Chapter XVII: Korea Under Japanese Rule

Those of us who travel often wonder about the names by which we know countries and cities. Where do they come from? If you mentioned the name Korea to a Korean he would have no idea what you were talking about, unless he had studied English in school. It seems that centuries ago the word “Korai” was used for a while, but even that meant only a part of the peninsula. Our custom of calling all the people Koreans is much like that of the South Americans in calling all of us in the United States “Yankees,” even those who live in Virginia or Texas. The real name of the country is Chosen, which means “The Land of Morning Calm.” That has been the correct name of the peninsula for hundreds of years, yet the Japanese are having a hard time getting the rest of the world to accept it.

The Koreans themselves and the foreigners in Korea—who are mostly missionaries—have much trouble about names. This has come about in a curious way. The Koreans have a very old civilization. Most of that civilization they got from the Chinese, and much of it they passed on to the Japanese, centuries ago. Therefore all three of these peoples have the same written language, made up of the queer Chinese characters that you all have seen. Each character means one particular thing, but as there are no letters in it there is no way of telling by looking at it how it should be pronounced. So the Koreans, and the Chinese, and the Japanese all pronounce those characters to suit themselves, and while they can write to one another they cannot talk to one another at all. It is very amusing to see a Japanese and a Korean, or a Chinese and an Annamese (from French Indo-China), talking to each other by pretending to write characters with a forefinger in the palms of their hands. In fact many a Japanese servant tries to talk that way to Americans who cannot understand his spoken words.

Two Names for Each Town

Now when the Japanese came to Korea they found each city and town with a name of one or two Chinese characters. But the Koreans pronounced those characters one way and the Japanese quite another. So each race continues to give them its own pronunciation, and the names in the Japanese time-tables are often so entirely different from those by which the Koreans and the missionaries know the same places that the poor traveler might easily lose himself entirely. Thus the Japanese call Seoul “Keijo”; Chemulpo is “Jinsen” to them; Song-do is “Kaijo,” and so on through every city and town and province in the peninsula. I once asked an old American missionary if he had ever been in Heijo. “Never heard of it,” he replied. “Oh, come!” I could not help saying; “it is the second largest city in Korea.” “Oh,” exclaimed the missionary, “you mean Pingyang! Why of course, I have lived there most of my life.”

It is hardly flattering to us to know that the ancient nations of the Far East did not at all want to be introduced to us upstart people of the West. Japan, Korea, even China, had to be pried open like oysters before they would have anything to do with Occidentals (that is, Westerners). You remember that it was our Commodore Perry who induced Japan to open her ports to American trade and travelers in 1854. Well, it was the United States again that opened Korea to the world, by the Treaty of Chemulpo, as recently as 1883. It is not strange if in some ways the Koreans are still more different from the rest of the world than are the Japanese. Chosen was shut up so long and so thoroughly that it was once known as the Hermit Kingdom. There was a time when foreigners were not welcome. But nowadays they can travel anywhere in the peninsula just as safely as in their own country, more safely in fact than in some American cities after dark. The Koreans may not love the Japanese, and some of them may even dream of driving out the conquerors and regaining their independence, but they are learning so much about good government that they would never again allow themselves to be ruled as corruptly as they were under the old emperors. They know more about sanitation, too, and about reforesting their treeless hills, and they realize how much better it is to have good schools than bad.

The Japanese have done some foolish things in Korea, just as we have in our island possessions. They tried, for instance, to force the Korean men to cut off their topknots. The Japanese now admit this was a mistake. What does it matter, after all, how people wear their hair? To many foreigners it seems just as unnecessary for the Japanese to try to make all Koreans Shintoists, building Japanese temples and _torii_ (square arches of evergreen logs) all over the peninsula. For while Shintoism means patriotism, loyalty to the Mikado, it is also a religion. Religion cannot be forced upon people, and patriotism is not worth much if there is no feeling behind it. You stand up and take off your hat when “The Star-Spangled Banner” is played because you respect and love your country, not because a policeman might arrest you if you did not.

Some Japanese Improvements

Many Koreans already realize that Japanese rule has done them much good. They have good railroads, some good highways and bridges, modern streets, courts, and schools. Japanese and Korean policemen keep order in even the small towns. In Korea the Japanese find good commercial opportunities for their own people, but it should be said, in fairness, that the Koreans themselves now have better opportunities and are in less danger of being robbed of what they earn than they were under their old corrupt imperial government.

An old-fashioned Korean school is a sad place. The boys sit on the
floor and rock back and forth reciting the classics, which they do
not understand, from dawn until dark, while the teacher drowses or
smokes, and the flies swarm.
]

The difference between old Korea and the Chosen of Japan can quickly be seen in the two kinds of schools in the peninsula. You would be greatly interested to see one of the old-fashioned Korean schools, but you would certainly be glad you did not have to try to get an education there. Some such schools are still left, for a few old fathers in every large town think their boys should study the way they once did. These schools are miserable little hovels, with dirty floors and walls, swarming with flies in summer and bitterly cold in winter. The teacher squats at one end of the room, with a row of boys on the floor on either side. (Girls do not need an education, say old-time Koreans.)

The boys come as soon as it is daylight and usually stay until dark, seven days a week, with sometimes no recess at all. Each has a tissue-paper book filled with those intricate Chinese characters which it takes so many years to learn. The books are not on subjects such as American boys are interested in, but are ancient Chinese classics, older than our Bible. Yet the teacher does not teach them; he merely squats at the end of the room, smoking his long pipe and sometimes dozing off to sleep. The boys rock back and forth, each one shouting at the top of his voice the characters before him. They may all be shouting different ones, and most of the pupils may not know what the characters mean. The only requirement is to keep on shouting. If the deafening chorus dies down for a moment, the teacher wakes up and rushes at the boys with a stick until they begin to shout again.

You can hear one of these old-time Korean schools blocks away. Is it any wonder that the boys who came out into the sunlight for me to photograph them looked pale and tired, and bewildered with the constant uproar in which they were expected to learn? Every week or every month each boy must bring the teacher some money, for the town does not pay him, and the teacher must have something with which to buy his rice and tobacco and a new white grass-cloth suit now and then.

The Japanese schools in Korea, in contrast, are big modern brick buildings. They have seats and desks, and laboratories and gymnasiums, and the teaching is very much as it is in your own schools. It is true that the Japanese have not yet built enough such schools to care for all the Korean children who want to attend. These have to take what room is left after the Japanese boys and girls are provided for. The language of the classes is Japanese, too, rather than Korean. For these reasons the American and British missionaries insist that they also be allowed to have schools for the Koreans. The Japanese, however, are building more and more modern schools, the teachers being paid by the government, and they say that the time will come when all Korean children will have the same educational opportunities as the Japanese children.

The primary school at Antung, built and owned by the South Manchuria
Railway.
]