Korea became a territory of Japan by the
Japan–Korea Treaty of 1910.
Many foreigners reported the situation of
Korea during the annexation period.
What do they say? You will learn the
reality.
● Helen Mears, Mirror for Americans, Japan
The [First Sino-Japanese War] was an
unqualified success from the Japanese point of view.
The Western Powers applauded, and one after
another gave up their “special privileges” and admitted Japan as an equal
sovereign Power.
The Japanese bestowed freedom on the Koreans,
and to celebrate the event, the Korean King assumed the title of Emperor to
indicate that he was now an equal of the Chinese and Japanese
Emperors.
***
When, in 1910, the Japanese annexed Korea, it
was because the new Emperor“petitioned” them to do so.
In commenting on Japan’s relations with Korea,
many pre-Pearl Harbor Western historians have noted how punctilious the
Japanese were in following the legal niceties of international relations as
taught them by the Western Powers.
As Professor [Payson Jackson] Treat comments,
“... every step in the process was ‘correct’ diplomatically, and the final
annexation was consummated by ... treaty, not
proclamation.”
As a matter of record, Japan’s annexation of
Korea had considerably more
“legal” documentation than most of the empire-buildingof the Western
Powers.
●London Times, 28 September 1904 edition
The Japanese Government are understood to have
two principal aims in view.
They desire to promote Korea’s foreign
commerce ... and to regulate her foreign relations sothat there shall be a
minimum of friction and blundering.
(...)
It has therefore been agreed that Korea shall
accept a financial adviser recommended by Japan, and Mr. Megata, one of the
ablest among the junior members of the Japanese Treasury, has been chosen for
the post.
(...)
Then, in the conduct of her foreign relations
also, Korea is to have the benefit of an adviser franked by Japan–Mr. D. W.
Stevens, during many years Secretary of the United States Legation in Tokio,
and now counsellor to the Japanese Legation in Washington, a man of well proved
ability.
(...)
The Koreans have had ample time to appreciate
the advantages of reform, but they have never shown the least disposition to be
appreciative.
There is only one faint hope–namely, that
although Korea cannot discern the things making for her own good, she may learn
to value them by experience of their uses.
On that slender foundation Japan intends to
build, and if she succeed in raising a solid edifice she will deserve much
credit.
●San Francisco Chronicle, 21 March 1908 edition]
D.W. Stevens, diplomatic adviser to the Corean
Council of State, was an arrival yesterday on the Nippon Maru
(...)
In 1904, under the treaty between Japan and
Corea, he was appointed to his present position.
Stevens says the Corean people have been
greatly benefited by Japanese protection and that they are beginning to look
more favorably on it. He says the Japanese are doing for the Coreans what
America is doing for the Philippines. Continuing, he said,“You can get some
idea of the condition of Corea before the war from the statement that the
Government was spending 3,000,000 yen annually on a standing army and 60,000
yen on public education.
The people are divided into two classes, the
peasantry and the official classes. The former was ground down until nothing
but a bare existence was left from their labor, while the official class was
thoroughly corrupt.
“The peasants have welcomed the Japanese,
while the official class has not, but even the officials are beginning to see
that the only hope for the country lies in are organization of the old
institutions.”
● George Trumbull Ladd: American educator and
philosopher
Nationally, a new life opens up before Korea.
Japan has sent her veteran statesman to advise and guide Korea, the man to whom
in the largest sense Japan owes so much–the most conspicuous statesman in Asia
to-day, Marquis Ito. Plans for the reform of the Government, codification of
the laws, development of the industry and business of the people, and extension
of education, have been formulated, and in a comparatively short time most
promising results achieved. In spite of difficulties which necessarily for the
present encumber the situation, the outlook is most
hopeful.
●New York Times(29 April 1905 edition)
Wonderful is the spectacle of transformation
in Korea.
The reforms already effected are remarkable
and are an unmixed benefit to the people, but they are causing dismay to the
Emperor and his corrupt Court of attendants, soothsayers, fortune tellers, and
foreign parasites.
The Emperor has suffered a cruel disillusion,
but is still hoping for the ultimate success of Russia, a power which has
fostered the worst influences of his barbaric reign.
● Correspondent EssonThird in
the North China
Herald(18 August 1905
edition)
Japan, meanwhile, is being soundly rated by
the ignorant classes and by some foreigners for her whole course of action
during the past year.
She is threatening a protectorate, we are
told. But what of that?
We have had a protectorate ever since the
treaty was signed and since war broke out.
(...)
In a word the bane of Corea to-day is not the
Japanese, but the Palace, where ignorance, superstition, and cruelty hold
sway.
(...)
To the fullest extent of her territory and
influence, [Korea] stands responsible for the war.
In the blood and sweat and suffering of it she
has shared nothing.
Let us help her to see her faults, her sins,
her good-for-nothingness, help her to awake to an earnest, diligent, honest
life, and it will be time enough then to declaim against a protectorate and the
high-handedness of the Japanese.
●North China Herald(24 November 1905 edition)
Even those who like the Coreans best, and all
who know them allow that they have many amiable qualities, are forced to admit
that Corea cannot maintain herself in the twentieth century as an independent
State.
● Comments made by General Dmitri Horvath,
general manager of the Chinese EasternRailway, about the assassination of Ito
Hirobumi in Kharbinskii
viestnik(a Russian-
Manchurian newspaper)
The more I contemplate [the assassination],
the more miserable I feel.
If Russia had heeded the advice of Marquis Ito
prior to the great war of recent times [the Russo-Japanese War], both that
cruel war and the dishonor defeat brought to Russia could have been
avoided.
Everyone knows that the purpose of Marquis
Ito’s visit to Harbin was decidedly not empty, ritualistic diplomatic exchanges
with our finance minister.
●Shen Bao(Chinese-language newspaper published in
Shanghai between 1872 and 1949; 01 September 1910 edition)
Korea has perished.
Nevertheless, the Korean emperor is smiling,
the Korean liege lords are ecstatic, and the former emperor (Gojong) too bears
no grudge.
All of them seem to be skilled at acquiring
special treatment from a foreign nation. Only the students are gloomy and
disaffected.
●London Times(04 October 1904 edition)
Of all the many remarkable circumstances of
this Far-Eastern war, the fact that dominates everything else is the courage
and conduct of the Mikado’s armies.
We recognise, almost grudgingly and in spite
of ourselves, the existence of a moral force that appears to govern and sway
the whole conduct of a whole people, inspiring not a caste but a nation from
highest to lowest, to deeds that are worthy to rank with the most famous of
history or of legend.
We want to know what this force is, whence it
comes, and what it means; the sense of its existence makes us jealous,
uncomfortable, almost annoyed.
We are told that the Japanese are scientific
fanatics; in effect that is apparently the result; but effects are nothing and
causes everything.
What we desire to know is the cause, the
underlying motive that inspires the deeds of valour, too numerous to name, that
are told us from all sides, without a single dissentient voice, both from one
side of the battlefield and from the other, even finding a generous
acknowledgment in a rescript of the Tsar’s.
(...)
Valor is nothing new to the West, since the
annals of all armies are crowded with it.
It was not that; there was something more
behind, something which, had all Western armies possessed it, would have
prevented black marks which besmirch the military escutcheons of all nations of
the West without exception. What was it? What is it?
● Alleyne Ireland, British
historian
From such a study [of the available data],
which has occupied me for more than three years, and of which the results are
presented in this volume, I have formed the opinion that Korea is today
infinitely better governed than it ever was under its own native rulers, that
it is better governed than most self-governing countries, that it is as well
governed as any of the British, American, French, Dutch, and Portuguese
dependencies which I have visited, and is better governed than most of them,
having in view as well the cultural and economic development of the people as
the technique of administration.
***
From year to year since annexation the number
of prisons has increased, and their condition improved, so that today, the
larger prisons, at least, will bear comparison with those of any country, and
are greatly superior to most of the prisons in the United
States.
In the fiscal year 1918 public schools for
Korean children numbered 466 throughout the country, and the expenditure for
them amounted to 1,835,000 yen, of which only 195,000 yen, namely about ten per
cent of the whole, fell upon the Korean population, the average burden on each
household being as low as six sen (1 sen = 1⁄2 cent U.S.), while the rest was
met by government assistance.
However, in view of the growing need of common
education among the people a programme was drawn up in 1919 to found 400 more
schools within the next four years on the standard of “one school to every
three villages at least,” and this necessarily meant [a] large increase in
expenditure and consequent increase in the incidence of the school tax, as well
as in the amount of government aid.
(...)
It is to be noted that between 1918 and 1922
the expenditure on the elementary education of Koreans increased nearly
eight-fold.
Are those articles
same as what you learnt? If not, that is not a problem! Now is the best time to
learn the reality.
If you're
interested, you can read more story from the following link.
A NEW LOOK AT THE
ANNEXATION OF KOREA By Committee Against Government Apologies to Korea
http://www.sdh-fact.com/CL02_1/89_S4.pdf
modified 090513103949
最終更新：2013年05月09日 17:40
