TRUTH ABOUT KOREA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18141, 12 January 1921, Page 6

TRUTH ABOUT KOREA

JAPANESE INDICTED. PLIGHT OF THE PEOPLE (By Rev. Frank H. L. Paton, in the Melbourne Argus.) The leaders of the Constitutional Party in Japan are anxious that the widest publicity should be given to the actual condition of Korea under the rule of the Military Government. They themselves are engaged in a great fight for the liberation of Japan from militaristic and bureaucratic government, and they welcome intelligent and sympathetic criticism from abroad as a means of arousing the best elements in their nation to rally to their aid. But they ask that such criticism be well informed and free from bias, and they have takeq great pains to inform themselves of th 6 truth of the stories of cruelty that emanate from Korea, Mr Konosuke Morya was sent by them to investigate on the spot, and he reported that the disturbances were due to the discriminatory treatment of Koreans, complicated and impracticable administrative measures, extreme censorship of public speeches, forcible adoption of the assimilation system, and the spread of the spirit of self-determination. About the same time the Christian Church in Japan sent, over Dr Ishizaku to examine and report upon the Tacts In his report he attributed the disturbances to the following causes:—!. Discrimination against Koreans in education and official positions. 2. Hie depredations of the Oriental Development Company, 3. The gendarme and police system. 4. The Military Government, 5. The policy of assimilation. The Japanese press, on the other hand, blamed the missionaries, and the Government General conducted a searching inquiry into their charges. As a result of this official investigation Mr Sanga Kobubu, Director of Judicial Affairs, issued the following pronouncement:—"Rumours have been rife that foreign missionaries incited the disturbances, or at least showed sympathy with the rioters. . . . But that they are entirely groundless has been established by the results of investigations into the matter conducted by the authorities. The authorities have carried out thorough and strict inquiries concerning it, and are satisfied that there is no trace whatever that foreigners instigated the disturbances. Nor is there any evidence that they knew anything beforehand of the occurrence of the trouble or gave support to the rioters.” NO REAL CHANGE. As a result of criticism at home and abroad the Constitutional Party succeeded in bringing such pressure to bear upon the Government that they recalled Count Hosegawa from Korea, and appointed Admiral Baron Saito as Governor-General in his place. Much was hoped for from this change of administration, as it was regarded as the first step ijp the transferring of Korea from the military to the civil administration. Baron Saito outlined a programme of conciliation and reform, and some of the most objectionable features of the Government restrictions were modified. For example, the gendarmerie were abolished, flogging was forbidden, and freedom of the press was proclaimed. But the early promise of the new administration has passed away like the morning clouds. The gendarmes merely changed their name and their uniform, and are now called police; torturing has reappeared under the alias of “ severe admonition,” and the papers that were founded as a result of the granting of freedom of the press have all been suppressed. The administrators have been changed, but the administration is the same. This was made clear by an interview which Baron Saito was kind enough to grant me in Seoul last October. He was most courteous, and expressed his strong desire for a better understanding with Australia, which I heartily reciprocated; but when the conversation turned to Korean affairs he defended the policy of tho military party, and blamed the recalcitrant Koreans for the delay in carrying reforms into effect. I came away from that interview with two distinct impressions :—(1) That there is a power behind the Baron restraining his reforming proclivities. (2) That he himself is quite unconscious of anything reprehensible in the military administration.

For throe months —from the beginning of August to the ohd oi October last—l travelled through Korea, making it my business to interview Koreans, foreigners, and Japanese, in an honest attempt to discover the truth. I was struck by tne remarkable improvements the Japanese had brought about in the material conditions of the country. The old irregular foot tracks through the noe plots and up the steep mountain passes have been replaced by a splendid system of finely graded roads, and motor traffic has made it possible to travel with a comfort and a speed hitherto undreamed of in Korea. Railways have been extended in many directions, and the bare mountains are being covered with forests of young pines. Sanitation has been introduced, and agriculture lias been improved. New industries have been established, and the people are better off financially than they have ever PEOPLE EMBITTERED. But in spite of all this the Koreans are utterly dissatisfied. They compare Korea to a well-conducted® penal establishment, and complain that the country has been improved by torced labour and taxation far beyond tne economic strength of the people. In addition to this, the tollowing features oi the Japanese administration have emuittered tne people and hardened tnem in the.r opposition to the present regime:— 1. The enormous power vested in the police, and, the arbitrary and harsh way m which they use it. The police have the power of summary judgment over a large area of cases, and they may enter a man’s house to search it or arrest the inmates without warrant. Their method of securing evidence is to torture the accused till he says “Yes” to the questions they put, and out of 82,121 cases dealt with by the police in 1916-17, only 80 were able to prove their innocence, while 81,139 were sentenced. There were no later figures available, but wherever 1 travelled in Korea arrests by the police were going on at an alarming rate. Here are some recent examples of the way in which the police are handling the Koreans: ‘The wite of a Christian teacher was ordered to undress. She hesitated, whereupon the policeman kicked her. He tore her underclothes off. Still clinging to them, she tried to cover her nakedness. The clothes were torn out of her hands. She tried to sit down They forced her up She tried by turning to the wall to conceal herself from the many men in the room They forced her to turn round again. When she tried to shelter herself with her hands, one man twisted her arms, held them behind her back, and held them there while the beating and kicking continued.” A boy was on his way to Pyongyang to the Union Christian College when he met the police. On learning his destination, they tried to dissuade him from going to a Christian school. But, as he persisted in ms purpose, they took him to the police office and beat him. Then they took him down to die river and threw him in. Iho water was only 2ft deep, so they stood on him to keep him under. Then they got on to the hank, and every time he tried to scramble up they kicked him in again. After a while they seized him and bound his hands and knees, and threw him in again. Every time he managed to get his face above water they pushed him under again. At last when he was nearly dead with exhaustion, they let him go, but warned him on no account to go to Pyongyang. As soon as he got clear of them and recovered his strength he resumed his journey, and is now studying at die school of his choice. Last July a Bible woman, who was particularly successful in her preaching, was arrested and beaten by the police, who kicked her and spat in her face and ripped her clothes. They threatened her with death, and, holding a revolver at her breast, ordered her to give up preaching. She refused. and they fired—but it was a blank cartridge. Then they applied lighted cigarettes to her body until she sank into unconsciousness.

In October the police raided a mission house at 3 a.m., and searched it while they covered the missionary with a revolver and fixed bayonets. A few days later they arrested the Korean pastor and six of his elders as they were about to conduct u communion service at the church. The minister and several of his elders were so severely tortured that their shirts were saturated with blood. A day or two later I saw them in the jiolioc station, and their faces were disfigured with agony. One might fill many columns with descriptions of actual cases ot torture being carried on by the Japanese police in Korea to-day, but these are enough to show what is going on. It is not so much the torturing of men and boys, but the. stripping and the outraging of women and girls, that has burned into the very soul of Korea an implacable hatred of Japanese rule. RESOLVED ON INDEPENDENCE. 2. Discrimination.—The Koreans complain that there is systematic and deliberate discrimination by the Japanese Administration against the Koreans. For example, the Government General undertakes to carry out a national system of education in Korea. There sire 7.21000 Japawso and 16,000,000 Koreans, yet the AdmfaMtnrtion spends 40 per cemt. on tha wiucatir-c of the Japanese and only 60 per coat, rs Ihut of the

Koreans. Besides this, the standard of education for the latter is far below that for the former. Thus the Japanese are trained for the higher positions, while the Koreans are deliberately kept back and fitted only for inferior posts; nor are they allowed to travel abroad for foreign education. The ideal of education is frankly stated to be to make the Koreans into loyal Japanese citizens —in other words, assimilation. 3. Lack of Freedom.—'There is no freedom of the press in Korea under Japanese rule, or of speech, or of public meeting. Xiie whole country is honey combed witu spies, many of whom are abyssmaily ignorant, and arrests arc constantly taking place as a result of their misunderstanding of the simplest scriptural teaching. A whole edition of Dr Gale’s school text-books was suppressed, lest Kipling’s elephant jStory should incite the Koreans to retuse to serve their second master, the Emperor of Japan! 4. The policy of the Oriental Development Company is another source of deep resentment on the part of the Koreans. This company virtually acts for the Govern-ment-General, and it seems to be exploiting the Koreans in the interests of the Japanese. Thousands of families have been dispossessed of their land under one pretext or another, and about a million and a-half have emigrated to Manchuria. Thousands of these perished by the way from hunger and exhaustion, and the survivors are maintaining a more or less precarious livelihood in circumstances of great hardship. This has afforded the astute Japanese another excuse for policing Manchuria “to protect their citizens’’ from the violent oppression of the peaceable Chinese. 5. The deliberate encouragement of social vice has cut deep into the heart of all selfrcspoctmg Koreans. This evil always existed in Korea, but it was regarded as a shameful thing, and kept in the background. But the Japanese have dragged it into the most prominent places, and thrown around it the respectability of official patronage. Even non-Christian young _ Koreans are banding together to fight this social vice, because they believe that if left unchecked it will sap the nation’s strength. In these and many other ways the Japanese have not only failed to win the confidence of the Koreans, but have consolidated them into a nation of one heart and mind absolutely determined to win back their independence. It is no wonder that the military party take such extraordinary precautions to keep these facts from the knowledge of the outside world. But we are acting as true friends of Japan in giving thorn publicity, for by so doing we are helping tihe Constitutional party in their efforts to break down the domination of the reactionary militarists, and to set up true constitutional government. We have no desire to throw stones at Japan—we are too conscious of our own past to do that —but we do -want to help her to come to her true self. The Japanese are a great people, with limitless possibilities, but until they shatter the bonds of militarism they will not reach their true greatnets. It is still true that “ they that take the sword shall perislh by the sword.’’ Japan can only fulfil her destiny through righteousness, and we would ally ourselves in moral sympathy with the Constitutional party in their struggle for civil freedom in Japan and the reign of justice and good will in Korea,