From the night of the murder of his consort until his escape, four months later, to the Russian legation, the sovereign of Corea was to all intents and purposes a prisoner in his own palace. Unable to trust anybody and feeling in constant danger, he sought the American missionaries for food, for companionship, and even for protection.1 To him the new Government consisted of his jailers. The Corean people, sympathizing with their King, hated the Japanese all the more, for they felt that their sovereign was a virtual prisoner in the hands of the Tai-wen Kun and the pro-Japanese conspirators. Under these circumstances, he determined to break the palace jail. On the morning of February 11, 1896, according to a plan elaborated by the women and arranged with the Russians, he entered one of the ordinary box chairs in which female servants are carried. A few minutes later, pale and trembling, the King of Corea knocked at the north gate of the legation of Russia and was promptly admitted. It has been insisted that “no Russian had been to the palace or near it, nor had any Russian been to any of the public offices,” yet by some curious coincidence the Russian legation guards had been increased on the evening of the 10th by nearly one hundred men from the Czar’s men-of-war at Chemulpo. Furthermore, the Russians welcomed not only the King but later also the Crown Prince and the Queen Dowager.
His Majesty was scarcely within the walls of his new shelter before he issued an edict against his “rebel cabinet,” ordering his soldiers to “cut off their heads at once and bring them,” but in the afternoon another edict decreed that the six traitors should be degraded and delivered to the courts for trial. This royal order was the signal for another outburst of riot, savagery, and bloodshed. The Corean prime minister and the Minister of Agriculture were [485]killed and their corpses mutilated and dragged round the streets. The prisons were emptied and the innocent and guilty alike released. Sixty-six Japanese, mostly workmen on the telegraphs, were murdered and the line partially destroyed.
The pro-Japanese party, beginning with the bloody morning of October 8, 1895, when Queen Min was murdered, had been in power during four months, during which time a tremendous blow was dealt to the prestige of Japan in Corea. For eleven months the King transacted the national business in the Russian legation buildings, going only occasionally to the palace to give audiences to the foreign envoys. One of these from the Mikado presented a claim of indemnity for $146,000 for his subjects slain during the riot.
The flight of Corea’s sovereign was like that pictured in the proverb “from the frying pan into the fire.” In fierce reality, it was escape from bloody to inky tyranny, from an iron to a silken chain; but in both cases it was humiliation and slavery. While the guest of the Russians, the King paid well his bill as tenant by signing a concession to his hosts, permitting them to cut timber “in the Yalu valley.” The Russian Government liberally interpreted this document, according to the vast scale of Muscovite geography, as meaning the whole basin drained by the Yalu and its tributaries, that is, a region half as large as Corea. The Russians thus obtained for a year’s rent of part of their legation buildings a lien on Corean property valued at fifty millions of dollars.
Revolutions do not go backward, and the general proceeding of the Government was along the line of progress. The external reforms are particularly noticeable in the capital, in which Corean officers trained in Washington have greatly improved the streets, the methods of cleaning and the drainage. The police and soldiery were uniformed and disciplined, and preparations made for a national census. The untrustworthy “census” of Seoul showed a population of 144,626 in 27,527 houses, and in the suburbs 75,189 in 18,093 houses, or a total of 219,815, and of houses 45,350, in which district are 36 Buddhist temples with 442 priests and 204 nuns. The original width of the streets, as laid out in 1392, of 55 feet, has been regained over many miles of the city thoroughfares. Foreign trade steadily increased. American capital and energy helped to make what was once one of the filthiest and most unprogressive [486]cities of the Far East a clean and attractive place, bright with electric lights and railway and modern water-works. A railroad was built from the seaport to the capital and opened for traffic September 1, 1899. The steel bridge, made at Chattanooga, Tenn., spanning the Han River is nearly a mile long. The electroliers give light to the palace and to part of the city of Seoul. The trolley line, besides traversing the city, runs to the mausoleum of the Queen, which has been built in superb style. There her scant remains, escorted by a vast procession characterized in all its features by the old barbaric grandeur of Corea, were laid with appropriate ceremonies.
In the spring of 1896 the Independence Club, with a membership of over 2,000, was formed. It was composed entirely of natives actively interested in social and material development as well as in the independence of Corea. On October 21st the cornerstone of Independence Arch was laid on a site but a few yards distant from the old Chinese Gate under which the ambassadors of China had for centuries received the vassalage of the Corean sovereign. It is a structure in stone, alike of architectural beauty and of political significance. The subsequent history of this club and of the general movement, in which the publication of a daily newspaper in both English and native script, The Korean Independent, were prominent features, is not a happy one. It showed clearly that independence or freedom must be something more than a word, in order to bring forth the fruits seen in America or among the nations that have most cultivated liberty, safeguarded by law. In this Seoul movement the seed may have been good, but good and well prepared soil did not exist. Rock, brambles, and the beaten road of bad precedent, in which Corea is so rich, received the sower’s hopes. The movement ended in sedition or evaporated. Nevertheless, it was vastly better than the Seoul mobs that so often dictated imperial policy to the ministers of the Government. As late as May, 1902, the former members of the Independence Club were being arrested and executed. More promising in ultimate results was the celebration on September 2d of the forty-fifth birthday of the King by a great gathering of Corean Christians in the pavilion near the old Chinese Gate.
After a stay of one year and nine days, the King left his Russian quarters and took up his residence in the new palace of Kyeng-wun, [487]built in 1896 in the western part of the city, where are gathered the foreign legations and residences, some of them very handsome and substantial.
Corea, being now free and independent, between the two great empires of Japan and China, and Corean conceit of national history and antiquity, real or supposed, being never at any time lacking, it was thoroughly appropriate and financially very profitable for the yangban and palace officials to take measures to proclaim the once “little outpost state” an “empire,” and their sovereign an “emperor.” Besides suffering from imperialism in an acute form, the Corean office-holders knew well the significance of this nominally political act, in relation to their own fortunes; for in the assumption of the King of Corea of the title of Emperor, $100,000 was taken out of the treasury to celebrate the event, most of which, as a matter of course, went into the pockets of the King’s faithful servants. His Majesty protested in vain against the proceedings, but finally yielded gracefully. At 3 A.M. on October 12, 1896, with great pomp and state, before the altars of the Spirits of the Land, the King assumed the title of Emperor of Ta Han, or the Great Han—in distinction from the ancient San Han. “The King is dead, long live the Emperor.”
This, too, was the time of Russia’s political dominance, when a Russian military commission of fourteen were drilling the Corean military and when the Minister of Foreign Affairs at Seoul and the Russian envoy, Mr. Speyer, signed an agreement, November 5th, by which Dr. McLeavy Brown, the Englishman in charge of the national finances—able, faithful, and unterrified—should be ousted and a Russian, Mr. Kuril Alexieff, put in his place. Mr. Brown’s contract not having expired, he refused to vacate his post, and a large British and Japanese fleet having appeared off Chemulpo, he was able to maintain his ground. The three countries, Russia, Great Britain, and Japan, made an agreement that Mr. Brown should remain in office and that a Russian and a Japanese commissioner of customs should share in the collection of foreign duties at the ports. On December 23, 1897, a telegram was received from the Czar of Russia recognizing the Emperor of Corea, whereat the imperial party in Seoul was greatly elated. This whole incident illustrates the rather theatrical methods of Russian diplomacy in Corea during the past twenty years, showing [488]how entirely her interests were military and strategic, but not commercial, she having usually scarcely a score, and never at any time a hundred, of subjects in the empire commercially engaged, and only a few fishermen who are whale hunters on the coast. One Baron Guntzburg was busy as a promoter of Russian interests, and the wife of the Russian minister was not inactive in social affairs and even as an influencer of political action.
It was not long before there were signs of a popular reaction against Russia. On January 22, 1898, an attempt was made to assassinate Kim, the native Russian interpreter. By March 10th this feeling had taken form in a great anti-Russian demonstration, which ended in the apparently total though not real withdrawal of Russian influence in the peninsula. The military commission soon after departed and the Russo-Corean Bank was closed. After much excitement, Russia and Japan, on April 25th, agreed on a modus vivendi, both recognizing the sovereignty of Corea and engaging to refrain from direct interference in her internal affairs. No military or financial adviser was to be nominated without mutual agreement, and Russia bound herself not to impede the commercial relations between Japan and Corea. It was evident (probably in large measure on account of Russia’s new interests in Manchuria) that she considered Corea for the present beyond her sphere of influence. No serious revival of the claims of Russia to any part of Corea were made again openly until 1903. When the correspondence between Tokio and St. Petersburg, leading to the war of 1904, opened, the ambitions of Russia were seen to be serious and all-embracing.
The first year of the Corean empire was completed after the celebration of the King’s birthday with unusual demonstrations of loyalty. The founder’s day (that of Ki-tsze, or Ki-ja, whose tomb and temple are at Ping-an and which suffered during the war of 1894) and the 506th anniversary of the establishment of the dynasty, as well as the celebration of the coronation, were honored with unusual demonstrations, including the illumination of the capital. This year was noted for a revival of Confucianism among the yangban, Buddhism having already enjoyed a “recrudescence”—both systems being galvanized into a similitude of life by the powerful induction, and evidences, both in leaven and bloom, of the new faith. On the whole, the year 1898 [489]was characterized by an intense conservative reaction in the Government and by an absence of important diplomatic or political events, except the chronic local rebellions in the provinces and the plots of rivals and partisans in the capital. Notwithstanding that the solar calendar had been adopted in 1895, and had been officially observed, the people still celebrate New Year’s Day with a fortnight of oldtime rejoicings, merrymakings, and customs according to the lunar calendar.
The year 1899 was one of comparative quiet in the capital and provinces. During the Boxer agitation in China, there was danger of eruptions across the border which were duly guarded against, and a Russian escort of fifty soldiers to the refugee Danish missionaries from China was given free passage. Corea virtually joined the allies marching to Peking, by giving aid and comfort in the form of a thousand bags of cleaned rice, two thousand bags of flour, and several hundred cases of cigarettes.
In August, 1899, the written constitution of the kingdom was issued, the nine articles of which declare the absolute power of the King. It cannot be said that either the Coreans, the foreign diplomatic corps, or the world at large took this giving of a constitution as a very serious matter. To the special “imperial” envoy despatched from Seoul to Tokio, Japan flatly refused to promise the complete neutrality of Corea. Nevertheless, Corean subjects are expected to bow down and worship (either in the old English sense of the term or with more profound significance) the picture of the Emperor as in other pagan or semi-civilized countries. A memorial tablet and pagoda “to commemorate the virtues of his Majesty” was begun—on a day significant in the West—April 1, 1902. These will be in the main street at the junction of Palace Street in Seoul.
It was noted as a great event in the history of a country that has never given very serious attention to its high-roads, that Dr. W. B. Magill, an American missionary, drove a horse and carriage from Gensan to Seoul. A system of lighthouses was decided upon October 31, 1901.
The fiftieth anniversary of the Emperor’s birthday was celebrated December 7th, silver commemorative medals being given to each guest at the palace. A Corean band of musicians, trained by Mr. Franz Eckhart, a German, who arrived in the country February [490]19, 1901, played two pieces of foreign music very creditably to themselves and their instructor. On July 1, 1902, the Corean national hymn, an adaptation by Franz Eckhart, was published. This German musician had already made a good record in Japan.
On May 30, 1902, the Emperor entered the Society of the Hall of Aged Men, having completed the first year of the sixth decade of his life (51 years), the foreign representatives being entertained at breakfast. Prominent among these, in influence and ability, was the American minister, Dr. Horace Newton Allen, born in Delaware, Ohio, in 1868, and resident in Corea since the summer of 1884, when he introduced modern methods of healing and surgery. He accompanied the first legation of Chō-sen in Washington. There he was appointed secretary to the American legation in Seoul, and since 1890 has been the chief guardian of American interests in Corea, being made minister in July, 1896. During the time of the Boxer insurrection in China, when the movement threatened to spread into Corea, he was especially alert in precautionary measures of safety. Previous to the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese war, he secured the presence of a guard of American marines in Seoul by which American rights, personal and commercial, were thoroughly secured.
Events during the year 1903 showed a steady movement toward an inevitable end and pointed to the impending crisis between Russia and Japan. The situation in Seoul was dominated by Yi Yong Ik and Yi Keun Tak, who were in close communication with Port Arthur and the Russian authorities at that place. Their high-handed financial and other schemes, in opposition to the Japanese efforts at securing a stable currency, came to naught after severe pecuniary loss to natives and foreigners and the serious disturbance of trade. The Russians, on April 11, 1901, had secured a twenty-year extension of timber cutting and prosecuted vigorously their advances in the north. They now refused to allow the Corean Government any supervision over their work of denuding the forests in the Yalu valley. In May one of the Czar’s gunboats anchored in the harbor of Yongampo, which the Russians called Port Nicholas, and soon after began what were believed to be fortifications. A guard of twenty-six Russian marines reinforced the legation in Seoul, shortly after the violation by Russia of her pledge to evacuate Manchuria. A serious riot in November between [491]Nipponese and Muscovite soldiers at Chemulpo foreshadowed the impending clash on a large scale in 1904. During December Russia’s influence at Seoul blocked all attempts of the foreign representatives to have Wiju (Ai-chiu) opened as a port of trade.
At this stage in the nation’s history, the once white-coated hermits who had hitherto lived under their own top-knots, and often under hats that were as big as a haycock, began numerously to go abroad as students. Scores of them have been in America and Europe and hundreds in Japan. In December, 1902, a party of nearly one hundred emigrants, men, women, and children, started for Hawaii. All of these were admitted, except eight who were sent back because of contagious eye disease. Other incidents showed healthful movement in a long-stagnant mass of population. Light and vision are coming to a people blind to nearly everything modern.
Of all the moral and reformatory forces at work, that of active Christianity leads. The missionary pioneers, Allen, Underwood, Scranton, Appenzeller, Heron, Gale, Jones, Hulbert, and others, mastered the language and opened the treasures of native literature and history. Already the list of aids to the vernacular and of their writings descriptive of country and people is a very respectable one. These works, the fruit of earnest toil, contrast superbly in the quality of truthfulness with the sketchy and ephemeral writings of tourists and hasty travellers. With other scholars and civil servants of various governments, they sustain the editor in furnishing the richly freighted pages of the Korea Review, and have formed the Korea Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, from which already several creditable volumes of “Transactions” have appeared to delight the serious student, who values perspective and tone in his mind-pictures of this once hermit nation.
Already the representatives of the Christian brotherhoods of English-speaking peoples have their row of graves in which sleep heroes, veterans, and some who “fell at the first fire.” Beginning in 1884, their prospective celebration of a double decennial, in September, 1904, was postponed under the clouds of war. Besides healing and helping, translating the Scriptures, and teaching the great uplifting truths which centre around the idea of one living and true God, gathering thousands of souls into churches and furnishing [492]Gospel nurture, they have taught the natives the grand lesson of self-support and self-propagation through a first-hand knowledge of the Bible. War, persecution, and manifold trials have tested and proved the quality of the converts, who in sincerity and power to stand in the midst of temptations are perhaps second to none in any field.
It was evident at the opening of the year 1904 that Japanese armies were once again to tread the soil of Corea, this time the war being not between China and Japan, but between Japan and Russia. Against the Colossus of the North and Russian rapacity, the Island Empire had a long list of grievances. As far back as 1861 a Russian man-of-war had, not without shedding the blood of its defenders, landed marines on the Island of Tsushima. There they had planted seed and begun the formation of a settlement looking to permanent occupation. In those days of hermitage, weakness, and fear, nothing could be done by the Japanese authorities at Yedo; but Katsu Awa, the Shogun’s most far-seeing statesman, called the attention of the British minister at Peking to this invasion, and a British naval force was sent to compel the Russians to retire. A few years later Russia took possession of Saghalien, after the usual preliminary of “joint occupation,” compelling the Japanese to be satisfied with the Kurile Islands below 50° 56′ of north latitude. This was in the year 1875, but long before that, Japanese statesmen, especially Okubo, had penetrated the designs of Russia. The formation, out of feudal elements, of her national army in 1871 and the first of this character since the twelfth century, was largely with a view of defending Japan against Russian and other aggressions. On the return of the Japanese embassy from its trip round the world in 1873, Okubo, Kido, and others opposed the Corean war project (as we have seen in Chapter XLVII), because a war with Corea then meant playing into Russia’s hands. Something of the popular fear of Russia over the Japanese nation, which hung like an advancing black cloud, was seen in the attack by a fanatical policeman on the Crown Prince, now the Czar of Russia, during his visit to Japan in 1891, but the Government in Tokio, even in the person of the Mikado, besides making ample apology, scrupulously maintained propriety in all dealings with Russia, at home and in Corea, living on terms of perfect friendship. It was therefore a stunning disappointment, [493]though a not wholly unexpected procedure, when Russia, in 1895, summoning to her aid the French and Germans, deprived the Japanese of the fruits of their victories in the war with China, by compelling the islanders to relinquish all territory on the mainland of Asia, and to be content with Formosa and an indemnity. Exhausted as they were by the war with China, yet had the Japanese been possessed of five battle-ships, they would have declared war upon Russia as an abominable intermeddler and aggressor. The force of circumstances required them to swallow their humiliation, but as the Japanese, any more than certain Christian nations, never forgive an injury, they began immediately to gird themselves for the coming and inevitable struggle with the Power that seemed bent upon their destruction. When the Boxer uprising in 1899 called forth the military energies of eight nations, the Japanese Government at first held back, lest its motives in being too forward might be questioned. When finally urged to lead the van of the allied armies of rescue, Japan sent 21,000 of her ablest and best equipped soldiers into the campaign. Their experiences on the march to Peking were invaluable to the Japanese, for through becoming comrades with the mujiks in the camps and on the battle-field, they learned that they had nothing to fear from such foes when arrayed against them in anything like an equality of numbers in war. The Japanese officer found himself a modern man in the presence of his equals, who were men steeped in mediæval methods of thought.
Steadily enlarging their navy and perfecting in every detail arms, ammunition, field equipment, army hygiene, and the physical development of their soldiers, the Japanese determined to stand for their rights, even though this might seem like Jack challenging the giant. No longer hermits on an island, which, having but a small fraction of arable fertile soil, could not feed its inhabitants, so that population had to remain stationary, the Japanese had become a nation of traders and manufacturers, with an annual increase of population of over 500,000 a year, with a total population of fifty millions, and with a foreign trade that had increased 543 per cent since 1890, with a total export trade consisting of 84.6 per cent of manufactured articles. With nearly thirty thousand Japanese subjects in Corea, most of them married and with homes, and with 10,000 of their people in Manchuria, [494]they took an interest in the affairs of Corea and Manchuria which was not like that of the Russians, chiefly military and strategic, but which, on the contrary, was commercial and vital. During the Boxer troubles, Russia sent a large army into Manchuria and finally took possession of the whole of that portion of the Chinese Empire. She promised solemnly to all the governments interested, to vacate the country on the 9th of October, 1903.
The world knows how this promise was broken. The correspondence between Tokio and St. Petersburg reveals the exasperating delays of the Russian Government, and its intention not only to remain permanently in Manchuria but to prevent if possible Japan from having anything to do with the matter. Russia even desired “recognition by Japan that Manchuria is outside her sphere of special interest” and requested a mutual engagement to establish “a neutral zone on the Corea-Manchuria frontier, extending fifty kilometers each side into which neutral zone neither of the contracting parties shall introduce troops without the consent of the other,” and “the engagement on the part of Japan not to undertake on the coast of Corea any military works capable of menacing the freedom of navigation in the straits of Corea.”
In a word, what Japan claimed is, that “Japan has a perfect right to demand that the independence and territorial integrity of China shall be respected and the rights and interests of Japan in that region shall be formally guaranteed.”
After innumerable delays and the situation growing more serious every day, the Russians continually reinforcing their naval and military forces in the far East, Mr. Kurino, the Mikado’s minister to St. Petersburg, having waited for an answer since the 13th of January, called on Count Lamsdorff at 8 P.M. February 4th for a definite reply, which was not forthcoming. Finding that in all probability there would be no changes in Russia’s claims of control over Manchuria and her demand for “a buffer region between confines of direct influence and action of the two countries in the far East,” being out of the question, the Japanese legation was on the 10th of February withdrawn from St. Petersburg and war began.
The Russians were already on Corean soil with three hundred Cossacks guarding their timber cutters on the left bank of the Yalu River. Since June, 1903, they had reinforced their army [495]with 40,000 men and their navy with 26 vessels, ranging from battle-ship to torpedo boat, thus adding 83,000 tons to their sea power. Five days before, the Russian commander at Vladivostok had notified the Japanese commercial agent that a state of siege might be declared at any moment. With steam up, decks cleared for action, and search-lights in use for night work, the Russian seamen instantly replied to the fire and torpedoes of Admiral Togo’s attack. The Japanese thus anticipated a naval raid from the Russians, which was afterwards successfully carried out from Vladivostok. To the Czar’s advisers in Europe actual war may have come as a surprise. It did not come thus to his servants in the far East. Nevertheless, within three days after the rupture of peaceful relations the Russian war ships Variag and Koreetz had been sunk outside of the harbor of Chemulpo by the guns of Admiral Uriu and an army landed to begin its march northward. At Port Arthur three battle-ships and four cruisers had been sunk or damaged by Admiral Togo’s torpedoes. The first idea of the Japanese was to eliminate the sea power of Russia from the scene of the seat of war. Landing her armies in Corea, at Chemulpo, the march was made without serious opposition, until near Wiju, the Mikado’s hosts once more stood on the banks of the Yalu, the Rubicon of eastern Asia, confronting the forces of the White Czar.
Meanwhile, a new protocol between Japan and Corea was signed, in March, 1904, in which the stronger Power bound itself to reform the weaker country without annexing it and to protect it without impairing its sovereignty. Corea pledged herself, as distinctly under Japan’s protection, to repose confidence in and to accept advice from the Japanese Government, and to make no agreement with a third Power which might seem to contravene the principles of the protocol. This document made Japan the champion of Corean independence, and is in spirit and letter the antipodes of Russia’s action in Manchuria.
The new model army in Asia, and the most modern of all armies, was in its fitness of body and mind to cope with the problems of war in the twentieth century, the creation of the public schools of Japan. These soldiers, both veterans and youth, set a new standard of resourceful valor, celerity of movement, temperance in living, ability to endure hunger and hardship, and of self-abnegation in the presence of death. To a Japanese patriot, life, [496]apart from duty, has no value. On the 1st of May, this “public school army,” under Kuroki, having crossed the Yalu under fire, won a brilliant victory, capturing many guns and prisoners. They had met European troops and beaten them in fair fight.
Then began the Japanese march through the old Border Gate and Feng-Wang Chang or Phœnix Castle, and over the mountain range dividing the Yalu from the Liao valley. The fortified passes were one after the other carried in victorious assault, and in the early days of September both Russian and Japanese main armies were marshalled before Liao Yang city, southwest of the ruins of the ancient Corean stronghold, for one of the great decisive battles of modern times and perhaps of human history.
During this time other armies were landed in Manchuria and by May 15th Oku was in possession of the railway leading to Port Arthur. Dalny was occupied May 26th, and later Yinkow and Niu Chwang came under the sun banner. On August 25th Field-Marshal Oyama took command of all the Japanese forces and the armies of Kuroki, Nodzu, and Oku.
After the great pitched battle in the early days of September, the Mikado’s flag floated over Liao Yang, and Kuropatkin fell back on Mukden, in masterly retreat.
From Port Arthur, girdled by a wall of fire and under a rain of shells, the Czar’s battle-ships and cruisers made desperate efforts to escape, only to be sunk, driven back, or, torn and riven, to seek shelter in the ports of China, and elsewhere, their presence giving rise to perplexing questions in international diplomacy.
As we close again, in the autumn of A.D. 1904, our story of the once “hermit nation,” the Japanese, confronted with the practical difficulties of assuming a real protectorate over Corea, while nominally but sincerely striving to maintain her independence, are still determined to control the peninsula as a vital possession. One hundred miles of the Seoul-Fusal railway are in operation. The sound of the blasting night and day in the deep rock-cuts near Seoul announce their purpose to finish speedily a highway of steel to the Chinese frontier. The real purpose of the war is the integrity of China, upon which depends the safety of Japan, perhaps even the political salvation of Asia. [497]