JAPANESE IN KOREA
Thequestion of the relations between the Koreans and the Japanese in Korea is a delicate one—one which requires an insight into past causes and present issues somewhat beyond that of a casual observer.
It is a question which finds its parallel in the relations of the Filipinos to the Americans in the Philippine Islands. Taking into consideration some of the minor differences, it is strikingly the same.
Unwillingly, by the fortunes of war, both these helpless people, people loving very little the “strenuous life” and enjoying ease with little, far more than much without it, are being forced to arouse themselves to action along new paths into a complex existence to which their child-like and primitive needs do not call them. They are both more given to reflection than action, and to theory rather than practice. The same pride of those who take refuge in dreams is found in both, but in the case of the Korean it is even harder to obliterate the past tendencies, as they are not anxious to change even when at slight cost to themselves. But here we must make a second observation,—that along the normal and intellectual paths they do desire improvement. They will sacrifice much to educate their children, and will go to any privation to get an education. For example, the nurses in training in the Seoul hospital, the “Po Ku Nyo Koan,” take six years of study and pay for tuition, and do it gladly and withenthusiasm to obtain their diplomas. I saw several of these young ladies who would do credit to Johns Hopkins, so noble and self-poised did they appear. But stubborn they most surely are, and refractory to those new forms of life which mean other customs and other laws. The missionaries find them open to spiritual truth and tractable to the practice of it in their lives.
Both essentially Oriental and gentle when left to themselves, the Filipino and the Korean become sullen, and even fierce when forced against their will.
Both Americans and Spaniards, as a Spanish gentleman said to me, become heady and inflated with their own importance as soon as they “round Corregidor.” The least desirable traits come into focus when vulgar people are in the foreground. The Japanese have suffered somewhat by crossing the Tsushima Straits. Insolence and a swagger of “we are the people” we fancied we had left behind us in the “Pearl of the Orient,” and which is slowly passing away, however, is recognizable at a glance in Korea. A jinrikisha man, who seems to be a “thorn in the flesh” of Yokohama, becomes a festering sore in Korea; he runs over unwary men and women without a grimace, and bullies the rider into double fare with the air of a bandit.
The meddling “in other men’s business,” conspicuous also where ignorance and lawlessness come into play, as in the Philippines and Korea, is also characteristic. There is no bound to the impertinence of those who feel like the bad boy of the nursery that the governess will never dare tell, for she would get the worst of it if she did. Fair play is not conspicuous in Korea, nor always in the Philippines.Great complaint is made by foreigners in Korea as to the wholesale disregard of property rights, the absolute impossibility of getting justice before the law. Fortunately the parallel stops here; we have Filipino judges who enjoy nothing better than sending an American up for a long term! I hope the time is not far distant when a Korean judge can enjoy the same ironical pleasure. Of course the greatest difficulty lies in this adjusting of ignorance to another ignorance in the lower classes, the ignorance of both being absolutely impenetrable. The educated Japanese recognize this and acknowledge their inability to cope with it at times. Occasionally this takes a tragic aspect, as when in working on the telegraph wires in the streets of Seoul they warned to no purpose over and over again a poor Korean, to whom electricity and its deadly power was as unknown a quantity as a Sanskrit root to a London fishwife, and at last they hit him a blow, and he fell—dead!
But force is always the weapon of men who have power over others and none over themselves, whether in Bombay, Manila or Seoul. But that the patience of English and American and Japanese is often tried to the uttermost is also true, doubtless. “Patience conquers all things”; this saying of Saint Theresa is needed by them all; and by the Filipino and Korean, above all. In conversation with foreigners, with Japanese and with Koreans, you feel this absolutely.
A Korean boy said to me pitifully, “Oh, they do not understand,” and a very astute and able man of prominence in finance in Seoul, a Japanese, acknowledged the same difficulty of harmonizing such divergent elements,meaning exactly what the boy could not express. Some of the foreigners are strongly influenced by their hearts in favor of the Koreans, citing incidents of their ill-treatment by the coolies and the merchants. Others, relying on their heads, say, “No, Japan is doing as well as under the circumstances is possible with a delicate, obstinate, inflexible people, who do not wish to develop in the modern sense.” As to the Japanese soldiers and their behavior, I heard only praise, which is certainly, considering the opportunity they have to be otherwise, admirable.
The Korean has by no means the courtesy towards strangers of the Japanese, but it is said that once you show yourself their friend they go further in their cordiality and are far more unselfish in their devotion.
The less attractive qualities of the Koreans have been greatly overdrawn. They are kindly and attractive, the women especially so, even winsome, graceful, and possessing that dignity and poise, partly characteristic of the British Indian and partly of the Mohammedan. They are sticklers for tradition and punctilious in etiquette, and like such people usually are rather more anxious for the “letter” than the “spirit.” Sensitive to the feelings of a stranger as the Japanese are, they certainly are not. The prosperity of Korea is tempting to the avaricious Japanese, and they have been guilty of such transactions as are some of the monopolies of America, crushing to the wall the less clever. It is an old story; Japan can show England and America nothing new in greed. We have exhausted the repertoire!
Seoul is one of the most enchanting cities in the world; its situation is marvelous, its picturesqueness only Constantinoplecan rival.
Korea is a land of stupendous beauty and attractiveness, the kingdom of toil, and it is to this they are looking. To the onward marching lines of men who see the future, Korea and Manchuria are the stepping stones. The wide fields extend in every direction, the hills “rejoice on every side.” Japan marches her soldiers at every station, law and order go with her, and out of chaos, Asiatic chaos, she will bring—who that sees her at work can doubt—civilization in the modern sense.