which the people could not understand, and by the harsh and indiscriminate manner in which they were administered. The records of the summary courts — which correspond to our police courts — for 1915, show a total of 59,483 persons brought to trial and only seven acquitted. Dr. Gleason, who is strongly pro-Japanese, asserts that, in the four years 1913-16, 221,000 persons were tried and only 496 acquitted. In the report issued by the Government-General for the year 191617, it is stated that, out of 82,121 offenders dealt with ‘in police summary judgment,’ 81,139 were sentenced, 952 were pardoned, and only 30 were able to prove their innocence. Dr. Hugh C. Cynn, in his dispassionate and, on the whole, remarkably just book, The Rebirth of Korea, dryly remarks that ‘either the Japanese police in Korea are so superior to those of all other nations in detecting crime that they al. most never run down any but the actual criminals, or the Koreans, when they get into the meshes of the policeand gendarme-interpreted ordinances, find it next to impossible to prove their innocence.’

Instead of putting Korean interests first, Japan made the mistake of ruling the peninsula primarily for her own glory and the benefit of her own people. Under the old Korean government the land was divided into four classes: —

1. Private lands, owned by individuals.

2. Crown lands, belonging to the Emperor, but leased in perpetuity to private individuals.

3. Municipal lands, the titles to which were vested in the various municipalities, but the practical ownership of which was in the hands of private individuals.

4. Lands belonging to the Buddhist temples.

Owners of private lands paid taxes to the government. Tenants of crown lands paid rental to the royal household. Those occupying municipal lands paid fees to the respective municipalities.

The temple lands, which were held under a communistic arrangement by the Buddhists, were exempt from taxation. In many cases the leasehold of these lands had acquired a value almost equal to that of land held in full possession. One of the first acts of the Japanese administration was to survey the country and expropriate all crown, municipal, and temple lands, on the ground that, as they did not belong to private individuals, they must be the property of the government. They were then turned over to a concern known as the Oriental Development Company, which was a governmentfostered organization for encouraging the immigration of Japanese into Korea. This company, by demanding greatly increased rentals from the Korean tenants, forced them to abandon the lands, which they had tilled for generations, in favor of government-assisted Japanese settlers. The economic unwisdom of this policy is shown by the fact that, though some 400,000 Japanese have settled in the peninsula since the annexation, upwards of 1,500,000 Koreans have gone into voluntary exile in Manchuria and Siberia, because they could not stand the pressure thus brought to bear upon them. The repeated assertions of the Japanese that they went into Korea for the benefit of the Koreans reminds me of an anecdote told of one of the rulers of the House of Hanover, — I think it was George the First, — who, addressing his new subjects upon his arrival in England, assured them in his broken English, ‘I am here for your own good — for all your goods.'

III

In the foregoing pages I have sketched, in brief outline, the methods by which Japan sought, during the ten years following the annexation, to as-

similate the Korean people. In doing this, I have tried to be absolutely fair. All the abuses which I have cited are fully substantiated by the official reports of the Government-General itself. Of certain other charges, which I have not been able to verify to my own satisfaction, I have made no mention. Viewing the question impartially, it appears to me that, at the beginning of 1920, when Japan inaugurated a milder and more sympathetic rule in the peninsula, the Koreans had no less than a dozen distinct and justifiable grounds for complaint against the Japanese administration. These might be summed up as follows: —

1. Taxation without representation.

2. Denial of freedom of the press, of speech, and of assembly.

3. Measures tending to the eventual extirpation of the Korean language.

4. Educational discrimination.

5. Interference with the religious activities of the people.

6. Abuse of power by the police.

7. Multiplicity of irritating laws and lack of judgment in their enforcement.

8. Expropriation of public lands.

9. Economic pressure against Koreans.

10. Treatment of Korean leaders.

11. Lack of tact, sympathy, and understanding on the part of Japanese officials.

12. Social discrimination.

By these methods the Japanese sought to remould their new subjects in their own image. But, much to their surprise and perturbation, they discovered in the Korean a character as hard, as obstinate, and as unyielding as their own. At every turn they found themselves confronted by that most baffling of all obstacles — passive resistance. Had the Japanese been farsighted enough to treat the Koreans, who are not a conquered race, as England treated the conquered Boers, there would have been a genuine amalgamation of the two peoples. And it is not a long step from amalgamation to assimilation. But the Japanese ignored this golden opportunity to win the loyalty and friendship of their new subjects. Imagine the upheaval in the British Empire if England should suppress the vernacular newspapers of the Hindus; if she should forbid the use of Arabic in the courts of Egypt; if she should expropriate the lands of the Indian princes; if she should prohibit the teaching of the Koran in the schools of her Mohammedan possessions! Yet that is a fair parallel to the Japanese policy in Korea. That the complete breakdown of this policy has been clearly recognized by the more progressive and discerning of the Japanese themselves is shown by the report of Mr. Kenosuke Morya, whom the Japanese Constitutional Party sent to Korea to investigate conditions on the spot. In it he says: ‘It is a great mistake of colonial policy to enforce upon the Koreans, with their two-thousand-year history, the same spiritual and mental training as the Japanese people.’

Yet, during this same discouraging decade, the Japanese made amazing material progress in Korea. The old, effete, corrupt administration was swept away. A cabinet was formed on the model of that in Japan. An elaborate system of local government was adopted. The judiciary was reformed. A sound monetary system was established and maintained. Prisons were cleansed and modernized. The mileage of the railways was doubled. The inadequate Korean harbors were transformed into spacious ports, equipped with all modern appliances. Remarkable improvements in the public health were effected by government hospitals and systems of sanitation. New waterworks were built in fourteen cities and towns. The 500 miles of road which existed in 1010 were increased to 8000, it being proposed eventually to cover the peninsula with a network of highways. New industries were introduced, nearly 800 factories, something theretofore unknown in the land, being established, which provided occupation for thousands of Koreans. Handsome and substantial public buildings were erected. Streets were extended and paved, and charming parks laid out. Primary, secondary, technical, agricultural, forestry, and other schools, model farms and experimental stations, were opened.

Agriculture—the mainstay of the country — was enormously developed, the Korean farmer being taught new and profitable side lines: fruit, cotton, sugar-beet, hemp, tobacco, and silkworm culture, and sheep-breeding. Afforestation was pushed forward on a truly astounding scale, no less than half a billion young trees being set out by the Japanese Forestry Service on the bare, brown hillsides. The area of cultivated land was doubled. Fruit production was more than doubled. The output of the Korean coal mines was trebled. Cotton acreage increased by more than 4500 per cent, and salt production by more than 7000 per cent. There were increases of several hundred per cent in the acreages of wheat, beans, and barley. By the introduction of modern appliances the value of the fishery products was doubled. The foreign trade of Korea went up from 59,000,000 yen to 131,000,000 yen in seven years. In less than a decade after the annexation, there were a million depositors in the postal-savings banks — and this in a country with a notoriously shiftless and improvident population. Inshort., more public improvements were made, civic reforms instituted, and economic progress effected in these ten years than the Koreans had so much as thought of since their history began.

For this great work Japan deserves the highest commendation. It is a striking testimonial to her efficiency in effecting material reforms. And it is likewise a testimonial to the capacity for making progress of the Koreans themselves. If successful colonial administration consisted only in effecting material benefits, Japan’s record in Korea would entitle her to be regarded as one of the most successful colonizing nations in the world. The curious fact remains that few, if any, of the writers on Korea have been able to appraise this record of achievement at its true valuation.¹ Their perspective is distorted by their prejudices. The proKorean writers, almost without exception, have either minimized Japan’s accomplishments in the peninsula, or have denied their benefit to the Koreans themselves. On the other hand, such pro-Japanese writers as Messrs. Sherrill, Gleason, and Hershey have magnified the chronicle of progress until it all but obscures everything else. It can no more benefit the Koreans to have their champions shut their eyes to the undeniable good that the Japanese have accomplished, than it can serve Japan to have her partisans ignore those evils which cry for redress.

IV

Throughout the four years of the Great War there were manifest to keen observers many evidences that a new spirit was gradually taking possession of the Koreans. It would be stating only a part of the truth, however, to assert that the Japanese administration was the sole cause of this national unrest. Obnoxious though that administration was, it was only contributory; the real cause was to be found in the innate and irresistible desire of the Koreans to govern themselves. They were hungry for freedom. Now that the Poles and the Croats and the Czechs and the Lithuanians were about to achieve their independence, is it any wonder that the Koreans felt that the hour when they should strike for liberty was likewise at hand? It was Woodrow Wilson’s pronunciamento on the right of small nations to self-determination that gave them their text and battle cry. It was the assembling of the peacemakers at Versailles that gave them their opportunity. The Korean leaders, believing, no doubt, that they could ride to success on the wave of political freedom which was sweeping the world, chose the time set for the opening of the Peace Conference to launch their ‘passive revolution.’ For the most part impractical visionaries, there is something of the pathetic in their failure to realize how hopeless was their attempt to interest a distracted Europe in the fortunes of an obscure little nation half the world away.

It was planned that the ‘revolution’ should be unique in the history of political uprisings, in that there should be neither bloodshed nor violence. The participants were explicitly warned that no one was to be harmed. No property was to be destroyed or damaged. No rowdyism, no Bolshevism, no terrorism was to be tolerated. Orders were given that under no circumstances were the demonstrators to resist the Japanese police. If they were beaten, imprisoned, or even killed, they were to take their punishment without complaint. Nothing must be done that would bring reproach upon the name of Korea, or upon their movement. It was arranged that these passive demonstrations should break out simultaneously in all the larger towns and cities of the peninsula, while in Seoul itself the demonstrators were to divide themselves into groups of three thousand, each under a leader, and march to the various foreign consulates and government offices, singing the Korean national anthem and shouting ‘Mansei! ’ which is the Korean equivalent of ‘Hurrah!’ In short, it was to be a nation-wide demonstration, in which seventeen million Koreans were to impress on their Japanese rulers, by strictly peaceable methods, that they would no longer submit to misgovernment and oppression. When it is remembered that for every Japanese in the peninsula there are fifty Koreans, it is not hard to guess what would have happened if the demonstration had not been a passive one.

How the great number of country people who were to participate in the demonstration were to gain access to the capital without arousing the suspicions of the Japanese police was a question which caused some perplexity to the leaders of the movement; but it was suddenly solved in the latter part of January, 1919, when the old exEmperor Yi passed away in his palace in Seoul. Though he had been of no service to his countrymen when alive, it seemed that he might aid them unwittingly now that he was dead; for his funeral, set for March fourth, provided the very excuse that the Korean leaders had been seeking for a sudden influx of peasantry into the capital. In some way, however, the carefully guarded secret reached the ears of the police; whereupon the resourceful leaders suddenly changed the date for the demonstration to March first — the day set for the rehearsal of the funeral. As the rehearsal of a Korean funeral is almost as magnificent as the event itself, the authorities saw nothing to cause alarm in the great numbers of Koreans who came pouring into the capital by train and road, afoot, and in lumbering carts, and astride of horses.

The morning of March first found upward of two hundred thousand people assembled in the streets of Seoul. The whole city was tense with anxiety, mingled with some vague expectancy. In the meantime thirty-three men, representing all religions, sects, and classes, had drawn up and signed what was virtually a Declaration of Independence. These men thoroughly believed that President Wilson’s declaration, that the civilized world was determined henceforth to protect the rights of weaker nations, proclaimed the end of Korea’s vassaldom. ‘A new era,’ they declared, ‘wakes before our eyes; the old world of force is gone, and the new world of righteousness and truth is here.’ Copies of the proclamation, together with instructions as to what was expected of the people, were sent to local leaders all over Korea, through the aid of little schoolgirls, who hid the incriminating documents in their capacious sleeves and trudged from town to town, bearing the message of freedom.

Shortly before noon on March first, twenty-nine of the thirty-three signers of the declaration met in the Tai-wha Kwan, where the independence of Korea had been signed away nearly a decade before. It is said that all the higher officials of the Japanese administration had been invited to attend the meeting, but that only one had come, the others having official duties which took them elsewhere. After the momentous document had been read to the assemblage, a messenger was dispatched to communicate its contents to the great crowd which had gathered in Pagoda Park. Then, after drinking success to the movement thus initiated, one of the signers went to the telephone, called up the chief of police, told him what they had done, and informed him that they were ready to go to prison. The police promptly complied with the suggestion.

The demonstration, taken as a whole, followed the instructions of the leaders to the letter. The demonstrators were unarmed, and among them were as many old men and women as young people. Foreigners who witnessed the affair told me that it was one of the most curious and impressive sights they had ever seen. The masses of white-clad people, pulsating with the new spirit of freedom, surged through the streets in human billows, waving little Korean flags, of which thousands had been distributed secretly, singing the Korean national anthem, which is set to the tune of ‘Auld Lang Syne,’and shouting ‘Mansei! Mansei! Mansei! Ten thousand years for Korea!'

So skillfully had the demonstration been planned and executed, that the authorities were taken completely by surprise. The Japanese secret service, which had boasted that it had its fingers constantly on the pulse of Korean public opinion, had been outwitted and outmanœuvred at every turn. Because of the magnitude of the movement, the police were helpless; but as soon as the seriousness of the situation was realized, the troops were called out and the paraders were dispersed by force, hundreds being wounded or trampled upon. By nightfall of Independence Day the prisons of Korea were filled to overflowing.²

It was here, in my opinion, that the authorities were guilty of a serious blunder. It must be patent to every fair-minded person that they could not tolerate disorders and revolutionary acts, however patriotically intended, and that, in adopting stern measures for their suppression, they did only what all governments are quite likely to do under similar circumstances. The question is whether, in view of the eminently passive character of the demonstration, they chose the wisest course. So long as there was no violence, it would have been the part of wisdom, it seems to me, to have let the pent-up emotions of the people escape through the safety valve provided by the demonstration, instead of attempting forcibly to suppress them. Much bloodshed might have been averted if the authorities had possessed the psychology of one village policeman, who permitted the people in his district to celebrate for three days without molestation. Then he told them that, if they wanted independence, they should build up an army and navy; this would require much money, so they had better return to their work and accumulate the wealth necessary to develop the nation. They agreed with him that it was sound advice, and dispersed peaceably, without any harm having been done.³

Notwithstanding official attempts to minimize the extent and significance of the agitation, there seems to be but little doubt that it was a genuine national movement. When I went to Korea, I was quite prepared to find certain classes of the population, particularly the students and intellectuals and those having political aspirations, permeated by the spirit of nationalism. But I expected to find the farmers, who compose the great mass of the people and are the backbone of the country, largely ignorant of and indifferent to the new movement. I found, however, that the emotions aroused — which might be described as a new national consciousness — have gone deep and broad into the lives of the people as a whole. When Yi Sang-Chai, who has been called ‘the Tolstoy of Korea,’ was interrogated by a secret-service man as to who were the persons behind the movement, he replied: ‘All the Korean people, from Fusan to the Ever-White Mountains. They are all in it. They are the committee back of the agitation.’

Now, it is not my intention to enter into any detailed account or discussion of the excesses which marked the suppression of the independence movement. That the Japanese police and gendarmes were guilty of many brutalities and some horrible reprisals is not open to question. Not only have they been confirmed by a host of reputable witnesses, foreigners as well as natives, but the Japanese Government itself has virtually admitted them by punishing the perpetrators. In certain of the provincial towns, if the testimony of trustworthy witnesses is to be believed, unarmed and unresisting Koreans, both men and women, were bayoneted or shot down in cold blood. Houses were looted and burned. In order to extort confessions, or to obtain evidence, many of the prisoners were subjected to torture. Women and young girls were stripped, beaten, and subjected to shameful indignities; though I might add that I found no evidence of a single case of assault on Korean women by Japanese police or soldiers. Yet, brutal and cruel though they undeniably were, that is no excuse for the grossly exaggerated accounts that have been spread broadcast.

V

In considering the methods that the Japanese authorities used in suppressing the independence movement, it should be kept in mind that they were indicative of the sentiment of only a small, though powerful, section of the Japanese people— the military party. These men took the position that Korea and the Koreans were the absolute property of Japan, that the subjugation and Japanization of the Koreans was a military necessity, and that the independence movement constituted a defiance of the imperial power which must be stamped out with fire and sword. I am not excusing the Japanese when I remind my readers of the massacre ordered by the British General Dyer at Amritsar; of CaptainGeneral Weyler’s treatment of the Cubans; of the behavior of the Blackand-Tans in Ireland; of the excesses perpetrated by the Greeks in Albania and Asia Minor. The Japanese excesses in Korea should not be condoned because other people have committed similar ones. I am merely calling attention to the fact that history shows that enlightened and humane nations have frequently been disgraced by the actions of their military men.

It is due to historical accuracy and to the Japanese army to emphasize the fact that three bodies of men have been sent by the Japanese Government to Korea to restore order. One is the regular army. Another is the gendarmerie — a police force organized on military lines. The third is the police, or, rather, those contingents of police recruited in Japan. These forces are distinct and should not be confused. Nor should their deeds. In organization, discipline, temper, and ideals, the police and gendarmerie are several degrees removed from the regular army. Unlike the regular army, their discipline, training, and temper could not withstand the trials and temptations to which they were subjected in Korea. Neither their discipline nor their methods could compare with army discipline; so it is scarcely a matter for surprise that, at certain times and places, they broke loose — that they burned, destroyed, killed, tortured, intimidated. In the vast majority of cases the excesses in Korea were committed by police and gendarmes, not by Japanese soldiers.

Now here is the most significant and discouraging feature of the whole deplorable business. When the news of what had happened in the peninsula became known in Japan, there was no public, and very little political, reaction. The wave of indignation which swept England when the conduct of the Black-and-Tans in Ireland became known had no parallel in Japan. Scarcely more than a ripple disturbed the political waters, while the public remained as profoundly apathetic as if the excesses had occurred in Central Africa instead of in a province of the Empire, six score miles away. It is true that the Japanese Constitutional Party dispatched an independent investigator to Korea, to examine the situation on the spot; and that his report ascribed the movement to discriminatory treatment of the Koreans, complicated and impracticable administrative measures, and extreme oppression. It is also true that the Resident-General, Count Hasegawa, the Director of Political Affairs, Mr. Yamagata, and the chief of gendarmerie were recalled, though the government ‘saved the face’ of the militarists by making General Hasegawa a fieldmarshal.

There is no doubt that the government was gravely concerned over the excesses, though not so much on moral grounds as because of its fear of the effect on Western opinion. And this concern was shared by a small group of men who had had long associations with Western life and were familiar with Western thought. As I was discussing the excesses some months later with Viscount Kaneko, who is a graduate of Harvard and one of the most advanced Japanese statesmen, he said with great earnestness: ‘Unfortunately they are only too true. I do not pretend to deny them; I can only deplore them, the more so because they were committed by my own people. I only hope that they will not be interpreted abroad as indicative of the real attitude of the Japanese people toward the Koreans.’ I do not wish to do the Japanese Government or people an injustice, but, in my opinion, the reforms which were promptly instituted in Korea were inspired, not by public opinion in Japan, but almost wholly by public opinion outside Japan. For the Peace Conference was then sitting in Paris, and Japan, with enormous interests at stake in the post-bellum settlements, could ill afford to have her case prejudiced by criticism of her conduct in Korea.

The government thus found itself in a difficult and trying situation. Premier Hara ⁴ was quick to recognize that something must be done, and done at once, to convince America and the European nations that Japan was sincere in her desire to ameliorate conditions in the peninsula. But he likewise realized that he could not afford to do anything which would arouse the animosity of the military party. He steered a middle course, therefore, by designating Admiral Baron Saito, a retired naval officer, as the new GovernorGeneral of Korea, this appointment being in the nature of a compromise between the militarists, who demanded that the independence movement be suppressed with an iron hand, and those statesmen of broader vision, who, recognizing the danger of flouting foreign opinion, insisted on a new deal for the Koreans. I might add, parenthetically, that, as a captain in command of a Japanese warship, Baron Saito was present when the American squadron under Dewey destroyed the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay, and that he unreservedly sided with the American commodore when the commander of a German warship attempted to interfere in behalf of the Spaniards. The portfolio of Political Affairs in Baron Saito’s cabinet is held by Dr. Kentaro Midzuno, formerly Minister of the Interior of Japan, an enlightened and progressive statesman of the highest type. Though I believe that Baron Saito’s administration has the best interests of the Koreans genuinely at heart, its freedom of action has been hampered by the military party. Men like Baron Saito and Dr. Midzuno could and would accomplish far-reaching reforms in Korea, if they were not discouraged in their efforts by the apathetic state of public opinion at home.

VI

More than two years have passed since the Imperial Rescript of August 20, 1919, in which the Emperor called upon his officials’ to rush reforms,’ which was followed by Premier Hara’s proclamation announcing that ‘ it is the government’s fixed determination to forward the progress of the country, in order that all differences between Korea and Japan proper, in matters of education, industry, and the civil service, may be finally obliterated. . . . It is the ultimate purpose of the Japanese Government in due course to treat Korea as in all respects on the same footing with Japan proper.’

In that period a very creditable number of reforms have been effected. The objectionable gendarmerie system has largely been done away with, and the police system, improved, enlarged, and under the direct control of the civil instead of the military authorities, has been substituted. The much-criticized custom of flogging was definitely abolished on April first, 1920 — about the time, incidentally, that American newspapers were carrying reports of the movement to abolish the public flogging of women in Georgia. The prisons have been enlarged and improved. New school-regulations have been adopted, lengthening the courses of study, granting wider options in the curricula, permitting religious instruction in private schools, and relaxing the requirements as to the use of the Japanese language in certain subjects. The regulations governing religious activities have been revised, in the direction of simplifying the requirements as to reports concerning the opening of new churches, the number of adherents, and the like.

The so-called Company Law, restricting the establishment of commercial companies, has been repealed. Newspapers in the Korean language, owned and edited by Koreans, have again appeared; and freedom of the press, at least in some degree, has been restored, though the newspapers are frequently suppressed by the authorities. The spies and informers who so long swarmed in the peninsula have largely disappeared. The salaries of Japanese and Koreans in government, employ have been equalized in the various grades. Koreans have been appointed to high posts in the government, including those of provincial governor, judge, and public procurator. The custom of wearing swords by civil officials has been abolished. The Advisory Council, composed of Korean statesmen, which had fallen into innocuous desuetude, has been revived, it being convened regularly once a week; and by the infusion of new blood it has been made more representative of all classes of Korean opinion, — including the anti-Japanese, — thus providing at least the germ of representative government in Korea. Though admittedly much remains to be done, this, as most fair-minded persons will admit, is a very creditable showing for two years.

The Korean leaders with whom I discussed the situation, though guarded in their comments, were, as might have been expected, dissatisfied with the extent of the reforms, and frankly skeptical of Japanese sincerity. Their chief criticisms appeared to be (1) that the new administration is supporting the leaders of the old, corrupt, discredited rêgime rather than the leaders of the progressive party; (2) that it is keeping the Korean standard of education fully two years behind that of Japan; (3) that the police still have altogether too much authority, particularly in the rural districts, where an ignorant constable is often vested with almost autocratic powers; (4) that the treatment of prisoners is not yet in accordance with enlightened standards, those charged with political offenses being confined in overcrowded cells and permitted insufficient exercise.

Though I am myself convinced that substantial progress is really being made, and though I am satisfied of the sincerity of the new administration, it is my opinion that no programme of reform can be expected in the immediate future that will satisfy a large section of the Korean people and their friends. They expect, and will continue to demand, more than the Japanese Government will feel able to grant. A complete reversal of Japanese policy in Korea will come only when military autocracy has been definitely subordinated to democracy in Japan itself.

Notwithstanding the reforms, the independence movement, though at the moment in abeyance, is being carried steadily forward, in spite of the vigilance of the police. I was given to understand that there are two factions among the Korean leaders, — one which favors advancing their cause by forcible methods, the other favoring peaceable means, — and that the latter is at present in control of the situation.

The prevailing belief in Korea is that the continuance in power of the peace party will largely depend upon the sincerity and energy displayed by the new administration in prosecuting the promised reforms. Should the promises of the government and the expectations of the people remain unfulfilled, however, there is every likelihood of an outbreak of a more serious nature than has yet occurred.

For the sake of peace in the peninsula, it is sincerely to be hoped that the new administration will prove itself so enlightened that the peace party may remain in the ascendant. I was told, by an official in whom I have confidence, that the leaders of the secret organization which has been directing the independence movement were rapidly becoming convinced of the futility of open resistance on the part of the Koreans at present, and were counseling the people to attend to their business, and the students to their studies, until such time as they are better able to make their strength felt. If that is true, — and it is borne out by the fact that the student registration for last year (1921) was unprecedented, — it explains the present lull, and is an indication of what may be expected in the future, provided the reforms proceed at a reasonable pace. If, on the other hand, the Japanese Government fails to keep its promises, if it makes the blunder of returning to the old, shortsighted policy of repression and oppression, then I fear that the next chapter in Korea’s troubled history will be written in blood.

VII

I have now sketched the conditions which prevailed in Korea before the Japanese came and those which obtain there to-day. What its future is to be depends wholly upon whether the Koreans and the Japanese adopt an attitude of mutual sympathy and understanding. Were Japan to evacuate the country now, or in the near future, — as there is not the slightest prospect of her doing, — she would leave it under conditions which would soon result in chaos, and the good that she has done would be largely lost. The extensive schemes for agricultural and industrial development upon which she has entered, and upon which the prosperity of the peninsula largely depends, could never be financed by an independent Korea; and the same is true of her plans for improving the means of communication, which is at the bottom of all the problems of economic development in Korea.

However critical we may be of the methods by which it was accomplished, the annexation of Korea seems to me to have been justified. For the fact must not be lost sight of that the country was doomed to become either Japanese or Russian. The Japanese occupied it to forestall a Russian occupation, which would have menaced their independence as a nation. And they have remained in the peninsula for reasons similar to those which, in the opinions of reasonable men, justify Great Britain in retaining control of Egypt.

The Koreans insist that they are themselves perfectly capable of establishing and maintaining a just and stable government. But their ability to do this is, I believe, open to grave question. Certainly there is nothing in the twenty centuries of their history as an independent nation to justify such confidence; for the old government of Korea was perhaps the worst on which the sun ever shone. Though they are now making encouraging progress, it is being made under Japanese guidance and tuition. The leaders of the independence movement are, for the most part, young men, — students, intellectuals, idealists, — who, no matter how able individually, are wholly without experience in practical government. To turn a nation of seventeen millions of ignorant, simple-minded people over to their guidance would be to invite disaster.

Mind you, I do not think that the Japanese administration of Korea has been all, or nearly all, that it should have been. The Japanese officials have worked hard, and in many instances effectively, for the amelioration of the Korean people and the improvement of Korean conditions; but their method has been lacking in tact, sympathy, and understanding. But criticism of Japan’s stern militaristic policy and of the harsh methods she has permitted in its execution should not blind us to her integrity, to her large administrative ability, and to the energy she has displayed in carrying out material reforms. From personal observation on the spot, I am convinced that the general condition of the Korean peasantry is appreciably higher than it ever was, or could have been, under Korean administration.

This is not to be interpreted as meaning that I do not sympathize with the Koreans, for I do. They have been the victims of cruelty, injustice, and oppression. Nor would they be worthy of respect if they did not prefer to rule themselves. But I can also sympathize with the Japanese. During one of the most trying periods in the world’s history; disliked, distrusted, and opposed by Koreans, Chinese, Russians, and most of the foreigners living in the Far East, Japan has jerked a nation out of the depths of poverty, degradation, and despair, as if by its collar, set it on its feet, and is teaching it to play the game. And, as Count Terauchi once remarked, ‘It is no easy task to uplift a decayed people.’

Viewing the question from an unbiased standpoint, I believe that the balance inclines heavily in favor of Japan. I will go further than that, and assert that Korea could suffer no greater calamity than to have Japan go. Not that there is the slightest probability of her doing so; for the unrest in China, combined with the uncertainty in Russia, is likely to cause her to tighten rather than relax her grip on the peninsula. For, when all is said and done, Korea is the key to the whole Far-Eastern situation. Upon her control of it depends Japan’s entire scheme for the economic penetration of Siberia, Manchuria, and China. For her to withdraw from Korea would be tantamount to leaving the gateway to these great, rich markets unguarded, and that, I am convinced, she will never do. The sooner the Koreans realize that Japan’s determination to remain in the peninsula is adamantine, and the sooner the Japanese realize that the Koreans will resist further attempts at forcible denationalization to the bitter end, the better it will be for both peoples. If the Japanese will adopt a conciliatory and unselfish policy toward the Koreans, with a view to granting them a very large measure of autonomy as soon as they are prepared for it; and if the Koreans, for their part, will drop their demands for complete independence, which it is obviously impossible for Japan to accede to, and set to work to fit themselves for self-government under the Empire, it will put forward the hands of progress in the Farther East by many years, and there will no longer be a Korean Question.