Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Land—Founding the Kingdom of Cho-sen—The Era of the Three Kingdoms—Dependence on China and Japan—Period of Peace and Prosperity—Invasion of Corea by the Japanese in the Sixteenth Century—Introduction of Christianity—The Modern History of Corea—Breaking down the Walls of Isolation—The French Expedition—American Relations with Corea—Ports Opened to Japanese Commerce—The Year of the Treaties—A Hermit Nation no Longer.

Until recent years our knowledge of the remarkable country of Corea, known indeed to the general public by little more than its name, has been limited to the meagre and scanty information imparted to us by Chinese and Japanese sources. After having been for several thousands of years the scene of sanguinary and murderous feuds between the various races and tribes who peopled the peninsula, and of the intrigues and wars of conquest of its rapacious neighbors, Corea succeeded after its final union under the sway of one ruler, but with considerable loss of territory, in driving back the invaders behind its present frontiers, enforcing since that time with an iron rule, that policy of exclusion which effectually separated it from the whole outer world. Corea, though unknown even by name in Europe until the sixteenth century, was the subject of description by Arab geographers of the middle ages. The Arab merchants trading to Chinese ports crossed the Yellow Sea, visited the peninsula, and even settled there. The youths of Shinra, one the Corean states, sent by their sovereign to study the arts of war and peace at Nanking, the mediæval capital of China, may often have seen and talked with the merchants of Bagdad and Damascus.

As has been said, nearly all that the western world was able to learn about Corea until recent years, has been collected from Chinese and Japanese sources, which confine themselves mainly to the historical and political connection with these countries. The meagre early accounts owed to Europeans on this interesting subject, originate either from shipwrecked mariners who have been cast upon the inhospitable shores of Corea and there been kept imprisoned for some time, or from navigators who have extended their voyages of discovery to these distant seas and who have touched a few prominent points of the coast.

Like almost every country on earth, Corea is inhabited by a race that is not aboriginal. The present occupiers of the land drove out or conquered the people whom they found upon it. They are the descendants of a stock who came from beyond the northern frontier. It may not be a wrong conjecture, which is corroborated by many outward signs, to look for the origin of the people in Mongolia, in a tribe which finally settled down in Corea after roaming about and fighting its way through China. We may also take those who bear the unmistakable stamp of the Caucasian race to have come from Western Asia whence they had been driven by feuds and revolutions. At the conclusion of the long wars which have at last led to the union of the different states founded by various tribes, a partial fusion had taken place, which, though it has not succeeded in eradicating the outer signs of a different descent, at least caused the adoption of one language and of the same manners and customs.

Most of the Coreans claim to be in complete darkness and ignorance of their own origin; some declare quite seriously that their ancestors have sprung from a black cow on the shores of the Japan sea, while others ascribe their origin to a mysterious and supernatural cause.

The first mention of the inhabitants of Corea we find in old Chinese chronicles about 2350 B.C., at which period some of the northern tribes are reported to have entered into a tributary connection with China. The first really reliable accounts, however, commence only with the twelfth century B.C., at which time the north-westerly part of the peninsula first stands out from the dark.

The last Chinese emperor of the Shang dynasty was Chow Sin, who died B.C. 1122. He was an unscrupulous tyrant, and one of his nobles, Ki Tsze, rebuked and remonstrated with his sovereign. His efforts were hopeless, and the nobles who joined him in protest were executed. Ki Tsze was cast into prison. A revolt immediately ensued against the tyrant; he was defeated and killed, and the conqueror Wu Wang released the prisoner and appointed him prime minister. Ki Tsze however refused to serve one whom he believed to be an usurper and exiled himself to the regions lying to the north-east. With him went several thousand Chinese immigrants, most the remnant of the defeated army, who made him their king. Ki Tsze reigned many years and left the newly founded state in peace and prosperity to his successors. He policed the borders, gave laws to his subjects, and gradually introduced the principles and practices of Chinese etiquette and polity throughout his domain. Previous to his time the people lived in caves and holes in the ground, dressed in leaves, and were destitute of manners, morals, agriculture and cooking. The Japanese pronounce the founder’s name Kishi, and the Coreans Kei-tsa or Kysse. The name conferred by the civilizer upon his new domain was that now in use by the modern Coreans, “Cho-sen,” or “Morning Calm.”

The descendants of Ki Tsze are said to have ruled the country until the fourth century before the Christian era. Their names and deeds are alike unknown, but it is stated that there were forty-one generations, making a blood line of eleven hundred and thirty-one years. The line came to an end in 9 A.D., though they had lost power long before that time.

This early portion of Cho-sen did not contain all of the territory of the modern Corea, but only the north-western portion of it. While the petty kingdoms of China were warring among one another, the nearest to Cho-sen encroached upon it and finally seized the colony. This was not to be permanent however, and there ensued a series of wars, each force becoming alternately successful. The territory of Cho-sen grew in area and the kingdom increased in wealth, power and intelligence under the rule of King Wie-man, who assumed the authority 194 B.C. Thousands of Chinese gentry fleeing before the conquering arms of the Han usurpers settled within the limits of the new kingdom, adding greatly to its prosperity. In 107 B.C., after a war that had lasted one year, a Chinese invading army finally conquered the kingdom of Cho-sen and annexed it to the Chinese empire. The conquered territory included the north half of the present kingdom of Corea.

Things remained in this condition until about 30 B.C., at which time a part of Cho-sen taking advantage of the disorders which had broken out afresh in China, separated itself from the empire and again formed a state by itself, but still remained tributary; while the other portions of the old kingdom for some time longer remained under Chinese rule, until they also joined the portion that had been freed. Up to this period Cho-sen forming the north-west of the present Corea, had been the only part of that country that had become more closely connected with China. The tracts to the north-east, south-west and south were occupied by different independent tribes, and little more is known of them than that they were ruled by chiefs of their own clan. In course of time three kingdoms, Korai, Hiaksai, and Shinra, were formed out of these various elements, subsisting by the side of Cho-sen, at a later date fighting either beside or against China, and almost incessantly at feud with each other, until Shinra gained the predominance about the middle of the eighth century A.D. and kept the same up to the sixteenth century. It was then supplanted in the leading position by Korai, which united under its supremacy all those parts of Corea which had hitherto been separate, and constituted the whole into a single state. Like the three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Wales, these Corean states were distinct in origin, were conquered by a race from without, received a rich infusion of alien blood, struggled in rivalry for centuries, and were finally united under one nation with one flag and one sovereign.

Hiaksai was for a while the leading state in the peninsula. Buddhism was introduced from Thibet in 384 A.D. And to this state more than any other part of Corea, Japan owes her first impulses towards the civilization of the west. The kingdom prospered until the decade from 660 to 670, when it was overrun and practically annihilated by an army of Chinese, despite the aid of four hundred junks and a large body of soldiers sent from Japan to the aid of Corea.

Korai of course took its turn in struggling with the Dragon of China. Early in the seventh century China had been defeated, and for a generation peace prevailed. But the Chinese coveted Koraian territory and again an invading fleet attacked the country. It took years to complete the conquest, but finally all Korai with its five provinces, its one and seventy-six cities and its four or five millions of people, was annexed to the Chinese empire.

Shinra, in the south-west of the peninsula, was probably the most advanced of all of the states. It was from this kingdom that the tradition reached Japan which tempted the Amazonian queen of Japan, Jingo, to her invasion and conquest. The king of Shinra submitted and became a declared vassal of Japan, but in all probability Shinra was far superior to the Japan of that early day in everything except strength. From this kingdom came a stream of immigrants which passed into Japan carrying all sorts of knowledge and an improved civilization. It is well to remember from this point that the Japanese always laid claim to the Corean peninsula and to Shinra especially as a tributary nation. They supported that claim not only whenever embassies from the two nations met at the court of China, but they made it a more or less active part of their national policy.

During this period Buddhism was being steadily propagated, learning and literary progress increased, while art, science, architecture were all favored and improved. Kion-chiu, the capital of Shinra, was looked upon as a holy city, even after the decay of Shinra’s power. Her noble temples, halls and towers stood in honor and repair, enshrining the treasures of India, Persia, and China, until the ruthless Japanese torch laid them in ashes in 1596.

From the year 755 A.D. up to the beginning of the tenth century, Shinra maintained its undisputed rule over the other countries of the peninsula, but about this time successive revolts occurred, Shinra was conquered, and the three kingdoms now united were called Korai, a name which was retained to the end of the fourteenth century. The kingdoms now thoroughly subdued, never recovered their old position and independence, and composed from that time forward the undivided kingdom of Corea, such as it has been maintained until the present day. In 1218 A.D. the king of Corea promised allegiance to the Chinese emperor Taitsou who was the Mongol Genghis Khan.

Here we find explanation for some features of the war now in progress between China and Japan. Corea has at various times acknowledged its dependence upon both of these countries. The Japanese laid claim to Corea from the second century until the 27th of February, 1876. On that day the mikado’s minister plenipotentiary signed the treaty recognizing Cho-sen as an independent nation. Through all the seventeen centuries, which according to their annals elapsed since their armies first completed the vassalage of their neighbor, the Japanese regarded the states of Corea as tributaries. Time and again they enforced their claim with bloody invasion, and when through a more enlightened policy the rulers voluntarily acknowledged their former enemy as an equal, the decision cost Japan almost immediately afterward seven months of civil war, twenty thousand lives, and $50,000,000 in treasury. The mainspring of the “Satsuma rebellion” of 1877 was the official act of friendship by treaty, and the refusal of the Tokio government to make war on Corea. It seemed until 1877 almost impossible to eradicate from the military mind of Japan the conviction that to surrender Corea was cowardice and a stain upon the national honor.

From the ninth century onward to the sixteenth century, the relations of the two countries seem to be unimportant. Japan was engaged in conquering northward her own barbarians. Her intercourse, both political and religious, grew to be so direct with the court of China, that Corea in the Japanese annals sinks out of sight except at rare intervals. Nihon increased in wealth and civilization, while Cho-sen remained stationary or retrograded. In the nineteenth century the awakened “Sunrise Kingdom” has seen her former self in the “Land of Morning Calm,” and has stretched forth willing hands to do for her neighbor now what Corea did for Japan in centuries long gone by. It must never be forgotten that Corea was the bridge on which civilization crossed from China to the archipelago.

About 1368 the reigning King of Corea refused vassalage to China. His troops refused to repel the invasion that threatened, and under their General Ni Taijo, deposed the king. Taijo himself was nominated king. He paid homage to the Chinese emperor and revived the ancient name of Cho-sen. The dynasty thus established is still the reigning family in Corea, though the direct line came to an end in 1864. The Coreans in their treaty with Japan in 1876, dated the document according to the four hundred and eighty-fourth year of Cho-sen, reckoning from the accession of Ni Taijo to the throne. One of the first acts of the new dynasty was to change the location of the national capital to the city of Han Yang, situated on the Han river about fifty miles from its mouth. The king enlarged the fortifications, enclosed the city with a wall of masonry, and built bridges, renaming the city Seoul or “capital.” He also redivided the kingdom into eight provinces which still remain. An era of peace and flourishing prosperity ensued, and in everything the influence of the Chinese emperors is most manifest. Buddhism, which had penetrated into every part of the country, and had become in a measure at least the religion of the state, was now set aside and disestablished. The Confucian ethics were diligentlydiligently studied and were incorporated into the religion of the state. From the early part of the fifteenth century, Confucianism flourished, until it reached the point of bigotry and intolerance, so that when Christianity was discovered to be existing among the people, it was put under the ban of extirpation, and its followers thought worthy of death.

At first the new dynasty sent tribute regularly to the shogun of Japan, but as intestinal war troubled the Island Empire and the shoguns became effeminate, the Coreans stopped their tribute and it was almost forgotten. The last embassy from Seoul was sent in 1460. After that they were never summoned, so they never came. Under the idea that peace was to last forever, the nation relaxed all vigilance; the army was disorganized and the castles were fallen into ruin. It was while the country was in such a condition that the summons of Japan’s great conqueror came to them, and the Coreans learned for the first time of the fall of Ashikaga and the temper of their new master.

As the Mongol conquerors issuing from China had used Corea as their point of departure to invade Japan, so Hideyoshi resolved to make the peninsula the road for his armies into China. He sent an envoy to Seoul to demand tribute, and then, angered at the utter failure of his mission, commanded the envoy and all his family to be put to death. A second ambassador was sent with more success, and presents and envoys were exchanged. Hideyoshi, however, became enraged at the indifference of the Coreans to assist him in his dealings with China, and resolved to humble the peninsular kingdom, and China, her overlord.

The invasion of Corea was made as related in the earlier chapters on Japan. The Coreans were poorly prepared for war, both as to leaders, soldiers, equipments and fortifications. The Japanese swept everything like a whirlwind before them, and entered the capital within eighteen days after their landing at Fusan. The accounts of the war are preserved in detail, and are exceedingly interesting, but the limits of this volume compel their omission to provide space for the war of 1894-5. At first Chinese armies coming to reinforce the Coreans were defeated and turned back, but another effort of the allies was more effective and the Japanese troops found advance turned to retreat. The Japanese armies concentrated at Seoul to receive the advance of the allies numbering some two hundred thousand. The capital was burned by the Japanese, nearly every house being destroyed, and hundreds of men, women, and children, sick and well, living quietly there, were massacred. The allied troops were beaten back in a ferocious battle, but hunger reached both armies, pestilence entered the Japanese camp, and both sides were utterly tired of war and ready to consider terms of peace.

Konishi, the general of the Japanese army, had been converted to Christianity by the Portuguese Jesuits. During this period of tiresome waiting he sent to the superior of the missions in Japan asking for a priest. In response to this request came Father Gregorio de Cespedes and a Japanese convert. These two holy men began their labors among the Japanese armies, preaching from camp to camp, and administering the right of baptism to thousands of converts, but their work was stopped by the jealousy of the Buddhist power. The Jesuits in Japan were then being expelled for their political machinations, and the chaplains in Corea were brought under the same ban. Konishi was called back to Japan with the priest and was unable to convince the shogun of his innocence. A few Corean converts were made during this time, and one of them a lad of rank, was afterward educated in the Jesuit seminary at Kioto. He endeavored to return to Corea as a missionary, but the condition of affairs in Japan interrupted his intentions and in 1625 he was martyred during the prosecutions of the Christians. Of the large number of Corean prisoners sent over to Japan, many became Christians. Hundreds of others were sold as slaves to the Portuguese. Others rose to positions of honor under the government or in the households of the daimios. Many Corean lads were adopted by the returned soldiers or kept as servants. When the bloody persecution broke out, by which many thousand Japanese found death, the Corean converts remained steadfast to their Christian faith, and suffered martyrdom with fortitude equal to that of their Japanese brethren. But by the army in Corea, or by the Christian chaplain Cespedes, no trace of Christianity was left in the land of Morning Calm, and it was two centuries later before that faith was really introduced.

The fortunes of the war alternated, and finally, after deeds of heroism on both sides, a period of inaction ensued, the result of exhaustion. At this time Hideyoshi fell sick and died, September 9, 1598, at the age of sixty-three years. Almost his last words were, “Recall all my troops from Cho-sen.” The orders to embark for home were everywhere gladly heard. It is probable that the loss of life in the campaigns of this war was nearly a third of a million. Thus ended one of the most needless, unprovoked, cruel, and desolating wars that ever cursed Corea. More than two hundred thousand human bodies were decapitated to furnish the ghastly material for the “ear-tomb” mound in Kioto. More than one hundred and eighty-five thousand Corean heads were gathered for mutilation, and thirty thousand Chinese, all of which were despoiled of ears and noses. It is probable that fifty thousand Japanese left their bones in Corea.

Since the invasion the town of Fusan, as before, had been held and garrisoned by the retainers of the Daimio of Tsushima. At this port all the commerce between the two nations took place. From an American point of view, there was little trade done between the two countries, but on the strength of even this small amount Earl Russell in 1862 tried to get Great Britain included as a co-trader between Japan and Corea. He was not, however, successful. A house was built at Nagasaki by the Japanese government which was intended as a refuge for Coreans who might be wrecked on Japanese shores. Wherever the waifs were picked up, they were sent to Nagasaki and sheltered until a junk could be dispatched to Fusan.

The possession of Fusan by the Japanese was, until 1876, a perpetual witness of the humiliating defeat of the Coreans in the war of 1592-1597, and a constant irritation to their national pride. Yet with all the miseries inflicted on her, the humble nation learned rich lessons, and gained many an advantage even from her enemy. The embassies which were yearly dispatched to yield homage to their late invaders were at the expense of the latter. The Japanese pride purchased the empty bubble of homage by paying all the bills.

The home of the Manchoos was on the north side of the Ever-white mountains. From beyond these mountains was to roll upon China and Corea another avalanche of invasion. By the sixteenth century the Manchoos had become so strong that they openly defied the Chinese. Formidable expeditions previous to the Japanese invasion of Corea kept them at bay for a time, but the immense expenditure of life and treasure required to fight the Japanese drained the resources of the Ming emperors, while their attention being drawn away from the north, the Manchoo hordes massed their forces and grew daily in strength. To repress the rising power in the north, and to smother the life of the young nation, the Peking government resorted to barbarous cruelties and stern coercion. Unable to protect the eastern border of Liao Tung the entire population of three hundred thousand souls, dwelling in four cities and many villages, were removed westward and resettled on new lands. Fortresses were planned in the deserted land to keep back the restless cavalry raiders from the north. Thus the foundation of the neutral strip of fifty miles was unconsciously laid, and ten thousand square miles of fair and fertile land west of the Yalu were abandoned to the wolf and tiger. What it soon became it remained until yesterday—a howling wilderness.

In 1615 the king of the Manchoo tribes was assassinated as the result of a plot by the Ming emperor. This exasperated the tribes to vengeance and they began hostilities. China now had to face another great invasion. Calling on her vassal, Corea, to send an army of twenty thousand men, she ordered them to join the imperial army about seventy miles west of the Yalu River. In the battle which ensued the Coreans were the first to face the Manchoos. The imperial legions were beaten, and the Coreans seeing which way the victory would turn, deserted from the Chinese side to that of their enemy. This was in 1619. Enraged by alternate treachery to both sides from the Coreans, the Manchoos invaded Corea in 1627, to which time the war had been prolonged. They crossed the frozen Yalu in February, and at once attacked and defeated the Chinese army. They then began the march to Seoul. Town after town was taken as they pressed onward to the capital, the Coreans everywhere flying before them. Thousands of dwellings and stores of provisions were given to the flames and their trail was one of blood and ashes. After the siege of Seoul began, the king sent tribute offerings to the invaders, and concluded a treaty of peace, by which Corea again exchanged masters, this time confessing subjection to the Manchoo sovereign. As soon as the invading army had withdrawn, the Corean king, confident that the Chinese would be ultimately successful over the Manchoos, annulled the treaty. No sooner were the Manchoos able to spare their forces for the purpose than they again marched into Corea and overran the peninsula.

The king now came to terms, and in February, 1637, utterly renounced his allegiance to the Ming emperor, gave his two sons as hostages, and promised to send an annual embassy with tribute to the Manchoo court. After the evacuation of Corea the victors marched into China, where bloody civil war was raging. The imperial army of China had been beaten by the rebels. The Manchoos joined their forces with the imperialists and defeated the rebels, and then demanded the price of their victory. Entering Peking they proclaimed the downfall of the house of Ming. The son of the late king was set upon the dragon throne, and as we have seen in a foregoing chapter the royal house of China came to be a Manchoo family.

When, as it happened the very next year, the shogun of Japan demanded an increase of tribute to be paid in Yeddo, the court of Seoul plead in excuse their wasted resources, consequent upon the war with the Manchoos, and their heavy burdens newly laid upon them in the way of tribute to their conqueror. Their excuse was accepted. Twice within a single generation had the little peninsula been devastateddevastated by mighty invasion that laid waste the country.

In 1650 a captive Corean maid, taken prisoner in their first invasion, became sixth lady in rank in the imperial Manchoo household. Through her influence her father, the ambassador, obtained a considerable reduction of the annual tribute that had been fixed by treaty. Other portions of the tribute had been remitted before, so that by this time the tax upon Corean loyalty became very slight, and the embassy became one of ceremony rather than a tribute bringing.

In the seventeenth century some information about Corea began to reach Europe, first from the Jesuits in Peking, who sent home a map of the peninsula. There is also a map of Corea in a work by the Jesuit Martini, published in 1649 in Amsterdam. The Cossacks who overran northern Asia brought reports of Corea to Russia, and it was from Russian sources that Sir John Campbell obtained the substance of his history of Corea. In 1645 a party of Japanese crossed the peninsula, and one of them on his return wrote a book descriptive of their journey. In 1707In 1707 the Jesuits in Peking began their great geographical enterprise, the survey of the Chinese empire, including the outlying vassal kingdoms. A map of Corea was obtained from the king’s palace at Seoul and sent to Europe to be engraved and printed. From this original most of the maps and supposed Corean names in books published since that time have been copied.

The first known entrance of any number of Europeans into Corea was that of Hollanders belonging to the crew of the Dutch ship Hollandra which was driven ashore in 1627. Coasting along the Corean shores, John Wetterree and some companions went ashore to get water, and were captured by the natives. The magnates of Seoul probably desired to have a barbarian from the west, as useful to them as was the Englishman Will Adams to the Japanese in Yeddo, where the Corean ambassadors had often seen him. This explains why Wetterree was treated with kindness and comparative honor, though kept as a prisoner. When the Manchoos invaded Corea in 1635, his two companions were killed in the war, and Wetterree was left alone. Having no one with whom he could converse he had almost forgotten his native speech, when after twenty-seven years of exile, in the fifty-ninth year of his age, he met some of his fellow Hollanders, and acted as interpreter to the Coreans.

In the summer of 1653 the Dutch ship Sparwehr was cast on shore on Quelpaert island, off the southwest coast of Corea. The local magistrate did what he could for the thirty-six members of the crew who reached the shore alive, out of the sixty-four on board. On October 29th the survivors were brought by the officials to be examined by the interpreter Wetterree. The latter was very rusty in his native language, but regained it in a month. Of course the first and last idea of the captives was how to escape. They made one effort to reach the sea shore, but were caught and severely punished, after which they were ordered to proceed to the capital. Wherever they went the Dutchmen were like wild beasts on exhibition. When they once reached the palace they were well treated, and were assigned to the body guard of the king as petty officers. Each time that the Manchoo envoy made his visit to the capital the captives endeavored to enlist his sympathy and begged to be taken to Peking, but all such efforts resulted in failure and punishment. The suspicions of the government were aroused by the studies which the Dutchmen pursued, of the climate, the topography, and the products of the country, and by their attemptsattempts to escape, and in 1663 they were separated and put into three different towns. By this time fourteen of the number were dead and twenty-two remained.

Finally, early in September 1667, as their fourteenth year of captivity was drawing to a close, the Dutchmen escaped to the seacoast, bribed a Corean to give them his fishing craft, and steered out into the open water. A few days later, they reached the northwestern islands in the vicinity of Kiushiu, Japan, and landed. The Japanese treated them kindly and sent them to Nagasaki, where they met their countrymen at Desima. The annual ship from Batavia was then just about to return, and in the nick of time the waifs got on board, reached Batavia, sailed for Holland, and in July, 1668, stepped ashore at home. Hendrik Hamel, the supercargo of the ship, wrote a book on his return recounting his adventures in a simple and straightforward style. It has been translated into English and is a model work of its sort.

The modern introduction of Christianity in Corea dates little more than a hundred years ago. Some Corean students studying with the famous Confucian professor Kwem, during the winter of 1777, entered into discussion of some tracts on philosophy, mathematics, and religion just brought from Peking. These were translations of the writings of the Jesuits in the imperial capital. Surprised and delighted, they resolved to attain if possible to a full understanding of the new doctrines. They sought all the information that they could from Peking. The leader in this movement was a student named Stonewall. As his information accumulated, he gave himself up to fresh reading and meditation, and then began to preach. Some of his friends in the capital, both nobles and commoners, embraced the new doctrines with cheering promptness and were baptized. Thus from small beginnings, but rapidly, were the Christian ideas spread.

But soon the power of the law and the pen were invoked to crush out the exotic faith. The first victim was tried on the charge of destroying his ancestral tablets, tortured, and sent into exile, in which he soon after died. The scholars now took up weapons, and in April, 1784, the king’s preceptor issued the first public document officially directed against Christianity. In it all parents and relatives were entreated to break off all relations with Christians. The names of the leaders were published, and the example of Thomas Kim, the first victim, was cited. Forthwith began a violent pressure upon the believers to renounce their faith. Then began an exhibition alike of steadfast faith and shameful apostasy, but though even Stonewall lapsed, the work went on. The next few years of Christianity were important ones. The leaders formed an organization and as nearly as they could on the lines of the Roman Catholic church. Instructions were sent from Peking by the priests there, and the worship in Corea became quite in harmony with that of the Western church. But the decision that the worship of ancestors must be abolished, was, in the eyes of the Corean public, a blow at the framework of society and state, and many feeble adherents began to fall away. December 8, 1791, Paul and Jacques Kim were decapitated for refusing to recant their Christian faith. Thus was shed the first blood for Corean Christianity. Martyrdom was frequent in this early history of the Christian church in Corea, but in the ten years following the baptism of Peter in Peking in 1783, in spite of persecution and apostasy, it is estimated that there were four thousand Christians in the peninsula.

The first attempt of a foreign missionary to enter the Hermit Kingdom from the west was made early in 1791. This was a Portuguese priest who endeavored to cross the Yalu River to join some native Christians, but was disappointed in meeting them and returned to Peking. Two years later a young Chinese priest entered the forbidden territory, and was hidden for three years in the house of a noble woman, where he preached and taught. Three native Christians who refused to reveal his whereabouts were tortured to death and were thrown into the Han River. From the beginning of this century the most bitter general persecutions against Christians was enforced. The young Chinese priest, learning that he was outlawed, surrendered himself to relieve his friends of the responsibility of protecting him, and was executed. The woman also who had so long sheltered him was beheaded. Four other women who were attendants in the palace, and an artist who was condemned for painting Christian subjects were beheaded near the “Little Western Gate” of Seoul. The policy of the government was shown in making away with the Christians of rank and education who might be able to direct affairs in the absence of the foreign priests, and in letting the poor and humble go free.

It is impossible to catalogue the martyrs and the edicts against Christianity. The condition of the Christians scattered in the mountains and forests, suffering poverty, hunger, and cold, was most deplorable. In 1811 the Corean converts addressed letters to the Pope begging aid in their distress. These however could not be answered in the way they desired, for the Pope himself was then a prisoner at Fontainebleau and the Roman propaganda was nearly at a standstill.

In 1817 the king and court were terrified by the appearance off the west coast of the British vessels Alceste and Lyra, but beyond some surveys, purchases of provisions, and interviews with some local magistrates, the foreigners departed without opening communication with them. FifteenFifteen years later the British ship Lord Amherst passed along the coasts of Chulla, seeking commercial connections. On board was a Protestant missionary, a Prussian. He landed on several of the islands and attempted to gain some acquaintance with the people, but made little progress. The year 1834 closed the first half century of Corean Christianity. It is not strange that persecutions resulted from the advance of Roman Catholic strength in Corea, for the Corean Christians assumed naturally the righteousness of the Pope’s claim to temporal power as the vicar of heaven. The Corean Christians not only deceived their magistrates and violated their country’s laws, but actually invited armed invasion. Hence, from the first, Christianity was associated in patriotic minds with treason and robbery.

After the restoration of the Bourbons in France and the strengthening of the Papal throne by foreign bayonets, the missionary zeal in the church was kindled afresh, and it was resolved to found a mission in Corea. The first priest to make entrance was Pierre Philibert Maubant, who reached Seoul in 1836, the first Frenchman who had penetrated the Hermit Nation. A few months later another joined him, and in December, 1838, Bishop Imbert ran the gauntlet of wilderness, ice, and guards at the frontier, and took up his residence under the shadow of the king’s palace. Work now went on vigorously, and in 1838 the Christians numbered nine thousand. At the beginning of the next year the party in favor of extirpating Christianity having gained the upper hand, another persecution broke out with redoubled violence. To stay the further shedding of blood, Bishop Imbert and his two priests came out of their hiding places and delivered themselves up. They were horribly tortured, and decapitated September 21, 1839. Six bitter years passed before the Christians again had a foreign pastor.

Since 1839 the government had tripled its vigilance and doubled the guards on the frontier. The most strenuous efforts to pass the barriers repeatedly failed. Andrew Kim is a name to be remembered in the history of Christianity in Corea. Year after year he worked to enter Corea, or once in, to advance the cause, or when rejected to help others in the work. He was ordained to the priesthood in Shanghai, and finally in company with two French priests, in September, 1845, sailed across the Yellow Sea, and landed on the coast of Chulla, to make his final effort to spread Christianity among the Coreans. During July of the same year, the British ship Samarang was engaged in surveying off Quelpaert and the south coast of Corea. Beacon fires all over the land telegraphed the news of the presence of foreign ships, and the close watch that was kept by the coast magistrates made the return of Andrew Kim doubly dangerous.

These records of perseveranceperseverance, of distress, of martyrdom, from the pages of missionary work in Corea, written in the blood of native converts, who bore their cross with equal bravery to that of the Roman fathers, may be surprising to some who have been unfamiliar with the history of the Corean peninsula. But they are convincing testimony to controvert the assertions of some incredulous ones who affirm that the “heathen” are never really Christianized, but are always ready to return to their idols in times of trial. There is no country that can show braver examples of fortitude, in enduring trial for the support of the faith, than the “Hermit Nation.”

Three priests in disguise were now secretly at work in Corea, Andrew Kim, a native convert, and the Frenchmen, Bishop Ferreol, and his companion Daveluy. Kim was captured and in company with half a dozen others was executed September 16th. While he was in prison the Bishop heard of three French ships which were at that time vainly trying to find the mouth of the Han River and the channel to the capital. Ferreol wrote to Captain Cecile, who commanded the fleet, but the note arrived too late and Kim’s fate was sealed. The object of the fleet’s visit was to demand satisfaction for the murder of the two French priests in 1889, but after some coast surveys were made and a threatening letter was dispatched the ships withdrew.

During the summer of 1845, two French frigates set sail for the Corean coast, and August 10th went aground, and both vessels became total wrecks. The six hundred men made their camp at Kokun island, where they were kindly treated and furnished with provisions, although rigidly secluded and guarded against all communication with the main land. An English ship from Shanghai rescued the crews. During the ensuing eight years repeated efforts were made by missionaries and native converts to enter Corea and advance the work there, and the labor of propagation progressed. A number of religious works in the Corean language were printed from a native printing press and widely circulated. In 1850 the Christians numbered eleven thousand, and five young men were studying for the priesthood. Regular mails sewn into the thick cotton coats of the men in the annual embassy were sent to and brought from China. The western nations were beginning to take an interest in the twin hermits of the east, Corea and Japan. In 1852, the Russian frigate Pallas traced and mapped a portion of the shore line of the east coast, and the work was continued three years later by the French war vessel Virginie. At the end of this voyage the whole coast from Fusan to the Tumen was known with some accuracy and mapped out with European names.

It was in the intervening years, 1853 and 1854, that Commodore Perry and the American squadron were in the waters of the far east, driving the wedge of civilization into Japan. The American flag, however, was not yet seen in Corean waters, though the court of Seoul was kept informed of Perry’s movements.

A fresh reinforcement of missionaries reached Corea in 1857. When three years later the French and English forces opened war with China, took the Peiho forts, entered Peking, and sacked the summer palace of the Son of Heaven, driving the Chinese emperor to flight, the loss of Chinese prestige struck terror into all Corean hearts. For six centuries China had been in Corean eyes the synonym and symbol of invincible power. Copies of the treaties made between China and the allies, granting freedom of trade and religion, were soon read in Corea, causing intense alarm. But the most alarming thing was the treaty between China and Russia, by which the Manchoo rulers surrendered the great tract watered by the Amoor river and bordered by the Pacific, to Russia. It was a rich and fertile region, with a coast full of harbors, and comprising an area as large as France. The boundaries of Siberia now touch Corea. With France on the right, Russia on the left, China humbled, and Japan opened to the western world, it is not strange that the rulers in Seoul trembled. The results to Christianity were that within a few years thousands of natives fled their country and settled in the Russian villages. At the capital, official business was suspended and many families of rank fled to the mountains. In many instances people of rank humbly sought the good favor and protection of the Christians, hoping for safety when the dreaded invasion should come. In the midst of these war preparations, the French missionary body was reinforced by the arrival of four of their countrymen who set foot on the soil of their martyrdom, October, 1861.

The Ni dynasty, founded in 1392, came to an end January 15, 1864, by the death of King Chul-chong, who had no child, before he had nominated an heir. Palace intrigues and excitement among the political parties followed. The widows of the three kings who had reigned since 1831 were still living. The eldest of these, Queen Cho, at once seized the royal seal and emblems of authority, which high-handed move made her the mistress of the situation. A twelve-year-old lad was nominated for the throne, and his father, Ni Kung, one of the royal princes, became the actual regent. He held the reins of government during the next nine years, ruling with power like that of an absolute despot. He was a rabid hater of Christianity, foreigners, and progress.

The year 1866 is phenomenal in Corean history. It seemed to the rulers as if the governments of many nations had conspired to pierce their walls of isolation. Russians, Frenchmen, Englishmen, Americans, Germans, authorized and unauthorized, landed to trade, rob, kill, or what was equally obnoxious to the regent and his court, to make treaties. This and the rapid progress of Christianity now excited the anti-Christian party, which was in full power at the court, to clamor for the enforcement of the old edict against the foreign religion.

Vainly the regent warned the court of the danger from Europe. Forced by the party in power, he signed the death warrants of bishops and priests and promulgated anew the old laws against the Christians. Within a few weeks fourteen French priests and bishops were tortured to death, and twice as many native missionaries and students for the priesthood suffered like fate. Scores of native Christians were put to death, and hundreds more were in prison. In a little over a month, all missionary operations came to a standstill. The three French priests who remained alive escaped from the peninsula in a Chinese junk, and finally reached Chefoo October 26. Not one foreign priest now remained in Corea, and no Christian dared openly confess his faith. Thus after twenty years of nearly uninterrupted labors, the church was again stripped of her pastors, and at the end of eighty-two years of Corean Christianity the curtain fell in blood.

With Bishop Ridel as interpreter and three of his converts as pilots, three French vessels were sent to explore the Han River and to make effort to secure satisfaction for the murder of the French bishops and priests in the previous March. They entered the river September 21, and two of the vessels advanced to Seoul, leaving one at the mouth of the river. One or two forts fired on the vessels as they steamed along, and in one place a fleet of junks gathered to dispute their passage. A well-aimed shot sunk two of the crazy craft, and a bombshell dropped among the artillerists in the redoubt, silenced it at once. On the evening of the 25th, the two ships cast anchor and the flag of France floated in front of the Corean capital. The hills were white with gazing thousands, who for the first time saw a vessel moving under steam. The ships remained abreast of the city several days, the officers taking soundings and measurements, computing heights, and making plans. Bishop Ridel went on shore in hopes of finding a Christian and hearing some news but none dared to approach him. While the French remained in the river not a bag of rice nor a fagot of wood entered Seoul. Eight days of such terror, and a famine would have raged in the city. Seven thousand houses were deserted by their occupants. When the ships returned to the mouth of the river two converts came on board. They informed Ridel of the burning of a “European” vessel, the General Sherman, at Ping-Yang, of the renewal of the persecution, and of the order that Christians should be put to death without waiting for instructions from Seoul. Sailing away, the ships arrived at Chefoo, October 3.

The regent, now thoroughly alarmed, began to stir up the country to defense. The military forces in every province were called out, and the forges and blacksmith shops were busy day and night in making arms of every known kind. Loaded junks were sunk in the channel of the Han to obstruct it. Word was sent to the tycoon of Japan informing him of the trouble, and begging for assistance, but the Yeddo government had quite all it could do at that time to take care of itself. Instead of help two commissioners were appointed to go to Seoul and recommend that Corea open her ports to foreign commerce as Japan had done, and thus choose peace instead of war with foreigners. Before the envoys could leave Japan the tycoon had died, and the next year Japan was in the throes of civil war, the shogunate was abolished, and Corea was for the time utterly forgotten.

Another fleet of French vessels sailed from China to Corea, consisting of seven ships of various kinds, and with six hundred soldiers. The force landed before the city of Kang-wa on the island of the same name, and captured the city without difficulty on the morning of October 16. Several engagements in the same vicinity followed, all of them successful to the French until they came to attack a fortified monastery on the island some ten days later. Here they were repulsed with heavy loss to themselves and to the foe. The next morning to the surprise of all and the anger of many, orders were given to embark. The troops in Kang-wa set fire to the city which in a few hours burned to ashes. The departure of the invaders was so precipitate that Corean patriots to this day gloat over it as a disgraceful retreat.

In the palace at Seoul the resolve was made to exterminate Christianity, root and branch. Women and even children were ordered to the death. Several Christian nobles were executed. One Christian who was betrayed in the capital by his pagan brother, and another fellow believer, were taken to the river side in front of the city, near the place where the two French vessels had anchored. At this historic spot, by an innovation unknown in the customs of Cho-sen, they were decapitated and their headless trunks held neck downward to spout out the hot life blood, that it might wash away the stain of foreign pollution. Upon the mind of the regent and court the effect was to swell their pride to the folly of extravagant conceit. Feeling themselves able almost to defy the world, they began soon after to hurl their defiance at Japan. The results of this expedition were disastrous all over the east. Happening at a time when relations between foreigners and Chinese were strained, the unexpected return of the fleet filled the minds of Europeans in China with alarm. The smothered embers of hostility to foreign influence, steadily gathered vigor as the report spread through China that the hated Frenchmen had been driven away by the Coreans. The fires at length broke out in the Tien-tsin massacre of 1870.

It was this same year, 1866, that witnessed the marriage of the young king, now but fourteen years old, to Min, the daughter of one of the noble families. Popular report has always credited the young queen with abilities not inferior to those of her royal husband. The Min or Ming family is largely Chinese in blood and origin, and beside being preëminent among all the Corean nobility in social, political, and intellectual power, has been most strenuous in adherence to Chinese ideas and traditions with the purpose of keeping Corea unswerving in her vassalage and loyalty to China.

American associations with Corea have been peculiarly interesting. The commerce carried on by American vessels with Chinese and Japanese ports made the navigation of Corean waters a necessity. Sooner or later shipwrecks must occur, and the question of the humane treatment of American citizens cast on Corean shores came up before our government for settlement, as it had long before in the case of Japan. Within one year the Corean government had three American cases to deal with. June 24, 1866, the American schooner Surprise, was wrecked off the coast of Wang-hai. The approach of any foreign vessel was especially dangerous at this time, as the crews might be mistaken for Frenchmen and killed by the people from patriotic impulses. Nevertheless, the captain and his crew, after being well catechised by the local magistrate and by a commissioner sent from Seoul, were kindly treated and well fed and provided with the comforts of life. By orders of Tai-wen Kun, the regent, they were escorted on horseback to Ai-chiu and after being feasted there were conducted safely to the border gate. Thence after a hard journey via Mukden they got to Niuchwang and to the United States consul.

The General Sherman was an American schooner that had the second experience with the Coreans. The vessel was owned by a Mr. Preston who was making a voyage for health. At Tien-tsin the schooner was loaded with goods likely to be salable in Corea, and she was dispatched there on an experimental voyage in the hope of thus opening the country to commerce. The complement of the vessel was five white foreigners and nineteen Malay and Chinese sailors. The white men were Mr. Hogarth, a young Englishman, Mr. Preston, the owner, and Messrs. Page and Wilson, the master and mate of the vessel, and the Rev. Mr. Thomas, a missionary, who were Americans. From the first the character of the expedition was suspected, because the men were rather too heavily armed for a peaceful trading voyage. It was believed in China that the royal coffins in the tombs of Ping-Yang were of solid gold, and it was broadly hinted that the expedition had something to do with these.

The schooner, whether merchant or invader, sailed from Chefoo and made for the mouth of the Tatong River. There they met the Chinese captain of a Chefoo junk who agreed to pilot them up the river. He stayed with the General Sherman for two days, then leaving her he returned to the river’s mouth, and sailed back to Chefoo. No further direct intelligence was ever received from the unfortunate party. According to one report the hatches of the schooner were fastened down after the crew had been driven beneath, and set on fire. According to another, all were decapitated. The Coreans burned the woodwork for the iron and took the cannon for models.

The United States steamship Wachusett, dispatched by Admiral Rowan to inquire into the matter, reached Chefoo January 14, 1867, and took on board the Chinese pilot of the General Sherman. Leaving Chefoo they cast anchor two days later at the mouth of the large inlet next south of the Tatong River, thinking that they had reached their destination. A letter was dispatched to the capital of the province demanding that the murderers be produced on the deck of the vessel. Five days elapsed before the answer arrived, during which the surveying boats were busy. Many natives were met and spoken with, who all told one story, that the Sherman’s crew were murdered by the people and not by official instigation. In a few days an officer from one of the villages appeared. He would give neither information nor satisfaction, and the gist of his reiteration was “go away as soon as possible.” Commander Shufeldt, bound by his orders, could do nothing more, and being compelled also by stress of weather came away.