Korea (Hamilton)/Chapter 11

JAPANESE CAVALRY Southern Korea bears many evidences of the warlike activities and commercial enterprise of the past generations of Japanese, who, abandoning their own island home, sought domicile upon the shores of the neighbouring peninsula. The precarious existence of these waifs and strays from an alien state, in the midst of a people whose whole attitude was anti-foreign, did not deter others from coming to her ports. ​This gradual migration from Japan to the Hermit Kingdom continued during many centuries, promoting an intercourse between two races which the Government was powerless to frustrate. Japanese historians argue from this settlement in Korea that the State was a vassal of Japan from the second century by right of conquest and appropriation. The idea, which prevailed through seventeen centuries, was not finally rejected until the Ambassador of the Mikado signed a treaty at Seoul on February 7th, 1897, which recognised Korea as an independent nation. From about the beginning of the Christian era until the fifteenth century, the relations between Japan and Korea were very close. From this period onward Korea, although maintaining her attitude of complacent indifference to events outside her own Empire, betrayed signs of weakness in her policy of isolation when menaced with the importunate demands of her rival neighbours, China and Japan.

At the two points in her Empire adjacent to the dominions of China and Japan, war and peace alternately prevailed. If, upon occasion, the Koreans went out unsupported to fight their invaders, the leaders more usually united with one of the two rivals against the other. Thus, there was always turmoil throughout the kingdom. In the south, as in the north, the tide of war rolled backwards and forwards, with varying success. From the west, the armies of China appeared and vanished, skirting the Liao-tung Gulf, to plunder and to devastate the peninsula. Fleets from Shan-tung, crossing the Yellow Sea, dropped their anchors in the rivers of the land. The west was threatened by the hordes of China, and the south was harried by ships and men from the east, who pounced upon Fusan and seized the cities of the south. The aggressions of the Japanese ​extinguished any hope the Koreans might still have cherished of preserving the southern frontier of their kingdom intact. Although cordons of armed sentinels and palisades, barriers of mountains and miles of ruined and deserted wastes protected the northern borders against the incursions of the Chinese soldiers to some extent, the south was vulnerable.

Fusan was the floodgate through which poured the hostile masses of Japan, an unbroken stream of men, to deluge the land. They invaded Korea as enemies, levying tribute; they came as allies against China; they appeared as the embassies of a friendly State and returned enriched to the Court of their Sovereign. Actuated by feelings of mercy, they sent grain-ships to Fusan when famine overtook their neighbours. Between Japan and Fusan there was the continuous passing of ships. Around this outlet, the one gate to the southern half of the kingdom, the spasmodic beginnings of the present important commerce between the two countries grew out of a fretful exchange of commodities.

In the years that followed the earlier visitations, Japan became so embarrassed by her own internal troubles, that the Kingdom of Korea was left in that peace and seclusion which, always preferring, it had found so much difficulty in securing. This happy state of things prevailed for two centuries. At the end of this interval, the annual embassy to Japan from the Court of Korea had ceased. The kingdom in general, lulled by visions of perpetual peace, no longer maintained defences. Military preparations were neglected; the army was disorganised; the old fighting spirit of the people died down, and martial exercises disappeared from the training of the militia. Dissipation and profligacy were rife. In the meantime, order having been restored in Japan, ​the thoughts of her soldiers again turned towards fields of conquest and deeds of daring. The vassalship of Korea was recalled; the King was summoned to renew his allegiance. The answer proving unsatisfactory,

preparations for an invasion were at once begun. The fleet assembled and the ships set sail. The mobility which was to distinguish the Japanese in after years characterised their movements in this campaign. Within eighteen days after their landing at Fusan, the capture of the capital was accomplished and a blow was struck, which enabled the Koreans at last to understand the gravity of their plight.

The part, which Fusan played in this war, materially assisted the invading hosts of Japan. A settlement at Fusan, which had been founded long since by the retainers of the Daimio of the island of Tsu-shima, assisted by itinerant traders and deserters from the numerous expeditions which ​visited its shores, had grown to such dimensions that when the force was descried off the harbour upon the morning of May 25th, 1592, Fusan was already in their possession. This circumstance gave the troops immediate facilities for disembarkation, and, in the subsequent vicissitudes of the next six years' campaign, expedited the progress of the war. The position of Fusan speedily made the place a base of supplies to the army of operation and a repairing yard for the Japanese fleet after their disastrous engagement with the Korean ships, in an attempt to co-operate with the victorious forces, which Konishi and Kuroda had assembled before Pyöng-yang. After the conclusion of the first invasion and the Japanese retreat from the north, before the combined strength of the Chinese and Koreans on May 22nd, 1593, Fusan became one of the fortified camps upon the coast, where the Japanese armies passed the winter in sight of the shores of their own land. The negotiations, which were opened in the following year, and shifted alternately between the camp of the Commander-in-Chief at Fusan and the Courts in China and Japan, failed.

Even at this date Japan was anxious to establish her power in Korea by obtaining possession of the southern provinces. Foiled in this attempt, she renewed her attack. Fusan again became the seat of the councils of war, and the base for the second invasion. The operations began with the siege of the Castle of Nan-on, in Chyöl-la province, upon the morning of September 21st, 1597. Twelve months later, the Japanese were withdrawn from Korea, and the war came to its close. Two hundred years passed before Korea recovered from the desolation of this conflict, which was one in which the loss of three hundred thousand men ​was recorded. Moreover, the Japanese retained Fusan, a perpetual evidence of their victory.

This early claim to the southern provinces put forward by the Japanese plainly reveals how long standing is their wish to annex the southern half of Korea. Even in modern times, they have embarked upon one campaign in the interests of Korea, while they are now ready to go to war with Russia on behalf of the same nation that they themselves consistently bully. Their plea of Korea for the Koreans, however, is in curious contrast to their own lawless domination of the coveted territory. Indeed, the interests which the Japanese have developed for themselves throughout these regions do not disclose much consideration for the rights of the natives. The treaty of 1876, which opened Fusan to Japanese settlers, removed the nominal obstacles to that over-sea immigration which had been progressing steadily during several centuries. A wave of Japanese colonisation at once lapped the eastern, western, and southern shores of the Hermit Kingdom.

Indications of previous incursions were given by the affinity which existed between the language, manners, and local customs of these newcomers and the indigenous race. The existence of this affinity became a powerful, if impersonal, instrument in abating the opposition of the population to the settlement. Unable to obtain the secession of the territory which they so much desired, communities of Japanese fringed its borders. They planted themselves wherever there were prospects of trade, until the resources of the land were tapped in all directions, and the control of its commerce was virtually in their hands. As other ports were opened at the persistent instigation of these persevering traders, however, the settlement of the south ​proceeded less rapidly. In view of the changing relations between Korea and the Powers, therefore, the Japanese passed further afield, developing some little industry to their own advantage wherever they went. Trade followed their flag, whether they were within the radius of the treaty ports, or engaged in forcing the hand of the local officials by settling beyond the limitations of their Conventions. The success of these efforts was soon assured. Despite the stipulations of the treaties, and in face of the objections of their own, as well as the Korean, Government, the irrepressible activity of these pioneers of a past generation unconsciously contributed to that supremacy which the trade of Japan has since achieved in the land of her former enemy.

The expansion of Japanese interests in Korea has not been without political design. The integrity of her neighbour is bound up with her own existence. The security of Korea emphasises the safety of her own borders; and, as her own Empire has developed into a first-class Power, this desire to see the kingdom respected has become more and more the spirit of the policy upon which she has concentrated her individual action. She has fostered the trade with Korea because it drew together the ties which connected the two countries. She has urged the concession of ports, and still more ports, to foreign commerce, because the preponderance of her trade in these open marts substantiates her claim to be the lawful champion of the race. The progress of Korea, since the country came under her supervision, has been more evident than any of the difficulties which have originated out of the disposition of the Japanese to bully and coerce the Koreans. If, upon occasion, the results have suggested that the blind cannot ​lead the blind without disaster, the rarity of mistakes reflects credit upon the judgment which has been displayed. This combination is, of course, directed against foreigners. Just as Japan is discarding those Western teachers, whose genius and administrative abilities protected her in her days of ignorance, so does she hanker after the time when she alone may guard the interests of Korea, and supply the demands of her markets. At present, however, it is open to question whether the Koreans will have overcome their feelings of irritation against the Japanese by the time that these have become thoroughly progressive in their treatment of the Koreans. The Japanese are more repressive in their methods than they need be.

The extraneous evidence of the power of the Japanese irritates the Koreans, increasing the unconquerable aversion which has inspired them against the Japanese through centuries, until, of the various races of foreigners in Korea at the present, none are so deservedly detested as those hailing from the Island Empire of the Mikado. Nor is this prejudice remarkable, when it is considered that it is the scum of the Japanese nation that has settled down upon Korea. It is, perhaps, surprising that the animus of the Koreans against the Japanese has not died out with time; but the fault lies entirely with the Japanese themselves. Within recent years so much has occurred to alter the position of Japan and to flatter the vanity of these island people that they have lost their sense of perspective. Puffed up with conceit, they now permit themselves to commit social and administrative excesses of the most detestable character. Their extravagant arrogance blinds them to the absurdities and follies of their actions, making manifest the fact that their gloss of civilisation is the merest veneer. Their conduct ​in Korea shows them to be destitute of moral and intellectual fibre. They are debauched in business, and the prevalence of dishonourable practices in public life makes them indifferent to private virtue. Their interpretation of the laws of their settlements, as of their own country, is corrupt. Might is right; the sense of power is tempered neither by reason, justice nor generosity. Their existence from day to day, their habits and their manners, their commercial and social degradation, complete an abominable travesty of the civilisation which they profess to have studied. It is intolerable that a Government aspiring to the dignity of a first-class Power should allow its settlements in a friendly and foreign country to be a blot upon its own prestige, and a disgrace to the land that harbours them.

There are some twenty-five thousand Japanese in Korea, and the Japanese settlement is the curse of every treaty port in Korea. It is at once the centre of business, and the scene of uproar, riot, and confusion. In the comparative nakedness of the women, in the noise and violence of the shopkeepers, in the litter of the streets, there is nothing to suggest the delicate culture of Japan. The modesty, cleanliness, and politeness, so characteristic of the Japanese, are conspicuously absent in their settlements in this country. Transformation has taken place with transmigration. The merchant has become a rowdy; the coolie is impudent, violent, and, in general, an outcast more prone to steal than to work. Master and man alike terrorise the Koreans, who go in fear of their lives whenever they have transactions with the Japanese. Before the Chino-Japanese war this spirit had not displayed itself to any great extent in the capital of the Hermit Kingdom. With the successful conclusion of that campaign, ​however, the Japanese became so aggressive in their treatment of the people that, had the choice of two evils been possible in view of these events, the Koreans would have preferred the Chinese and a state of dependence to the conditions which were then introduced. The universal admiration aroused by the conduct of the Japanese troops in the North-China campaign of 1900-1901 has added sensibly to the vanity and egoism of these Korean-Japanese. Convinced of their innate superiority, their violence towards the Koreans goes on unchecked. It threatens now to assume unparalleled dimensions. If the relations between the Powers are to continue upon a satisfactory footing in Korea, it will be necessary for the Japanese Government to redress those abuses which foreigners, Japanese, and Koreans alike have combined to denounce.