A History of Korea (69 page)

An Chungg
n, Ito’s assassin, has long stood as the heroic representative in Korea of the combative resistance to the Japanese takeover. An gunned down Ito in plain sight at a train station in Harbin, Manchuria, and, following a legendary interrogation in which he
laid out the principles behind his actions, he was executed. Prior to this An had led some bands of “Righteous Army” guerillas who were operating throughout Korea and beyond, targeting Japanese soldiers as well as Korean collaborators—from officials and policemen down to villagers. Active sporadically after 1894, the Righteous Army guerillas had risen up spontaneously in force following the 1905 Protectorate Treaty. Some of these groups were led by prominent elites, including the Confucian scholar Ch’oe Ikhy
n, whose anti-foreign activism dated back to the 1860s (
Chapter 13
). It was the disbandment of the Korean army in the summer of 1907, however, that truly triggered an explosion in Righteous Army activities, as thousands of disaffected former soldiers entered the ranks of anti-Japanese guerillas. Battles raged throughout the peninsula, with one dramatic showdown taking place on the outskirts of Seoul in late 1907 involving upwards of 10,000 Korean resistors. Though they would never again be so well organized, they quickly formed the most serious obstacle to the Japanese takeover, and the full thrust of Japan’s imperial might was directed at suppressing them. Pacification would not come until well after the 1910 annexation, and the bitter memories of the brutality deployed to hunt down the guerillas would continue to fuel anti-Japanese activities indefinitely.

Notwithstanding his military deeds, An Chungg
n also belonged to the wave of resistance leaders who, after 1904, had pursued their activities through education and publishing. The onset of the Russo-Japanese War and the growing awareness of Japanese designs instilled a sense of crisis that the nation’s autonomy and even its future as a civilization were at stake. Sin Ch’aeho, who like An Chungg
n would later engage in militant activities, was representative of those sounding the alarm. As a writer for a stubbornly critical newspaper during the protectorate period, the
Korea Daily News
, he, like many others, connected the country’s imminent danger to the people’s lack of nationalistic consciousness. His solution was to raise awareness of the nation’s plight through the publication of works on the glories of ancient history, on the often tragic trajectory of national historical development thereafter, and on the pressing need to apply these historical lessons to asserting
independence. Other historian-activists included Pak
nsik and Hy
n Ch’ae, who wrote long treatises on both recent and distant Korean history that sought to instill a sense of urgency. Still other educators, scholars, and journalists appealed for direct action. The most notable example of this was Chang Chiy
n, who penned a resounding “Lament of Wailing” in a leading newspaper immediately following the signing of the 1905 Protectorate Treaty. The newspapers and journals of the protectorate period stood often as the desperately final means, short of violence, to arouse Koreans and to appeal for international attention.

Little wonder, then, that one of the first steps taken by the colonial government in 1910 was to shut down all private newspapers and publication activities. The first decade of the colonial period, in fact, was marked by a general suppression of unauthorized activity, including in business, and became known as the era of “military rule” in reference to the heavy hand of colonial suppression. The primary aims of the colonial administration were to ferret out and pacify the remaining sources of armed resistance, and to stifle any plots seeking restoration of Korean autonomy. For the latter concern, the colonial authorities directed much of their attention and resources to mollifying the Yi royal house, for, as the secret mission to The Hague had proven in 1907, the long-standing monarch, Kojong, would not go quietly.

In the spring of that year, Kojong, unable to break out of the confines in which the Protectorate had placed him, dispatched three advisors to the Second World Peace Conference in The Hague. They met first in St Petersburg, where they joined up with a former Korean ambassador to the Russian Empire to plead their case for assistance to the Tsar himself. The Russian government, now more interested in allying with Japan, rebuffed them, and they proceeded to the Netherlands on their own. While they were denied a formal audience there, the three emissaries did manage to create a scene of protest, which caught the attention of the press. Indeed, according to the official proceedings of the Conference, one of the Korean delegates, Yi Wijong, pleaded simply for “a judgement on the legitimacy of the 1905 treaty.” Later, at a speech he gave, in French, at the foreign press club in The Hague, he was more explicit: the
Japanese have unjustly forced their way onto Korea against the wishes of the Korean people and their monarch; the 1905 treaty was signed at the point of a gun and sword, and hence is illegal according to the standards of international law; and the Korean people are determined to resist this injustice. Much of the press coverage of the Koreans came to sympathize with them, and this only furthered the resolve of the Japanese officials to take more decisive action.

THE DEFT HAND OF CONQUEST

The summer of 1907, which included the forced abdication of Emperor Kojong, represented the culmination of gradual changes in the Korean government that the Japanese had promoted since 1904, the year the Japanese military made its way into the capital to stay for good. Thereafter, the military and police, though not deployed specifically for struggles over control of government, stood as the undeniably powerful presence looming over the developments leading to and securing the Japanese takeover. Under the cause of “reform” the Japanese Residency General, which formally held responsibility only for Korea’s diplomatic and financial affairs, pushed many of the most consequential changes. This process witnessed sweeping amendments to the organization and manner by which the Korean government operated, all geared toward a more efficient means of mobilizing human and material resources as well as greater state control and surveillance. Notable targets of this project included the household registration and legal systems, both of which included an explicitly expanded role for, and the implicit threat of, the police. The reorganization of the cabinet and, more importantly, the shift in appointment power to the Residency General took place immediately after Kojong’s abdication in 1907. Thereafter the highest posts in the central government, the provincial governorships, and most of the county magistracies were filled by Koreans with reliable ties to Japan.

The formal annexation of the summer of 1910, then, required few major changes to the structure or personnel of the government. The first Governor General, or head of the colonial Government General of Korea, had been in fact the last Resident General of
the Protectorate. He presided over an ambitious colonial state that more or less combined the pre-annexation Korean government and Residency General. One major change in state organization did materialize, however, to oversee the execution of the nationwide colonial land survey. By the time of its conclusion in 1918, this enormous project would record and standardize the ownership of all parcels of land, consolidate large holdings of both public and private owners, and employ thousands of new officials, mostly Korean, in the process.