Koreas Fight for Freedom | Page 2

In six years the total of prisoners convicted or awaiting trial doubled. The rule of the big stick was instituted, and the Japanese police were given the right to flog without trial any Korean they pleased. The bamboo was employed on scores of thousands of people each year, employed so vigorously as to leave a train of cripples and corpses behind. The old tyranny of the yang-ban was replaced by a more terrible, because more scientifically cruel, tyranny of an uncontrolled police.
The Japanese struck an unexpected strain of hardness in the Korean character. They found, underneath the surface apathy, a spirit as determined as their own. They succeeded, not in assimilating the people, but in reviving their sense of nationality.
Before Japan acquired the country, large numbers of Koreans had adopted Christianity. Under the influence of the teachers from America, they became clean in person, they brought their women out from the "anpang" (zenana) into the light of day, and they absorbed Western ideas and ideals. The mission schools taught modern history, with its tales of the heroes and heroines of liberty, women like Joan of Arc, men like Hampden and George Washington. And the missionaries circulated and taught the Bible--the most dynamic and disturbing book in the world. When a people saturated in the Bible comes into touch with tyranny, either one of two things happens, the people are exterminated or tyranny ceases.
The Japanese realized their danger. They tried, in vain, to bring the Churches under Japanese control. They confiscated or forbade missionary textbooks, substituting their own. Failing to win the support of the Christians, they instituted a widespread persecution of the Christian leaders of the north. Many were arrested and tortured on charges which the Japanese Courts themselves afterwards found to be false. The Koreans endured until they could endure no more. Not the Christians alone, but men of all faiths and all classes acted as one. The story of their great protest, of what led up to it, and the way in which it was met, is told in this book.
To the outsider, one of the most repulsive features of the Japanese method of government of Korea is the wholesale torture of untried prisoners, particularly political prisoners. Were this torture an isolated occurrence, I would not mention it. There are always occasional men who, invested with authority and not properly controlled, abuse their position. But here torture is employed in many centres and on thousands of people. The Imperial Japanese Government, while enacting paper regulations against the employment of torture, in effect condones it. When details of the inhuman treatment of Christian Korean prisoners have been given in open court, and the victims have been found innocent, the higher authorities have taken no steps to bring the torturers to justice.
The forms of torture freely employed include, among others:--
1. The stripping, beating, kicking, flogging, and outraging of schoolgirls and young women.
2. Flogging schoolboys to death.
3. Burning--the burning of young girls by pressing lighted cigarettes against their tender parts, and the burning of men, women and children by searing their bodies with hot irons.
4. Stringing men up by their thumbs, beating them with bamboos and iron rods until unconscious, restoring them and repeating the process, sometimes several times in one day, sometimes until death.
5. Contraction--tying men up in such fashion as to cause intense suffering.
6. Confinement for long periods under torturing conditions, as, _e.g._, where men and women are packed so tightly in a room that they cannot lie or sit down for days at a stretch.
In the latter chapters of this book I supply details of many cases where such methods have been employed. Where it can safely be done, I give full names and places. In many instances this is impossible, for it would expose the victims to further ill treatment. Sworn statements have been made before the American Consular authorities covering many of the worst events that followed the 1919 uprising. These are now, I understand, with the State Department at Washington. It is to be hoped that in due course they will be published in full.
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When my book, "The Tragedy of Korea," was published in 1908, it seemed a thankless and hopeless task to plead for a stricken and forsaken nation. The book, however, aroused a wide-spread and growing interest. It has been more widely quoted and discussed in 1919 than in any previous year. Lawyers have argued over it in open court; statesmen have debated parts of it in secret conferences, Senates and Parliaments. At a famous political trial, one question was put to the prisoner, "Have you read the 'Tragedy of Korea'?" It has been translated into Chinese.
At first I was accused of exaggeration and worse. Subsequent events have amply borne out my statements and warnings. The book has been