A chicken peddler in Seoul
A chicken peddler in Seoul
A chicken peddler in Seoul
A full load
A full load
A full load
The plowman homeward wends his weary way—in Korean fashion, always carrying the plow and driving his unburdened ox or bull before him; one of the most common sights of Korea
The plowman homeward wends his weary way—in Korean fashion, always carrying the plow and driving his unburdened ox or bull before him; one of the most common sights of Korea
The plowman homeward wends his weary way—in Korean fashion, always carrying the plow and driving his unburdened ox or bull before him; one of the most common sights of Korea
The biblical “watch-tower in a cucumber patch†is in evidence all over Korea in the summer, when crops begin to ripen. Whole families often sleep in them during this season, when they spring up all over the country, and often afford the only cool breeze
The biblical “watch-tower in a cucumber patch†is in evidence all over Korea in the summer, when crops begin to ripen. Whole families often sleep in them during this season, when they spring up all over the country, and often afford the only cool breeze
The biblical “watch-tower in a cucumber patch†is in evidence all over Korea in the summer, when crops begin to ripen. Whole families often sleep in them during this season, when they spring up all over the country, and often afford the only cool breeze
Christian students in government schools often report that they have secretly been ordered to quit the church. There seems to be little doubt that the Japanese foster the student strikes which are increasingly becoming the bane of mission schools, now with demands for a Korean principal in place of an American who has grown gray in that position, now that no teacher be hired who has not been educated in Japan or Korea, or that there shall be no studying of the Bible in school—almost prima facie evidence of Japanese influence. All this cuts both ways in separating the Koreans and the foreigners. When the strikes reach the point of demanding that laboratory or library equipment be improved, notwithstanding that every tack in the school wall is due to American charity toward the strikers, the ordinary human being finds himself wishing that the missionaries would forget their unnatural patience and boot the strikers down the front steps. Permits are required for everything under the sun—to be pastor, to build a new church, even to solicit contributions to mission hospitals. The Japanese meddle with hospitals, schools, and churches in ways which even they could not possibly believe are excusable. The missionaries have to submit to their dictation as to curriculum; they even have to make their school year conform to the Japanese custom and teach in July. Perhaps the greatest hardship the missionaries have to endure is the constant dread that their sick children will be carried off to Japanese isolation wards, on the pretext that contagious diseases cannot be properly isolated in mission hospitals, and there virtually killed by being given only Japanese food, lack of beds, and treatment, while the parents may not even be allowed to see them.
All books by foreigners must be fullyprintedbefore being submitted to the police censor, who will not look at manuscript. Three days before publication two copies of the finished book must be in hishands, and ifanyof the contents is considered objectionable the whole edition is confiscated. Christian schools are often called out to meet officials on Sunday, or teacher’s examinations are given on that day with a frequency that could scarcely be coincidence. The requirement that all children in government schools shall bow down before a picture of the mikado in an attitude of worship is of course a constant thorn in the side of the Christians. The authorities claim that American mission students have no discipline, which is probably true from the Japanese point of view, in that they are not told just what they should think and do on every possible subject and occasion. In their published maps of Korean towns the Japanese rarely give any signs of the existence of Christian establishments, though these are often many years old and the most prominent institutions in the place. On the other hand, when their travels take them out of their own orbit the missionaries almost always go to Korean hotels instead of patronizing the foreign ones under Japanese management, but old custom and the high prices of the latter could easily account for this without including a suggestion of pique.
Personally I came to the conclusion that, while both are in evidence, it is the thick-headedness of the rank-and-file Japanese more than deliberate persecution which causes the continued friction between the two peoples who are doing the most for the regeneration of Korea. I might cite a typical case in point. Over near Gensan on the east coast the missionaries have a private summer resort, half a hundred houses and a beach, all enclosed within purchased grounds. But as the Japanese are very insistent in matters which they conceive to involve the equality of their race to the rest of the world, they refuse to let the missionaries keep the townspeople off their beach. Now, the bathing demeanor of the Japanese, innocent and proper though it may be to those who like it, is decidedly not suited to a place where American women and children come to spend their summers. So by dint of coaxing and explaining their own peculiar point of view, the Americans got the authorities at Gensan to post a notice that no one should bathe on the missionary beach unless arrayed in proper swimming costume. The Japanese of course are notoriously law-abiding. One afternoon when I found time to join my family on that beach a big limousine stood at the edge of the sand, and several dignified middle-aged men who might have been bankers or lawyers from the city were disporting themselves in perfectly respectable bathing-suits. But when I chanced to glance about a little later, one of them stood within ten feet of us,stripped stark naked as he calmly and leisurely changed from swimming to street costume, and two others were in the act of disrobing for the same purpose. I feel sure that they had no intention whatever of being offensive toward the dozen or more American women about them; probably their limited minds really thought that they were complying with both the letter and the spirit of the posted order and the desires of those who inspired it by wearing bathing costumes while in the water, and getting into and out of them on the open beach. When I addressed them with an unmissionary vehemence that might have landed me in a police station if they had chosen to make the most of it, they apologized hastily for the unwitting offense and hurried off to the privacy of the limousine. The Japanese in Korea are spending large sums in the effort to make certain of the beaches of the peninsula popular with foreigners, and quite likely some of these bankerly-looking gentlemen were involved in the scheme; but none of them still have any clear conception, probably, of why no beach can ever be popular with foreigners as long as Japanese also have the right of admission to it.
Missionaries after all are only human beings, as they themselves are the first to admit, and we do not expect the supernatural of them even in such a matter as meekly accepting the abuse of what they more or less regard as a usurping and alien political power over a people the benefiting of whom they consider their life-work. Many of the Americans in the mission field have been in Korea far longer than the Japanese. Some have lived there so long, according to those foreigners of another class who see them as dangers to their precious “business as usual,†that “they think they own the country and can countenance no changes in it, not even improvements. They used to do exactly as they liked, and they hate the least suggestion of coercion.†We should remember that the missionaries had the advantages of extraterritoriality in Korea before the Japanese came, and they cannot but resent the loss of it, the submitting to alien rulers whose ideas of everything, from housing to justice, are so widely different from their own. Moreover, though they readily admit that the Japanese are doing many things for the good of the peninsula, they see them primarily as men with an ax to grind.
It would be strange, if it were not long since commonplace, to see how sharp national lines remain even among men who think they are working above nationalities, how completely even men of strong ideals succumb to their environment. The American missionaries in Japan say that there is some reason for the Japanese to be suspicious of theAmerican missionaries in Korea. They agree with the officials there, who contend that those destined for mission work in the Korean field should first have a year in Japan, that they may judge more fairly the Japanese national point of view. Even those in Korea, after ten to forty years’ residence there, cannot agree on many of the points involved, so how can a mere passer-by be expected to get at the exact truth of the matter? He can merely decide that there is some reason on both sides, with perhaps a private opinion as to which one is most inclined to tamper with the scales, and let it go at that. Friction is gradually decreasing, as the Japanese and Americans become more able to talk together—generally in Korean; and as there is no doubt that Japan has the good of Cho-sen and its people at heart—as an integral part of the Japanese Empire—constant improvement may confidently be expected.