Korea's Fight for Freedom Part 20

A student, arrested at his house, was kept at the police station for twenty days. Then they let him go, having found nothing against him. His bruised body when he came out showed what he had suffered. He had been bound and a cord around his shoulders and arms pulled tight until the breastbone was forced forward and breathing almost stopped. Then he was beaten with a bamboo stick on the shoulders and arms until he lost consciousness. The bamboo stick was wrapped in paper so as to prevent the skin breaking and bleeding. He saw another man beaten ten times into unconsciousness, and ten times brought round; and a boy thrown down hard on the floor and stamped on repeatedly until he lost consciousness. Those who came out were few; what happened to those who remained within the prison must be left to the imagination.

Despite everything, the demonstrations of the people still continued. On March 7th the people of the villages of Po Paik and Kan, twenty miles north of Pyeng-yang, came out practically en ma.s.se to shout for independence.

Next day four soldiers and one Korean policeman arrived, asking for the pastor of the church. They could not find him, so they seized the school-teacher, slashed his head and body with their swords and thrust a sword twice into his legs. An elder of the church stepped up to protest against such treatment, whereupon a j.a.panese soldier ran a sword through his side. As the soldiers left some young men threw stones at them. The soldiers replied with rifle fire, wounding four men.

Soldiers and police came again and again to find the pastor and church officers who had gone into hiding. On April 4th they seized the women and demanded where their husbands were, beating them with clubs and guns, the wife of one elder being beaten till great red bruises showed all over her body.

The police evidently made up their minds that the Christians were responsible for the demonstration, and they determined to rid the place of them. The services of some liquor sellers were enlisted to induce people to tear down the belfry of the church. On April 18th a j.a.panese came and addressed the crowd through an interpreter.

He told them that the Christians had been deceived by the "foreign devils,"

who were an ignorant, low-down lot of people, and that they should be driven out and go and live with the Americans who had corrupted them. There was nothing in the Bible about independence and "Mansei." Three thousand cavalry and three thousand infantry were coming to destroy all the Christians, and if they did not drive them out but continued to live with them, they would be shot and killed.

A number of half drunken men got together to drive out the Christians. This was done. A report was taken to the gendarmes that the Christians had been driven away, whereupon the villagers were praised. In other parts, near by, the same chief of gendarmes was ordering the families of Christians out of their homes, arresting the men and leaving the women and children to seek refuge where they might.

Word came to some other villages in the Pyeng-yang area that the police would visit them on April 27th, to inspect the house-cleaning. The Christians received warning that they must look out for a hard time.

Everything was very carefully cleaned, ready for the inspection. The leader of the church sent word to all the people to gather for early wors.h.i.+p, so as to be through before the police should come. But the police were there before them, a j.a.panese in charge, two Korean policemen, two secretaries and two dog killers.

The two leaders of the church were called up by the j.a.panese, who stepped down and ran his fingers along the floor. "Look at this dust," he said.

Ordering the two men to sit down on the floor, he beat them with a flail, over the shoulders.

"Do you beat an old man, seventy years old, this way?" called the older man.

"What is seventy years, you rascal of a Christian?" came the reply.

The police took the names of the Christians from the church roll, and went round the village, picking them out and beating them all, men, women and children. They killed their dogs. The non-Christians were let alone.

On the afternoon of April 4th a cordon of police and gendarmes was suddenly picketed all around the missionary quarter in Pyeng-yang, and officials, police and detectives made an elaborate search of the houses. Some copies of an Independence newspaper, a bit of paper with a statement of the numbers killed at Anju, and a copy of the program of the memorial service were found among the papers of Dr. Moffett's secretary, and two copies of a mimeographed notice in Korean, thin paper rolled up into a thin ball and thrown away, were found in an outhouse. The secretary was arrested, bound, beaten and hauled off. Other Koreans found on the premises were treated in similar fas.h.i.+on. One man was knocked down, beaten and kicked on the head several times.

Dr. Moffett and the Rev. E.M. Mowry, another American Presbyterian missionary from Mansfield, Ohio, were ordered to the police office that evening, and cross-examined. Dr. Moffett convinced the authorities that he knew nothing of the independence movement and had taken no part in it (he felt bound, as a missionary, not to take part in political affairs), but Mr. Mowry was detained on the charge of sheltering Korean agitators.

Mr. Mowry had allowed five Korean students wanted by the police to remain in his house for two days early in March. Some of them were his students and one was his former secretary; Mr. Mowry was a teacher at the Union Christian College, and princ.i.p.al of both the boys' and girls' grammar schools at Pyeng-yang. Mr. Mowry declared that Koreans often slept at his house, and he had no knowledge that the police were trying to arrest these lads.

The missionary was kept in jail for ten days. His friends were told that he would probably be sent to Seoul for trial Then he was suddenly brought before the Pyeng-yang court, no time being given for him to obtain counsel, and was sentenced to six months' penal servitude. He was led away wearing the prisoners' cap, a wicker basket, placed over the head and face.

An appeal was at once entered, and eventually the conviction was quashed, and a new trial ordered.

XVII

GIRL MARTYRS FOR LIBERTY

The most extraordinary feature of the uprising of the Korean people is the part taken in it by the girls and women. Less than twenty years ago, a man might live in Korea for years and never come in contact with a Korean woman of the better cla.s.ses, never meet her on the street, never see her in the homes of his Korean friends. I have lived for a week or two at a time, in the old days, in the house of a Korean man of high cla.s.s, and have never once seen his wife or daughters. In j.a.pan in those days--and with many families the same holds true to-day--when one was invited as a guest, the wife would receive you, bow to the guest and her lord, and then would humbly retire, not sitting to table with the men.

Christian teaching and modern ways broke down the barrier in Korea. The young Korean women took keenly to the new mode of life. The girls in the schools, particularly in the Government schools, led the way in the demand for the restoration of their national life. There were many quaint and touching incidents. In the missionary schools, the chief fear of the girls was lest they should bring trouble on their American teachers. The head mistress of one of these schools noticed for some days that her girls were unusually excited. She heard them asking one another, "Have you enrolled?"

and imagined that some new girlish league was being formed. This was before the great day. One morning the head mistress came down to discover the place empty. On her desk was a paper signed by all the girls, resigning their places in the school. They thought that by this device they would show that their beloved head mistress was not responsible.

Soon there came a call from the Chief of Police. The mistress was wanted at the police office at once. All the girls from her school were demonstrating and had stirred up the whole town. Would the mistress come and disperse them?

The mistress hurried off. Sure enough, here were the girls in the street, wearing national badges, waving national flags, calling on the police to come and take them. The men had gathered and were shouting "Mansei!" also.

The worried Chief of Police, who was a much more decent kind than many of his fellows, begged the mistress to do something. "I cannot arrest them all," he said. "I have only one little cell here. It would only hold a few of them," The mistress went out to talk to the girls. They would not listen, even to her. They cheered her, and when she begged them to go home, shouted "Mansei!" all the louder.

The mistress went back to the Chief. "The only thing for you to do is to arrest me," she said.

The Chief was horrified at the idea, "I will go out and tell the girls that you are going to arrest me if they do not go," she said. "We will see what that will do. But mind you, if they do not disperse, you must arrest me."

She went out again. "Girls," she called, "the Chief of Police is going to arrest me if you do not go to your homes. I am your teacher, and it must be the fault of my teaching that you will not obey."

"No, teacher, no," the girls shouted. "It is not your fault. You have nothing to do with it. We are doing this." And some of them rushed up, as though they would rescue her by force of arms.

In the end, she persuaded the girls to go home, in order to save her.

"Well," said the leaders of the girls, "it's all right now. We have done all we wanted. We have stirred up the men. They were sheep and wanted women to make a start. Now they will go on."

The police and gendarmerie generally were not so merciful as this particular Chief. The rule in many police stations was to strip and beat the girls and young women who took any part in the demonstrations, and to expose them, absolutely naked, to as many j.a.panese men as possible. The Korean woman is as sensitive as a white woman about the display of her person, and the j.a.panese, knowing this, delighted to have this means of humiliating them. In some towns, the schoolgirls arranged to go out in sections, so many one day, so many on the other. The girls who had to go out on the later days knew how those who had preceded them had been stripped and beaten. Antic.i.p.ating that they would be treated in the same way, they sat up the night before sewing special undergarments on themselves, which would not be so easily removed as their ordinary clothes, hoping that they might thus avoid being stripped entirely naked.

The girls were most active of all in the city of Seoul. I have mentioned in the previous chapter the arrest of many of them. They were treated very badly indeed. Take, for instance, the case of those seized by the police on the morning of Wednesday, March 5th. They were nearly all of them pupils from the local academies. Some of them were demonstrating on Chong-no, the main street, shouting "Mansei." Others were wearing straw shoes, a sign of mourning, for the dead Emperor. Still others were arrested because the police thought that they might be on the way to demonstrate. A few of these girls were released after a spell in prison. On their release, their statements concerning their treatment were independently recorded.

They were first taken to the Chong-no Police Station, where a body of about twenty j.a.panese policemen kicked them with their heavy boots, slapped their cheeks or punched their heads. "They flung me against a wall with all their might, so that I was knocked senseless, and remained so for a time," said one. "They struck me such blows across the ears that my cheeks swelled up,"

said another. "They trampled on my feet with their heavy nailed boots till I felt as though my toes were crushed beneath them.... There was a great crowd of students, both girls and boys. They slapped the girls over the ears, kicked them, and tumbled them in the corners. Some of them they took by the hair, jerking both sides of the face. Some of the boy students they fastened down with a rope till they had their heads fastened between their legs. Then they trampled them with their heavy boots, kicking them in their faces till their eyes were swelled and blood flowed."

Seventy-five persons, forty men and thirty-five girls, were confined in a small room. The door was closed, and the atmosphere soon became dreadful.

In vain they pleaded to have the door open. The girls were left until midnight without food or water. The men were removed at about ten in the evening.

During the day, the prisoners were taken one by one before police officials to be examined. Here is the narrative of one of the schoolgirls. This girl was dazed and almost unconscious from ill-treatment and the poisoned air, when she was dragged before her inquisitor.

"I was cross-questioned three times. When I went out to the place of examination they charged me with having straw shoes, and so beat me over the head with a stick. I had no sense left with which to make a reply. They asked:

"'Why did you wear straw shoes?'

"'The King had died, and whenever Koreans are in mourning they wear straw shoes,'

"'That is a lie,' said the cross-examiner. He then arose and took my mouth in his two hands and pulled it each way so that it bled. I maintained that I had told the truth and no falsehoods. 'You Christians are all liars,' he replied, taking my arm and giving it a pull.

"... The examiner then tore open my jacket and said, sneeringly, 'I congratulate you,' He then slapped my face, struck me with a stick until I was dazed and asked again, 'Who instigated you to do this? Did foreigners?'

"My answer was, 'I do not know any foreigners, but only the princ.i.p.al of the school. She knows nothing of this plan of ours!'

"'Lies, only lies,' said the examiner.

"Not only I, but others too, suffered every kind of punishment. One kind of torture was to make us hold a board at arm's length and hold it out by the hour. They also had a practice of twisting our legs, while they spat on our faces. When ordered to undress, one person replied, 'I am not guilty of any offence. Why should I take off my clothes before you?'

"'If you really were guilty, you would not be required to undress, but seeing you are sinless, off with your clothes,'"

He was a humorous fellow, this cross-examiner of the Chong-no Police Station. He had evidently learned something of the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. His way was first to charge the girls--schoolgirls of good family, mind you--with being pregnant, making every sort of filthy suggestion to them. When the girls indignantly denied, he would order them to strip.

"Since you maintain you have not sinned in any way, I see the Bible says that if there is no sin in you take off all your clothes and go before all the people naked," he told one girl. "Sinless people live naked."