Among the many embarrassments encountered by Marquis Ito as Japanese Resident-General in his efforts to reform and elevate Korea, there is perhaps no one more persistent and hard to overcome than the charges of fraud and violence made against his own countrymen. These charges come from various sources and are promulgated in a variety of ways. Sometimes they take the form of a book—as, for example, Mr. Hulbert’s “Passing of Korea.” For months the Korean Daily News, under the editorship of Mr. Bethell, in both its native and its English editions, filled its daily columns with complaints, wearisomely reiterated after they had been repeatedly disproved, or made anew on insufficient grounds and even without any trustworthy evidence whatever. In scarcely less degree, the same thing has been true of certain English papers printed outside of Korea, especially in China. More effective still in producing an impression abroad, but not more trustworthy, have been the published letters of many travellers and newspaper correspondents. Conspicuous among the latter class was the letter of Mr. William T. Ellis to the New York Tri-Weekly Tribune, in which it was stated that, under the then existing Japanese Government, “robbery, abuse, oppression, injustice, and even murder are the lot of the Korean common people.”[81] Most deplorable[82] of all are the hasty and inconsiderate charges believed on exaggerated or wholly false accounts of the Koreans themselves, and propagated by the relatively small body of missionaries who have remained—for reasons to be considered subsequently—in an attitude of open or secret hostility to the Japanese Protectorate.

The charges against the Japanese of violence and fraud in Korea may be divided into four classes: those which are important and true; those which are trivial and only partly true; those which are exaggerated; and those which are wholly false. Of the first kind there are a few only; of the second there are many; of the third there are even a greater number; and of the fourth there are not a few. In judging the conduct of the Japanese Government and its officials of all ranks and classes, as distinguished from the conduct of adventurous and unscrupulous individual Japanese, the material and social condition of affairs in the peninsula during and immediately after the Russo-Japanese war cannot fairly be left out of the account. One complaint brought by its most unsympathetic critics against the Government is that it did not foresee the influx of undesirable characters into Korea during the war and make sufficient provision for their control. But precisely the opposite of this complaint is true. The military and other coolies and camp-followers had given much trouble and embarrassment to the Japanese officials in the war with China. Accordingly, the military authorities determined at the beginning of the war with Russia to avoid such complications by composing the military train wholly of enlisted men. Thus many recruits—students, professional men, and tradesmen—who did not come up to the standard set for the soldier, or who were not ready for service in the ranks, served as cart-pullers, burden-bearers, and in other laborious and humble ways. The conduct of the army, and of the enlisted men generally, in Korea and Manchuria, was so admirable as to call out the quite unexampled approval of all candid observers. Looting was almost absolutely prevented; the extremely rare cases of rape were punished with death as soon as the offence was proved; violence or insult toward all non-combatants was of rare occurrence; and the treatment of the Russian prisoners of war evoked the gratitude of the prisoners themselves. In all these respects, the difference between the Japanese and the Chinese and Russians was indeed remarkable.

At the beginning of the war the Tokyo government, perceiving that the civil authorities in Korea were already overburdened with labors consequent upon the great influx of Japanese—many of them belonging to the lower classes—proposed a bill to establish new courts and an increased force of police. In the pressure of important business connected with the life-or-death struggle in which Japan was then engaged, the bill did not pass. A Police Adviser to the Korean Government was, however, appointed. What must have been the complete incompetency of the Korean magistrates and police at such a time of confusion may be faintly imagined by one who—like the author—has seen how ineffectively they still discharged their functions, for the protection of their own officials and for the maintenance of order in the country, at the time of his visit in the spring of 1907. It would have been strange, then, if anything approaching an even-handed justice through the courts, or a complete condition of order by fear of the police, could have been secured in Korea in 1904 and 1905. No such justice or order has ever existed in this land of misrule. Japan secured it during the occupation of war, so far as its own enlisted men were concerned; but its rights as “Protector” were not fully gained and defined until after the close of the war.

Among the most serious of the charges which are important and, in certain instances, true, is that made against the military authorities for the appropriation of lands for military and railway uses, to an unreasonable extent, and in unfair ways. “There can be no question,” says Mr. D. W. Stevens, “that at the outset the military authorities in Korea did intimate an intention of taking more land for these uses than seemed reasonable. They proceeded upon the principle that the Korean Government had bound itself to grant all land necessary for railway and military uses, and itself to indemnify the owners—an assumption which was technically correct. But the owners, knowing the custom of their own government under such circumstances, were hopeless of obtaining anything like adequate redress. This, it should be remembered, happened during the war, when martial law was in the ascendant.” When peace came, other counsels prevailed; the intention to appropriate additional large tracts was abandoned; and the amount staked off for military purposes was greatly reduced—was, indeed, in several instances, made only a fraction of the original amount. For all the domain granted or appropriated by the Korean Government there has already accrued to the country, in transportation facilities and other economic and political advantages, far more than its actual value at the time of its granting or appropriation. For the private land owned by Koreans a fair price was paid in the majority of cases. The prohibition of the owners within the delimited areas to sell their lands and houses was designed to prevent prior purchase by speculators and other indirect attempts to obtain extravagant prices. The military authorities, under the pressure of what they regarded as necessity, solved these difficulties in the military way—a way that certainly does not commend itself to civilians in times of peace, but which has been employed too often by all the other civilized nations to enable them to cast stones freely at the Japanese. Even by these high-handed measures they could not avoid, in certain cases, paying much more for land owned by foreigners than it was really worth.[83]

It must further be confessed that a considerable number of Japanese sharpers—for the most part usurious money-lenders—have obtained land from Koreans in unjust and oppressive ways. This species of robbery is made the more difficult to detect and punish for the following reasons: The Korean customs and laws concerning the transference of titles to land are inadequate and confusing (for this reason, some of the landed property belonging to other foreigners than the Japanese, and even to the missionary bodies, would have no little difficulty in establishing title); the Koreans are given to issuing false and forged deeds, or in their ignorance claiming title and conferring title where no such right exists; finally, in numerous instances, both Korean or foreign “squatters” (see p. 295 f.) and the government or some of its officials are asserting, either honestly or fraudulently, their holding of good title to the same piece of land. On all this class of offences we may trust implicitly the statement of the foreign official (an American) whose duty has led him to examine into a large number of these cases: “The theft of land by eviction, false deeds, etc.,” says this authority, “is another offence upon which great stress has been laid. Undoubtedly there were a number of cases of this kind, although here again exaggeration has been at work. The commonest instances were those where money-lenders were concerned; and, in these cases, as in almost all others of the kind, Koreans were associated in some way or other with the frauds which were perpetrated. A spendthrift son or nephew would give false title-deeds, or even pawn the genuine ones without authority; a Korean rascal would conspire with a Japanese of the same kidney to defraud other Koreans, and so on through the long gamut of fraud wherein Korean connivance was an indispensable prerequisite to success. The offences relating to land have now been rendered practically impossible through the promulgation of land regulations by the Residency-General.”

In a word, offences of this kind committed by the Japanese against the Koreans, however numerous and grievous they may have been, have proved short-lived; they were formerly due to the disturbed conditions of a period of war, and will now speedily be brought to an end. Summing them all up, and even without making allowance for exaggerations, the cry of the Koreans against the Japanese on the charge of fraud and oppression touching their land is only as a drop to a good-sized bucket compared with the cry of the Irish against the English, or of the Koreans themselves against their own countrymen. The wrongs are small indeed as compared with those which have characterized the behavior of Americans against Americans in our own West.[84]

Of brutal and murderous assaults from Japanese upon Korean men and women there are indeed instances; but the cases prove on examination to have been by no means frequent. They have been, on the whole, fewer than such crimes are accustomed to be between peoples of two nations similarly placed. Indeed, they have been fewer than those occurring to-day between different classes and different nationals in many of the civilized countries of the Western World. They bear no comparison to the horrors which have for centuries been familiar in most of the Orient, including Korea itself. “Wholesale military executions,” for example, of the Koreans who tore up the track of the military railroad have been charged against the Japanese as virtually murders. But during the entire war there was never a single instance of what is known as “drum-head court martial” of a Korean for such an offence. After the trial the evidence in each case was transmitted to the Headquarters at Seoul, where the case was confirmed, modified, or reversed. The Japanese military authorities consented to have a Korean official present at each trial as an amicus curiæ of the defendant; but the Korean Government declined to be represented and claimed that all such cases should be tried before their own officials only. What would have been the outcome of such a committal of the most vital military interests of Japan to Korean magistrates it needs no great amount of experience to judge. A Korean, for example, who had been arrested by a Japanese gendarme and taken before a native magistrate was duly punished for “throwing a stone at the railway!” But on his being rearrested and tried before a military court it was established that the man had been repeatedly convicted of piling stones upon the track with a view to wreck the trains conveying the Japanese soldiers; whereupon the sentence of the military court was confirmed from Headquarters and the man was quite properly executed.

Of the killing of Koreans, unprovoked and without the excuse of self-defence, by Japanese, there have been at no time any considerable number of cases. Indeed, the murders of men and women of the other nationality, while in the quiet discharge of their official duty or in their homes, have been far more numerous. This was especially true while the country was stirred to riot and bloodshed by the abdication of the Emperor in July, 1907, and by the disbandment of the Korean army, when mistaken or feigned “patriotism” was showing itself in the customary Korean way. But that there is nothing new about all this, a reference to chapters which have sketched (IX and X) the history of the relations of the countries in the past centuries will abundantly show.

Of serious and unprovoked assaults of Koreans by Japanese there have been, doubtless, a considerable number. It would be impossible to tell just how many, even as a result of the most patient and candid investigation;—if for no other reason, because the Korean habit of exaggeration and lying renders almost all the uncorroborated testimony of the natives untrustworthy. This experience with official lying to cover their own countrymen against the demands of foreigners for justice, or to enforce indemnity in cases of false charges made against foreigners for assault on Koreans, is not confined to the Japanese. It is the common experience with all Korean judicial procedure.[85]

Among the more serious unproved charges against Japanese officials was that of torturing Korean prisoners by Japanese gendarmes at the time of the so-called “cleansing” of the Palace. Mr. Hulbert published this charge and specified, on the authority of “numerous witnesses,” the exact character of the torture—namely, by a kind of iron instrument designed to squeeze the head. Immediately Marquis Ito took up the matter and sent a messenger to Mr. Hulbert to express his earnest desire to probe the matter thoroughly; and his intention, in case the charge was proved, to punish the offenders severely. This request implied, as a matter of course, the pledge of protection to the witnesses; and Mr. Hulbert agreed to furnish the evidence. But when this could not be done, the excuse was first offered that the witnesses were afraid to come forward; and next, the “numerous witnesses” resolved themselves into one person, who had “gone into the country.” When still further pressed to furnish the promised evidence, the story of the iron head-rack was altogether abandoned, and for it was substituted the charge that a certain eunuch had been arrested and beaten by the police. But this, if it occurred, is only according to the Korean custom of judicial procedure, still to be allowed, after the torture of criminals had been legally abolished under Japanese influence. Nevertheless, this confessedly false charge was afterward included in a pamphlet by the same authority as another instance of Japanese outrages in Korea.[86]

Of rudeness and petty assaults the Koreans have, no doubt, had much to endure at the hands of the coolies and other low-class Japanese. But not so much as the Burmese and East Indians have had to endure from the British soldier and petty official in their own home land; or the Chinese and Japanese on the Pacific Coast of the United States; and, probably, not more than the Japanese themselves during the earlier days of the entrance of foreigners into Japan. While the atrocious treatment of the natives by the Belgians in Africa, by the French in Madagascar, by the Russians in many parts of Asia, is as midnight darkness to twilight or full dawn when compared with anything done to Koreans of late years by the Japanese.

In order to understand, but not to excuse, this harsh and bullying attitude of the foreigner toward the native, two things need to be borne in mind. The first is this: Korea has never been a land where the common people have been treated with any decency, not to say respect. In the old days—the days to change which the Japanese Government is planning and doing more than any other human agency—the attendants of officials beat every commoner who came within their reach; this was as a matter of course; it was an evidence, not much resented by the people, of the superiority of their master. Lieutenant Foulk describes how, when he was travelling in the country, his chair coolies on approaching an inn would accelerate their pace and, rushing into the yard at the top of their speed, would begin to belabor every one in sight. “In 1885,” says Mr. Stevens, “I was riding through the streets of Seoul on official business. Among my attendants were several policemen armed with the many-thonged whips carried in those days. The policemen slashed with these at the curious who pressed around the chair, regardless of where the blows fell. One old woman, lashed in the face until the blood came, still pressed forward when the policeman had passed, eager to see the foreigner close at hand, and apparently regarding the blows as a matter of course.” To-day such cruelty is in no respect rare among the “amiable Koreans.” Indeed, without something of this kind, it is difficult in the country for the traveller, whether native or foreigner, to get anything done. “During the first two days,” says Mr. Henry Norman,[87] “I was greatly annoyed by my mapous, whom I could not get along at all. At the midday halt they would lie about for a couple of hours, and in the morning it was two or three hours after I was up before I could get them to start. On the third morning I lost my temper, and going into their room, I kicked them one after the other into the yard. This was evidently what they expected, for they set to work immediately. Unless they were kicked they could not believe the hurry was real. Afterward, by a similar procedure, I started whenever I wished.” Again, Mr. Angus Hamilton, after bringing a railing accusation against the Japanese for their bullying methods with the Koreans, recommends that the Korean interpreter “be flogged” if he suggests the employment of too many servants, asserts that “an occasional kick” is helpful to convert the Korean into a “willing if unintelligent servant,” and closes his book with the frank narrative of his falling into a blind rage and taking vengeance right and left because of his disappointment over the defeat of a scheme for an exploring and sporting trip to the northern part of the peninsula.[88]

The second consideration to which reference was made brings out the more humorous side of the picture. In Korea it makes a great difference, not only whose ox is gored, but who gores the ox. Small favors of the kind which are received uncomplainingly—almost gratefully—from their own officials, and even from other friends, are by no means just now received in the same way from the Japanese. Of this fact Dr. Gale gives an admirable description: it is that of a Korean lounging along in the middle of the road and smoking the pipe of contemplative abstraction—a habit indulged in by almost all Koreans in the most inconvenient places. A Japanese jinrikisha-man pushes him rudely to one side, and not being at all firm upon his legs, he goes sprawling on the ground (comp. p. 172 f.). Eyes raised to heaven, he calls upon the skies to fall; for the end of all things has come. “But,” says the passing stranger, “a missionary pushed you out of the way yesterday; another foreigner beat you the day before; your own people have always kicked and cuffed you.” “Yes, yes, but a Japanese! Only think of it—a Japanese!”

Among the partially true, but greatly exaggerated, charges of petty oppression and injustice must be classed the claim that the labor on the Japanese military railway was enforced by personal cruelties and paid for at unfair prices. Again, it must be remembered that the prompt conclusion of this work was a military necessity of the first importance. In the rush and confusion which accompanied its execution, it would have been strange if there had not been cases of harsh treatment of laborers by the Japanese sub-contractors. Where an appeal, accompanied by trustworthy evidence, was taken to the higher authorities, it was possible to obtain redress in almost every instance. But there was another class of cases where it was almost impossible to secure anything like decent reparation; these were chiefly under the management of the Koreans themselves. Concerning such cases, the statement of an authority, made on grounds of personal knowledge, is quoted below:

The reputation of the Japanese—army, civil government, and the people generally—has suffered more from the long-standing and the more recent relations between Japan and Korea than is customary elsewhere under similar circumstances. This is due partly to inexperience and over self-confidence on their own part; but also in larger measure to the untrustworthy and corrupt witness of the Korean officials and to the ignorance and credulity of the Korean people; most of all, however, to the prejudiced or malignant, untrue reports of certain foreigners. During the occupation and transit of the Japanese army in the late war, the charges of cruelty and injustice on its part were not confined to the construction and service of the military railway. While the commissary department was paying to the Korean contractors the full market price for provisions and other supplies, the contractors were compelling the Korean people to furnish the supplies, either without pay or at greatly reduced rates. From time immemorial, the people of Korea have been accustomed to have their rice, chickens, ponies, and service, levied upon by their own officials; in the present case they, as a matter of course, attributed the same manner of getting what you want by taking what you see, to the Japanese.[89]

Ignorance of the Korean language and customs is another fruitful source of bad repute for the Japanese. Even now, in the city of Seoul, the Japanese who blunders into the women’s quarters, or even into their too near vicinity, in the discharge of his duty to collect a bill, to make an inspection or a report of some official character, or to inquire his way, is liable to be charged with an intent to commit rape or some other form of assault. The Japanese collector of taxes, or customs, or the Japanese policeman who protects the obnoxious Korean official, or even the “unpatriotic” Cabinet Minister, is a particular object of Korean falsehood and hatred. But all these complaints, although they have been made much of by the anti-Japanese “friends” of Korea, and in spite of the undoubted fact that they greatly increase the feeling of bitterness between the two peoples and interfere with the benevolent plans of the Resident-General, are in themselves comparatively trivial.

Wholly false charges of oppression and fraud of a much more important character have been made against the Japanese Government in Korea, either in ignorance or with malignity, and have industriously been spread abroad by the subsidized or the deceived “foreign friends” of the Korean Court. One of the most notable of such charges concerned the so-called “fisheries company.” Its history is briefly this. Certain Koreans came to a “missionary friend” complaining that the Resident-General had peremptorily dissolved a Korean company which had a legal concession to develop the fisheries industry, thus involving the shareholders in heavy losses. The presumption was that the unjust act was intended to further in the future the Japanese interest in this same industry. But the truth was that the Minister of Agriculture, Commerce and Industry had in the Fall of 1906, at the solicitation of a “Korean, notorious for previous participation in malodorous schemes,” secretly granted to a native company a monopoly of all the fishing rights upon the entire Korean coasts, except the whale fisheries. In addition to this, this same company was given the exclusive right of control over all the fish markets in the Empire, so that no fish could be sold except at places designated by it and upon payment to it of such sums as it might choose to exact. When, however, sufficient funds were not speedily available from Korean subscribers to float this monstrous and totally illegal monopoly, a Japanese visiting capitalist was approached by the Korean promoter and asked to buy a half-share of the enterprise. His mention of the investment offered to him gave to the Residency-General its first knowledge of the scheme. The Minister of Agriculture, Commerce and Industry was immediately informed that such a concession was in plain violation of treaty rights and highly prejudicial to Korean private and public interests. The Minister was also warned that the concession should be cancelled; he promised to do this, and it was supposed that he had kept his word. But either through cowardice or connivance at corruption, the promise was not fulfilled. Months later, therefore, the Chief of the Commercial Department of the Residency-General, Mr. Kiuchi, while making a tour of inspection in Southeastern Korea, received a petition from the fishermen of the district, complaining that this same company was levying taxes upon them and forbidding those who did not pay the taxes to continue their fishing. The complete dissolution of this illegal monopoly was saved from being the object of popular resentment only by the fact that its promoters had been ready to share their plunder with a Japanese![90]

Another instance which illustrates, however, the habitual exaggeration and ignorant credulity of the Koreans rather than their well-known official capacity for fraud, is connected with the establishment of the royal “stud-farm” near Pyeng-yang. In this case two native pastors from this city, as members of a deputation to petition the redress of a great wrong, came to a missionary friend in Seoul in great distress. Their story was that the Korean officials of the Household Department, in complicity with the Japanese officials, had enclosed in stakes a territory having a population of fifty thousand people and comprising a vast quantity of arable land. Within this large area, no one could sell the land, or cut timber or grass, or plant crops, or bury the dead; or, in brief, put the land to any of its ordinary uses. These official prohibitions were said to have been inscribed upon the stakes—although the petitioners, on being questioned, could not tell upon just how many of them. At Seoul, neither the Korean nor the Japanese officials knew of any such project in connection with the proposed stud-farm; although it was true that such a farm was to be established, under the joint patronage of their Majesties, the Emperors of Japan and Korea. Communication with Marquis Ito, who was then in Tokyo, brought a reassuring telegram from him. Investigation showed that no notice of the kind had been put upon any of the stakes which had been erected to show that all the government lands within the area delimited were reserved for the uses of the farm. Nor did the placing of the stakes put any restrictions whatever upon the people, so far as concerned their own property. The one stake on which the mysterious notice did appear had been driven some time previous to the very existence of the scheme for a royal farm; and it had reference to a totally different piece of Imperial property which it had been designed to guard against encroachments from both Koreans and Japanese dwelling in Pyeng-yang. All this excitement could have been avoided if the Korean officials had done their duty by way of informing and instructing the people. But the simple truth is that many of them and of the “foreign friends” of Korea do not wish to avoid any popular excitement which will contribute to the embarrassment and discredit of the Japanese Government in Korea. The rather do they welcome all such excitement.

The truth of this last remark is amply illustrated by the treatment given to the “Pagoda Incident”—one of the “flagrant wrongs” done to Korea by the Japanese which was on the carpet during our entire stay of two months in the land. Viscount Tanaka, who is described as “an ardent virtuoso and collector,” while visiting in Seoul was approached by a Japanese curio dealer with the suggestion that he might add to his collection the ancient but neglected pagoda then situated near Song-do. Mention of the matter was made to the Korean Ministers of the Interior and of the Household, and their approval obtained; and through them the sanction of the Emperor was gained for its removal, as a present to his distinguished guest. The actual work of the removal was committed to the dealer who made the unfortunate suggestion, and who executed his job “with his characteristic skill and audacity.” Previous to its removal this relic of former grandeur had for a long time been wholly neglected by the Korean Government and was, in fact, in process of destruction by the Korean people, who were in the habit of removing bits from it to use as medicine. At once, however, a storm of indignant protest broke out; not, indeed, among the Koreans left to themselves so much as on the part of the “foreign friends” of Korea in their English papers and foreign correspondence. The Viscount was called by terms applicable to a common thief; the “robbery of the Pagoda,” the “rape of the Pagoda,” the plunder of this “precious religious relic” of Korea’s former grandeur, was deplored and abjurgated in the most extravagant terms. The Emperor doubtless chuckled; for while he cared little for the Pagoda, he cared much for the discredit which the taking away of it brought upon the Japanese. The unwise act was virtually disowned by the Residency-General (Marquis Ito was absent in Japan at the time of its removal), and was severely criticised by the Japanese themselves; with the departure of Mr. Hulbert for Russia the excitement over this act of oppression gave way to more important political affairs.

Most ludicrous and pathetic—but highly characteristic—of all these popular excitements was, perhaps, that which arose through the mere proposal of a subject of debate by a Japanese student in Waseda University, Japan: Whether the Korean Emperor should not be made a noble of Japan? (Thus implying, of course, his descent from his Imperial dignity and the virtual annexation of Korea.) The proposal was indeed never adopted, and the debate never took place. But the intolerable insult to the Korean students at the same university, and to the whole nation of Korea—although the authorities of Waseda at once rebuked the unfortunate student—was dwelt upon, and exaggerated, and rubbed into the inflamed and sensitive skins of the people, with all the vigor which the Korean patriots and their “foreign friends” could command. And when some obscure but self-conceited Japanese official, in Japan and not at all in Korea, published a brochure giving fully two-score and more reasons why Japan should promptly annex Korea, these same patriots and their friends made all the use in their power of this insignificant document to stir up sedition and murderous revolt. It was the issue of it as a forgery bearing the official authorization of the Japanese Government, which caused the excitement in Pyeng-yang—the story of which has already been told (see p. 104 f.).[91]

It is not necessary, however, to multiply instances under any of these heads. All classes of wrongs done the Koreans by the Japanese—important and trivial, real, exaggerated, or falsely claimed—are fast diminishing and are destined in time to be reduced to a minimum. The Korean Central Government is now more genuine, more intelligent, and more efficient—as distinguished from the mere wilfulness of the ex-Emperor—than it has ever been before. The reforms possible under the Convention of July, 1907, will afford a judiciary system and judicial procedure hitherto impossible as respects the administration of justice. The control of the local magistrate and of the policing of city and country will contribute something quite new in the way of the blessings of peace and prosperity to the common people. The reforms in the public finance and in taxation will stimulate trade and commerce; the industrial and common-school education will bring about an economic redemption. And if the teachers of morals and religion, both native and foreign, behave with a reasonable wisdom and self-control in the future, and with the same devotion and enthusiasm which they have displayed in the recent years, wrongs will be righted; justice will be done; enlightenment will be spread abroad; and the Korea of the near future will be a quite different nation from the Korea of the long-continued, disgraceful, and distressful past.