South Korea

“ Thanks in large measure to the veterans of the Korean War, South Korea today stands as a shining example of the economic and social benefits of democracy. As we observe the 50th anniversary of the Armistice, America looks forward to the day when the stability of the Korean Peninsula is built on peaceful reconciliation of North and South. ”

“ Thereafter, South Korea achieved rapid economic growth with per capita income rising to roughly 18 times the level of North Korea. In 1987, South Korean voters elected ROH Tae-woo to the presidency, ending 26 years of military dictatorships. South Korea today is a fully functioning modern democracy. In June 2000, a historic first North-South summit took place between the South's President KIM Tae-chung and the North's leader KIM Jong Il. ”

“ The partition disrupted the Korean economy because most of the mineral ores and most of the modern economic infrastructure that Japan had developed were in the north. Lacking an industrial base, the largely agricultural South needed massive foreign economic aid to survive. The South Koreans felt that the United States, having participated in the division of the country, was responsible for supporting them. The United States, therefore, was obliged to shoulder the burden of supporting the less naturally endowed but more populous South. ”

“ Ch‘oe asked, “Shall the king come out in his royal robes?” “By no means. He must come out dressed in blue.” This was because blue is the color corresponding to east, and was therefore appropriate for Korea, which has always been called the “East Country.” “Shall he come out the South Gate?” was the next question asked. “No, how can one who has done wrong come out the South Gate? He must come by way of the West Gate. After the surrender he will proceed to Seoul and he need fear no danger, for we have recalled all our foraging parties and no one will offer to molest him. ”

“ The Military Government in Korea, which is currently being turned over to American and Korean civilians, is the only government in South Korea. The immediate and primary objectives of the American Military Commander in Korea are to maintain law and order in the face of subversive uprisings in the American zone, to care for and safeguard American noncombatants and property, and to operate a military government which looks toward the future political independence of Korea together with its economic and social rehabilitation. ”

“ The strong paternalistic and authoritarian traditions of Korean governments, continued by the Japanese and to a remarkable degree by Rhee, inculcated a master-servant relationship between people and government. There had been little or no opportunity for political parties or even interest groups to mature and compromise. Neither has there been any sizable middle class with the interest, training, and opportunity to participate in public affairs. ”

“ Japan did much to modernize Korea even though this was done merely to modernize Korea, even though this was done merely to integrate the area into the Japanese Empire and to make it a strong jumping-off point for the later Japanese invasions of Manchuria and China proper. While Korea served primarily as a source of raw materials for Japan, agriculture and irrigation were greatly improved, lands reclaimed, and roads, railroads and harbors were built. ”

“ Agriculture—Over three-quarters of the total population of South Korea are farmers. The total area of land under cultivation in 1946 was 6,033,000 acres, or about 21⁄2 acres per farm household. Approximately 15 per cent of agricultural land was formerly owned by Japanese, but title thereto remains with the Military Government and will eventually pass to Koreans. In the projected land reforms an additional 60 per cent of land, which is tenant-operated, would be involved. ”

“ During the period of Japanese administration, the Korean economy was developed essentially as a complement to the Japanese economy. A substantial industrial complex developed in the northern part of the country based largely on local raw materials and power, but the southern part remained heavily agrarian in character and developed only a thin veneer of small-scale industry. The material benefits from such development, however, were largely monopolized by the Japanese. In manufacturing, for example, 90% of the capital and 80% of the skilled labor were Japanese ”

“ In 1894 an antiforeign rebellion led to Chinese and Japanese intervention and subsequently to the Sino-Japanese war. Victorious Japan forced China to abandon any claim to a special position in Korea. Conservative, anti-Japanese forces within the country then turned to Russia for support, and helped the Russians gain concessions for raw materials in northern Korea. The Russians helped Korea reorganize its finances and its army and then moved to acquire naval bases on the southeastern and southwestern corners of the peninsula. ”

“ With a splendid climate, an abundant, but not superabundant, rainfall, a fertile soil, a measure of freedom from civil war and robber bands, the Koreans ought to be a happy and fairly prosperous people. If “squeezing,” yamen runners and their exactions, and certain malign practices of officials can be put down with a strong hand, and the land tax is fairly levied and collected, and law becomes an agent for protection rather than an instrument of injustice, I see no reason why the Korean peasant should not be as happy and industrious as the Japanese peasant. ”

“ Can an honest and efficient Korean official class be secured, trained, and supported by the nation? Can that middle class—which is in all modern nations the source of the controlling economic and moral factors—be constituted out of the body of the Korean people? And, finally, can the great multitude, the Korean populace, be made more intelligent, law-abiding, and morally sound?
As to the purification of the Court at Seoul under the ex-Emperor, and so far as his influence could be extended—such a thing was found impossible by the Resident-General. ”

“ As I sat amidst the dirt, squalor, rubbish, and odd and endism of the inn yard before starting, surrounded by an apathetic, dirty, vacant-looking, open-mouthed crowd steeped in poverty, I felt Korea to be hopeless, helpless, pitiable, piteous, a mere shuttlecock of certain great powers, and that there is no hope for her population of twelve or fourteen millions, unless it is taken in hand by Russia, under whose rule, giving security for the gains of industry as well as light taxation, I had seen Koreans in hundreds transformed into energetic, thriving, peasant farmers in Eastern Siberia. ”

“ All classes of wrongs done the Koreans by the Japanese—important and trivial, real, exaggerated, or falsely claimed—are fast diminishing and are destined in time to be reduced to a minimum. The Korean Central Government is now more genuine, more intelligent, and more efficient—as distinguished from the mere wilfulness of the ex-Emperor—than it has ever been before. ”

“ On an “institution” so venerated and time-honored, and so bound up with Korean nationality (for the Korean, though remarkably destitute of true patriotism, has a strongly national instinct) , the decree of the 30th of December, 1895, practically abolishing the Top Knot, fell like a thunderbolt. The measure had been advocated before, chiefly by Koreans who had been in America, and was known to have Japanese support, and had been discussed by the Cabinet, but the change was regarded with such disgust by the nation at large that the Government was afraid to enforce it. ”

“ The Korean official is the vampire which sucks the lifeblood of the people. We had crossed the Tao-jol, the boundary between the provinces of Kyöng-hwi and Hwang-hai, and were then in the latter. Most officials of any standing live in Seoul for pleasure and society, leaving subordinates in charge, and as their tenure of office is very brief, they regard the people within their jurisdiction rather with reference to their squeezeableness than to their capacity for improvement.
Forty Japanese soldiers found a draughty shelter within the tumble-down buildings of the yamen. ”

“ The Korean has absolutely nothing to recommend him save his good nature. He is a standing warning to those who oppose progress. Some one has said that the answer to Confucianism is China; but the best and most completely damning answer is Korea."
Can Korea—such a people, with such rulers—be reformed and redeemed? Can her rulers be made to rule at least in some semblance of righteousness, as preparatory to its more perfect and substantial form ? Can the people learn to prize order, to obey law, and to respect human rights ? ”

“ Early in July the Japanese Minister handed the government a list of the reforms which it deemed necessary. As they were all incorporated in the reforms inaugurated a little later it is unnecessary to enumerate them here. Fifteen thousand Japanese troops had by this time landed on Korean soil and the capital was thoroughly invested. The prospects of peace seemed to be growing smaller each day. The people of Seoul fled in large numbers leaving their houses and all their effects except such as could be carried on their backs. Such was the terror that the very name of the Japanese inspired. ”

“ It is in the capital that the Korean feels the first stress of his unsought and altogether undesired contact with Western civilization, and resembles nothing so much as a man awaking from a profound [Pg 60] sleep, rubbing his eyes half-dazed and looking dreamily about him, not quite sure where he is.
Seoul is also the commercial centre of a country whose ideas of commerce are limited to huckstering transactions. All business is done there. All country shops are supplied with goods from Seoul. All produce not shipped from the treaty ports converges on Seoul. ”

“ The Korean Christians and their foreign leaders were favored by the Japanese Government with special protection when the mad and cruel Korean mob rose up, in veritable ancient fashion, to plunder and to murder atrociously, in spots favorable to such activity throughout the land. Thus in the emergency which, thanks to the wisdom of both kinds of reforming and restraining forces, was after all far less great than might have been expected, Korea made at comparatively small expense a great step forward toward the position of a truly civilized and prosperous nation. ”

“ Koreans have come hundreds of miles to sell their farms to a foreigner for a few cents each, simply that they might be under a foreigner's name, and so escape wanton seizure. During the year 1905 there was no such thing as justice for the Korean either from the private Japanese or from the officials. The military put their hands upon eight square miles of the most valuable land near Seoul simply for the building of barracks and parade grounds for twelve thousand men, when experts affirm that one-sixteenth of that space would have been ample. ”

“ It was generally understood that the right of Japanese and Western foreigners to reside in Seoul was based on the most favored nation clause in the treaties and that if the Chinese removed from Seoul the others could be compelled to do likewise. The Chinese, therefore, hoping, it is said, to secure more exclusive power in the capital by the removal of other foreigners began to agitate the question of removing all their nationals to Yong-san near the river three miles from Seoul. ”

“ The lofty crags that lift their heads three thousand feet into the air and almost overhang the city of Seoul are alpine in their grandeur. There is always distance, openness, sweep to a Korean view which is quite in contrast to the picturesque coziness of almost all Japanese scenery. This, together with the crystal atmosphere, make Korea, even after only a few years' residence, a delightful reminiscence. No people surpass the Koreans in love for and appreciation of beautiful scenery. ”

“ Korean, too, is the official yamen at the top of the hill, and Korean its methods of punishment, its brutal flagellations by yamen runners, its beating of criminals to death, their howls of anguish penetrating the rooms of the adjacent English mission, and Korean too are the bribery and corruption which make it and nearly every yamen sinks of iniquity. The gate with its double curved roofs and drum chamber over the gateway remind the stranger that though the capital and energy of Chemulpo are foreign, the government is native. ”

“ At first, and for a long time to come, it should be pretty strictly limited to fitting the Koreans themselves for a serviceable life, in Korea, and under the conditions, physical, social, and economic and political, of Korea. To educate—after the fashion followed too much by Great Britain in India—thousands of Korean babus, who thus become unfitted for the pressing needs of their country at this present day, and inclined to idleness rather than any hard and disagreeable but useful work, would be a mistake which neither the Government nor the Missions can afford to make. ”

“ As the Queen’s procession passed by on the day of the Duke of York’s marriage, I heard a workingman say, “It’s we as pays, and we likes to get the valey for our money.” The Korean pays in another and heavier sense, and as in tens of thousands he crowds in reverential silence the route of the Kur-dong, he is probably glad that the one brilliant spectacle of the year should be as splendid as possible.
The monotony of Seoul is something remarkable. Brown mountains “picked out” in black, brown mud walls, brown roofs, brown roadways, whether mud or dust, while humanity is in black and white. ”

“ Sometimes half a century passes without one, and then again they may follow each other by an interval of only a few years. Korean history shows that with the beginning of each new reign, or the inauguration of a new government policy, or under stress of some national calamity which has emptied the treasury, a readjustment of land values is likely to be ordered. ”