Korea's Fight for Freedom. Fred A. McKenzie
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attacked the new Premier, Hong Yung-sik, and slew him. The Korean soldiers seemed to disappear from the scene as soon as the real fighting started, but the students and the Japanese did valiantly. They claimed that they shot fully three hundred Chinese. The great gate of the palace still held, in spite of all attacks. But the ammunition of the defenders had at last all gone.
"Let us charge the Chinese with our bayonets," cried So. The Japanese captain joyfully assented. But Takezoi now asserted his authority. He pulled from his pocket his Imperial warrants giving him supreme command of the Japanese in Korea and read them to the captain. "The Emperor has placed you under my command," he declared. "Refuse to obey me and you refuse to obey your Emperor. I command you to call your men together and let us all make our way back to the Legation." There was nothing to do but obey.
While the Chinese were still hammering at the front gate, the Japanese and reformers crept quietly around by the back wall towards the Legation. The people in the building, hearing this mass of men approach in the dark, unlit street, thought that they were the enemy, and opened fire on them. A Japanese sergeant and an interpreter were shot down on either side of General So. Not until a bugle was sounded did the Japanese inside the building recognize their friends. The party staggered in behind the barricades worn out. So, who had not closed his eyes for four days, dropped to the ground exhausted and slept.
He did not awake until the next afternoon. He heard a voice calling him, and started up to find that the Japanese were already leaving. They had resolved to fight their way to the sea. "I do not know who it was called me," said So, afterwards. "Certainly it was none of the men in the Legation. I sometimes believe that it must have been a voice from the other world." Had he wakened five minutes later, the mob would have caught him and torn him to bits.
The Japanese blew up a mine, and, with women and children in the centre, flung themselves into the maelstrom of the howling mob. The people of Seoul were ready for them. They had already burned the houses of the Progressive statesmen, Kim, Pak, So and Hong. They tried, time after time, to rush the Japanese circle. The escaping party marched all through the night, fighting as it marched. At one point it had to pass near a Chinese camp. A cannon opened fire on it. At Chemulpo, the coast port twenty-seven miles from Seoul, it found a small Japanese mail steamer, the Chidose Maru. The Koreans who had escaped with the party were hidden. Before the Chidose could sail a deputation from the King arrived, disclaiming all enmity against the Japanese, but demanding the surrender of the Koreans. Takezoi seemed to hesitate, and the reformers feared for the moment that he was about to surrender them. But the pockmarked captain of the Chidose drove the deputation from the side of his ship, in none too friendly fashion, and steamed away.
The reformers landed in Japan, expecting that they would be received like heroes, and that they would return with a strong army to fight the Chinese. They did not realize that the revolutionist who fails must look for no sympathy or aid.
The Japanese Foreign Minister at first refused even to see them. When at last they secured an audience, he told them bluntly that Japan was not going to war with China over the matter. "We are not ready yet," said he. He then demanded of the reformers what they were going to do with themselves. This was too much for So Jai-pil. His seniors tried to restrain him, but in vain, "What way is this for Samurai to treat Samurai?" he hotly demanded. "We trusted you, and now you betray and forsake us. I have had enough of you. I am going to a new world, where men stand by their bonds and deal fairly with one another. I shall go to America."
A few weeks later he landed in San Francisco, penniless. He knew scarcely any English. He sought work. His first job was to deliver circulars from door to door, and for this he was paid three dollars a day. He attended churches and meetings to learn how to pronounce the English tongue. He saved money enough to enter college, and graduated with honours. He became an American citizen, taking a new form of his name, Philip Jaisohn. He joined the United States Civil Service and in due course was made a doctor of medicine by Johns Hopkins University. He acquired a practice at Washington, and was lecturer for two medical schools. Later on, he was recalled to his native land.
The Korean reformers themselves saw, later on, the folly of their attempt. "We were very young," they say. They were the tools of the Japanese Minister, and they had inherited a tradition of political life which made revolt seem the natural weapon by which to overthrow your enemies. They learned wisdom in exile, and some of them were subsequently to reach high rank in their country's service.
There is a sequel to this story. The King and the Court regarded Kim Ok-kiun as the unpardonable offender. Other men might be forgiven, for after all attempted revolts were no novelties. But there was to be no forgiveness for Kim.
A price was put on his head. Assassins followed him to Japan, but could find no opportunity to kill him. Then a plot was planned and he was induced to visit Shanghai. He had taken great pains to conceal his visit, but everything had been arranged ahead for him. Arriving at Shanghai he was promptly slain, and his body was carried in a Chinese war-ship to Chemulpo. It was cut up, and exhibited in different parts of the land as the body of a traitor. The mortified Japanese could do nothing at the time.
Years passed. The Japanese now had control of Korea. One of the last things they did, in 1910, before contemptuously pushing the old Korean Government into limbo, was to make it issue an Imperial rescript, restoring Kim Ok-kiun, Hong Yung-sik and others—although long dead—to their offices and honours, and doing reverence to their memory.[1]
[Footnote 1: Curiosity may be felt about my authority for many of the particulars supplied in this chapter. Accounts published by foreigners living at Seoul at the time are of use as giving current impressions, but are not wholly to be relied on for details. A very interesting official report, based on information supplied by the King, is to be found in the unpublished papers of Lieutenant George C. Foulk, U.S. Naval Attaché at Seoul, which are stored in the New York Public Library. A valuable account from the Japanese point of view was found among the posthumous papers of Mr. Fukuzawa (in whose house several of the exiles lived for a time) and was published in part in the Japanese press in 1910. I learned the conspirators' side directly from one of the leading actors in the drama.]
III
THE MURDER OF THE QUEEN
"We are not ready to fight China yet," said the Japanese Foreign Minister to the impetuous young Korean. It was ten years later before Japan was ready, ten years of steady preparation, and during that time the real focus of the Far Eastern drama was not Tokyo nor Peking, but Seoul. Here the Chinese and Japanese outposts were in contact. Here Japan when she was ready created her cause of war.
China despised Japan, and did not think it necessary to make any real preparations to meet her. The great majority of European experts and of European and American residents in the Far East were convinced that if it came to an actual contest, Japan would stand no chance. She might score some initial victories, but in the end the greater weight, numbers and staying power of her monster opponent must overwhelm her.
The development of Korea proceeded slowly. It seemed as though there were some powerful force behind all the efforts of more enlightened Koreans to prevent effective reforms from being carried out The Japanese were, as was natural the most numerous settlers in the land, and their conduct did not win them the popular affection. Takezoi's disastrous venture inflicted for a time a heavy blow on Japanese prestige. The Japanese dead lay unburied in the streets for the dogs to eat. China was momentarily supreme. "The whole mass of the people are violently pro-Chinese in their sentiments," the American representative stated in a private despatch to his Government, "and so violently anti-Japanese that it is impossible to obtain other than a volume of execrations and vituperations against them when questioned," A semi-official Japanese statement that their Minister and his troops had gone to the palace at the King's request, to defend him, made the matter rather worse.
The affair would have been more quickly forgotten but for the overbearing attitude of Japanese settlers towards the Korean people, and of Japanese Ministers