"Surely God Will Work Out Their Salvation:" Protestant Missionaries in the March First Movement

<< Surely God Will Work Out Their Salvation:"1 Protestant Missionaries in the March First Movement Donald N. Clark Part I: The Missionaries and the Japanese There are unmistakable signs that the independence manifesto and other similar documents . . . were prepared at residences of the missionaries and in churches or in hospitals ... in collusion with these missionaries. Advantages were being taken of liberal treatment accorded these persons by the authorities. Opinion is gaining vigorous growth among influential Japanese in Korea that deportation of these undesirable foreigners should be demanded and their misdeeds laid before the world.2 The participation of Korean Christians in the March First Independence Movement is a recognized fact. The contribution of foreign missionaries to the movement is another question. As the passage above from the Jiji newspaper suggests, many Japanese believed that the missionaries were prime perpetrators of the uprising. On the other hand, the missionaries have always denied foreknowledge of the movement and have insisted that their involvement was limited to protecting Koreans from the brutality of the Japanese gendarmes. The missionaries faced a dilemma. If Japanese colonial rule in Korea was legitimate, then the uprising was a political matter and therefore none of their business. However, they saw the behavior of the Japanese in suppressing the movement as an affront to human rights. Could moral people be neutral when confronted with the spectacle of armed police fighting unarmed demonstrators, particularly members of their faith who were being singled out because they were Christians? Or were they called to witness and intervene?3 A distinction should be drawn between planning the movement and reacting to it. There is no evidence that the missionaries helped organize MISSIONARIES IN THE MARCH FIRST MOVEMENT43 it. The most frequently cited case of prior knowledge is that of Frank Schofield of Severance Hospital, who was asked by his friend Yi Kaps ông to take pictures of the movement as it began at Pagoda Park. Ku Dae-yeol has found that a few other Westerners had hints of the uprising before it happened and actually behaved in supportive ways. But these were merely cases of limited knowledge. They did not constitute conspiracy .4 However, once the movement was in progress, and the Japanese were using bayonets and firemen's hooks on the Koreans, the missionaries took a more active stance. They sheltered student demonstrators. They looked the other way when their facilities were used by Korean activists. They documented the atrocities with photographs and depositions . And they tried to shame the Japanese by protesting to anyone who would give them a hearing: local officials, consuls, reporters, newspaper editors in other countries, and people back home. Their actions may have helped move the Japanese toward a more conciliatory policy in Korea. On the other hand, the record does not indicate that they really supported the goal of Korean independence from Japan. Their witness was aimed at stopping the brutality and ensuring religious freedom. Although Frank Schofield is remembered as the honorary "thirty-fourth signer" of the independence declaration, there are few signs that the missionaries were aiming to end Japanese rule. ATTITUDES OF THE MISSIONARIES IN KOREA To understand missionary attitudes toward the Japanese, it is instructive to go back to the turn of the century and review some of the prevailing opinions about Korea at that time. In the process, it is necessary to reflect upon who the missionaries were and what they wanted to see happen in Korea. In 1919 the Protestant missionary community in Korea consisted of approximately four hundred persons from the United States, Canada, Australia, and Britain. The Catholic missionary community was much smaller, numbering around fifty, from a variety of European countries.5 The work of the Protestants had begun in 1884-85, with the arrival of the American pioneers Horace Allen, Horace Underwood, and Henry G. Appenzeller. Their goal was to establish a Christian community of churches on the peninsula and eventually, perhaps after generations, to withdraw and leave the church in self-supporting Korean hands. They came to a country which they appraised as being in wretched condition, ruled by a yangban class whose Confucian ethics were a corrupt facade.6 "Behold Korea," wrote the editor of the Korean Repository in 1895, "with her oppressed masses, her general poverty, her treacherous and The P'yongyang Presbyterian Station 'One-Sixth of a Square Mile of Missionary Activity" (120 acres) The P'yongyang Presbyterian Station 1.Entrance to Compound23. 2.Union Christian Hospital24. 3.West Gate Church25. 4.Seminary Administration Build-26. ing and Dormitories27. 5.Dr. Engel's Home28. 6.Dr. Clark's Home 7.Dr. Robb's Home29. 8.Dr. Reynolds's Home30. 9.Dr. Parker's Home31. 10.Domestic Science Building, Girls' Academy32. 11.Administration Building, Girls'33. Academy 12.Miss Snook's Home and Girls'34. Academy Dormitory35. 13.YM.C.A. Residence36. 14.Men's Bible Institute37. 15.Mr. Hamilton's Home38. 16.Mr. Lutz's Home39. 17.Dr. Swallen's Home 18.Dr. Blair's Home40. 19.Dr. Roberts's Home 20.Mr. Hill's Home41. 21.Dr. Bernheisel's Home 22.Women's Bible Institute Mr. Philips's Home Mr. Mowry's Home Lady Workers' Home Dr. Bigger's Home Dr. McCune's Home Miss Doriss' Home and Lula Wells Institute Dr. Moffett's Home Foreign School Teachers' Home Foreign School Dormitories and Infirmary Mr. Reiner's Home Foreign School and Athletic Field Dr. Baird's Home Mr. McMurtrie's Home Anna Davis Industrial Shops Boys' Academy Building Union Christian College Library Union Christian College Science Hall Union Christian College Main Building and Dormitory Union Christian College Auditorium and Gymnasium At one time the station housed a Women's Bible Institute (150 students), Women 's Higher Bible School (50 students), Women's Industrial School (100 students ), Primary and High School for Missionary Children (100 students), Girls' Academy (280 students), Boys' Academy (570 students), Presbyterian Theological Seminary (120 students), and Union Christian Men's College (150 students). The local congregation had 1,500 members (2,000 at Sunday School). There were 15 churches in the city and 15,000 Christians, and 313 churches in the province and 32,789 Christians (with 697 Sunday Schools drawing 45,437 students). Union Hospital treated 13,000 patients, with four missionary and five Korean doctors. 46CLARK cruel officers, her dirt and filth, her degraded women, her blighted families —behold all this and judge for yourselves what Confucianism has done for Korea."7 Naturally the yangban shunned them—because they were foreign, heterodox in values, and heedless of social propriety. GROWTH OF THE PROTESTANT CHURCH At the turn of the century, "modernization" was still very much a foreign notion in Korea. Events, however, had stirred in the Korean people an appetite for change. The Tonghak Rebellion was evidence of this, as was the growth of the Christian church.8 The Protestant missionaries sensed how history seemed to be setting the stage for modernization, and they felt themselves to be on the leading edge of change in the peninsula. The Japanese were likewise interested in change, but their leadership was imposed by force. The missionaries offered modernization voluntarily, in the form of education and religon. Based in towns called "stations," on compounds purchased for them by their mission boards, they taught classes, won converts, founded churches, and trained church workers. Their establishments sometimes were impressive, as the illustration of the P'yongyang Presbyterian station shows,5 both as to their location (invariably on high ground) and their buildings, which included schools, hospitals , churches with spires, and Western-style red brick homes, sometimes roofed Korean-style but furnished and equipped inside in the Western manner. Though there were some good reasons for maintaining this standard of living, it all served as a dramatic advertisement for Christianity , Western ideals, materialism, and modernization—not necessarily in that order.10 By 1910 the missionaries could point to a record of steady growth in the number of converts and the number of institutions which were turning out educated young Christians. There were imbalances in the growth: the northwest centering on P'yongyang led the way, while the work in the south and in the more cosmopolitan centers of Seoul and Pusan lagged. There are many theories to explain the rapid growth of the church in the P'yöngan provinces. Spencer Palmer contends that there were two main factors, alienation and fright: Northerners felt alienated from the south and particularly from the yangban-dommated Seoul government , whose discrimination against them had helped spark the 1811 Hong Kyöng-nae revolt and still lingered as a major grievance; and they were frightened by the experience of watching the Japanese win modern battles with the Chinese and Russians in the suburbs." The fact that the Western missionaries and their Christian religion were not part of these ills but offered ideals and a strong community instead, helped stimulate the growth of the church alongside the events of the Japanese annexation MISSIONARIES IN THE MARCH FIRST MOVEMENT47 between 1900 and 1910. Thus in the single year 1900, membership grew by 30 percent, a growth rate typical of the decade to follow. 12 With the establishment of the Japanese protectorate in 1905, many Koreans looked for ways to express their grief and anger at their country 's sinking fortunes. Some took to the hills to fight in the Righteous Armies, or üibyöngdae. Some joined secret societies. Others became Christians. One missionary explained this period in terms of opportunity for the church: "Many are realizing the failure of the ancient civilization of their fathers in the stress of the twentieth century. They see that the nations styled Christian are the ones that today possess the highest civilization and culture.'"3 While the Japanese were tightening their control, church growth accelerated. In 1907 a major revival spread across Korea from the churches of P'yongyang, quickening church growth at an astonishing rate. By the time of the annexation in 1910 there were more than 173,000 Protestant adherents, three-fourths of them Presbyterians .14 Thus the growth of the church was related to the annexation, and although certain missionaries such as Homer Hulbert spoke out against Korea's loss of independence, others were willing to praise the Japanese for their accomplishments and plans for Korean modernization. Politically seasoned churchmen were inclined to make the best of Japanese rule in Korea. For example, James Scarth Gale at first readily accepted it.15 Horace H. Underwood began his missionary career in 1916 by studying Japanese in Tokyo, in order to be able to deal more effectively with the authorities in Seoul. Arthur Judson Brown, the New York-based Presbyterian Board Secretary, was an admirer of Ito Hirobumi and argued that Japanese rule was potentially a blessing for Korea.16 MISSIONARIES AND THE JAPANESE In 1910 most foreigners in Korea hoped that Japanese rule would mean a safer, more stable environment in which to carry on their work. There were a few practical concerns, such as rights to land ownership and the future of extraterritoriality in Korea.17 The land ownership issue was not resolved until after 1919, when the Japanese agreed to recognize clear titles to foreign-owned land provided that the owners organized themselves as juridical persons [zaidan höjin] under Japanese law. This meant that for years mission land had to be registered in the names of individuals , which raised difficulties when there were furloughs or retirements. In place of extraterritoriality, which the Japanese absolutely refused to continue , the Government-General agreed to carry on under its direct supervision any legal action involving foreigners in Seoul. These ad-hoc arrangements were a clue that the Japanese wanted the missions kept on 48CLARK a short tether. The Government-General said in effect: "Trust us and work with us." Some missionaries were inclined to do so in any case; others did so grudgingly and kept up their guard. MISSIONARIES AND THE TDEA OF COLONIAL RULE In testing the attitudes of the missionary community in the years just prior to the independence movement, it is necessary to reflect on the special contradictions of missionary work in Korea. Korea missionaries were a third party and not part of the occupation force, but they were used to colonialism. The United States had just taken the Philippines, and the era was full of talk about the good which would come of American rule there. To reject as immoral Japanese colonial rule, or tutelage, was to deprecate the civilizing mission of the United States in the Philippines .18 Since the missionaries' very careers were premised on their belief in the Koreans' need to be improved and uplifted, they could hardly have objected to the Japanese coming to join them in the enterprise. The Japanese , for their part, hoped to enlist the cooperation of the missionaries by emphasizing the congruence of aims and assuring them that their work could go on without hindrance. As Governor-General Terauchi Masatake put it a few days after the annexation in 1910: Freedom of religion will always be respected and I am ready to extend due protection and facilities to the propagation of all religious doctrines, provided they do not interfere with politics. I am one of those who fully appreciate the good work of foreign missionaries, and as we have the same object in view as they, the improving of the general conditions of the people, their work will by no means be subject to any inconvenience. I need scarcely say that all the vested rights of foreign residents will be fully respected. " After the annexation, the cooptation of the missionaries fell to the foreign affairs section of the Government-General Secretariat. This office was headed by a succession of urbane, English-speaking Japanese officials who were skilled at soothing the sensibilities of Western missionaries and their consuls. As they dealt with various protests and legal issues they showed great patience and even personal kindness. Holding that the Government -General welcomed the help of the missionaries in uplifting aind civilizing the Korean people, they encouraged the Biblical view of politics as taken from the Apostle Paul's letter to the Romans, 13:1-3: Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct but to bad. MISSIONARIES IN THE MARCH FIRST MOVEMENT49 In this spirit most of the missionaries adjusted to Japanese rule and recognized the Government-General's special toleration. Much of the time they got along well. For example, when it was discovered that there was no licensing category for Western missionary doctors, Foreign Affairs Bureau Chief Komatsu Midori and American Consul-General Ransford Miller worked out an exception to permit them to continue their work. Likewise in 1915, when new regulations were applied to missionary nurses, Miller and Komatsu had an English-language examination drawn up for them. The best solution to many of the conflicts between the missionaries and the Japanese apparently was teamwork involving the consular offices in Seoul, and much good was accomplished when they all worked together.20 SEOUL JAPANESE AND LOCAL JAPANESE: A CONTRAST Unfortunately the experience of the Westerners in Seoul was not typical of their experience with Japanese officials in the provinces. If the top officials of the Foreign Affairs bureau could be reasonable and even magnanimous, in the provinces the Japanese officials and their Korean assistants could be endlessly petty and tyrannical. In some locales they seemed to want to invent ways to frustrate missionary work. Worse, they were often obnoxious in enforcing minor registration requirements for household members and overnight guests. At the post office they might hold up a letter or incoming package for inspection, or summon the recipient for questioning. They might take months to renew a driver's license which could be had in Seoul within half an hour. Such cases required investigations, and investigations involved endless questioning, typical rudeness, and maddening time lost. Local officials were especially creative in employing discretionary powers. A gendarme might turn up at a clinic and demand that the Red Cross flag be taken down.21 A student might be interrogated about spy equipment in a missionary's home. An investigator might demand a list of the publications being received at the missionary compound. The police might order the missionaries not to slaughter any of the compound hogs for food without first obtaining a meat inspector's license.22 A detective might listen in on a missionary's classes and report the Bible stories as anti-Japanese allusions, thereby setting off a police investigation .23 Most of these potential problems could be solved with a trip to Seoul. Their only significance lay in their nuisance value. The missionaries were never allowed to forget that they were a third party in Korea, present only so long as it pleased the Japanese authorities to let them stay. 50CLARK CONFLICTS BETWEEN MISSIONARIES AND THE JAPANESE IN THE ICIOS While the missionaries were learning to get along with the Japanese , there were two episodes or issues which developed into confrontations with the Government-General. One was the so-called Conspiracy Case of 1911-15, in which the government accused a group of Koreans, mainly Christians, of fomenting rebellion and plotting to assassinate Governor-General Terauchi. The plot allegedly centered on the Hugh O'Neill Academy in Sönch'ön, where George S. McCune was the principal , and included him as an instigator. Though McCune and his students were eventually exonerated, six adults were sent to prison for several years, including Yun Ch'i-ho, a leading Methodist layman. The trial, which brought out the fact that confessions had been extracted by torture , turned into an international media event and a considerable embarrassment to the Government-General. In 1915 even the six were granted amnesty, but not before everyone had seen that the Japanese were watching the Christian community closely and that many colonial officials regarded the church as a hotbed of sedition.24 The other episode was the missionaries' response to the Government -General's Educational Ordinance of 1911 and regulations of 1915, the basic laws covering schools and curriculum. The missionaries had built a network of church-related elementary schools across Korea. In the absence of a comprehensive public education system these served an important function. Their basic purpose was to create enough literacy so that Korean Christians could read the Bible in simple han 'gui. The teachers were church members who could read, but they did not have any systematic normal school training. Some schools were better than others, but there were no standards for teacher certification and no consistent plan for teaching. The two elements present in all mission school curricula were simply first, literacy, and second, religion. The Japanese educational ordinances decreed that the government would not grant certificates of graduation to the students of schools which did not conform to government standards of teacher training and curriculum. This automatically disqualified the Christian schools, whose teachers were uncertified Koreans and whose main textbook was the Bible. It also tended to make mission school education a second choice for parents and students. Some missionaries saw the Japanese rules as a direct attack on their work and refused to comply with them. The Government-General offered them a ten-year grace period, at the end of which they either had to conform or close. Some missions—the Methodists at Paejae Academy, for example—dutifully went about upgrading their schools and dropped MISSIONARIES IN THE MARCH FIRST MOVEMENT51 religion classes from the daily routine. Others got around the ordinance by convening religion classes outside the normal daily schedule. The Presbyterians, however, insisted on keeping religion in the daily schedule . They held that the raison d'être for mission schools was Bible teaching , and they vowed to close before giving that up. Some Japanese and Koreans took this attitude to be more than a matter of schooling: it was an impressive defiance of Japanese authority. A few Presbyterian schools were forced to close immediately. The others made plans to close in ten years, at the end of the grace period.25 Such was the background to the missionaries' reaction to the March First Independence Movement in 1919. The Japanese had begun by promising them that there would be freedom of religion in Korea as there was in Japan proper. But before long it became clear that not all freedoms guaranteed by the Meiji constitution were to be given to the Koreans. Instead the Japanese felt obliged to rule by force in Korea, and they expected the Western missionaries to help make the Koreans good imperial subjects. The Conspiracy Case and the confrontation over educational regulations proved that the Japanese saw some (if not all) foreign missionaries as potential troublemakers. The missionaries reciprocated with a view of Japan as Korea's (and to some extent their own) oppressor. Thus the stage was set for conflict. Part II: The Samil Movement and After After dinner on Thursday, February 27, 1919, Robert Grierson was reading at home in the Canadian Mission compound in Söngjin, North Hamgyöng Province, when he heard a knock at the door. A group of elders had come looking for a safe place to discuss a "secret matter." Since they were friends, Grierson invited them in. The "secret matter" turned out to be a cryptic message from the capital that there was soon to be "movement." Since the elders could not divine what the message was all about, they appointed a delegation to go to Seoul to learn more. Two days later, when demonstrations broke out in Söngjin, a startled Robert Grierson realized that his home had been used as the site of a political conspiracy.26 The next day, February 28, in Seoul, Dr. Frank Schofield of Severance Hospital was visited by his colleague Yi Kap-söng. There was to be a demonstration the next day at Pagoda Park, said Yi. Would Schofield agree to stand across the street with his camera and photograph the event for posterity? Schofield agreed to be there. Thus began his informal career as photographic witness to the Independence Movement.27 On Saturday, March 1, at the boys' school on the Presbyterian compound in P'yongyang, the auditorium was full for the long-sched- 52CLARK uled memorial service for Emperor Kojong. The text was 1 Peter 3:1317 , which begins, "Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is right? But even if you do suffer for righteousness' sake, you will be blessed." Kim Son-du intoned the passage, as Charles Bernheisel wrote later, and "it was evident from his intonation as he read that something serious was on the docket. Then Chong Il-sun, a graduate of the college . . . took the platform and said he had an important communication to read. He said it was the happiest and proudest day of his life . . . a great cheer went up from the audience. He then proceeded to read what was virtually a declaration of independence of the Korean people."28 Later that afternoon, Bernheisel and several others took a walk down the main road toward town. "After walking for some distance ... I happened to look behind us and found that we were leading a long procession. As soon as we had quit the school grounds the crowd . . . unknown to us, had fallen in behind us and we were thus in the position of leading the procession down the main street of the city. I told the brethren that we must not continue in this position, and they agreed, so we scooted off into an alley and allowed the crowd to follow other leaders."2' In Seoul at Chösen Christian College (now Yönsei), staff members Bliss Billings, Herbert Owens, and Arthur Becker had been hearing that there was to be an independence campaign of some kind. All three of them had warned their Korean students and friends not to participate, because there was likely to be violence. When Owens heard about the plans he called them "madness." Becker went so far as to recommend against using Pagoda Park, since it would be dangerous to confront the Japanese police in an enclosed area.30 In these ways a handful of Westerners in Korea learned in advance of the independence movement. They were not sure what was brewing, nor did they grasp the scale of what was being planned. Many rumors had been in the air since the death of Emperor Kojong on January 22, prompting Consul-General Leo Bergholz to remind the Americans in his jurisdiction to be extra careful not to do anything which might look political. Most of the missionaries were trying to oblige.31 THE LINK WITH THE MISSIONARIES When it developed on March First that sixteen out of the thirtythree signers of the declaration of independence were Christians, the Japanese naturally suspected that the foreign missionaries had taken some part in staging the movement. Signer KiI Sön-ju, for example, was the foremost Presbyterian minister in P'yongyang, as close as a brother to Samuel A. Moffett, the unofficial "pope" of the station, whom the Christians were said to obey "as they would Jesus himself."32 No fewer MISSIONARIES IN THE MARCH FIRST MOVEMENT53 than eleven of the sixteen Christians who signed the declaration were ordained ministers, former students of missionaries in the Presbyterian and Methodist Theological Seminaries. Pak Hüi-do of the YMCA had actually discussed the movement with Americans at Chösen Christian College and Yi Kap-söng had enlisted various kinds of help from O. R. Avison and Frank Schofield at Severance Hospital.33 That the missionaries had had no influence on the movement was hardly to be believed. For the Japanese, the outside agitator theory was a good place to start the investigation. It was "the most convenient way of accounting for the otherwise inexplicable dissatisfaction of the Koreans with the Japanese regime,"34 at least until some way could be found to explain the uprising to the high command in Japan. The precedents were there. The Conspiracy Case and the foot-dragging over school regulations had proven the missionaries' hostility. There was also the fact that the missionaries were mainly Americans . Many Koreans in the March First Movement apparently believed that President Woodrow Wilson was personally interested in the cause of Korean independence, which made his name a red flag to the authorities. The manifesto calling people to demonstrate on March First declared Wilson the champion of the movement. Yamagata Isaburö, the Civil Governor, blamed Wilson's Fourteen Points for stirring up the Koreans. Home Affairs Director Usami Katsuo accused Wilson of telling some visiting Koreans that the world would not listen to their case for independence as long as things were quiet on the peninsula.35 There were petitions for Wilson's active intervention, such as the schoolgirls' petition which closed, "Mr. Wilson, President of Great America, we look on you as a father. 'Hear our declaration of independence and tell it to the world,' is our prayer."36 And there were the Wilson rumors: that he was about to arrive in an airship to lead the Koreans' fight for independence ,37 or that he was about to land at Inch'on with an army to liberate the peninsula.38 In fact there was such a cult of Wilson in Korea that the Japanese had to cut his pictures out of newsreels "as they evoke much enthusiasm among the Koreans in the audience."39 Missionaries therefore absorbed some of the hostility against Wilson along with the blame for allegedly inciting the Koreans to revolt. But no smoking gun was ever found. The closest thing was an unauthenticated report that investigators had discovered the English original of the declaration of independence in a missionary's papers.40 GOVERNMENT CONSULTATIONS WITH THE MISSIONARIES While the police tried to determine how missionaries were involved in the movement, ministry-level officials of the Government-General in Seoul tried to get the foreigners' perspective on events, in a series of 54CLARK meetings which began on March 9 at the Chösen Hotel. The officials asked the senior members of the Presbyterian and Methodist missions and the YMCA for their opinions as to the cause of the uprising. The foreigners responded with a seventeen-page brief entitled "An Opinion of Missionaries as to What Changes are Desirable in the Existing Laws and in the Attitude of the Government Toward the Christian Church and Mission Work in Korea." The brief was self-interested in that it argued for fewer restrictions on mission work, less surveillance of Korean Christians , less government regulation for mission schools, and more freedom for foreigners to own property. The most political point in the document was a plea for an end to preferential education opportunities for Japanese children in Korea.41 The brief avoided comment about the independence movement and its causes, on grounds that the missionaries were entitled to comment only on religious liberty. But their attitudes about other freedoms came out during the discussions. When asked by Home Affairs Director Usami Katsuo about the root causes of the rebellion, James Scarth Gale suggested two: the oppression of military rule and the misguided policy of assimilation. When asked how it was possible that the missionaries had not been asked to help organize the movement, Gale offered his opinion that in fact the missionaries were seen as useless by the planners, and further , that Korean Christians had been trying to protect them from guilty knowledge. The missionaries insisted that they sincerely wanted to steer clear of political affairs. In time Usami, like most senior Government-General officials, came to accept the missionaries' professions of innocence.42 But that was not enough. In the meetings of March 22 and 29, the Japanese began trying to recruit the missionaries into restraining the Koreans and bringing them under control. As Education Minister Sekiya put it on March 22 to a group which included Moffett, Gale, and Brockman: "Is it not time to act and tell them to obey as Paul told the Romans?"43 To this the missionaries responded with perfect innocence again, claiming that to intervene on the government's behalf would be no more legal than to participate on the side of the independence movement.44 The meetings foundered on this obstacle, with the Japanese officials frustrated by the missionaries' lack of cooperation and the missionaries continuing to claim neutrality while harboring sympathies for the Koreans. MISSIONARIES AND THE JAPANESE PRESS If the top officials in Seoul treated the missionaries civilly, such was not the case with the Japanese vernacular press in Korea. On March 10 the Chösen Shimbun characterized them as follows: MISSIONARIES IN THE MARCH FIRST MOVEMENT55 If one enquires into their learning, their personality, their character, they are failures from home, given a paltry three hundred gold dollars, sent out all the way to the three provinces of Korea. . . . As was expected, it is they who have planned the present disorder. Then inciting the ignorant mob which constitutes the Ch'öndogyo followers, disturbances have been planned which have now unexpectedly taken a wrong turn.45 The same paper offered this opinion of the Presbyterian establishment in P'yongyang: Outside the West Gate of P'yongyang there are some houses—some of brick, some in the Korean style—some high and some low. These are the houses of the foreigners. There are about 100 of them. Outwardly they manifest love and mercy but if their minds were investigated, they would be found to be filled with intrigue and greed. They pretend to be here for preaching but they are secretly stirring up political disturbances and foolishly keep passing on the vain tales of the Koreans and thereby foster trouble. These are really the homes of devils. . . . This is the center of the present Korean uprising. We feel certain it is in the church schools—a certain college and a certain girls school in a certain compound of these foreigners—really this community is very vile.46 WHAT THE MISSIONARIES DID AFTER MARCH FIRST With the violent reaction of the Japanese soldiers, gendarmes, and police against the demonstrators and the counterviolence of Koreans against the Japanese and their Korean hirelings in the police forces, the missionaries were shocked into a de facto stance of sympathy for the Koreans. "The civilized world," they said, "has fought a four years war with incalculable expenditure of blood and treasure to stamp out in the West the kind of thing that is going on here today. Can any intelligent consistent individual to whom the words Belgium and Armenia have become poignant synonyms for outraged humanity condone the same atrocities in Korea?"47 Acting out of personal motives which probably included revenge and spite as well as mercy and sympathy, they sheltered demonstrators, treated the wounded, posted bail for arrested students, took depositions from wounded demonstrators in the hospitals, photographed their injuries, and bore witness to the entire affair in letters home, protests and depositions to their consulates, protests to the government itself, and news dispatches to papers in China, Japan, and the West. In these ways they helped to expose the excesses of Japanese rule in Korea and almost certainly contributed to the end of military rule. FIRST REACTIONS—SHELTERING A primary reaction of the missionaries to the outbreak of demonstrations on March First was to protect their students by barring their participation. Helen Kim recalled how Lulu Frey, principal of Ewha 56CLARK Girls' School in Chöng-dong, "stood by the bolted gate facing [us] with her arms outstretched to make sure that none would pass. 'Well, girls, you will go out over my dead body,' she said."48 Like other missionary teachers Miss Frey suffered the indignity of having her students disobey her direct orders: the girls simply vaulted the walls of the school yard. Attempts to stop students at other mission schools were no more successful . The next question was whether and how to help demonstrators when they were avoiding arrest or were wounded. Helen Kim was dressed up as a sewing woman and taken by rickshaw to hide in a missionary's home in the suburbs. Dr. Schofield and many others are said to have harbored fugitives at one time or another. Eli Mowry of the Presbyterian Mission in P'yongyang was arrested and tried for harboring five fugitive boys in his house, in what became the most serious legal proceeding against missionaries in the entire movement. Though Mowry was first sentenced to hard labor and then paroled on appeal, the image of his being led into the courtroom with his head encased in the prisoner's wicker basket is one of the most striking images of the period in Korea missionary lore.49 When their students were arrested, the missionaries became concerned about prison conditions. Bliss Billings of Chösen Christian College gathered contributions to pay bail for student demonstrators.50 Frank Schofield was so incensed at a Japanese claim that the prisons were humane places that he demanded and got a visit to the West Gate Prison, after which he wrote a scathing counter-report.51 TREATING THE WOUNDED Severance Hospital across from the railroad station in Seoul was very important in the missionary effort to help the Koreans. Treating the wounded was a top priority, and the missionary doctors took photographs of the kinds of injuries which the Japanese inflicted on the unarmed Koreans. Gunshot wounds, often in the back, were the most common, proving that the police were firing into crowds. Sword wounds on the hands and arms were particularly horrible; but the worst were the head wounds caused by the hooked poles of firemen deputized to disperse the demonstrations. Daily exposure to this handiwork of the gendarmes and police radicalized the missionaries at Severance Hospital and established the place as a hotbed of antigovernment activity. Rumors held that Severance was the source of the movement's newspaper, the Independence News [Tongnip sinmun], though surprise police raids turned up no proof. One especially notorious raid occurred on April 10, when police took away several badly wounded patients as suspects. Sev- MISSIONARIES IN THE MARCH FIRST MOVEMENT57 erance doctors took depositions from patients about how they had been wounded, and filed the stories and photographs of the injuries with the consular corps and mission boards in North America.52 INVESTIGATING THE CHE'AM-NI MASSACRE The most notorious atrocity of the March First movement was brought to light by a party of Americans consisting of Horace H. Underwood of Chösen Christian College, Consul Raymond S. Curtice, sent by Consul-General Bergholz, and A. W. Taylor, a Seoul-based businessman acting as a reporter for the Associated Press. On April 16 the men drove down to the Osan area to check out a rumored church-burning at the town of Such'ön. En route the party saw smoke rising from Che'am-ni, a nearby village of some fifty houses and two hundred inhabitants, where upon investigation they found that the previous day Japanese troops had gathered up the Christian and Ch'öndogyo men of the village,53 herded them into the local Methodist church, and there had beaten, stabbed, and shot them. They had finished by burning down the building and part of the village. Thirty-five men died in the church, and with them two protesting wives who were shot dead in the street outside. Local people told the Americans that about fifteen other villages had been similarly attacked by the Japanese.54 The fact that Consul Curtice had actually seen Che'am-ni brought the Commissioner of Foreign Affairs, Hisamizu Saburö, to the Consulate -General immediately for a personal report.55 Hisamizu was greatly distressed at what Curtice told him. He said that the police and army authorities had reported something entirely different; yet as days passed and other foreigners visited Che'am-ni and its environs, no fewer than eighteen villages were found to have been burned. It developed that the attacks were in response to the killing of a Japanese gendarme in the district some days before;56 but no orders could be traced to authorize the killings and village burnings. In anger a group of senior missionaries gained an audience with Governor-General Hasegawa Yoshimichi, where they lodged a personal protest. Hasegawa said he was very sorry for what had happened and assured the missionaries that the responsible police and military officers had been punished. To rebuild the Che'am-ni church he contributed Y1500 ($750) from his discretionary fund.57 The killings and burnings in the vicinity of Che'am-ni were the worst of the wholesale violence against Christians. The hospital reports from Severance and the unfolding story of Che'am-ni and environs made it clear that the Japanese were making examples of innocent people and using random violence to frighten the people into submission. In the case of the Christians it was to frighten them into leaving the shelter of the 58CLARK religious community, and so far as the missionaries were concerned, to discourage the flow of embarrassing information abroad. The singling out of Christians for abuse all across the country was well documented by the missionaries, but no other incident rivalled the massacre at Che'am-ni for sheer brutality. THE POLITICAL NATVETE OF MISSIONARIES VIS-À-VIS JAPAN One rarely finds references in Korea mission literature to the Tokyo government and its political relationship to Seoul. Korea missionaries simply did not know much about Japan or Japanese affairs. Some of them were assigned to work with Japanese residents in Korea while others ferried back and forth, working with Koreans in Japan. But Korea had its own government, courts, police, and laws; similarly the mission boards kept separate missions in Korea. The Methodist missions in Japan and Korea were organized under a single bishop, making for more interaction; but the largest mission, the Chösen Mission of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. (or "Northern Presbyterians"), was completely autonomous. Missionaries in Korea learned Korean. It was asking too much to expect them also to learn to read the local Japanese newspapers and keep up with Japanese politics. Japan was a foreign country through which they passed as tourists on their way home to Korea. Frank Herron Smith, a Japanese-speaking Methodist missionary who had worked with Japanese Christians in Korea since 1905, discerned a sort of righteous provincialism in the contrasts between foreign missionaries in Japan and Korea: 1 . Japan missionaries love Japan generally. Korea missionaries may love a few individuals. 2.Japan missionaries know there is a fight in Japan, but they trust in her and think she will do right in the end. Korea missionaries think Japan is a second Germany. 3.Japan missionaries have respect for Japan's honor in what they write and say. Korea missionaries—some of them—think that to defame Japan is to do God's service.58 Since they could usually afford to ignore Japanese politics, most Korea missionaries were ill prepared to put pressure on Tokyo when it was appropriate. They sensed that there was accountability somewhere in the system, but they didn't know how to locate it. This led to frustration. For example, in April 1919 the Presbyterian Mission decided to mobilize opinion among Christians in Japan. Two missionaries were dispatched to Tokyo for meetings with Christians and missionary counterparts in hopes of reaching powerful people in the government. Upon arrival in Tokyo the two men called upon U.S. Ambassador Roland Morris to discuss MISSIONARIES IN THE MARCH FIRST MOVEMENT59 their purpose. Morris, who was interested chiefly in keeping Americans neutral in Korea, "practically forbade" them from talking politics with anyone in Japan. Their only accomplishment appears to have been a seven-page letter to the Board of Foreign Missions in New York. The Canadians did a little better: O. R. Avison had a visiting Canadian board secretary en route home stop by Tokyo to talk with liberal Diet members, and they reportedly relayed his views to Prime Minister Hara Kei.59 PROTESTS TO CONSULS Western missionaries regularly took their complaints and protests to the consulates, and the consuls invariably replied with coolness and wisdom. At times, as with the Che'am-ni investigation, they got involved . The American Embassy in Tokyo even sent a military attache over to Korea to observe the work of gendarmes and police and prepare an official American report.60 Missionaries were thus the eyes and ears of the U.S. government in Korea, and a symbiosis always existed between the missionaries and the consular agents. On the other hand, American consuls in Seoul occasionally expressed exasperation at the political naivete of the missionaries in their jurisdiction.61 Their own professions required that they be tactful and politically sensitive and encourage the same traits among U.S. citizens abroad. But in Korea there were many Americans who acted as if the function of consuls was to champion American values abroad and to act as attorneys for U.S. citizens who got themselves into trouble. The missionaries deluged the American Consul-General with information about Japanese atrocities, with the clear expectation that he would somehow pressure the Japanese into changing. Though sympathetic with the suffering Koreans, Leo Bergholz nevertheless had a duty to keep his opinions to himself. Day by day, as American after American regaled him with stories of Japanese misadventures, he filed their reports and forwarded them to Tokyo and Washington, acting like a model of forbearance .62 PROTESTS TO CONSTITUENCIES AT HOME Korea missionaries did not limit themselves to State Department channels to get the word out concerning Japanese repression. Their informal propaganda campaign was disorganized; some seemed to think that it was dangerous to write home in any detail, while others blithely mailed letters giving names and places. H. H. Underwood's description of Che'am-ni found its way into the Congressional Record. Sallie Swallen of P'yongyang wrote her brother, an Ohio congressman. Many missionary reports also reached the U.S. government secondhand, from 60CLARK Americans who had received outraged letters from Korea and were so upset that they denounced Japan to their own officials in Washington. Typical is a resolution from the Men's Club of Pasadena Presbyterian Church in California. It read in part: it seems plain to us that it is the purpose of the Japanese government to crush out of existence the Korean Christian Church, now numbering nearly a million adherents, very largely the results of the labors of our own Pasadena Presbyterian Church.63 Mission boards naturally got the fullest reports. Their archives contain hundreds of eyewitness accounts, such as "Incidents of Severe Treatment of Koreans by Japanese Soldiers, Seen Personally by Stacy L. Roberts."64 The effect of this reporting back home was to heighten the reputation of the Korean church as a martyrs' church, and of the missionaries as defenders of freedom in a dangerous place. Nevertheless they had not the slightest influence on U.S. policy. The American government unwaveringly left Korean affairs to Japan as an internal matter. As Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes wrote to the White House when asked for advice on the Korean Provisional Government in 1921, "the Department of State is not aware of the establishment of any Government in Korea other than the Government-General operating under the control of the Japanese Government."65 PROTESTS IN THE PRESS The missionaries had their greatest propaganda impact through newspapers abroad. They encouraged reporters to come to Korea and see for themselves, and they acted as guides and interpreters when they arrived.66 Through smuggled notes and visits to wire service offices in Tientsin, Peking, and Shanghai, as well as to occasional sympathetic Japanese journalists, they put their unvarnished stories before thousands of readers in East Asia and the West. Not all the stories were meant for publication. After E. W Thwing, a visiting missionary journalist from China, was detained in P'yongyang for allegedly trying to protect some Korean women from the police, he decided to act as spokesman for the anti-Japanese faction of missionaries.67 From just over the border in Antung, he filed his dispatches with various English-language Chinese newspapers. It was probably Thwing who embarrassed the P'yongyang missionary community on March 22 by publishing in the North China Daily News a detailed confidential report written by R. O. Reiner to Ambassador Paul Reinsch in Peking. The report laid out the particulars of Japanese actions against Korean and foreign Christians, and its publication gave the Japanese in Korea ammunition for their attacks on the missionaries. Other eyewit- MISSIONARIES IN THE MARCH FIRST MOVEMENT61 ness accounts found their way into the Japan Advertiser and overseas papers in Europe and America. Americans in China, sympathizing with the anti-Japanese campaign which was about to develop into the May Fourth Movement, took the stories and reprinted them up and down the China coast.68 Missionary accounts from Korea thus contributed to the wave of anti-Japanese feeling across East Asia. Observers in China were delighted to see Japan embarrass herself on the peninsula. When Eli Mowry was sentenced in April to six months at hard labor, a sentence which was overruled on appeal, the Peking Daily News wrote a delighted editorial: We rejoice because whether the verdict be sustained or not, by the time the appeal can be heard . . . every five-cent Sunday school in America, every tinroofed tabernacle from California to Carolina, from the Lakes to the Gulf, will be having lessons or sermons on the subject. . . . If the Japanese authorities had been sitting up nights trying to find a way of advertising their failure in Korea they could not have devised a better way of so doing than by arresting and condemning Mr. Mowry. . . . We hope that Mr. Mowry will carry his appeal to the very highest court and that the judicial proceedings will last a long time, for the longer they last the better for Korea.69 Press reports originating with Americans in Korea were of special concern to consular authorities.70 They were provocations—further proof of the political insensitivity of the missionaries—which could only lead to more grief for the officials. As attacks on Americans by Japanese civilians and bitter articles about them in the Japanese press became commonplace, the consuls never ceased to be surprised at the feigned innocence of the missionaries when they were insulted or abused. Part III: Action Against Foreign Missionaries No doubt there were occasional fears in the foreign community that the violence would worsen and eventually all foreigners would be in danger . Most of the time, however, the missionaries rested secure in the extraterritorial mentality—the belief that Korean friends would protect them and that they would be safe within the compound walls. It was with special surprise and indignation, therefore, that they reported action by Japanese authorities and residents against themselves. ARRESTS AND SEARCHES As the independence movement continued, a number of foreigners were stopped and detained for questioning by police. There were formal arrests as well. On March 8, an American in Taegu was arrested for following a column of her schoolgirls in a demonstration, allegedly to encourage them. On March 11 in Pusan, two Australian women were 62CLARK arrested and held for two days for "participation and leadership." In mid-March in Söngjin, police put Robert Grierson under house detention to "protect" him from mobs which were said to want to kill him for printing the "Independence News" in his hospital.71 Police took seriously the rumors that missionaries were printing independence movement propaganda and harboring fugitives in their homes, and there were numerous searches of mission buildings. Samuel H. Moffett recalled being awakened from his nap in the family nursery one afternoon by police who burst in with fixed bayonets on their rifles. To Moffett and his brother James, "the shouts of 'Mansei' and the excitement in the streets seemed like some gigantic happy game, so when the soldiers threw open the door we greeted them with the glad cry we had been hearing so much: 'Mansei.' . . . My father's face went pale, expecting retaliation. There was a moment of tension; then the soldiers broke into a laugh, and left. It wasn't much, but at least I can say I was in the sam-il undong. "72 Sam Moffett's boyhood experience notwithstanding, most of the searches were serious business. In Sönch'ön, the home of Norman C. Whittemore was raided at gunpoint at four in the morning.73 When police raided Severance Hospital on March 18, looking for copies of the "Independence News," Frank Schofield just barely managed in time to get his incriminating papers hidden under a loose baseboard.74 In Taegu the police raided the entire Presbyterian compound in search of the demonstrators ' mimeograph machine. They were especially thorough at the boys' school, where Principal Harold Henderson was made to open every single door with his passkey—all but one, a closet off the seniors' lounge, which the police accidentally overlooked. Henderson later got to wondering what they would have found there. In the evening, by lamplight , he returned to the lounge with his neighbor Henry Bruen and made a chilling discovery: [The door] opened into a closet long and narrow, which had nothing in it but litter on the floor. The litter was made up of dozens of used mimeograph stencils and a small hand mimeograph. . . . It made my blood run cold. Here would have been complete evidence that the school was deeply involved in it all. . . . We carefully picked up the sheets and took them down to the furnace room and burned them, little by little, so as not to make too much smoke. . . . The mimeograph we threw back under a part of the building that had not been excavated. . . . I never told this story to anyone until after the Koreans secured their independence in 1945." THE TRIAL OF ELI MOWRY The wonder is that more missionaries were not arrested. The only real trial came when Eli M. Mowry of the Presbyterian Mission in MISSIONARIES IN THE MARCH FIRST MOVEMENT63 P'yongyang was tried on April 15 for harboring demonstrators in his home. The fugitives were students at his school, and he claimed that he was just entertaining them as houseguests. In court, however, he admitted that he had known that they were hiding from the police but that he did not know what they had done. He had given them bedding but not food, and he had told them that he could not protect them if they were doing anything wrong. Mowry's near-confession virtually obliged the court to convict him. In his summation the procurator wondered aloud what American officials would do in Hawaii or the Philippines if Japanese residents harbored people agitating for independence from the United States. Mowry was duly found guilty and sentenced to six months' hard labor. However, Mowry had had to be his own lawyer. There had been so little notice before the trial that he had had no time to engage an attorney. On this technicality his conviction was reviewed by an appeals court, where the sentence was reduced to four months' at hard labor, suspended on parole for two years. In Seoul, Leo Bergholz must have breathed a sigh of relief.76 ASSAULTS BY JAPANESE CIVILIANS Throughout the independence movement, Japanese residents in Korea lived in fear of Korean reprisals. Japanese farmers were sometimes terrorized, as alleged by the police in the investigation of the Che'am-ni massacre. It was the Japanese civilian press which made the angriest accusations against Western missionaries in Korea. Whereas officials down to the level of the local gendarmes were generally correct in their demeanor, some civilian Japanese displayed no such manners. Japanese thugs—soshi—had been imported to Korea as enforcers of one type or another since the opening of Korea in the 188Os, and were generally credited with the murder of Queen Min in 1895, among other crimes. In 1919 it was thought that special crews were being brought over to protect Japanese lives and property from the rampaging Koreans.77 Although Foreign Affairs Director Hisamizu Saburö promised Leo Bergholz that he would give him his head, if the "plainclothes gendarmes " hurt any Americans,78 Westerners in Korea, especially Americans , became fearful of their Japanese neighbors. In P'yongyang on March 30, J. G. Holdcroft was stopped on his way to the railroad station and threatened by two armed Japanese civilians.79 And just to the north in Sönch'ön, Japanese residents allegedly tried to mobilize an attack on the Presbyterian Mission, causing the men of the compound to spend their nights on patrol.80 However, actual assaults were rare. The worst case was that of the British missionary John Thomas, who was walking on the street in the 64CLARK town of Kanggyöng, Ch'ungch'öng Province, when a group of boys raced passed him in flight from the police, waving flags and shouting "Mansei!" According to Thomas he was suddenly attacked by the police who, in turn, blamed the assault on the townspeople. As a result of the beating Thomas claimed that he sustained permanent disability. The British government decided to make an issue of the case and took it as far as Foreign Minister Shidehara Kijuro, in Tokyo, where orders were given to apologize for the misdeeds of the "civilian" assailant(s). As the case dragged on, eventually the government punished a lone policeman and offered Thomas a cash payment of five thousand yen, or about ten thousand U.S. dollars.81 Part IV. Long-term Effects of the Missionary Role in the Movement By the time the March First Movement died down inside Korea, several of the missionaries commonly associated with the resistance were gone. Frank Schofield was recalled to Canada, in part because of the worsening health of his wife but largely because he was a political liability to the Canadian Presbyterian Mission in Korea. In Sönch'ön, George McCune's students and teachers were arrested and his school was closed. He resigned in 1921, temporarily as it turned out, to tend an ailing child in the United States,82 and it is probable that American as well as Japanese officials in Seoul were relieved to see him go. People in Korea settled down to ponder the lessons learned in the March First period. WHAT THE MISSIONARIES LEARNED ABOUT THE JAPANESE The crushing of the independence movement put missionaries on notice that the Japanese were in Korea to stay, and that the church would be in danger if it allowed itself to become a center of resistance. Catholic missionaries had known this all along, as had the Anglicans. Fortunately the Protestants were favorably impressed with the new regime of Governor -General Saitö Makoto, and there was no harm in their thinking that their protests had helped bring about an end to military rule and the relaxation of the iron fist in Korea. As Ku Dae-yeol has pointed out, the handling of missionaries, with their proclivities toward propaganda, was an item of some concern to the new Governor-General. He came to Seoul in the summer of 1919 and set about cultivating missionary leaders. He gave luncheons and dinners for missionaries of all denominations, and let them talk. At one reception he invited a bishop to ask a blessing, and there was a dinner where he had another blessing and no wine—much to the disappointment of the Catholics and Anglicans.83 Saitö solicited opinions from the autumn confer- MISSIONARIES IN THE MARCH FIRST MOVEMENT65 enee of the Federal Council of Evangelical Missions in Korea and was given a nicely printed document containing recommendations on ways to enhance religious freedom and safeguard human rights.84 He promised an end to capricious police pressure: thenceforward no charges would be brought against foreigners without attempts first to settle matters through the consular corps. All the admiral asked in return was that the missionaries stay strictly out of political affairs. Bishop Herbert Welch, speaking for many of the foreigners who had been charmed by the new leader, thought that the new regime deserved some time to show what it could do.85 Not all the missionaries were so compliant, of course. Frank Schofield kept up his attack on the Japanese and caused his colleagues considerable concern with such things as an article entitled "Syphilizing the Koreans," which also made him persona non grata to the new GovernorGeneral .86 Saitö was particularly sensitive to any recurrence of demonstrations in 1920 on the anniversary of the March First Movement. In February all school principals were ordered to forbid any observances on their campuses . At Ewha Girls' School, Principal Bertha Smith demurred, claiming that to tell the students how to behave was to interfere in their politics , and when the forbidden cry of "Mansei" went up on her campus she was instantly removed by the Government-General. Down the street at Paejae Boys' School, Principal Henry D. Appenzeller warned his students as instructed, but on March 1 the students took the afternoon off. The following day, after Appenzeller had reprimanded them, someone on the playground began shouting "Mansei," and the police moved in. Over Appenzeller's protests they arrested fourteen boys, and by the end of the week Appenzeller too had lost his educator's permit because he had hampered a police investigation.87 The message was clear: keep out of politics and control your students or we will do it for you. WHAT THE KOREANS LEARNED ABOUT THE MISSIONARIES In the beginning, Korean Christians involved in planning the movement saw no role for the missionaries. However, their mimeograph machines and buildings were useful, and there can be little doubt that the missionaries often looked the other way when their facilities were put to use by the movement. Some, like Eli Mowry, abetted escapes. Many helped tell the world what was afoot in Korea. For these things Koreans remembered the missionaries. Frank Schofield might have been anathema to the Japanese (and a "crank" to Frank Herron Smith, the rare Japanophile), but to the Koreans he was a hero. The role of mission schools in the independence movement focused 66CLARK attention on them and made them respectable to a broader class of Koreans . The events of 1919 indicated that there was some leeway for Korean expression in mission schools which did not exist in Japanese government schools. A better reason for the rising popularity of Western-oriented mission education is that as part of its reform effort, the Government-General under Admiral Saitö abandoned its strict prohibition of religious training in recognized schools and agreed to recognize the graduates of mission schools which otherwise met curricular standards. A by-product of the independence movement for the missionary effort in Korea, therefore , is that the ensuing reforms gave Christian education a new lease on life. The impression that foreign missionaries stood up for the Koreans, however, has recently been reexamined in studies by Korean church historians using missionary archives. The researchers have come away surprised at the equivocation of the missionaries and the stance of board officials, especially, in favor of Japan. Active support of the movement by foreigners was the exception rather than the rule, and in relatively few instances were any missionary efforts motivated by a yearning to free Korea from Japan. Missionaries have been criticized for consistently protecting their work and institutions by compromising with the Japanese .88 WHAT THE JAPANESE LEARNED ABOUT THE MISSIONARIES Admiral Saitö's new liberal direction did not alter the feelings of Japanese in Korea against missionaries and Christianity in general. Some Japanese Christians in Korea left the faith in protest.89 The newspapers continued to let fly antimissionary articles and editorials. True to form, the top officials in the Government-General smoothly cultivated the missionaries , but the provincial officials kept their watch. A prime example of bureaucratic retribution for the missionaries' role in the independence movement came later on in 1919, with the trial of the Rev. Eugene Bell of the Southern Presbyterian Mission. On March 26 the unfortunate Mr. Bell had been driving his car on the main highway near Suwön where it crossed the railroad, and had been hit by a train. His wife and Dr. Paul Sackett Crane had been thrown from the car and killed. It was an accident, caused by obstructed visibility on the road, but the Suwön procurator's office pressed the case and had Bell tried for manslaughter in Suwön. There was some sense that they did so in retaliation for the missionaries' exposing the massacre at nearby Che'am-ni.90 If so, it represented a new sophistication on the part of Japanese officials in the colony. Later, in the thirties, there would be more occasions to trap foreigners in the snares of bureaucracy. MISSIONARIES IN THE MARCH FIRST MOVEMENT67 WHAT MISSIONARIES AND THEIR CONSULS LEARNED ABOUT EACH OTHER Every few years it seems the American community in Korea had to be reminded of their government's complete disinterest in Korean affairs. Horace Allen finally learned the lesson in 1905. Homer Hulbert learned it in 1907. Others learned it when appealing for help during the Conspiracy Case. Many more learned it in 1919. The March First movement broke over the missionaries after Leo Bergholz had already warned them to stay neutral. Neutrality and official disinterest were Bergholz's stance throughout 1919, until he was replaced in November by Ransford Miller. Informally, however, he signaled his own outrage at the Japanese cruelty. His sending Consul Raymond Curtice to Che'am-ni could easily have been construed as interference . The missionaries understood Bergholz. He listened to their every complaint, and when he was transferred they wanted to petition Washington to let him stay.91 Ransford Miller, who returned to replace Bergholz, came as a skeptic . Recalling the days when he had worked so well with Komatsu Midori in the Foreign Affairs section, Miller expected to find that the accusations about Japanese brutality had been exaggerated. He shared Ambassador Roland Morris's concern that the United States was earning a black eye in Korea. He worried at the way the Japanese press was pushing stories about friction between Japanese and American troops in Siberia , and he wanted some good news from Korea to help restore harmony .92 But when Miller arrived in Korea he was quickly persuaded that the independence movement was broad, deep, and somewhat justified, given the way the Koreans had been treated since 1905.93 As for the missionaries , "They have succeeded to a remarkable degree in maintaining a discreet and neutral attitude in a most difficult situation, the factors of which have tended to draw their hearts and their heads in opposite directions ."94 Part V. Epilogue More than twenty-two years of Japanese rule followed in Korea, before Pearl Harbor. In the mid-1930s, the Japanese began forcing Korean Christians to worship at Shinto shrines, over the fervent protests of the missionaries. By 1936 George McCune, who had returned to Korea in the mid-1920s, had had his last run-in with the authorities in P'yongyang and was gone for good. By 1939 many Korean Christians were avoiding contact with foreign missionaries altogether and the foreigners were finding less and less to do. In November 1940, Consul-General O. Gaylord ("Guatemala") Marsh succeeded in bullying most of the 68CLARK American community into evacuating aboard the S.S. Mariposa. War clouds were everywhere, and only a handful of Americans, mostly Presbyterian missionaries, chose to stay behind. February 25, 1941: Miss Alice Butts of the Presbyterian Mission in P'yongyang held in her hand one of the fifteen thousand programs she had ordered for local services on the International Women's Day of Prayer. Women's organizations and peace groups in Europe and America had set the date and time of the service for February 28, at 2:00 p.m. It was pure coincidence that the next day was the anniversary of the 1919 Korean uprising against Japan. As Japanese troop trains rumbled in the distance, Miss Butts admired her handiwork. The programs had turned out well in spite of being so hurriedly assembled. There had not even been time to obtain the required publication permit from the police; but now at least it was being distributed in time to women's groups all across northern Korea. She liked the way the hymns and scripture selections brimmed with the power of the Almighty:95 Opening Hymn"All Hail the Power of Jesus's Name" Scriptures:His Kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and his dominion is from generation to generation. —Dan. 4:3 For the Kingdom is the Lord's and he is governor among the nations. —Ps. 22:27-28 Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever." —Rev. 11:15 Confession:We must confess that for the interests of our own country we afflict other countries . . . making war against other nations for personal gain. . . . [Sermon, prayer, etc.] Closing Hymn"Must Jesus Bear the Cross Alone? " Closing Scripture:. . . and God himself shall be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away. —Rev. 21:1-4 As scheduled, all across Korea on the 28th of February Christian women met to pray for peace. Within hours there was a knock at the door. Miss Butts had visitors. They were from the police. NOTES 1. From a letter written by Mrs. R. O. Reiner (P'yongyang) to her father, Lapsley A. McAfee (Berkeley, California), March 9, 1919 (Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia ). The passage reads: "Oh, do pray for the poor oppressed KOREANS, my blood MISSIONARIES IN THE MARCH FIRST MOVEMENT69 boils, my heart aches, and the scenes I've witnessed haunt me, so you can imagine how they must feel. Poor things, but surely God will work out their salvation. Don't worry about us, we are safe, God is on our side—and we have a good Government back of us AMERICA. 'The land of the free,' what a meaning that has for me lately." 2.Jiji Shimpo, quoted in a cablegram from U.S. Ambassador Roland S. Morris (Tokyo) to the Secretary of State (SecState), March 15, 1919, in "Correspondence Relating to the Internal Affairs of Korea, 1910-1929," a part of Record Group 59, National Archives and Records Service, Washington, D.C. (file number 895.00/572). 3.This question is also discussed by Frank Baldwin, "Missionaries and the March First Movement: Can Moral Men be Neutral?" in Korea Under Japanese Colonial Rule, ed. Andrew C. Nahm (Kalamazoo: Center for Korean Studies, Western Michigan University , 1973), pp. 193-219; Samuel H. Moffett, "The Independence Movement and the Missionaries ," Transactions of the Korea Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 54 (1979), pp. 13-32; Martha Huntley, To Start a Work: the Foundations ofProtestant Mission in Korea (1884-1919) (Seoul: Presbyterian Church of Korea, 1987), pp. 537-52; and Ku Dae-yeol, Korea Under Colonialism: The March First Movement and Anglo-Japanese Relations (Seoul: Royal Asiatic Society, 1985), pp. 169-98. In this article, as in most of the literature on this question, the term missionaries is taken to mean primarily Protestants, who were reported by the U.S. Consulate-General as numbering 387 in April 1919. The Japanese total for Protestant and Catholic missionaries of all nationalities for the end of the year was 433 (Baldwin, pp. 212-13). The record of incidents involves Protestants almost exclusively, and among them, Americans. 4.Ku, Korea Under Colonialism, pp. 169-75. For Frank Schofield, see Doretha E. Mortimore, "Dr. Frank W. Schofield and the Korean National Consciousness," in Korea's Response to Japan: the Colonial Period 1910-1945, ed. C. I. Eugene Kim and Doretha "vlortimore (Kalamazoo: Center for Korean Studies, Western Michigan University, 1977), pp. 245-61. 5.For census data on foreigners in Korea under Japanese rule, see Yongsin Ak'ademi , Han'gukhak yön'guso, Chosön chaerye ku-mi-in chosa-rok [Directory of Europeans and Americans in Korea], Han'gukhak chwaryo ch'ongsö No. 14 (Seoul: Yongsin Ak'ademi , 1981). 6.For a scathing assessment oíyangban in general, though not perhaps as artful as some traditional Korean satires on the same subject, see Homer Hulbert's "The Rise of the Yangban," in The Korean Repository (December 1895), pp. 471-74. 7.The Korean Repository (November 1895), p. 403. James Scarth Gale was among those who held a negative view of the condition of Korea and hoped that the Japanese would improve things for everyone, the Koreans and the missionaries as well as themselves (Ku, Korea Under Colonialism, 193-94). Gale later was utterly disappointed by the performance of the Japanese in Korea (see note 15). Foreigners were not the only ones with these opinions. For example, see Yun Ch 'i-ho Ilgi, 6 vols. (Seoul: National History Compilation Committee, 1973-76), IV, p. 82, and passim . Also see Spencer John Palmer, Korea and Christianity (Seoul: Royal Asiatic Society, 1967), p. 77. Palmer gives a sampling of contemporary lamentations from the turn of the century, ending with Min Yöng-hwan's suicide letter. 8.See "Continued Progress," in TheKorean Repository (July 1895), p. 268. 9.Richard H. Baird, William M. Baird ofKorea: a Profile (Oakland: published by the author, 1968), p. 209. 10.For a discussion of the relationship between the development of Christianity and early Korean modernization, see Kyung Dong Kim, "The Role of the Christian Church in the Modernization of Korean Society," in Korea Struggles for Christ: Memorial Symposium for the Eightieth Anniversary of Protestantism in Korea, ed. Harold S. Hong, Won Yong Ji, and Chung Choon Kim (Seoul: Christian Literature Society of Korea, 1966), pp. 197-211. 1 1 . Palmer, Korea and Christianity, pp. 82-83. 12.Roy E. Shearer, Wildfire: Church Growth in Korea (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1966), p. 50. 70CLARK 13.C. E. Sharp, "Motives for Seeking Christ," The Korea Mission Field 11:9 (July 1906), p. 182. 14.The KoreaMission Field VI:10 (October 1, 1910), p. 249. L. George Paik put the figure for the same year at two hundred thousand, in The History ofProtestant Missions in Korea, 1832-1910, revised edition (Seoul: Yonsei University Press, 1971), p. 423. This growth spawned an audacious "million movement" to build the church membership even more rapidly; however, in the aftermath of the annexation a significant number of Koreans, perhaps fifty thousand, stopped coming to church, causing some retrenchment. U.S. Cónsul -General Leo Bergholz (Seoul) to SecState, March 16, 1919 (895.00/589). 15.Consul-General Thomas Sammons (Shanghai) to SecState, July 22, 1919 (895.00/653). Gale became particularly disgusted with Japanese censorship of Korean literature in the 'teens: "Old Korean literature is full of the voices of great men. It marshals a host of great masters whom the world may rejoice to see. There is interest unbounded in its pages. Today all this is gone. The government would seem to say, 'If the Korean's mind cannot be Japanized let it be foully poisoned and so rendered innocuous to the state." "Dr. Gale's Statement of Press Laws and Regulations," undated, enclosed with Brockman to Mott, June 22, 1919, YMCA archives, University of Minnesota. 16.Arthur Judson Brown, The Mastery ofthe Far East (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1919), pp. 354-62. 17.For example, see the letter excerpt from Wilbur C. Swearer of the Methodist Mission in Kongju to his father, forwarded to the Secretary of State on April 6, 1910 (895.1166/470). 18.When pressed, Americans were capable of rationalizing the distinction between the U.S. in the Philippines and Japan in Korea by saying that the difference lay in "the fact that in our dealings the doctrine of sympathy was fundamental, and in the case of Japan cold obedience." Ambassador Roland S. Morris (Tokyo) to SecState, May 29, 1919 (895.00/643). 19.Quoted in Consul-General George H. Scidmore (Seoul) to the Assistant Secretary of State, September 1, 1910(895.00/501). 20.Komatsu Midori to Ransford Miller, enclosed with Miller to SecState, July 9, 1914 (8954.1281/3). Also see Miller to Ambassador George Guthrie (Tokyo), January 18, 1915, in U.S. Department of State, "Correspondence Relating to the Internal Affairs of Korea, 1910-1929," a part of Record Group 59, National Archives and Records Service, Washington, D.C. (file number illegible). 21.Consul-General George Scidmore (Seoul) to SecState, January 30, 1912 (895.142). In fact it was illegal under U.S. law, and presumably under Japanese law, for persons not associated directly with the Red Cross to fly the Red Cross flag. Scidmore to Rev. William C. Kerr (in Chaeryong), January 30, 1912 (895.142). 22.C. N. Weems, Songdo (Kaesöng), to George Scidmore (Seoul), June 17, 1911, in U.S. Department of State, "Correspondence Relating to the Internal Affairs of Korea, 1910-1929," a part of Record Group 59, National Archives and Records Service, Washington , D.C. (file number illegible). 23.Among many such examples is an investigation of George S. McCune of Sönch 'ön, reported by Consul-General Ransford Miller (Seoul) to Ambassador George Guthrie (Tokyo), January 16, 1916 (895.00/557). 24.Sources on the Conspiracy Case include The Korean Conspiracy Trial: Full Report ofthe Proceedings in Appeal, by the Special Correspondent ofthe Japan Chronicle (Kobe: The Japan Chronicle, 1913). F. A. McKenzie's Korea's Fightfor Freedom presents another account (Seoul: Yonsei University Press, 1969), reprint edition, pp. 218-38. For Yun Ch'i-ho, see my "Yun Ch'i-ho (1864-1945): Portrait of a Korean Intellectual in an Era of Transition," Occasional Papers on Korea IV, Joint Committee on Korean Studies of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council (September 1975), pp. 36-76. Japanese opposition to the church and suspicion of Christians was the subject of an open letter written by a group of missionary leaders in 1919 as part of their documentation of the March First Movement. Entitled "To Boards having Mission Work in Korea," it is MISSIONARIES IN THE MARCH FIRST MOVEMENT71 enclosed with a letter from YMCA Secretary Frank M. Brockman to John R. Mott, June 22, 1919, YMCA archives, University of Minnesota. 25.The files of the Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia contain extensive correspondence on the subject of the school regulations, which was a major crisis in the history of the missionary enterprise in Korea. The State Department files from the ConsulateGeneral in Seoul also reflect the attempt of American missionaries to embroil their consular agents in a crusade for freedom of religion in the schools. After getting expert advice to the effect that the Japanese authorities in Korea were well within their legal rights, Arthur Judson Brown, Secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., engaged in a detailed written dialogue with Komatsu Midori, Chief of the Foreign Affairs Bureau of the Government-General Secretariat, on the morality of the regulations. He also got nowhere, though Komatsu appears to have been the soul of patience. From his vantage point in New York, and after periodic visits to the field, Brown became an expert on the entire subject. See his chapter entitled "Japanese Nationalism and Mission Schools," in TheMasteryoftheFarEast, pp. 586-610, for a concise discussion of the issue. 26.Robert Grierson, "Episodes on a Long, Long Trail" (n.p., private document, mimeographed, n.d.), p. 63. 27.Interview with Yi Kap-söng, TheKorea Times (Seoul), March 2, 1969. 28.Charles F. Bernheisel, "Forty-one Years in Korea," newsletters 1900-1941, quoted in Huntley, To Storta Work, p. 359. 29.Huntley, To Start a Work, p. 540. 30.Becker and Billings told YMCA Secretary Pak Hûi-do to stay out of it because the YMCA needed him; and that if there was to be a movement, it should be peaceful (Ku, Korea Under Colonialism, pp. 170-71). Pak signed the declaration of independence and eventually was sentenced to two years in prison. See C. I. Eugene Kim, "Nationalist Movements and Students," in Kim and Mortimore, Korea's Response to Japan, p. 271 . 31.U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1919, II (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1934), pp. 458-60. 32.The full remark is, "The head of the crowd is Dr. Moffett. The Christians obey him as they would Jesus himself." Chösen Shimbun, quoted in "A Plea for Korea by an Eyewitness" (no date), Presbyterian Historical Society. The reference to Moffett as pope is in a letter from Lillias H. Underwood to Arthur J. Brown, May 23, 1913: "This is the type of mind that practically rules our mission, so that he is openly called 'pope' and 'boss'." Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia. 33.Yi Kap-söng said he worked with Avison, the president of Severance Union Medical College, to send telegrams about the movement to Koreans in Shanghai using a code which made the messages look like drug and supply orders to the Burroughs-Welcome Company, the hospital's normal supplier. For example, Yi explained that if Avison cabled "We are in critical condition, so we are going to manufacture the drugs in Korea," it meant that the independence movement leaders had decided to stage the street demonstrations very soon-i.e. on March 1. Yi Kap-söng interview, Korea Times, March 2, 1969, p. 2. For Avison, also see Kim Yang-son, "Samil Undonggwa Kidokkyogye" [The March First Movement and the Christians], in Collected Essays, pp. 250-51, cited in Ku, Korea Under Colonialism, p. 198. 34.Ambassador Roland S. Morris (Tokyo) to SecState, March 21 , 1919 (895.00/586). 35.Acting Secretary of State Phillips to Embassy Tokyo, March 31, 1919 (895.00/ 582a). Bergholz to SecState, April 4,1919 (895.00/612). 36."A Letter to President Wilson and the Members of the Peace Conference from Korean School Girls," March 10, 1919, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadephia. 37.Leo Bergholz, "The Present Movement for Korean Independence," date uncertain , U.S. Department of State, "Correspondence Relating to the Internal Affairs of Korea, 1910-1929." 38.Shades of John R. Hodge and Douglas MacArthur. Rumor cited in letter from Frank Herrón Smith, Methodist Mission, Seoul, to Sidney Gulick, Secretary of the Commission on Relations with the Orient of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, October 16, 1919, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia. 72CLARK 39.Bergholz to SecState, April 4, 1919(895.00/612). 40.Premier Hará Kei himself heard this report and was said to be very concerned with its implications. Japanese linguists were said to have reached their conclusion after comparing the English document with the Korean text. Morris (Tokyo) to SecState, April 13, 1919 (895.00/597). On reflection perhaps it was an English translation oí a. Korean original . See also the charge in the Jiji newspaper at the head of this article. 41."An Opinion of Missionaries as to What Changes are Desirable in the Existing Laws and in the Attitude of the Government Toward the Christian Church and Mission World in Korea," (file date, August 22, 1919), Methodist Mission archives, Drew University . 42.Yamagata Isaburö, the Civil Governor, likewise gave credit to the Ch'öndogyo organization for organizing the movement, and categorized Christians and Buddhists as followers. This was on top of a statement by the Minister of Justice that he found no sign that missionaries were involved. Interview, William R. Giles with Yamagata Isaburö, Seoul, March 25, 1919, in Department of State files. However, Yamagata also felt that it was natural for the missionaries to show sympathy for Korean friends, and said it was an open question whether or not they had helped instigate any of it. Cablegram, Morris to SecState , April 13, 1919 (895.00/597). 43."Report of First Session of Unofficial Conference between Representative Missionaries and Japanese, Chosen Hotel, March 22, 1919," Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia. 44.In this instance the missionaries argued thusly: "[we cannot] accede to the request of Government officials and leading Japanese citizens to use our influence with the Koreans to stop the agitation and return to their former acquiescence in things as they were. The Koreans did not ask our advice when they began their demand for independence, they have not asked our help in the carrying of it on and it has been made plain to us that they do not want us to interfere by proposing any compromise settlement." From "A Statement of Missionary Position on Korean Agitation," enclosed with letter from Brockman to Mott, June 22, 1919, YMCA archives, University of Minnesota. 45.Chösen Shimbun, cited in Ku, Korea Under Colonialism, pp. 177-78. 46.Quoted in "A Plea for Korea by an Eyewitness," in the Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadephia. 47."The Present Movement for Korean Independence," a report prepared at the request of U.S. Consul-General Leo Bergholz by members of the Presbyterian and Methodist Missions, enclosed with Bergholz to SecState, May 22, 1919 (895.00/639), p. 47. 48.Helen Kim, Grace Sufficient (Nashville: The Upper Room, 1964), pp. 42-43. 49.Samuel A. Moffett, "Report of the Trial of the Rev. E. M. Mowry in the Local Court, Pyeng Yang, on April 15, 1919," enclosed in Bergholz to Amb. Morris (Tokyo), April 17, 1919, in U.S. Department of State, "Correspondence Relating to the Internal Affairs of Korea, 1910-1929." 50.Induk Pahk, September Monkey (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1954), p. 69. 51.Mortimore, in Kim and Mortimore, Korea's Response to Japan, p. 253; Bergholz to SecState, July 17,1919 (895.00/650). 52.J. D. VanBuskirk was said to have used his mimeograph to publish installments of the "Independence News" [Tongnip sinmun]. See Huntley, To Start a Work, p. 549; O. R. Avison, "Statement Concerning Removal of Wounded Men from Severance Hospital , April 10, 1919;" and F. G. Vesey and Bliss Billings, "Stories of Wounded Koreans in Severance Hospital," dated March 29, 1919, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia. Frank Schofield gave copies of his photos of wounds to Leo Bergholz, who forwarded them to Washington along with accounts of how some of the wounds were inflicted (by beating and hacking with swords). Bergholz to SecState, July 17, 1919 (895.00/650). An unnamed American missionary from Seoul gave Ambassador Paul Reinsch a photo of one of the injured demonstrators, which Reinsch sent on to Washington. Reinsch (Peking) to SecState , May 17, 1919 (895.00/636). 53.Most missionary accounts since 1919 have left the impression that the Che'am-ni massacre victims were Christians, but contemporary accounts indicate that two-thirds of MISSIONARIES IN THE MARCH FIRST MOVEMENT73 them were Ch'öndogyo. Missionaries also knew this at the time: for example, see O. R. Avison to A. E. Armstrong, April 30, 1919, Methodist Mission archives, Drew University. Horace Underwood wrote a transcript of conversations he had with villagers, in which Che'am-ni was identified as a "Christian village." This may be the origin of the idea that the victims were exclusively Christian. See discussion in Ku, Korea Under Colonialism, pp. 113-14. The full transcript of this and other conversations between Underwood and various villagers is filed at the Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia. 54.Bergholz to SecState, April 23, 1919 (895.00/625). Consular reports say that the victims were both Christians and adherents of Ch'öndogyo. 55.Hisamizu Saburö succeeded Komatsu Midori in the Foreign Affairs section of the Government-General in 1916. He was a well-educated senior official who had served in the Japanese diplomatic service in India, Africa, and the United States, as well as in Inch'on, where he had been prefect. Consul Raymond Curtice to SecState, December 11, 1916(895.021/1). The official version of the Che'am-ni incident as told to the U.S. Consulate-General was that the Christian and Ch'öndogyo village men had been gathered in the church to listen to friendly counsel, that they had attacked the Japanese who were trying to talk with them, that a lamp had been overturned setting the church on fire, and that in the ensuing confusion the villagers had been shot, mainly in self-defense. Bergholz to SecState, May 12, 1919(895.00/642). 56.Police reports of conditions in the Osan area just prior to the massacre were that area villagers had killed a Korean gendarme and a Japanese policeman; there had been demonstrations and destruction of Japanese town offices, postal facilities, and homes; and many Japanese residents had been forced to flee. Although the Korean demonstrators were unarmed, fire was effective as an anti-Japanese weapon and some of the destroyed buildings had been torched. People brandished torches during demonstrations and lit beacons, a traditional Korean war signal, atop hills. Ku, Korea Under Colonialism, p. 81 . 57.Bergholz to SecState, May 12, 1919 (895.00/642). When the Japan Advertiser learned of this contribution by Hasegawa, apparently from W. A. Noble and/or Leo Bergholz, he was "instantly" recalled to Tokyo, according to Frank Herron Smith, an American missionary with close ties to the Government-General. Hasegawa's gift looked embarrassingly like an indemnity or admission of guilt. F. H. Smith to Sidney Gulick (New York), January 10, 1920, letter, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia. As an example of the difference in attitude between the officials in Seoul and the Japanese press in Korea, consider this: the SeoulPress claimed that inexperienced soldiers had just been trying to do a good job at Che'am-ni; that true Christians should blame themselves for not showing them better methods; and that God would punish the Christians for letting the soldiers go astray. Quoted in Leo Bergholz to SecState, July 17, 1919 (895.00/649). 58.Frank Herron Smith to Sidney Gulick, October 16, 1919, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia. 59.The emissaries were Gordon Holdcroft and Walter Erdman. See their report to Arthur Judson Brown, April 7, 1919, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia. For A. E. Armstrong's report see his "Notes on the Korean Uprising for Independence," copy in Methodist Mission archives, Drew University. 60.After being read in Tokyo, the attache's report was forwarded to Washington. Morris to SecState, May 29, 1919 (895.00643). 61.For example: When Methodist missionaries Mrs. John Z. Moore and Miss Maude Trissel were hit on the back with rifle butts by gendarmes while walking in P'yongyang , Mr. Moore lodged a protest with Consul-General Leo Bergholz. Bergholz protested strongly to the Foreign Affairs Bureau, which arranged for the Civil Governor at P'yongyang to receive the women and offer apologies. Miss Trissel declined to go, saying she was too busy. Bergholz was appalled. He wrote to Mr. Moore, "Should the authorities again make a request to a member of the Mission to call in connection with a matter which has been a subject of complaint to them, or to this Office, I think it would be well promptly to comply with it." Bergholz to John Z. Moore (P'yongyang), March 17, 1919, U.S. Department of State, "Correspondence Relating to the Internal Affairs of Korea, 1910-1929." 74CLARK 62.Ku Dae-yeol cites various Japanese sources for instances in which consuls lodged protests with the Seoul government, including Gendaishi Shiryö, Chösen XXVI [Modern historical materials, Korea], ed. Kang Tok-sang (Tokyo, 1965-67), p. 483, and Meiji hyakunenshi sösho, Chösen dokuritsu undo I [Historical materials of the Meiji hundred years, Korean independence movement], ed. Kim Chong-myong (Tokyo, 1967), pp. 32728 . Also Gendaishi XXV, pp. 253-54, 293; and XXVI, pp. 439, 441 . These sources are cited in Ku, Korea Under Colonialism, p. 174. 63.W. O. Youngblood, Secretary, Men's Club of the Pasadena Presbyterian Church, to Secretary of State Robert Lansing, October 22, 1919 (895.00/664). A sampling of protest letters from the public is in the State Department archives. 64.File date November 18, 1919, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia. Roberts describes mounted police running people down; a boy caught and beaten outside his study window; a fourteen year-old boy being tied up and beaten about the head by police with a piece of wood torn from a gate; and a woman terrorized by police firing blanks, among other abuses. 65.Hughes to George B. Christian, Secretary to the President, May, 1921 (895.00/ 691). 66.For example, S. A. Moffett served as an interpreter in P'yongyang for correspondents who came in from Japan, Peking, and Shanghai. Song So-am, Letter to the Editor , Korea Times, March 4, 1969. 67.E. W. Thwing, "Arrest of Two American Missionaries," Presbyterian Historical Society. Clippings of this and other articles by Thwing are in the U.S. Department of State, "Correspondence Relating to the Internal Affairs of Korea, 1910-1929." 68.In Shanghai, YMCA Secretary George Fitch began cooperating with Koreans there to publicize Japanese repression in "literature that is calculated to arouse further ill feeling toward Japan." D. H. Hahn, D.D.S., another American in Shanghai, was even known to be working with Koreans to organize anti-Japanese demonstrations in the city. Consul-General Thomas Sammons (Shanghai) to SecState, April 30, 1919 (895.00/632). 69.Clipping forwarded by Mrs. A. R. Perkins to A. J. Brown (file date, July 22, 1919), Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia. Also see Huntley, To Start a Work, p. 182. 70.Consul-General Thomas Sammons (Shanghai) to Reinsch (Peking), March 19, 1919. The Japanese knew about the news pipeline. According to Ku Dae-yeol, "A gendarmerie report concluded on 17 March that 'foreigners in Korea' had been collecting various materials about the Japanese suppression of the disturbances and had been communicating them to the foreign press with the ultimate object of liberating Korea from the Japanese yoke." Meiji hyakunenshi sösho, Chosen dokuritsu undo I, p. 388, cited by Ku, Korea Under Colonialism, p. 177. 71 . Cases cited in Ku, Korea Under Colonialism, p. 176. 72.Samuel H. Moffett, "The Independence Movement and the Missionaries," p. 14. James Moffett's account of the day is in Korea Calling (Seoul) XIV:4 (April 1975), pp. 1-2. For the search of the P'yongyang compound, see S. A. Moffett to Bergholz, April 7, 1919, and Moffett to Bergholz, April 9, 1919, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia . 73.Harriet E. Pollard, "The History of the Missionary Enterprise of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., in Korea, with Special Emphasis on the Personnel." M.A. thesis. Northwestern University, 1927. Pp. 97-98. 74.Mortimore, in Kim and Mortimore, Korea's Response to Japan, p. 248. 75.Clara Hedberg Bruen (comp.), Forty Years in Korea (n.p., family memoir [1987]), pp. 253-55. 76.Samuel A. Moffett, "Report of the Trial of the Rev. E. M. Mowry in the Local Court, Pyeng Yang, on April 15, 1919." U.S. Department of State, "Correspondence Relating to the Internal Affairs of Korea, 1910-1929." Also see Moffett to Arthur Judson Brown, April 21, 1919, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia. On the disposition of the case, see "A Matter of Interest," The Korea Mission FieldXY:6 (lune 1919), p. 131. 77.Frank Schofield tricked a Japanese policeman into admitting that at least sixty MISSIONARIES IN THE MARCH FIRST MOVEMENT75 Japanese soshi had been imported to terrorize the foreign community. Mortimore, in Kim and Mortimore, Korea's Response to Japan, pp. 252-53. 78.Bergholz to SecState, April 8, 1919 (895.00/614). 79.Holdcroft to Bergholz, March 31, 1919. U.S. Department of State, "Correspondence Relating to the Internal Affairs of Korea, 1910-1929." 80.Consul John K. Davis (Antung) to Reinsch (Peking). March 17, 1919; Bergholz to SecState, March 22, 1919 (895.00/607). 81.Ku, Korea Under Colonialism, pp. 184-89. 82.Shannon B. McCune, Supplement to talk on "Dr. George S. McCune and Korean Studies," presented to the Conference on Personalities of Korean-American Cultural Relations, New Britain, Connecticut, November 3, 1973. 83.Frank Herron Smith, to Sidney Gulick, October 15, 1919, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia. 84."A Communication to His Excellency, Baron Saito, Governor-General of Chosen , from the Federal Council of Protestant Evangelical Missions in Korea," Seoul, September 29, 1919. The document was so filled with political overtones that it prompted a State Department instruction to the new Consul-General Ransford Miller to restrain the missionaries from political activity. Wilbur J. Carr (Washington) to Ransford S. Miller (Seoul), December 26, 1919(895.00/673). 85.Bishop Herbert Welch, "The Missionaries' Attitude Towards the Government in the Present Crisis," The Korea Mission FieldXVhl (March 1920), pp. 56-58. 86.Ku, Korea Under Colonialism, pp. 250-51. Schofield's article reflected a frequent missionary complaint that the Japanese had set up legalized red-light districts. The missionary position was that they were systematically degrading Korean womanhood. The truth may be closer to Frank Herron Smith's explanation: there had been rampant prostitution everywhere in Korea until the Japanese confined it within well-policed boundaries. Smith to Gulick, October 5, 1919, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia. 87.Miller to SecState, March 6, 1920 (895.00/676). Henry Dodge Appenzeller, "Statement Concerning the Recent Disturbances in Paejae [unclear] and Higher Common School, March 2, 1919 and the Investigation of the Police," Methodist Mission archives, Drew University. 88.Min Kyong-bae, Han 'guk kidokkyohoesa (Seoul: Taehan kidokkyo ch'ulp'ansa, 1983), pp. 318-19. 89.Frank Brockman (Seoul) to John R. Mott (New York), August 15, 1919, YMCA archives, University of Minnesota. 90.Frank Herron Smith to Sidney Gulick, October 15, 1919, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia. 91.Ku, Korea Under Colonialism, p. 191 n. 92.Cablegram, Morris to SecState, March 15, 1919 (895.00/572). 93.Miller to Ambassador Morris (Tokyo), December 26, 1919 (895.00/673). 94.Miller to Morris, personal letter, December 26, 1919 (enclosed with 895.00/673). 95.Consul-General O. Gaylord Marsh (Seoul) to Ambassador Joseph C. Grew (Tokyo), April 1, 1941 (395.1121/22). ...