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The chief danger to public tranquillity arises from the vigorous expansion of some peoples and the decay of others. Nearly all the great nations of Europe are expansive; but on their fringe lie other peoples, notably the Turks, Persians, Koreans, and the peoples of North Africa, who are in a state of decline or semi-anarchy.
Moreover, the Japanese themselves have to admit that there were inexcusable delays in paying for land seized from Koreans, and in view of all the circumstances it is questionable whether the Korean hatred or dislike of Japan will become very much less cordial than it is to-day.
It is generally supposed that the magatama represented a tiger's claw, which is known to have been regarded by the Koreans as an amulet.
According to reliable sources, the Korean population now amounts to over 200,000 which is more than the Chinese population itself. In 1909 an Agreement, known as the Tumen Kiang Boundary Agreement, was arrived at between China and Japan, who was then the acknowledged suzerain of Korea, dealing, inter alia, with the status of these Koreans.
Its old Government was corrupt, and deserved to fall. But its people, wherever they have had a chance, have demonstrated their capacity. In Manchuria hundreds of thousands of them, mostly fled from Japanese oppression, are industrious and prosperous farmers. In the Hawaiian Islands, there are five thousand Koreans, mainly labourers, and their families, working on the sugar plantations.
The first rallying-place of the malcontent Koreans was in a mountain district from eighty to ninety miles east of Seoul. Here lived many famous Korean tiger-hunters. They had conflicts with small parties of Japanese troops and secured some minor successes. When considerable Japanese reinforcements arrived they retired to some mountain passes further back.
On one occasion when I visited Sun-chon I found that the authorities had ordered some of the Christians to find accommodation in their homes for Japanese women of ill fame. Some Koreans in China sent a petition to the American Minister in Peking which dealt with some moral aspects of the Japanese rule of Korea.
The Koreans, for example, would have us believe that their civilization, based on letters and introduced by Kishi, is "four thousand years old" and contemporaneous with China's own, and that "the Koreans are among the oldest people of the world." The average modern Japanese wishes the date of authentic or official history projected as far back as possible.
There is little doubt, I suppose, that the Japanese will give the Koreans better government than the old monarchy gave them, but one cannot excuse all the methods by which Japan fastened her rule on the island.
Month after month, when stories of trouble came from the interior, the Korea Review endeavoured to give the best explanation possible for them, and to reassure the public. It was not until the editor was forced thereto by consistent and sustained Japanese misgovernment that he reversed his attitude. Foreign visitors of influence were naturally drawn to the Japanese rather than to the Koreans.
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