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 )t Korean Conspiracy Case" 
 
 ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
“THE KOREAN CONSPIRACY CASE” 
 
 BY 
 
 ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN 
 
 ¥ 
 
 156 Fifth Avenue, New York 
 November 20, 1912 
 
NORTH FI ELD PRESS 
 NORTHFIELD. MASS 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 This paper is the outcome of a conference of representatives of all the mis- 
 sionary organizations of the United States which are conducting work in Korea 
 (Japanese Chosen) with several eminent laymen who are not connected with these 
 organizations and whose counsel was sought because their international reputation 
 and their detachment from the missionary interests that are immediately involved 
 fitted them to give dispassionate advice. These gentlemen highly approved the course 
 taken by the Boards thus far, and expressed the opinion that the appeal of the 
 convicted Koreans to the Appellate Court was desirable in the interests of Koreans 
 and Japanese alike. They also felt that while the reticence of the Boards had been 
 most commendable, public interest in the question had become so general that some 
 statement should now be made in order that the point of view of the Boards might 
 be more fully understood and that certain factors in the situation might be empha- 
 sized which would correct some misapprehensions and aid in forming a public 
 opinion Avhich would not do injustice to the various parties that are involved. The 
 missionary organizations referred to are: The Board of Foreign Missions of the 
 
 Methodist Episcopal Church, 150 Fifth Avenue, New York, The Board of Mis- 
 sions of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 810 Broadway, Nashville, Tenn., 
 The Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., 156 
 Fifth Avenue, New York, The Executive Committee of Foreign Missions of the 
 Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (South), First National Bank Building, Nash- 
 ville, Tenn., The American Bible Society, Bible House, New York, and The Inter- 
 national Committee of the Young Men’s Christian Association, 124 East 28th 
 Street, New York. The article has been read in manuscript or proof by one or 
 more Secretaries of each of these organizations and, in its present form, embodies 
 the changes which they suggested in the original text. This does not mean that the 
 article has been officially adopted by their Societies or that any other Secretary 
 would have used precisely the same language. The article is intended to be gen- 
 erally representative of the position of the missionary organizations and their 
 constituencies as the author understands it ; but he accepts sole responsibility for 
 its scope and form and for any errors or misunderstandings. He has tried to feel 
 his way through a very large and complicated situation — a maze of conflicting 
 facts, motives, interests and prejudices, affecting political, judicial, educational, 
 religious and racial problems, some of which are international in scope and gravity. 
 He can not venture to hope that he has succeeded to the full satisfaction of any one 
 else, as he certainly has not succeeded to his own. He therefore not only expects 
 but he will be grateful for constructive criticism alike from American, Japanese 
 and Korean sources. He only asks that the article be interpreted by the three 
 considerations which have determined his point of view: First, deep solicitude 
 
 for the situation in Korea: second, a relationship to the interests affected which 
 creates a moral obligation to discuss that situation; third, belief that the Japanese 
 Government and people earnestly desire to deal fairly with the Koreans so that we 
 may confidently expect them to see that justice will eventually be done. 
 

 
“THE KOREAN CONSPIRACY CASE” 
 
 The interest of the civilized world has been aroused by the difficulties that have 
 developed in Korea (Japanese Chosen) and which have culminated in the arrest, 
 trial and conviction of a large number of Korean Christians on a charge of con- 
 spiring to assassinate Count Terauchi, the Governor General. The circumstances 
 raise some grave questions in which western peoples are deeply concerned. It is 
 true that from the viewpoint of international law and diplomatic intercourse, 
 these questions primarily relate to Japan’s treatment of her own subjects; but it is 
 also true that it may be said of nations, as of individuals, that “none of us liveth 
 to himself.” Mankind has passed the stage where it is indifferent to what any 
 Government does to a subject race. The course of the Belgians in the Congo Free 
 State, the French in Madagascar, the Americans in the Philippines, the British in 
 India and the Japanese in Korea, is of international concern. We freely recognize 
 the right of other peoples to discuss our treatment of the Filipinos, and that the 
 Japanese recognize the right of others to discuss their methods in Korea is shown 
 by the excellent reports which they have published in English and by the Bureau 
 of Information which they maintain in New York. 
 
 Various accounts and interpretations of the present trouble in Korea have 
 been published, some of them quite unjust and incorrect, but others giving a fairly 
 accurate general impression. The Boards of Missions have received a large amount 
 of information from reliable sources, but they were slow to make any public state- 
 ment, for their rule is not to rush into print in such cases. As for our own Gov- 
 ernment, we have not asked it to act nor have we ever thought of doing so. It 
 has indeed been urged that the treaty between the United States and Korea pro- 
 vided that “if other Powers deal unjustly or oppressively with either Government, 
 the other will exert their good offices, on being informed of the case, to bring about 
 an amicable arrangement,” and that although Japan, in promulgating the treaty of 
 annexation, accompanied it with a declaration that the treaties concluded by Korea 
 with foreign Powers ceased to be binding, this treaty has never been specifically 
 abrogated by the United States. This is a rather doubtful and technical question 
 of international law which has been made extremely shadowy by the practical 
 acquiescence of the American Government in the Japanese annexation of Korea. 
 Apart from this, however, there are many precedents for remonstrance in 
 the protests which England and America have made at various times in 
 behalf of subject peoples, as for example, the Armenians, the Congo tribes, 
 and more recently the Putumayo Indians of Peru. Moreover, the rights of 
 American citizens are involved in Korea in that they have been implicated in a con- 
 spiracy against a foreign government and denied opportunity to clear themselves 
 of an accusation which seriously jeopardizes their standing and the interests which 
 they have lawfully acquired. But the Mission Boards from the beginning have 
 handled the pending question from the viewpoint not only of profound concern 
 for the situation in Korea but of absolute confidence that the Government and 
 
 1 
 
people of Japan intended to do what was right and that they could be relied upon 
 to do it. Independently, therefore, of the question whether our Government would 
 be likely to intervene between the Government of Japan and its Korean subjects, 
 the Boards did not deem it wise to ask the Department of State to deal with a 
 matter which, at its present stage, should be taken up with the Japanese them- 
 selves. As friends of Japan for many years and with a knowledge of its people 
 acquired by half a century’s missionary work in it, we were not willing to assume 
 that its Government had ordered or would approve such a course as its gendarmes 
 seem to have adopted in Korea. We regarded the Japanese officials as intel- 
 ligent and fair-minded men who would be more apt to handle the matter effectively 
 if they were not embarrassed by pressure from another Government, whose juris- 
 diction they would hardly admit in a matter of this kind. We therefore went 
 directly to the Japanese Embassy in Washington and talked the matter over in the 
 freedom of personal conversation, first with Mr. Masanao Hanihara, First Secre- 
 tary and at that time (February, 1912), Charge d’Affaires, and later with His 
 Excellency Viscount Chinda, the newly-appointed Ambassador. They received us 
 most cordially, as we expected them to do, and the communications that we sent 
 in writing were promptly acknowledged. The Ambassador has shown deep in- 
 terest in the matter ever since his arrival. He is an able and broad-minded diplomat, 
 one of the best types of the modern Japanese. He could, of course, only accept 
 our statements for transmission to Tokyo, and in turn transmit to us the replies 
 that were sent to him by the Japanese authorities in Korea through the Foreign 
 Office in Tokyo, and suggest that, as the matter was in process of adjudication by 
 the proper legal tribunals, it would be necessary to await the result. Finally, we 
 felt that we had done all that was practicable in this way. Conditions in Korea 
 grew worse and became public through other channels, as was inevitable in this 
 age of travellers, telegraphs and newspapers. Now we must deal with a rising 
 public sentiment throughout the country, and face insistent questions from our 
 constituencies and the general public which we can no longer avoid. It appeals 
 wiser to state our views in this full and open way and to send copies directly to the 
 Japanese Ambassador in Washington as well as to others, rather than to attempt to 
 state them in many letters and interviews which would be necessarily fragmentary 
 and liable to misconstruction. 
 
 We cannot be indifferent to the grave international consequences which may 
 be entailed. The Japanese are justly sensitive to the public opinion of the western 
 world. The respect and sympathy of the British and American peoples found 
 frequent expression in the press of the two countries during the Russia-Japan 
 War and were a national asset which the Japanese highly prized. Anti-Japanese 
 feeling in America has been chiefly confined to certain classes on the Pacific Coast 
 and to politicians who have catered to their votes. It will be a serious thing, and 
 one which may profoundly affect the relations of America and Japan, if this anti- 
 Japanese element is re-enforced by the millions of intelligent Americans who are 
 interested in the large missionary work in Korea and who, whether directly related 
 to it or not, have come to regard the Koreans as a discouraged people who are now 
 passing through a trying transition period and who should receive considerate 
 treatment. 
 
 2 
 
The Mission Boards have not approached the question from the viewpoint of 
 anti-Japanese feeling. It is the unvarying policy of the Boards and their Missions 
 loyally to accept the constituted governments of the countries in which mission 
 work is carried on, to do everything in their power to keep the missionary enter- 
 prise free from political movements, to avoid any interference with a govern- 
 ment or its courts of justice in the exercise of their lawful functions, and to take 
 up any question of relationship to a government, not through the diplomatic 
 channels of the American Government at Washington, but directly with the 
 authorities of the Government concerned, as was done in this case by the mis- 
 sionaries in Korea and by the Boards in America. If men who call themselves 
 Christians are justly accused of crime, the Missions and the Boards not only have 
 no desire to defend them but believe that they should receive the proper conse- 
 quences of their acts. We saw long ago that the independence of Korea was 
 impossible and that the only practical question was whether Russia or Japan 
 should rule the country. Americans generally believed that it would be better both 
 for Korea and for the world that Japan should dominate, and while the Boards of 
 course remained neutral during the War, when Japan was victorious they freely 
 used whatever influence they had with the Koreans to induce them to accept the 
 inevitable. Our opinions on this subject are on record in books and printed reports 
 and articles. Moreover, all the Boards that have missions in Korea also have mis- 
 sions in Japan, which they deem quite as important as their work in Korea. They 
 realize that the ill will of the Government would be a heavy handicap to their work 
 in both Korea and Japan. They therefore have strong motives of self-interest as 
 well as grounds of sentiment and conviction for maintaining friendly relations 
 with the Japanese. 
 
 The situation is a complicated one, and we should do the Japanese the justice 
 of attempting to understand their position. Korea is the most exposed part of the 
 Japanese Empire, and the one regarding which the Japanese are most sensitive. 
 Close to the Russian base at Vladivostok, bordering Manchuria and only a few 
 hours by steamer from the Chinese port of Chefoo, it would be the danger zone in 
 case of international complications. It is to the present advantage of Russia and 
 Japan to work together, and it is earnestly to be hoped that the present relations of 
 amity may continue ; but the fundamental causes of the Russia-Japan War 
 still exist. There are many who believe that Russia will not permanently 
 acquiesce in a situation which denies her an ice-free port on the open Pacific Ocean, 
 and that sooner or later Japan will have to fight again. It is equally clear that if 
 Japan should become embroiled with China, or with any western power, Korea 
 would be the battle ground, as it has been in every war that Japan has ever waged. 
 The attitude of the Koreans therefore is of vital importance to the Japanese. 
 While they are not strong from a military point of view, thirteen millions of 
 sullen, embittered people between a Japanese army and its foreign foe, or at the 
 rear of a Japanese army at the front, would be a serious menace. 
 
 In these circumstances, there are naturally two opinions among the Japanese 
 as to the best method of treating the Koreans. The civil party believes that a 
 humane and enlightened policy is not only the best for the Koreans but the best 
 for the Japanese, as it would conciliate a people who have for centuries feared 
 and distrusted the Japanese and would tend to bind them to their new rulers. The 
 
 3 
 
military party believes that the Koreans should be ruled with an iron hand, and 
 so thoroughly cowed that they will never dare to assert themselves against the 
 Japanese. The words civil and military are not entirely accurate as descriptive 
 terms. Some civilians advocate the stern policy and some army officers the 
 humane; but, broadly speaking, the terms serve to indicate the line of cleavage 
 between the two parties. 
 
 The military party governed Korea immediately after the Russia-Japan War, 
 and its inexorable methods, together with the brutality and greed of a swarm of 
 Japanese adventurers who came over to exploit the helpless country, were fast 
 reducing the people to the desperation of despair. Civil government was then 
 established under Prince Ito. Under his wise and statesmanlike administration, 
 many needed reforms were inaugurated. Some of the indolent and careless 
 Koreans resented the effort to arouse them from their lethargy, compel them to 
 obey sanitary regulations, and to work as they had never worked before; but the 
 Japanese were right, and the substantial benefits of their policy soon became so 
 apparent that the better class of Koreans began to recognize them and the country 
 appeared to be entering upon an era of peaceful prosperity. The American mis- 
 sionaries were outspoken in praise of Prince Ito’s policy and did everything in 
 their power to influence the Koreans to accept it as the best for the country. 
 Prince Ito’s successor, Viscount Sone, continued this wise policy. After an admin- 
 istration which was shortened by illness, he was succeeded in August, 1910, by the 
 present Governor General, Count Terauchi. He is an army officer of high rank 
 and was formerly Minister of War in Tokyo. He is a soldier by temperament as 
 well as by profession, an able executive and was believed to hold just and moderate 
 views and to be disposed to continue the enlightened policy of his predecessors. 
 
 Two events, however, induced him to listen to the more extreme party, which 
 was headed by General Akashi, Commander of the Gendarmerie. The first was a 
 vendetta of assassination. In March, 1908, Mr. D. W. Stevens, American Adviser 
 on Foreign Affairs of the Japanese in Korea, was shot in San Francisco by a 
 Korean who claimed to be a Protestant. In October, 1909, Prince Ito, Korea’s 
 greatest benefactor among the Japanese, was assassinated in Harbin by a Korean 
 who had been a Roman Catholic. The following month, twenty-one Koreans, 
 eighteen of whom were said to be Christians, attempted to kill the Prime Minister 
 of Japan, who was visiting Korea. These deplorable occurrences doubtless 
 brought Count Terauchi to Korea with the conviction that he would have 
 to deal with desperate men and with the suspicion that such men were 
 trying to shelter themselves in the Christian Church. The second event 
 was the growth of revolutionary sentiment in various parts of Asia and 
 particularly in China. Every throne felt its effects and the minds of some 
 Koreans were stirred with new hope that they, too, might inaugurate a successful 
 revolt, pathetic as such a hope seems to us. The party which favored stern treat- 
 ment of the Koreans made the most of these events. They vehemently argued that 
 the fate of Prince Ito showed the futility of a conciliatory policy and that if Japan 
 did not want to have a revolution on its hands, it must adopt such sternly repressive 
 measures that the Koreans would learn once for all that Japan would not brook- 
 opposition. Like men of the same type in Europe and America, the Japanese 
 
 4 
 
“Jingoes” luridly described the perils to which the nation was exposed and the 
 necessity of giving the military secret service and the Gendarmerie ample powers to 
 meet them. When the Governor General made a journey, they surrounded him 
 with police and gave him the impression that nothing but their vigilance saved 
 his life. For example, when he was to pass through Syen Chyun (Japanese Sensen), 
 December 28, 1910, the police ordered the students of the mission school, the 
 Hugh O’Neill, Jr., Industrial Academy, to be at the railway station in honor of 
 his passage. Before the boys were permitted to enter the station enclosure, they 
 were searched by the police and deprived of their pocket-knives. Two six-year-old 
 tots, whose little legs had been unable to keep up with the procession and who 
 arrived breathlessly a few minutes afterwards, were also searched in the same 
 manner and their pencil knives taken away. The “Data for Prosecution,” issued 
 by the Japanese in the spring of 1912 as a “statement of the facts connected with 
 the indictment of the accused Koreans,” includes the following: 
 
 "At Syen Chun, the conspirators proceeded on the 28th (Dec. 1910) to the station again 
 and ranged themselves on the platform with the Japanese and Koreans who came there to 
 welcome the Governor General. The train arrived about noon, and every one of the would-be 
 assassins watched intently for the opportunity, having ready his revolver or short sword under 
 his long cloak. The Governor General descended from the train and saluting the welcomers 
 passed within three or four steps of the conspirators. Owing, however, to the strict vigilance 
 of the police officers and others, they could not accomplish their nefarious object.” 
 
 “The Data for Prosecution” describes several other alleged attempts to 
 assassinate the Governor General at railway stations, the accounts closing with 
 substantially the same formula : “The Governor General passed closely by the 
 would-be assassins, but the vigilance of the Gendarmerie gave them no chance.” 
 It would occur to the average man that as railway station premises in Korea are 
 carefully enclosed and as no one was permitted to pass the gates, when the Gov- 
 ernor General came, without being searched, “the would-be assassins” could hardly 
 have brought into the station “ready revolvers or short swords,” except with the 
 connivance of the police, and that if they did get inside with such arms and with 
 the intention of killing the Governor General, they had ample opportunity to do 
 so at some one of the several times described by the police when “he passed closely 
 by them.” It is difficult to read this official document without getting the impres- 
 sion that the police who furnished the material were very desirous of giving the 
 Governor General to understand that nothing but their “vigilance” had kept him 
 from being assassinated. It requires either some ulterior purpose, or such a 
 panic-stricken imagination as the Russian naval officers had when they fired on 
 fishing boats in the North Sea, to see dangerous assassins in trembling little boys 
 whose very penknives had been taken away from them. 
 
 Evidences have been multiplying for more than a year that this military party 
 is now in the saddle. Uniformed gendarmes swarm in Korea, particularly in the 
 north. Secret police are ubiquitous. Spies attend every meeting of Koreans. All 
 organizations are suspected of revolutionary designs. Perhaps some organizations 
 had such designs. We do not know that they had, but every country in Asia is 
 honeycombed with guilds and societies of various kinds, many of them more or 
 less political. The Koreans would be lacking in the commonest elements of human 
 nature if some of them might not have thought of doing what every subject people 
 
 5 
 
has done since the world began — take secret counsel as to how the yoke of the alien 
 conqueror might be thrown off. 
 
 From all political movements, however, the missionaries and the leading 
 Korean Christians resolutely sought to keep the Churches aloof. Obedience to 
 “the powers that be” was preached from every pulpit. The Church must have noth- 
 ing to do with politics, the Christians were told. Some Christians who were sus- 
 pected of activity in political movements were not permitted to hold office in the 
 Church, and in some cases were excommunicated. So strong was this determina- 
 tion of the missionaries and Korean Church leaders that it was not uncommon for 
 Koreans outside of the Churches to taunt Christians with being on the side of the 
 enemies of their country and for the missionaries to be told that if it were not for 
 them, a revolution would have been started long ago. When I was in Korea in 
 1909, I was at pains to question the missionaries and leading Korean Christians 
 regarding their attitude toward the Japanese. The conferences were in private 
 homes, and those who were present had no motive for not talking frankly. 
 I asked them whether they deemed it their duty to oppose the Japanese Govern- 
 ment, or to ignore it as far as possible, or to ally themselves with it in active co- 
 operation, or loyally to recognize the Government and submit themselves to it. 
 Without exception they took the last of these positions, holding that it was impos- 
 sible to ignore the Government ; that either opposition or co-operation would take 
 the Church into politics; but that loyal recognition was the duty of every Christian 
 and in line with the teaching of Christ, who said : “Render unto Caesar the things 
 which be Caesar’s,” and of Paul, who said: “Let every soul be subject unto the 
 higher powers.” One of the missionaries made the point that when a missionary 
 opposes wrong, he should not be understood as opposing the Japanese Government 
 Missionaries have strongly objected to some things which Americans have 
 done in the Philippine Islands ; but they have not been considered hostile to the 
 Government on that account. It is the duty of missionaries to oppose evil 
 wherever it exists and under whatever auspices. When they protest against the 
 opium traffic, they are simply doing what the Japanese Government is enforcing 
 by law in Japan. When they oppose the establishment of brothels, they are think- 
 ing of vice, not the Government. After going back and forth through Korea and 
 getting the opinions of missionaries and Korean Christians from one end of the 
 country to the other, I am satisfied that our missionaries in Korea have taken the 
 right position on this question. 
 
 In spite of this policy, however, the Churches did not escape hostile espionage 
 and they soon began to feel the unpleasant effects. For more than two years, re- 
 ports have reached us from various parts of the country of growing suspicion and 
 harshness by Japanese local gendarmes toward the helpless Korean Christians. 
 Making all due allowance for exceptional cases which may have justified suspicion, 
 the correspondence indicates that something more is involved in the course of the 
 Japanese Gendarmerie than can be accounted for by the assumption that, wholly 
 unknown to the missionaries, there was a plot against the Government of which 
 certain Korean Christians may have been cognizant. 
 
 It is said that the liberty which Christianity enjoys in Japan proves that the 
 Japanese are not persecuting it in Korea. We believe this to be true, and therefore 
 
 6 
 
we had no fears for mission work when Korea was annexed by Japan. A distinction, 
 however, must now be observed between the Japanese conception of Christianity 
 and the Japanese conception of the Church as an organization. In Japan, there is 
 no hostility to the Church because it is composed of Japanese, some of them of 
 high rank, and it is controlled by them. The missionaries co-operate with the 
 Church, but they have little or no voice in its management. In Korea, however, 
 the Church is not only much larger than in Japan, numbering, with enrolled 
 catechumens, about 250,000, but it is of course composed of Koreans. The 
 Japanese desire to control everything within their dominions, as foreign business 
 men have learned to their cost. This is particularly true in Korea, where they 
 deem it necessary to their plans to be absolute masters. Now the Japanese 
 see in the Korean Churches numerous and powerful organizations of their 
 subjects which they do not control. They observe the devotion of the people to 
 the Church, a devotion almost unparalleled elsewhere. The life of the Korean was 
 singularly empty and forlorn before Christianity came to him. When he heard 
 the Gospel preached, he eagerly accepted it and found in its services inspirations 
 and companionships that he had never before known. He can say with Paul : 
 “For me to live is Christ.” When he has a dispute with his brother Christian, he 
 remembers the New Testament question: “Dare any of you having a matter 
 against his neighbor go to law before the unrighteous and not before the saints?” 
 So he takes his case, not to the Japanese policeman or magistrate, but to his pastor 
 or the missionary. This leaves the Japanese official with little to do and forces 
 him to see the life of the people, whom he is supposed to govern, go on without 
 him. A Japanese town of 8,000 inhabitants probably has one or two hundred 
 Christians. The church edifice is a comparatively small building and the congre- 
 gations are largely outnumbered by Buddhist or secular gatherings. But of the 
 8,000 inhabitants of the Korean town of Syen Chyun, where the present trouble 
 first became acute, about half are Christians, while the adjacent villages are also 
 largely Christian. The church and the mission school are the largest and most 
 conspicuous buildings in the place. There are no Buddhist temples and no secular 
 attractions which can draw more than a few score persons. Congregations of 
 Christians, however, throng the Church with 1,200 or 1,500 Koreans several times 
 on Sundays, and the mid-week prayer meetings are attended by from 700 to 
 1,000. Similar conditions prevail in many other towns and villages. Presbyterians 
 alone report 60,736 Christians, including enrolled adherents, in Syen Chyun and 
 Pyeng Yang (Japanese Heijo) and their tributary villages. As the Japanese 
 police note the multitudes of Christians flocking to the churches, they irritablv 
 wonder why these Christians meet so often and what they are doing. Spies are 
 sent to find out. Imperious as Russian police in hunting political agitators among 
 students, eager to obtain the rewards which are believed to be bestowed upon the 
 police who are most successful in ferreting out treason, and unfamiliar with 
 Christian terminology, their suspicions arc aroused as they hear the great congre- 
 gations sing with fervor such hymns as : 
 
 “Onward, Christian Soldiers, 
 
 Marching as to War!” 
 
 7 
 
“Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus, 
 
 Ye Soldiers of the Cross!” 
 
 and then listen to a stirring sermon which may personify the forces of evil in the 
 heart, as Paul did, and summon the believer to cast them out. One of the mission- 
 aries, Mr. George S. McCune, of Syen Chyun, in one of his daily Bible talks to his 
 students in the Hugh O’Neill, Jr., Academy, expounded the narrative of David and 
 Goliath, “emphasizing the conventional lesson that the weak man whose cause is 
 just and whose heart is pure can overcome the strongest.” This was promptly 
 reported to the authorities as treasonable, since Mr. McCune must have intended 
 to teach that David symbolized the weak Korean and Goliath the strong Japanese. 
 One pastor is said to have been arrested because he preached about the Kingdom of 
 Heaven ; he was told that there was “only one kingdom out here and that is the 
 kingdom of Japan.” The Christian Church opposes immorality, the morphine 
 habit, and cigarette smoking, especially by the women and children, and this has 
 aroused the anger of certain Japanese who have done not a little to encourage these 
 vices in Korea. Pastor Kil of Pyeng Yang advised the parents of his congregation 
 not to allow their children to smoke cigarettes or to work in the recently estab- 
 lished cigarette factory. Shortly afterward, he was warned by the police that, as 
 the manufacture of tobacco was a government monopoly, his advice was treason- 
 able and must not be repeated. Thus the police placed wrong constructions upon 
 what they saw and heard, and imagined in a vague but bitter way that it was 
 inimical to the interests of Japan to have such a large organization of Koreans that 
 was not amenable to their control. 
 
 The suspicions of the Japanese may have been strengthened by the widely 
 published statements regarding the prominence of Christians in the revolutionary 
 movement in China. Every American and European knows that while Chris- 
 tianity awakens the minds of men, makes them impatient of injustice and arouses 
 them to demand an honest and enlightened government, there is absolutely 
 nothing in the teaching of Christ to lead Christians to conspire against a govern- 
 ment, unless it is an evil and oppressive one. Japanese Christians are famous for 
 their loyalty to their Emperor, and British Christians are more devoted to their 
 King than American Christians are to their President. If a government is just, 
 Christianity is absolutely indifferent as to whether it is monarchical or republican. 
 Indeed, the majority of Christians throughout the w^orld live contentedly under 
 monarchies. Christians in China opposed the Manchu Dynasty, not because it had 
 an Emperor, but because it was hopelessly reactionary and corrupt. As a matter 
 of fact, the revolutionary spirit was strongest among the Chinese who were 
 educated in Japan. But the Japanese police in Korea got it into their heads that 
 the great organization of the Korean Church was a hotbed of revolutionary oppor- 
 tunity, and they jealously watched it. The so-called “Million Evangelistic Cam- 
 paign” in 1910 and 1911 intensified these suspicions. It was a concerted effort of 
 the Churches to seek the conversion of a million souls. But the Japanese misun- 
 derstood it, or if they did not, they feared that such an enormous re-enforcement 
 would make the leaders of the Church overshadow the civil authorities still more. 
 The police accordingly redoubled their activities. Gendarmes in uniform and spies 
 in citizens’ dress attended the special services. Pastors were required to report the 
 
 8 
 
names of converts at police headquarters. A gendarme entered a private house, 
 drew his sword and threateningly asked why the owner had joined “the Jesus 
 Church” the night before. Shop-keepers who became Christians were visited by 
 the police and remonstrated with for closing their places of business on Sunday. 
 In one country church, a Japanese official walked into the pulpit during a Sunday 
 service and denounced Christianity to the congregation. Probably one reason for 
 the arrest of so many leaders of the Church was the desire to find out whether the 
 Christians of Korea were inclined to imitate the example of their brethren in China 
 and whether Baron Yun Chi Ho was ambitious of becoming a Korean Sun Yat Sen. 
 
 The strain was intensified by the educational situation. The Japanese attach 
 great importance to their public school system in Japan and on the necessity of 
 managing it as a department of the Government. When they established them- 
 selves in Korea, they projected a system of schools, believing that the instruction 
 of Korean children in government public schools would be to the advantage of 
 both Korea and Japan, as the American Government believed that such schools in 
 the Philippines would be to the advantage of Filipinos and Americans alike. The 
 Japanese found, however, that, with the negligible exception of a few poor schools, 
 all the education of the Korean was in the hands of the missionaries and the 
 Churches under their care. The missionaries, like the Pilgrim Fathers of New 
 England, had planted the church and the schoolhouse side by side. Every chapel, 
 however small, had an attached primary school. Every mission station had board- 
 ing schools, Pyeng Yang had a college and Seoul professional schools. The 
 Japanese opened schools; but the Christians naturally preferred to send their 
 children to the mission schools which they had so long and favorably known, 
 especially as the Japanese common schools, when accessible at all, seemed to the 
 Koreans to be chiefly intended to teach the Japanese language, history and cus- 
 toms, to give a training that was inferior to that of the mission schools and that 
 was at best non-Christian and sometimes practically anti-Christian. The Japanese 
 chafed under this situation. They were not satisfied either with the kind of edu- 
 cational work which was done in some of the church primary schools in villages 
 where the Christians had been unable to secure trained teachers. They began to 
 pass law's for the regulation of all schools, to prescribe curricula and text-books, 
 and to confer certain privileges on schools which conformed to the Government 
 regulations ; privileges wffiich had the effect of discriminating against mission 
 schools. 
 
 All this, of course, the Japanese had a perfect right to do. The educational 
 situation needed co-ordination and standardizing. The Japanese strictly supervise 
 their schools in Japan, and they cannot be reasonably blamed for doing so in 
 Korea. The missionaries, while deprecating a few regulations, promptly declared 
 their readiness to co-operate with the authorities. I had a long interview with the 
 Japanese Minister of Education when I was in Seoul (Japanese Keijo) in 1909. 
 The Rev. Drs. Gale and Underwood accompanied me as a Committee of the Pres- 
 byterian Mission. We assured the Minister of our loyal desire to conform to the 
 Government regulations. But the local gendarmes are restive as they see so many 
 children ignoring the Japanese schools. When a policeman calls on a Korean parent 
 and sharply asks him why he does not send his children to the public school instead 
 
 9 
 
of to the church school, the timid Korean is apt to conclude that he is in danger of 
 punishment if he does not heed what he regards as a mandate; and when so many 
 of the teachers and pupils of the mission schools were among those who were 
 arrested, the conclusion appeared to be justified. To-day, the whole extensive 
 system of church primary schools in Korea is in jeopardy, and, rightly or wrongly, 
 many Koreans believe that if they identify themselves with the church, they will 
 incur the displeasure of the police. 
 
 The influence of the American missionaries over the Korean Christians is 
 another difficulty from the viewpoint of the Japanese. Whatever may be the 
 hostile attitude of the lower police officials and the unprincipled vendors of 
 morphine and panderers of vice, intelligent Japanese thoroughly respect the 
 missionaries. They know them to be Christian gentlemen of the best type, 
 who are devoting their lives to unselfish labor for the Korean people. It would 
 be easy to fill pages with testimonies of Japanese of high rank to the character 
 and work of the missionaries. Many Japanese would agree with the traveller 
 who recently wrote from Korea : “Here has been wrought one of the greatest 
 
 Christian accomplishments in the world’s history. The lives of the Americans 
 who have accomplished this great work are an open book. I hold no brief for 
 the missionary. But I have seen much of the work being done here and I know 
 the men who are doing it. Picture to yourself the saintliest man of your 
 acquaintance — the man whose character is so far above reproach that no man 
 has ever questioned it even in his own mind ; the man who, filled with the spirit 
 of Christianity, lives his religion every day of his life ; the man who asks nothing 
 else but opportunity to devote all his talents and all his energies to unselfish 
 labor in his Master’s service. Think of that man, and you have the American 
 missionary in Korea as I know him to be.” The Japan Advertiser editorially 
 referred to this opinion and added: “We do not believe these statements will 
 
 be gainsaid by unprejudiced critics.” 
 
 Just because of this character, the Korean Christians look up to the mis- 
 sionaries with an affection and respect bordering upon veneration. When they 
 were ignorant, depressed and superstitious, the missionaries brought them 
 knowledge and hope, liberated them from the fear of demons, ministered to 
 their sick in hospitals, taught their children in schools, visited the poor, com- 
 forted the dying, and preached to all the people “good tidings of great joy.” 
 And the simple-hearted Koreans, temperamentally affectionate and responsive 
 to a high degree, gladly responded to the message and gave to the men and 
 women who brought it an unstinted measure of devotion. The missionaries 
 are the great men in Korea. While they cannot control the political activities of 
 the hundreds of thousands of Korean Christians, they have, as we have seen, used 
 their great influence to induce the Koreans to acquiesce in Japanese rule. Indeed, it 
 has often been said that if it had not been for the missionaries, a revolution would 
 have broken out when Korea was annexed to Japan. The Japanese fully 
 appreciate this ; but they are restive under a situation in which foreigners 
 apparently have power to make or unmake a revolution among their. own 
 subjects. Japanese national pride demands Japanese supremacy within 
 Japanese territory. A Japanese official who sees himself overshadowed by an 
 
 10 
 
American missionary is more or less unconsciously jealous and is apt to feel 
 that such preeminence is prejudicial to the interests of Japan and that in some 
 way it must be broken. It is clear that the missionaries are not to be blamed 
 for this situation. On the contrary, it is a high tribute to their worth. We 
 cannot tell them to act so badly that they will forfeit the respect of the Korean 
 Christians. But it is equally clear that the missionaries and Boards must consider 
 the viewpoint of the Japanese and do what they can to meet it. 
 
 We do not insist that all of the several hundred American missionaries in 
 Korea have been wholly without fault. In the midst of a frightened and 
 helpless people, seeing what they believe to be severity and injustice, anxious 
 for the churches and schools which represent the toils of many years, they 
 cannot reasonably be expected to act as if they were deaf and dumb. Let it be 
 conceded that some of them have contributed heat as well as light to the ques- 
 tion under consideration. But the arm-chair critic ten thousand miles away 
 may discreetly ask himself whether he would not have acted worse than they 
 have. As a matter of fact, the missionary body as a whole has acted with 
 remarkable moderation, dignity and self-restraint. They may need to be 
 cautioned and advised by men to whom distance can give greater calmness of 
 judgment; but such caution and advice they have not only shown themselves 
 willing to receive but they have earnestly sought them. It is not true, as some 
 Japanese newspapers have alleged, that the missionaries in Korea are anti- 
 Japanese. But if those papers believe it to be true, let them ask themselves 
 why approximately three hundred American, English, Canadian and Australian 
 missionaries, who three years ago defended and frequently praised the course 
 of the Japanese in Korea, now feel distressed by the Japanese policy and atti- 
 tude. The influential Japanese editor of “The Fukuin Shimpo,” Tokyo, while 
 suggesting that “the foreign missionaries in Korea seem to be moved by various 
 baseless imaginations resulting from a misunderstanding of the facts,” candidly 
 adds: “Nevertheless, there is probably material for reflection and improvement in 
 the causes and conditions which have stirred their minds to such a degree and a 
 prompt investigation would benefit the nation .” 1 Some allowance may be made 
 for the fact that abuses can be found in every land, and that in the tense feeling 
 that has now developed in Korea, men on both sides are apt to be more emphatic 
 in their statements than men at a distance may deem judicious. But the existence 
 of such an unfortunate state of mind is a fact not only to be deprecated but 
 to be accounted for. Some of us personally know many of the missionaries. 
 We have visited them from one end of Korea to the other, have seen their work, 
 been in their homes and freely counselled with them, and we can testify to their 
 wisdom and single-hearted devotion. So careful have they been to avoid circulating 
 reports of the doings of Japanese gendarmes that they hardly ever mentioned them 
 in their letters until many months had passed. To this day, large numbers of mis- 
 sionaries have sent nothing to their Boards about the troubles. This may be parti v 
 due to the belief that their letters are opened by the Japanese, but it is due in larger 
 part to their reluctance to criticise the Japanese except when forced to do so by 
 their immediate relation to specific cases of injustice. Aside from a few 
 official letters that were sent directly to the Japanese and some confidential 
 •Sept. 12, 1912. 
 
 11 
 
letters that were not intended for publication, most of the published statements 
 have emanated from those who are not connected with the missions or the 
 Boards. The fullest published accounts have been given by the Special 
 Correspondents of the New York Herald, the New York Sun, the New York 
 Continent, and the Editor of the London Weekly Times. They wrote inde- 
 pendently of one another on information which each secured for himself. Some of 
 their statements do not accord with our conception of the question and some 
 others impress us as extreme. But these writers are not common sensationalists 
 nor are they connected with the missionary enterprise. They are experienced 
 journalists of the highest standing, who are, or who recently have been, in Korea 
 and whose knowledge of Far Eastern affairs is profound. 
 
 In the fall of 1911, the Japanese suspicion of the Churches began to find 
 more open expression in the arrest of leading Korean Christians. While 
 reports of harsh treatment came from several parts of Korea, the town of 
 Syen Chyun, already referred to, suffered the heaviest blow. The mission 
 high school, The Hugh O’Neill, Jr., Industrial Academy, with 158 students, is, 
 next to the Church, the dominating institution of the whole region. October 
 12, 1911, three pupils were arrested and sent to Seoul. Other arrests followed, until 
 so many teachers and students were in jail that the Academy had to be closed. 
 Pastors, elders, deacons and other leading church members were also 
 imprisoned and sent hand-cuffed to the capital, until the whole Christian popu- 
 lation was in a panic. The police refused to make any explanations either to 
 the arrested men or to their agonized families. Many of the men and boys 
 were kept in jail for months without proper food or clothing for the cold 
 weather, without knowing the charges against them, and without being per- 
 mitted to have legal counsel. Other arrests were made in other places, until a 
 considerable number of Christians were in jail. It has been wrongly said that 
 the number reached 6,000 by the spring of 1912. This story probably grew 
 out of a statement in the Official Gazette that there were over 6,000 Koreans in 
 jail all over the country ; but that meant for all causes and included Christians 
 and non-Christians. The exact number of Christians who have been arrested 
 in various places and released by the local officials, with or without other 
 punishment, is not known and is not likely to be. After the protests had 
 become world-wide, Count Terauchi was reported by the New York Sun, Octo- 
 ber 3, 1912, as stating that he had caused an inquiry to be made and that there 
 were 287 Koreans confined in the various jails of Korea, 151 of them being 
 Christians. That only 287 persons in a population of 13,115,449 were in prison 
 on a given date suggests either that the Koreans are such a peaceable and law- 
 abiding people that the Japanese should not be alarmed about them, or else 
 that the police liberated a good many prisoners before answering Count 
 Terauchi’s question. At any rate, the number of arrested men that were sent 
 from provincial towns to Seoul for the particular charge now under considera- 
 tion was said by the Seoul Press of April 19, 1912, to have been 150. A reliable 
 man on the ground, who had carefully investigated the question, wrote me in 
 July that the men then being tried numbered 125, that nine had been exiled 
 
without trial, that three were reported to have died as a result of torture and 
 imprisonment, and that about twenty had been released, a total of 157. 
 
 The character of the accused men is significant. Here were no criminal 
 types, no baser elements of the population, but men of the highest standing, 
 long and intimately known to the missionaries as Koreans of faith and purity 
 of life and conspicuous for their good influence over their people. Two were 
 Congregationalists, six Methodists, and eighty-nine Presbyterians. Of the 
 Presbyterians, five were pastors of churches, eight were elders, eight deacons, 
 ten leaders of village groups of Christians, forty-two baptized church members, 
 and thirteen catechumens. All but one of the Presbyterians were from the 
 Syen Chyun and Pyeng Yang station churches. The Rev. Dr. W. W. Pinson, 
 of Nashville, Tenn., who attended part of the trial in Seoul, wrote August 29th : 
 “One of the striking things about this body of prisoners is its personnel. If 
 one is here looking for weak and cringing cowards or brazen desperadoes, he 
 will be disappointed. Instead, he will see men erect, manly, self-respecting 
 and intelligent. There are many faces that bear the marks of unusual strength 
 and nobility of character. As a whole, they are a body of men of far better 
 quality than one would expect to see in the same number of men anywhere in 
 this country. The gendarmes have thrust their sickle in among the tallest 
 wheat. These men do not belong to the criminal or irresponsible class of 
 society. Most of them are Presbyterians trained after the strictest sect of the 
 Shorter Catechism. These are not the type of men to be guilty of such a plot 
 as that with which they are charged. They are too intelligent. They might 
 be capable of a desperate venture for a great cause, but they could not possibly 
 undertake anything idiotic.” 
 
 It is about as difficult for those who know them to believe that any such 
 number of Christian ministers, elders and teachers had committed crime as it 
 would be for the people of New Jersey to believe that the faculty, students and 
 local clergy of Princeton were conspirators and assassins. Baron Yun Chi Ho, 
 who was later charged with being a ringleader of the conspiracy, was in Amer- 
 ica at the time of the assassination of Prince Ito. He was the guest of Bishop 
 Candler, who was formerly President of the college at which Baron Yun Chi 
 Ho was educated. In the freedom of personal conversation with his host, the 
 Baron expressed the utmost horror of the deed and ejaculated with every evi- 
 dence of distress: “Such efforts will not help my country.” We do not profess 
 
 to know all that the people of Korea may have said or thought. Some of the 
 younger men may have talked with that injudicious valor of speech which charac- 
 terizes young men in many lands; nor is it inconceivable that a Christian may hold 
 political opinions at variance with those of his rulers and deem it his patriotic duty 
 to try to overthrow an alien government. Most nations have had such men. The 
 history of England, France, Germany, Russia, Italy, the United States as well as 
 of Japan itself abounds in accounts of revolutionary movements and the convul- 
 sions of civil wars. If such things could occur in these larger and stronger nations, 
 it is not incredible that they should be thought of in Korea. Indeed some Japanese 
 have frankly admitted that if the Koreans have plotted against Japan, they have 
 done only what Japanese would do in similar circumstances and that Japanese who 
 
 13 
 
are famous for their patriotism cannot despise others who manifest the same spirit, 
 however strongly they may deem it their own duty to repress it. We do not 
 dogmatize therefore about the impossibility of a Korean conspiracy. But the 
 missionaries had absolutely no knowledge of any such plot, nor do they believe that 
 the accused Korean Christians knew anything about one. 
 
 After a time, however, the Japanese authorities announced that they had 
 discovered such a conspiracy, that the specific charge against the men and youths 
 whom they had arrested was participation in a plot to murder Governor Gen- 
 eral Terauchi, and that under preliminary police examination the accused men 
 had “confessed” their guilt. The public trial began June 28, 1912, before the Dis- 
 trict Court of Seoul, the prisoners being represented by lawyers whom the 
 missionaries had assisted them in employing in order that in common humanity 
 the poverty-stricken Koreans might not be left wholly undefended. If they 
 had been found guilty after a fair trial, we might have pitied their misguided 
 zeal, but we would have unhesitatingly recognized that the Japanese authori- 
 ties had no alternative but to uphold their laws and punish revolutionists. It 
 is therefore deeply to be regretted that the trial proved to be of such a character 
 as to strengthen the grave fears regarding the methods of the Japanese. The 
 methods of procedure impress a western mind as peculiar. The lawyers for 
 the defence were not permitted to confer with their clients until shortly before 
 the public trial, months after the prosecution had prepared its case with freest 
 secret access to the prisoners. When their lawyers were given permission to 
 see them, the conversations were in the presence of scowling police, so that the 
 sorely beset men could imagine what their jailers would do to them afterwards 
 if anything was said that did not please them. The enormously voluminous 
 records of the case were not made accessible to the counsel for the defence 
 until it was too late to give them proper study or to verify the allegations of 
 fact. In court, all questions were asked and witnesses examined through and at 
 the option of the presiding Judge. The jury system has not reached Japan, and the 
 whole course of the trial showed that the Judges had made up their minds before 
 the trial and that they were in effect judges, jury and prosecuting attorneys 
 combined. 
 
 All this, of course, is familiar to those who are familiar with the legal pro- 
 cedure of most eastern and of some western nations — the assumption of guilt and 
 “incommunicado” of Turkey and Mexico. The Japanese urge that their 
 courts follow French rather than English and American lines, that Japanese 
 prisoners even when of high rank are treated in the same way, and that it is 
 not fair to criticise their established procedure because it does not conform to 
 that of America. I am not competent to discuss this question ; but as a layman 
 in law I venture to believe that the object of a trial is to ascertain whether the 
 accused man is guilty of the crime charged, and that methods which are incon- 
 sistent with a fair determination of this point are wrong, whether they are 
 European or Asiatic. I am credibly informed that the Japanese methods are 
 modeled after those of France before the Republic had made important modifi- 
 cations in its laws, and that every highly civilized western nation now gives an 
 accused man a better opportunity to prove his innocence than these accused 
 
 14 
 
Koreans were given. Dr. Charles W. Eliot of Harvard University, who recently 
 visited Korea and Japan, permits me to quote the following from his letter to 
 me of September 4th, 1912 : 
 
 “After I got to Tokio, and while the preliminary investigation was still going on, I had 
 several conversations with eminent Japanese about the treatment of the accused Christian 
 Koreans. The two points I endeavored to make were, first, that no American would believe on 
 any Korean evidence that a single American missionary was in the slightest degree concerned 
 with the alleged conspiracy; and secondly, that the Japanese preliminary police investigation 
 ought to be modified, and particularly, that counsel for the defense ought always to be present 
 during all stages of the preliminary investigation. Counsel for the defense might or might 
 not take part in the proceedings, but should invariably be present. I represented that the 
 standing of Japan among Western nations would be improved by judicious modifications of 
 her preliminary proceedings against alleged criminals.” 
 
 Japan wishes to be considered one of the most advanced nations of the 
 world, and if it expects to be regarded as such, it should so amend its criminal 
 law that it can withstand criticism that is based not on a technical difference of 
 method but on that essential justice which mankind has come to demand even 
 for the lowest of men. 
 
 But the trial of the accused Koreans did not conform even to the require- 
 ments of present Japanese law. The counsel for the defence has doubtless 
 based the appeal to the Appellate Court on errors upon whose validity I am not 
 qualified to pass. But the verbatim reports of the trial make three errors 
 patent even to a layman. 
 
 First: The testimony of the accused men was not fairly interpreted to 
 the Judges, who did not understand the Korean language. Several foreign 
 spectators, who heard the testimony in open court and who are conversant 
 with the language, affirm that the court interpreter translated only parts of the 
 testimony and either omitted many of the accounts of torture or used mislead- 
 ing words like “pressure” or “unkindness” so that the Judges did not get a correct 
 idea of what the Koreans said. When the lawyers for the defence brought 
 this fact to the attention of the presiding Judge, he said that it "was of no con- 
 sequence.” 
 
 Second : Counsel for the defence were not permitted to produce witnesses 
 
 who could have testified to alibis. A pastor was accused by the Judge of 
 attending a treasonable meeting at a given place and time when scores of 
 persons could have testified that he was conducting public evangelistic meet- 
 ings in another town. Other prisoners were prepared to prove that they were 
 preaching or attending religious meetings of various kinds in places far 
 removed from those where they were charged by the police with plotting 
 assassination. Two foreign professors in the Pyeng Yang College were ready 
 to swear that Pastor Kil’s son was in college on the date that his accusers 
 falsely swore that he was in Eui Ju. But the Court overruled every effort to 
 secure the admission of such testimony. 
 
 Third : The verdict was based on the alleged confessions of the prisoners 
 in the preliminary examinations. The value of these “confessions” may be 
 estimated by three facts: First, they were obtained in secret examinations by 
 
 police who had not shown that they were overburdened by compassion and 
 who had strong personal motives for making out a case that would justify 
 
 15 
 
their course to their superiors and to a public sentiment which had by this time 
 become aroused both in Japan and in other countries. Second, the "confessions” 
 implicated by name nineteen American missionaries as instigators of the con- 
 spiracy, attending the meetings of the conspirators, aiding them in securing revol- 
 vers, and blaming them for cowardice in not shooting the Governor General at the 
 appointed time. Principal George S. McCune was represented as telling the plot- 
 ters that he would point out the Governor General by shaking hands with him at 
 the railway station in Syen Chyun so that they could shoot the right man, and the 
 Rev. Dr. Samuel A. Moffett was said to have bitterly upbraided the Koreans for not 
 carrying out his orders to kill. The character of all the missionaries named in the 
 "confessions” is so well known that these statements were received with smiles 
 of amusement by all who know them, and especially by those who remembered 
 that several of them were in the United States on furlough at the time when they 
 were alleged to be attending revolutionary meetings in Korea. The assumption 
 that such men as Mr. McCune, Dr. Moffett, Bishop Harris, and others like them, 
 had guilty knowledge of a plot to murder Count Terauchi is about as reasonable as 
 would be a charge that Bishop Greer and Dr. Jowett had planned to murder the 
 Governor of New York. This part of the “confessions” was not taken seriously by 
 Japanese or foreigners either in Japan or in America. The Japanese authorities in- 
 stituted no proceedings under it, as they would have done if they had regarded the 
 "confessions” as true. Indeed, they openly said that they did not believe that 
 the missionaries were involved. But surely, if the "confessions” were valid 
 against the Koreans, they were valid against the Americans. Why then did 
 the police and the Judges condemn the Koreans and not the missionaries? 
 Third, as soon as the prisoners had an opportunity to testify in open court, 
 they emphatically repudiated their confessions, in some cases as wholly ficti- 
 tious and in others as having been extorted by the police under unbearable 
 torture. The one exception was a peasant who had the reputation of being 
 crazy and who justified his reputation by declaring that after murdering the 
 Governor of Korea, it was his intention to proceed to Europe and kill the 
 President of the Hague Tribunal. Many flatly denied that they had made 
 any “confessions” at all, asserting that they were tortured into insensibility and 
 that on regaining consciousness they were told that they had admitted things 
 of which, they said, they had never dreamed. Others declared that they had at first 
 truthfully denied the charges against them, but had finally assented to them 
 because their denials were followed by tortures so excruciating that flesh and 
 blood could not endure them. These statements were made by so many 
 Koreans of unblemished reputation for veracity, and were made with such full 
 realization of the further perils to which they exposed themselves from the 
 infuriated police, who were thus publicly accused of brutal and inhuman treat- 
 ment and the violation of their own laws, that they carried conviction to all 
 the foreigners present who understood the Korean language, and they are 
 likely to carry conviction to all who read the testimony. The Japanese police, 
 of course, vehemently deny the charge. They could hardly be expected to 
 make an admission which would pillory them before the world and probably 
 result in their execution by their own Government. The Governor General 
 
 16 
 
may be excused for believing what his subordinates tell him and the humane 
 people of Japan for accepting the garbled reports and mis-translations which 
 have been published by most of their vernacular newspapers. But any impar- 
 tial person w r ho will read the mass of testimony which is now accessible, and 
 whose accuracy is corroborated by scores of reliable persons, is likely to feel 
 that the charge of obtaining “fake” confessions under torture is not set aside by 
 the mere denials of the police who are concerned, and that the Japanese owe it 
 to themselves as well as to the Koreans to look more thoroughly into this 
 matter. It is significant that in spite of the charges of elaborate and long continued 
 plottings of assassination and the many opportunities which the police admitted 
 that the accused men had to kill the Governor General, not a single overt act was 
 committed or even attempted by the Koreans who were arraigned, and that no 
 evidence of conspiracy was adduced except the repudiated confessions. 
 
 As the trial proceeded, the hostile and unjudicial attitude of the Court 
 became more and more apparent. Innumerable questions by the Judges were 
 clearly intended to be traps for the men whom they were trying. When one 
 of the pastors was tripped in a slight verbal inaccuracy, the presiding Judge 
 loudly called him “a lying Jesus doctrine pastor,” and peremptorily dismissed 
 him. At this, the whole Court laughed heartily, including General Akashi, 
 who sat on the platform behind the Judges most of the time. We cannot 
 believe that the Japanese desire the world to get the impression that such 
 methods correctly characterize Japanese legal procedure under their own laws. 
 
 Finally, the perversion of justice became so gross that on July 17th, the 
 counsel for the defence boldly refused to proceed and announced that they 
 “felt it proper to state their opinion that the trial was not being conducted in a 
 regular manner and in accordance with Art. 41 in the Code of Criminal Proced- 
 ure, for the honor of the Imperial Judiciary and with a view to the full defence 
 of the accused,” and they therefore applied for the unseating of Chief Judge 
 Tsukahara and his colleagues and for a new trial under different judges. The 
 Court announced a suspension of the trial, pending appeal to a higher Court 
 for the assignment of other judges. The appeal was overruled, and after some 
 delay, the trial was resumed August 23d, but was brought to a close in the 
 unexpectedly short period of four days. The Judges reserved their decision 
 till September 28th, when they sentenced 105 of the defendants to terms of 
 imprisonment — six, including Baron Yun Chi Ho, for ten years, 18 for seven 
 years, 39 for six years, and 42 for five years. One man was sent to the hospital 
 in a critical condition a few days before judgment was pronounced, and his 
 sentence was postponed. Seventeen others were acquitted, 14 of the latter 
 being students of the Hugh O’Neill. Jr., Academy. Among those who received 
 the ten-year sentence was Baron Yun Chi Ho, President of the Southern 
 Methodist College at Song-do and Vice-President of the Korea Y. M. C. A. 
 A professor in the Methodist-Presbyterian Academy at Pyeng Yang, two profes- 
 sors in the Presbyterian Hugh O’Neill, Jr., Academy at Syen Chyun, and several 
 pastors and elders of churches were also among the condemned men. The sen- 
 tences impress a lay mind as rather odd. The prisoners were charged with treason- 
 able conspiracy involving assassination of the Governor General. If they were 
 
 17 
 
guilty, they surely deserved far heavier sentences. If they were not guilty, 
 they should have been acquitted. It has been conjectured that the sentences were 
 intended to “save the face” of the Government, or to be a punishment for contempt 
 of court in so boldly repudiating the statements of the police and objecting to the 
 methods of the Court. But we cannot believe that intelligent Japanese imagine 
 that “face” is “saved” by miscarriage of justice, or that contempt of court is com- 
 mitted when accused men exercise their legal right of self-justification. 
 
 We should not do the Japanese the injustice of believing that this is an 
 issue between Koreans and the whole Japanese nation and that foreigners are 
 the only ones who see the unwisdom of the high-handed course of the military 
 party and of the lower Court which has sustained it. I have already called 
 attention to the fact that the civil party among the Japanese stands for as 
 humane and enlightened treatment of the Koreans as any American could ask. 
 This party includes large numbers of the best Japanese in both public and 
 private life. The intelligent and progressive Japanese whom I have personally 
 met impress me as gentlemen who would be incapable of such wrong doing as 
 has been disclosed in Korea, however much they may feel officially obliged to 
 extenuate it. Some Japanese of high character have frankly lamented in 
 private conversation with missionaries that they are “greatly distressed over 
 the conduct of the trial” and “utterly ashamed of the affair.” While sensa- 
 tional Japanese newspapers have conveyed the impression to their readers that 
 the honor of Japan has been impugned by prejudiced foreigners, that the mis- 
 sionaries in Korea are enemies of Japan who are seriously embarrassing the 
 Government, that the Christian Churches are breeding grounds of revolt, and 
 that missionaries were the real instigators of a nefarious plot to murder the 
 Governor General ; others have taken the contrary view with vigor and plain- 
 ness of speech. The severest arraignment of the military policy in Korea that 
 I have read anywhere is from Japanese papers. Witness the following from 
 the Shin Nippon : 
 
 “Count Terauchi is trying by every means to crush the rising of the native Koreans 
 against his administration, even at the expense of his countrymen’s interests in the peninsula. 
 His press censorship, espionage policy, and factory legislation were all due to his fear of a 
 rising of the Koreans. But the present is not a time to oppress Korea with force, but to 
 
 assimilate the Koreans to the Japanese by good administration The Governor 
 
 General’s desire is to make the peninsula one big fortress, and he seems to regard all those 
 engaged in industrial or commercial work in Korea as mere camp followers within the walls 
 of the barracks.” 1 
 
 A Japanese Christian minister, the Rev. George Shigetsugu Murata, 
 writes an article in The Oriental Review, for October, 1912, in which, after 
 making some criticisms upon the missionaries and Korean Christians, he 
 frankly adds : 
 
 “Moreover it is not only Koreans who make mistakes. A few of the Japanese low class 
 officials and gendarmery are also guilty of mistakes. When I was in Korea, a company of 
 Japanese soldiers burnt down a Christian church from a mere fit of passion. On another 
 occasion, a party of soldiers entered a church during a prayer-meeting and demanded lodging. 
 When asked to wait till the end of the service, they drove out the congregation at the end of 
 bayonets, and occupied the church for the night. A drunken soldier forced his way into the 
 
 Translated from the China Press, June 21, 1912. 
 
 18 
 
house of Dr. W. A. Noble, a missionary friend of mine, without the slightest reason for so 
 doing. These acts caused just criticism against the Japanese officials.” 
 
 No difficulty was experienced in employing Japanese lawyers for the defence, 
 Mr. Ozawa and Mr. Ogawa, eminent attorneys of Tokyo and the first named for- 
 merly a member of the Imperial Diet. Their addresses to the Court bristle with 
 stronger denunciations than any foreigner has employed. Making all due 
 allowance for the professional duty which leads a lawyer to make the best case 
 that he can for his client, it is not without significance that these able Japanese 
 attorneys, according to authentic reports of men who heard them, openly 
 declared that the section of the criminal code under which the Koreans were tried 
 is archaic, barbaric and uncivilized ; that while the defendants were indicted for 
 conspiracy to commit murder, the prosecution’s case was a mere attempt to convict 
 them for having once entertained political opinions antagonistic to Japan; that the 
 unreliability of the confessions of the prisoners was clearly established by the 
 police, by the prosecution and by the Court itself; that if the confessions possess 
 any value, the police should be among the prisoners, and that instead, they still re- 
 main in office, living witnesses that the prosecution does not believe its own testi- 
 mony; that the confessions overflow with references to American missionaries as 
 abettors and instigators, but that if the confessions were accepted as evidence, 
 certainly the foreigners should have been indicted, particularly Messrs. 
 McCune and Moffett, who are pictured as the real leaders of the conspiracy 
 despite the fact that Dr. Moffett was in America at the time of the meeting at 
 which he was alleged to have advised the assassination; that the prosecution’s 
 contention that the Court should accept some portion of the confessions and 
 dismiss others was simply ridiculous and reveals the weakness of the whole 
 case; that the Court itself proved the untrustworthiness of the confessions by 
 calling for railway statistics which showed only nine passengers from Chang-ju 
 to Syen-Chyun on December 27th when the confessions declared that 150 
 plotters made the trip to kill Count Terauchi at the latter station ; that it was a 
 perversion of justice not to allow Baron Yun Chi Ho to summon witnesses to 
 establish his alibi, as there was indisputable evidence that he was at Song-do 
 upon the dates the prosecution charged he met the other plotters at Seoul ; that 
 even if the confessions were accepted at their face value, there was nothing 
 more to the case than that some persons had dreamed foolish dreams which 
 they voluntarily abandoned when the time for action came; that if any persons 
 ever entertained the idea of assassinating anybody, they actually did nothing ; that 
 the alleged plot at best was childish and laughable, unworthy of serious considera- 
 tion; and that while the Constitution guarantees religious liberty, there is evidence 
 from the records in this case that the Administration was oppressing men on 
 account of their belief, whatever may be said of other matters. 
 
 The Jiji Shimpo, a very influential Tokyo daily paper, recently published an 
 article which included the following criticism of the trial Court: 1 
 
 “What has struck us as the most regrettable feature in the trial of this case is that the 
 Court was somewhat niggardly in granting the requests of counsel for the examination of 
 evidence and witnesses. Only a small fraction of these applications was permitted. . 
 
 'Translation in The Japan Advertiser of Oct. 1, 1912. 
 
 19 
 
Tt is not too much to say that the trial of this case has been attended with most careless 
 examination of the evidence which is a very important factor in determining the truth of 
 offences alleged. In a case of so much importance as this no possible efforts should have been 
 spared to make the accused and the public thoroughly satisfied with the conduct of the trial, 
 not so much for the sake of the prisoners themselves as for the credit and dignity of the 
 judiciary of Japan, especially in view of the fact that there are so many people at present on 
 the watch to find flaws in the administrative methods of the Government-General. The Court 
 placed too much credence in the confessions of the accused and displayed a surprising callous- 
 ness as regards the investigation of evidence. For, as regards the summoning of witnesses, it 
 was confined to one railway official who was interrogated as to the number of passengers at 
 those stations where the plot was to have been put into effect. The Court had utterly rejected 
 the proposal for summoning the Inspector General of the Police who had such close connection 
 with the previous confessions of the prisoners in which the Court insisted on putting so much 
 faith. 
 
 “It need not be said that the mental horizon of the judiciary is very narrow and that they 
 can hardly see an important case in its clear and far-reaching light. Those who have had 
 occasion to study the attitude of the judiciary will acknowledge that they know things Korean 
 well but little of what is going on in Japan proper and that they were too much awed by the 
 dignity of the Government-General to remember the inviolable sanctity of the judicial author- 
 ity. They seemed to take little note of the serious effect which their arbitrary carelessness 
 about important details is bound to exercise upon the dignity of the home country and the 
 policy of the central Government. The life of the Governor General is a precious thing, no 
 doubt, but since the case is one of attempted murder of an individual, it is after all the question 
 of a private man and without any serious political significance. That the Court deliberately 
 involved in the affair many young people of shallow thoughts and weak characters and dealt 
 with them in such a summary manner must make one question which is the more important 
 of the two, the safety of the Governor General or the judicial authority of the Empire. 
 
 “If the confessions of the prisoners made in the course of the police examinations were 
 absolutely authentic, minor failings in the conduct of the public trial might have been passed 
 over: but there was something in these confessions that was very suspicious. The danger of 
 basing judgment solely upon the confessions of the accused is universally acknowledged and 
 yet the Korean Court was exclusively guided by the confessions of the accused in establishing 
 their guilt. According to the opinion of experts their confessions were a mixture of truth 
 and lies, which is probably a correct estimate. 
 
 “All this prejudice and narrow-minded dealing of the Court was due undoubtedly to the 
 fact that the Court had too much fear of the Government-General to assert the true dignity 
 and inviolability of the judicial administration.” 
 
 Foreigners therefore should not imagine that they are alone in questioning 
 the justice of present Japanese methods in Korea and they may be the more 
 encouraged to hope that the Japanese themselves will in time rightly settle 
 the questions at issue. We may count upon a healthy public sentiment among a 
 large number of Japanese who are as desirous as any one that a just decision should 
 be reached and who do not hesitate to censure wrong doing. We are inclined to 
 believe that the high-minded Japanese of our acquaintance are as glad as we are 
 that on October 1st the condemned men appealed to the Appellate Court so that the 
 Japanese will have opportunity to vindicate their true position. 
 
 We regret that some American Christians are circulating petitions to the 
 Emperor of Japan, praying him to grant amnesty to the condemned men. 
 Such petitions are apt to be interpreted as implying an admission of guilt, as 
 transferring their protest from the plane of justice to that of mercy, and as 
 identifying Christian missions with the defence of crime. We are not asking 
 consideration for the accused Korean Christians because we believe them to be 
 
 20 
 
guilty, but because we believe that their guilt has not been reasonably estab- 
 lished. We are therefore not imploring pardon, but urging thorough investi- 
 gation. If the Koreans are guilty as charged, they should be punished. We 
 may be sorry for them and lament their awful blunder and pathetic lack of 
 judgment. We may even continue to respect them as honest and patriotic 
 men who sought their country’s independence in the only way that immemorial 
 tradition had taught them when so hopelessly overmatched for open battle. 
 Admiral Alfred T. Mahan, in a letter to me on this subject, writes, and I quote 
 of course with his permission : 
 
 “There is no inherent improbability in the assertion that a number of Koreans, 
 even though Christians, are conspiring against the Japanese Government. That any number of 
 natives should combine to throw off a foreign yoke may be wholly admirable; and few, cer- 
 tainly not I, would condemn the bloodshed that might follow on such a course. Political 
 assassination in such a cause now stands on a different footing; but this point of view is a 
 recent acquisition of even European civilization. I am not wholly sure on what ground it can 
 be condemned logically, as compared with open war, except (1) the treachery involved and (2) 
 the proved general inutility of such deeds. The Christianity of Korea is less than a century 
 old. Christianity changes the heart, but it does not at once nor speedily change the nature. 
 The conflict between nature and grace is perennial. The Korean nature remains necessarily 
 Korean and Oriental, and Christianity has not yet had for it the centuries that have made its 
 leaven work through the nations of Europe and America. The result is seen in Japan, which 
 has adopted European external methods, but with what little effect is demonstrated by the 
 procedures in the trials, if the account be substantially correct. The suspicion excited by 
 Korean Christian gatherings is not only natural, but has been characteristic of the attitude of 
 non-Christian governments from the time of Rome. Sometimes it has been well grounded, as 
 in the English Roman Catholics in the days of Elizabeth and James I. Men bound together 
 by the close sympathies of vital religion are in a state very favorable to combination for other 
 objects, as for instance patriotic, . . . though I do not mean, of course, to imply any 
 belief on my own part in such a conspiracy.” 
 
 All would agree, however, that if men conspire to kill their rulers, they must 
 be prepared to accept the consequences, whether those consequences prove to be 
 reward or punishment. If amnesty is granted, it should be voluntarily extended by 
 the clemency of the Emperor and not demanded as a right by people of another 
 country. The mission Boards cannot ally themselves with an effort to shield politi- 
 cal offenders from a lawful sentence. But are the condemned Korean Christians 
 really guilty? Have the Churches of Korea become “hotbeds of revolutionary 
 sentiment’’ so that the police were justified in dealing with them so harshly? 
 We believe that these things have not yet been fairly determined by Japanese 
 law, and that Mr. Ogawa was right when he said that the methods adopted by 
 the Japanese gendarmes and inferior Judges thus far have virtually placed 
 Japan on trial before the civilized world. 
 
 The published statement of Count Terauchi, Sept. 7th, 1 indicates that he is 
 keenly sensitive to the fact that the situation has attracted an attention which 
 calls for explanation and defense. Some of his observations are just and merit 
 thoughtful consideration ; but it is to be regretted that the statement as a whole 
 indicates that he sees nothing more in the matter than “false” and “malicious 
 accusations against the officials of the Empire” and the dissatisfaction of the 
 Korean who “has not as yet fully awakened to the needs and improvements of 
 this day” and who “believes his personal rights are being infringed upon” 
 ‘The New York Sun, Oct. 3, 1912. 
 
 21 
 
"when civilization attempts to improve his condition.” This is not a hopeful 
 attitude. It is curious to read Count Terauchi’s declaration that he has made 
 "the most careful inquiry among the officers of the military secret service and 
 the police.” In other words, he asked the real offenders whether they had done 
 the things of which they were accused, and when they virtuously said that they 
 had not, he seriously informs the world that the charges have been looked into 
 and found to be baseless. One is reminded of the experience of a missionary 
 who last year deemed it his duty to report to the chief official of his district a 
 flagrant case of brutality by a gendarme. In due time, he received a courteous 
 reply stating that the gendarme had been asked about it and had denied the 
 charge, and as the complaint had thus been investigated and found to be 
 without foundation, no further attention need be paid to it. Those of us who 
 have maintained confidence in Count Terauchi as an enlightened Governor 
 General who has been misled by his interested subordinates deeply regret 
 that he was induced to affix his signature to a statement which it is difficult 
 to reconcile with those sentiments that we have liked to believe that he really 
 entertains. All intelligent people know that the Japanese found gross abuses in 
 Korea, an Augean stable of misgovernment, political corruption, and unsanitary 
 conditions. They have achieved wonders in bettering these conditions — inaugurat- 
 ing great administrative reforms and beneficial enterprises of various kinds. We 
 have paid high tribute to this work in addresses which many Japanese have heard 
 and in published writings which some influential Japanese have told us that they 
 have read. They know that we are not “anti-Japanese.” But most of these reforms, 
 valuable as they are, may be found in a well-regulated penal colony and reference 
 to them does not touch the heart of the real question which is now at issue. The 
 Mission Boards may still say, in almost the identical language of the official action 
 of the Presbyterian Board after receiving Count Terauchi’s memorandum of Janu- 
 ary 23d, 1912, that they “have full confidence in the good-will of the Government 
 in Japan toward the Korean people and in the just purpose of Count Terauchi. 
 But the documents before them, embracing, in addition to the papers forwarded by 
 the Japanese Embassy, many communications from eye witnesses, awaken concern 
 which Count Terauchi’s statements do not allay and which many events have 
 tended to confirm ; concern, namely, lest the local gendarmes have pursued a course 
 of action which will have the effect, not of suppressing a plot of evil men against 
 the Government, but of breaking the spirit of loyal and innocent people and of 
 discrediting the very influences which have rendered and would continue to render 
 the best support to all Japanese efforts to advance the interests of the Korean 
 people.” 
 
 We would not emphasize the interests of the missionaries and Boards, for 
 our chief thought is for the interests of Koreans and Japanese. Nevertheless, we 
 cannot be indifferent to the effect of the present policy of the Japanese police upon 
 a mission work which now represents approximately 330 foreign missionaries, 962 
 schools, a medical college, a nurses’ training school, thirteen hospitals, eighteen 
 dispensaries, an orphanage, a school for the blind, a leper asylum, a printing 
 press, 500 churches, a Christian community of 250,000, property worth approxi- 
 mately a million dollars, and an annual expenditure of over $250,000. This 
 
 22 
 
extensive work is being injuriously affected by the reign of terror which now 
 prevails among the Koreans. Properties become seriously lessened in value when 
 conditions are created which impair their use for the religious purposes for which 
 they were acquired. From a technical viewpoint, this may be an incidental result 
 for which the Japanese authorities may disclaim responsibility. The Boards do 
 not, of course, challenge the right of a Government to arrest any of its subjects 
 whom it may believe to be guilty of conspiracy, and they recognize the fact that 
 a Government, in dealing with such persons, cannot take into account their relig- 
 ious affiliations. The situation, however, is none the less trying on that account, 
 especially when, as in Syen Chyun, a large academy had to be closed for a time ; 
 when the private residences of American missionaries were surrounded by police 
 and ransacked from garret to cellar, even trunks, drawers and provision boxes being 
 opened in the search for alleged revolutionary documents and munitions of war; 
 and when missionaries are openly named and reviled as direct promoters of a 
 revolutionary plot in numerous articles in the censored press both of Korea and 
 Japan and in Korean “confessions” which were specifically accepted as true in 
 the decision of the Court and were made the ground of a verdict of guilty against 
 the Korean prisoners. These missionaries are now pilloried before the world, and 
 while, as Dr. Eliot has well said, no American believes them to be guilty, and 
 while the Japanese authorities are not proceeding against them, is it just to leave 
 them under such reproach in the eyes of the Japanese and Korean people, and in 
 the eyes also of hostile critics anywhere who may be disposed to use that court 
 decision against them? 
 
 But not to dwell further at present on this phase of the question, let us ask: 
 What can be done to remedy the exceedingly unfortunate situation which now 
 exists? The Boards frankly recognize that there are some things which they and 
 the missionaries can do, or rather continue to do: take special pains to cultivate 
 friendly relations with Japanese officials who are willing to be on such terms with 
 them ; scrupulously respect and obey, and teach the Korean Christians to respect 
 and obey, the lawfully-constituted authorities; rigidly limit their activities to 
 religious and social affairs and keep themselves and, as far as possible, the Korean 
 Churches wholly apart from all political matters; take any necessary complaints 
 directly to the Japanese and not to the consular or diplomatic representatives of 
 their respective Governments — save of course when their treaty rights as American 
 or British citizens have been violated, and even then not unless the violation is 
 very serious ; restrain any temptation to the kind of criticism which might inflame 
 public sentiment in America to a point that would affect the relations of two 
 nations which ought to be on terms of mutual good will ; let protest, when nec- 
 essary, be handled, not by extreme men but by those who are known for modera- 
 tion and judicious consideration of facts as distinguished from rumors; recognize 
 the Japanese nation as the absolute legal master of Korea which, on the whole, 
 means well and which should be helped and not hindered in all its legitimate poli- 
 cies and methods ; and finally, encourage such relations between Korean and 
 Japanese Christians as will tend to unite the two peoples in bonds of amity, remem- 
 bering that the Japanese are trying to amalgamate Korea and Japan and that they 
 will not tolerate any foreign influence which separates religiously and educationally 
 
 23 
 
peoples whom they are determined to unify politically. Korea is the broad high 
 way from Japan to Manchuria, to China, to Russian territory, to the international 
 opportunities that Japan covets and the international dangers that she fears. 
 Influence with the new Chinese Republic is the ambition of all the world powers. 
 With Russia bordering China for a vast distance on the north, Germany entrenched 
 at Tsing-tau, England occupying Wei-hai-wei, Shanghai and Hong-Kong, and 
 France established at Tong-king, the Japanese naturally feel that an unobstructed 
 Korea is an absolute necessity of their national life and that they cannot permit 
 any anti-Japanese element in it nor look with unconcern upon any organization, 
 however neutral, which is not amenable to their control. Whether we like this or 
 not, the fact must be squarely faced. We are not dealing with peoples who. like 
 Englishmen and Americans, are good-naturedly willing to allow their subjects to do 
 almost anything they please, short of open revolt ; but we are dealing with Asiatics 
 to whom freedom of speech, individual liberty, the privilege of peaceable assem- 
 blage, and the separation of Church and State are comparatively new conceptions 
 and who will not condone in Korea what Americans indifferently overlook in the 
 Philippines. The Korea missionary work and the Korean Church grew up and 
 took their character before the Japanese came to Korea and when conditions were 
 radically different from what they are today. In these circumstances, the problem 
 of readjustment of the Missions and Churches to the ideas and methods of the 
 new regime is one of the gravest and most difficult of all the problems that the 
 Korea missionaries and the Korean Christians have to solve. This problem cannot 
 be ignored or postponed. It must be met now, and met too with full recognition 
 of the Japanese position and the Japanese temperament and in a spirit of Christian 
 moderation and large statesmanship. 
 
 We frankly admit that that there are deeply-rooted difficulties. Conquerors 
 and conquered have seldom mingled as equals anywhere in the world and 
 then only after the lapse of many generations. Under our own rule in the 
 Philippine Islands, a wide social chasm is opening between Americans and 
 Filipinos, and the missionaries are fast becoming the only class which associates 
 with the people on terms of equality. Japanese and Koreans are separated by 
 unusually deep racial, linguistic, hereditary and temperamental differences, and by 
 social prejudices that are almost as stubborn as those which divided Jews and 
 Samaritans of old. Now that the Koreans are beginning to adopt Japanese dress, 
 the physical difference between the two peoples is becoming less marked and of 
 late years intermarriages have become more common. An eminent Japanese has 
 recently expressed the opinion that intermarriage will eventually solve this prob- 
 lem. But at present, when many Japanese are kind to the Koreans, as the best 
 Japanese are, it is apt to be with the type of kindness which characterizes a Georgia 
 gentleman towards a negro. The Georgian may be a friend and benefactor of the 
 negro, but he does not consider himself on the latter’s level. The Korean resents this 
 attitude even more than the negro does, for his ancestry is not one of slavery and 
 African barbarism, but of the traditions of a proud and ancient nation. He feels 
 that Korea is the land of his fathers and that the Japanese is an alien who has no 
 right there except on the low plane of physical force. Is unity of feeling to be 
 reasonably expected in such circumstances ? It is notorious that the white man the 
 
 24 
 
world over deems himself superior to men of other races, and that even missionaries 
 have not always succeeded in preventing the development of social cleavage 
 between their own families and native Christians. We should therefore be slow 
 to criticise the Japanese for an attitude which we also have to struggle to overcome. 
 
 Those of us who are familiar with missionary conditions are aware that dif- 
 ficulties inhere even in so apparently simply a proposal as a closer amalgamation 
 of the missionaries of Japan and Korea. “Are they not American and British 
 Christians ?” the reader may ask in amazement. They are, and exceptionally able, 
 consecrated and high-minded Christians who earnestly wish to aid in solving the 
 difficult problems that have developed. But they are also human beings, and even 
 grace does not wholly change the universal fact that human beings are more or 
 less unconsciously influenced by their environment, the interests of their local 
 work, and the points of view which their distinctive situation creates. If differ- 
 ences develop between Japanese and Koreans, the missionaries in Japan — living 
 among Japanese, on friendly personal terms with them, speaking their language, 
 and dependent upon their good will for the success of the work — naturally see 
 the Japanese side more clearly than they see the Korean, and as naturally too see 
 more clearly the effects upon the Japanese of anything that the Korea missionaries 
 may say or do. The Korea missionaries, in turn, are in precisely the same relation 
 to the Koreans, who consider themselves an oppressed and abused people, and 
 the Korea missionaries are in a position to know more intimately what the Japanese 
 police are really doing in Korea and what the effect is upon the Korean Christians. 
 Varying national conditions, too, have necessarily led to the development of mis- 
 sionary work along different lines, not only as to the particular kind of work but 
 as to the relation of the missionary to the native Churches. The missionaries in 
 each country have felt that the character and trend of the native mind with which 
 they had to deal called for special emphasis upon certain theological doctrines, 
 which, while not fundamentally at variance with, were nevertheless different from 
 the equally evangelical doctrines that the other body of missionaries were 
 emphasizing. The range of New Testament teaching is wide, and each national 
 group of Christians, like each individual believer, instinctively appropriates the 
 truths which impress him as best adapted to his needs. The oppressed, despairing, 
 poverty-stricken, emotional Korean approaches Christ from a different angle than 
 the proud, martial, ambitious and all-conquering Japanese. Korean and Japanese 
 types of Christianity are, therefore, as different as the German Moravian and 
 American Presbyterian types ; and the missionaries in each country, even of the 
 same communions, have been more or less unconsciously moulded accordingly. 
 
 The obstacles to unity of feeling are therefore formidable. But Christian men 
 should tactfully but firmly refuse to accept such obstacles as conclusive, just as their 
 Lord refused to accept the distinction between Jews and Samaritans and the equally 
 radical distinction between Jews and Gentiles, and just as Christians at home are 
 beginning to feel that they cannot accept their present sectarian divisions as final. 
 “God is no respecter of persons,” Peter was told in a memorable experience. The 
 foreign missionary enterprise stands, among other things, for the dissolving of such 
 prejudices and the obliteration of artificial differences that hinder the work 
 of God in the world. The Christian who has entered into the spirit of Jesus will 
 
 25 
 
not permit himself to be dominated by a racial prejudice which would take him off 
 the Christian platform and place him where Jonah stood when God punished him. 
 If it be said that the Koreans and Japanese cannot be brought together, we reply 
 in the words of inspiration : “With men this is impossible, but with God all things 
 are possible.” “And we are co-workers together with God.” That is what we 
 are in Korea for. 
 
 There is also something that the Japanese can do: seek a better knowledge of 
 what the missionaries and Churches really are and are doing ; study the beneficial 
 changes that Christianity has wrought in the lives of the people; realize that good 
 men who try to conform their lives to the teachings of Christ are never a hindrance 
 to the State but are on the contrary an asset of enormous value ; consider that a mis- 
 sionary’s criticism of injustice on the part of some Japanese is not to be construed 
 as antagonism to Japan as a nation or a reflection upon its honor; and, above all, 
 cease to deal with the Korean Christians through the kind of gendarmes and judges 
 that have so intensified the present trouble and perverted the wise policy of Prince 
 Ito and the good intentions of the Japanese people into a policy of espionage and 
 intimidation. The situation in Korea undoubtedly requires a firm government ; 
 but the firmness should be that of modern statesmanship and not that of a feudalism 
 which would reproduce in Korea conditions which the Japanese abolished in 
 Japan more than a generation ago. Americans, who remember with shame how 
 their own local officials once treated the Indians and the conquered Southern 
 people after the Civil War in the United States, may humbly hope that the 
 Japanese will learn from our bitter experience that the soldier’s rifle and the 
 policeman’s club do not make loyal citizens out of a defeated people. 
 
 Meantime, all concerned should remember that the Appellate Court has not 
 yet passed on the appeal of the convicted men, and that when it does so, if its 
 decision should be unsatisfactory, the Supreme Court remains as the tribunal of 
 final resort. The case is still, therefore, in process of adjudication so that the 
 resources of Japanese law have not been exhausted. The criticism that has thus 
 far been made was to have been expected. In this age of international knowledge 
 and humane sympathies, the Japanese military party could not rightfully expect 
 to escape publicity and protest. It is well that public interest has been aroused in 
 this matter. It will be helpful to the best element among the Japanese themselves 
 who, as far as they have learned of the case, are believed to be not a little distressed 
 by the course of the military police ; who are sincerely trying to have it changed 
 both for the good of Korea and the honor of Japan ; and who may not be adverse to 
 the re-enforcement which the public sentiment of the civilized world is now giving 
 them. The fact should be brought into strong relief that thus far the Japanese 
 Government and people have not had adequate opportunity to know the real state 
 of affairs in Korea. Reports to Tokyo have been drawn by the officials who are 
 concerned in defending their course, and newspaper accounts have been rigidly 
 censored as far as the Seoul authorities could reach. The Japanese editor of the 
 Fukuin Shimpo, in the editorial of September 12, 1912, already referred to, writes: 
 
 “There are many regrettable features in this affair, most especially the following: No 
 detailed reports of the trial were published in the Japanese papers. Some of the accused 
 testified that they had been tortured and made other extremely damaging statements in their 
 
 2G 
 
defense. Ordinarily such things would be reported in detail by the Tokyo papers first, and by 
 the papers throughout the country, but absolutely nothing was published. Up to the present 
 time, there is no convenient means of knowing the case except The Chronicle of Kobe, and 
 The Japan Gazette and Daily Advertiser of Yokohama (English newspapers). What is 
 the reason for the inadequacy of the reports of the Japanese papers on a matter of such 
 importance that the whole Japanese nation ought to be thoroughly informed on the 
 situation? .... Some say it is because the reporters of the present are all agents of a 
 certain official who manipulates their correspondence at will. Whether this is true we do not 
 know, but at any rate such tactics defeat their own purpose and only serve to invite suspicion, 
 doing harm beyond expectation even to the extent of national loss. But whatever the explana- 
 tion, the Japanese people have not been given any proper instruments of communication in 
 the Korean Plot Case. 1 In a sense, the public trial in this case has been just like a secret 
 investigation. This we regard as one of the most regrettable features of the case. In this we 
 probably voice the sentiments of those who have followed the references to the Korean Plot 
 
 Case in the papers published in Japan, both Japanese and foreign This is a proper 
 
 time to sift these tales of secret police torture to the very bottom. It is highly important that 
 this matter be cleared up. If such hateful practices exist, they should be thoroughly exposed, 
 whatever shame may be involved, and a thoroughgoing reform must be brought about. In 
 our opinion, it is of extreme importance not only to bring to trial those accused of the plot 
 but also to investigate this charge of torture. If this question is buried while still unanswered, 
 it will be a great misfortune for the country.” 
 
 The real friends of Japan at this juncture are not those who attempt to deny 
 or extenuate facts which are now as notorious as the even more deplorable facts 
 which in a former generation led to the characterization of American treatment of 
 the Indians as “A Century of Dishonor,” but they are those who frankly tell their 
 Japanese friends that “the recent course of the Gendarmerie in dealing with the 
 people of Korea has awakened grave misgivings as to its justice, its effect upon the 
 unhappy Koreans, and also upon that reputation for the humane and enlightened 
 rule of a subject race which the Japanese have shown that they rightly value .” 2 If 
 the Koreans have really been plotting revolution, harsh treatment will make them 
 plot the more and will win for them world-wide sympathy. If they have not been 
 plotting, such treatment will either stir them to a fury of desperation which will 
 make them dangerous enemies, or so crush the spirit of a sensitive and ancient 
 people that the indignant protest of the American and British peoples may 
 injuriously affect those relations of mutual respect and good will which have 
 hitherto existed between the nations and whose continuation we so ardently desire. 
 Japan undoubtedly has a hard task in Korea, and the mission Boards earnestly 
 desire to avoid anything that might make it more difficult. We cordially recog- 
 nize the many splendid things that the Japanese have done, and we lament only 
 that this unfortunate affair has done so much to prevent them from exerting their 
 full beneficent effect. We are convinced, as we have been from the beginning, 
 that as soon as the central Government in Tokyo and the Japanese nation as a 
 whole know how their true purposes regarding the Koreans have been distorted 
 by the Gendarmerie and the Judges of the lower Court in Seoul, they will take such 
 action as will prove to all the world that the name of the era of the late Emperor, 
 Meiji (Enlightenment), and that of the new Emperor, Taisho (Righteousness), 
 are not empty names, but that they represent the real spirit and intent of the 
 Japanese nation toward a subject race. 
 
 ‘Italics mine. 
 
 ‘From reply of the Presbyterian Board to Count Terauchi’s memorandum of January 23. 
 
 27 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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