Part 10

As the news spread through the country, the people of various districts assembled, particularly in the north, and started to march southwards to die in front of the palace as a protest. Thanks to the influence of the missionaries, many of them were stopped. "It is of no use your dying in that way," the missionaries told them. "You had better live and make your country better able to hold its own." A number of leading officials, including all the surviving past Prime Ministers, and over a hundred men who had previously held high office under the Crown, went to the palace, and demanded that the Emperor should openly repudiate the treaty, and execute those Ministers who had acquiesced in it. The Emperor tried to temporize with them, for he was afraid that, if he took too openly hostile an attitude, the Japanese would punish him. The memorialists sat down in the palace buildings, refusing to move, and demanding an answer. Some of their leaders were arrested by the Japanese gendarmes, only to have others, still greater men, take their place. The storekeepers of the city put up their shutters to mark their mourning.

At last a message came from the Emperor: "Although affairs now appear to you to be dangerous, there may presently result some benefit to the nation." The gendarmes descended on the petitioners and threatened them with general arrest if they remained around the palace any longer. They moved on to a shop where they tried to hold a meeting, but they were turned out of it by the police. Min Yong-whan, their leader, a former Minister for War and Special Korean Ambassador at Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, went home. He wrote letters to his friends lamenting the state of his country, and then committed suicide. Several other statesmen did the same, while many others resigned. One native paper, the Whang Sung Shimbun, dared to print an exact statement of what had taken place. Its editor was promptly arrested, and thrown into prison, and the paper suppressed. Its lamentation voiced the feeling of the country:--

"When it was recently made known the Marquis Ito would come to Korea our deluded people all said, with one voice, that he is the man who will be responsible for the maintenance of friendship between the three countries of the Far East (Japan, China, and Korea), and, believing that his visit to Korea was for the sole purpose of devising good plans for strictly maintaining the promised integrity and independence of Korea, our people, from the seacoast to the capital, united in extending to him a hearty welcome.

"But oh! How difficult is it to anticipate affairs in this world. Without warning, a proposal containing five clauses was laid before the Emperor, and we then saw how mistaken we were about the object of Marquis Ito's visit. However, the Emperor firmly refused to have anything to do with these proposals and Marquis Ito should then, properly, have abandoned his attempt and returned to his own country.

"But the Ministers of our Government, who are worse than pigs or dogs, coveting honours and advantages for themselves, and frightened by empty threats, were trembling in every limb, and were willing to become traitors to their country and betray to Japan the integrity of a nation which has stood for 4,000 years, the foundation and honour of a dynasty 500 years old, and the rights and freedom of twenty million people.

"We do not wish to too deeply blame Pak Che-sun and the other Ministers, of whom, as they are little better than brute animals, too much was not to be expected, but what can be said of the Vice-Prime Minister, the chief of the Cabinet, whose early opposition to the proposals of Marquis Ito was an empty form devised to enhance his reputation with the people?

"Can he not now repudiate the agreement or can he not rid the world of his presence? How can he again stand before the Emperor and with what face can he ever look upon any one of his twenty million compatriots?

"Is it worth while for any of us to live any longer? Our people have become the slaves of others, and the spirit of a nation which has stood for 4,000 years, since the days of Tun Kun and Ke-ja has perished in a single night. Alas! fellow-countrymen. Alas!"

Suicides, resignations, and lamentation were of no avail. The Japanese gendarmes commanded the streets, and the Japanese soldiers, behind them, were ready to back up their will by the most unanswerable of arguments--force.

Naturally, as might have been expected by those who know something of the character of the Japanese, every effort was made to show that there had been no breach of treaty promises. Korea was still an independent country, and the dignity of its Imperial house was still unimpaired. Japan had only brought a little friendly pressure on a weaker brother to assist him along the path of progress. Such talk pleased the Japanese, and helped them to reconcile the contrast between their solemn promises and their actions. It deceived no one else. Soon even, the Japanese papers made little or no more talk of Korean independence. "Korean independence is a farce," they said. And for the time they were right.

The Emperor did his utmost to induce the Powers, more particularly America, to intervene, but in vain. The story of his efforts is an interesting episode in the records of diplomacy.

Dr. Allen, the American Minister, wrote to his Secretary of State, on April 14, 1904, telling of the serious concern of the Korean Emperor over recent happenings. "He falls back in his extremity upon his old friendship with America.... The Emperor confidently expects that America will do something for him at the close of this war, or when opportunity offers, to retain for him as much of his independence as is possible. He is inclined to give a very free and favourable translation to Article I of our treaty of Jenchuan of 1882" (i.e., the pledge, "If other Powers deal unjustly or oppressively with either Government, the other will exert their good offices, on being informed of the case, to bring about an amicable arrangement, thus showing their friendly feeling").

In April, 1905, Dr. Allen transmitted to Washington copies of protests by an American missionary and certain Koreans against the conduct of Japanese subjects in Korea. Dr. Allen was shortly afterwards replaced by Mr. Edwin V. Morgan.

In October, 1905, the Emperor, determined to appeal directly to America, enlisted the services of Professor Homer B. Hulbert, editor of the Korea Review, who had been employed continuously in educational work in Seoul since 1886, and despatched him to Washington, with a letter to the President of the United States. Mr. Hulbert informed his Minister at Seoul of his mission and started off. The Japanese learned of his departure (Mr. Hulbert suggests that the American Minister may have informed them) and used every effort to force a decision before the letter could be delivered.

On the same day that Mr. Hulbert reached Washington the Korean Cabinet were forced to sign the document giving Japan a protectorate over their land. Formal notification had not yet, however, arrived at Washington, so it was resolved not to receive Mr. Hulbert until this had come.

"I supposed that the President would be not only willing but eager to see the letter," said Mr. Hulbert in a statement presented later to the Senate; "but instead of that I received the astounding answer that the President would not receive it. I cast about in my own mind for a possible reason, but could imagine none. I went to the State Department with it, but was told that they were too busy to see me. Remember that at that very moment Korea was in her death throes; that she was in full treaty relations with us; that there was a Korean legation in Washington and an American legation in Seoul. I determined that there was something here that was more than mere carelessness. There was premeditation in the refusal. There was no other answer. They said I might come the following day. I did so and was told that they were still too busy, but might come the next day. I hurried over to the White House and asked to be admitted. A secretary came out and without any preliminary whatever told me in the lobby that they knew the contents of the letter, but that the State Department was the only place to go. I had to wait till the next day. But on that same day, the day before I was admitted, the administration, without a word to the Emperor or Government of Korea or to the Korean Legation, and knowing well the contents of the undelivered letter, accepted Japan's unsupported statement that it was all satisfactory to the Korean Government and people, cabled our legation to remove from Korea, cut off all communication with the Korean Government, and then admitted me with the letter."

On November 25th Mr. Hulbert received a message from Mr. Root that

"The letter from the Emperor of Korea which you intrusted to me has been placed in the President's hands and read by him.

"In view of the fact that the Emperor desires that the sending of the letter should remain secret, and of the fact that since intrusting it to you the Emperor has made a new agreement with Japan disposing of the whole question to which the letter relates, it seems quite impracticable that any action should be based upon it."

On the following day Mr. Hulbert received a cablegram from the Emperor, which had been despatched from Chefoo, in order not to pass over the Japanese wires:--

"I declare that the so-called treaty of protectorate recently concluded between Korea and Japan was extorted at the point of the sword and under duress and therefore is null and void. I never consented to it and never will. Transmit to American Government. "THE EMPEROR OF KOREA."

Poor Emperor! Innocent simpleton to place such trust in a written bond. Mr. Root had already telegraphed to the American Minister at Seoul to withdraw from Korea and to return to the United States.

No one supposes that the Washington authorities were deceived by the statement of the Japanese authorities or that they believed for one moment that the treaty was secured in any other way than by force. To imagine so would be an insult to their intelligence. It must be remembered that Japan was at this time at the very height of her prestige. President Roosevelt was convinced, mainly through the influence of his old friend, Mr. George Kennan, that the Koreans were unfit for self-government. He was anxious to please Japan, and therefore he deliberately refused to interfere. His own explanation, given some years afterwards, was:

"To be sure, by treaty it was solemnly covenanted that Korea should remain independent. But Korea itself was helpless to enforce the treaty, and it was out of the question to suppose that any other nation, with no interest of its own at stake, would do for the Koreans what they were utterly unable to do for themselves."

There we have the essence of international political morality.

The letter of the Emperor of Korea to the President of the United States makes interesting reading:

"Ever since 1883 the United States and Korea have been in friendly treaty relations. Korea has received many proofs of the good will and the sympathy of the American Government and people. The American Representatives have always shown themselves to be in sympathy with the welfare and progress of Korea. Many teachers have been sent from America who have done much for the uplift of our people.

"But we have not made the progress that we ought. This is due partly to the political machinations of foreign powers and partly to our mistakes. At the beginning of the Japan-Russia war the Japanese Government asked us to enter into an alliance with them, granting them the use of our territory, harbours, and other resources, to facilitate their military and naval operations. Japan, on her part, guaranteed to preserve the independence of Korea and the welfare and dignity of the royal house. We complied with Japan's request, loyally lived up to our obligations, and did everything that we had stipulated. By so doing we put ourselves in such a position that if Russia had won, she could have seized Korea and annexed her to Russian territory on the ground that we were active allies of Japan.