The passing of Korea/Chapter 6

by Homer Bezalee Hulbert

CHAPTER VI
THE GOLDEN AGE OF KOREA AND THE
JAPANESE INVASION

IT is probable that there was never a peaceful revolution that was followed by more radical changes than the one whereby the Kingdom of Koryu fell and the present dynasty began. In the first place the capital was changed from Songdo. This in itself was not remarkable, for the site of the capital is always changed with the change of dynasty; but when we note that the people and officials of Songdo were debarred the privilege of residing at the new seat of government, we see what a sweeping change was contemplated. Hanyang had long been looked upon as the probable capital of a new dynasty. In fact it had been made the secondary capital of Koryu. Prophecy had foretold that it would become the capital of a new kingdom, founded by a man named Yi. The Chinese character for this word is formed by placing the character for child below the character for wood, and the whole means " plum-tree." The superstitious King of Koryu had thought to injure the prospects of the Yi family, therefore, by planting the town of Han-yang with plum-trees, and then rooting them up. The trick did not work, and in the year 1392 the new kingdom was inaugurated. It was ordered to build a wall about the new capital, and one hundred and ninety thousand men worked for two months in the spring and ninety thousand more worked for an equal time in the autumn, and completed the stupendous work of building a wall twenty feet high and nine miles in length, surmounted with a battlement and embrasures, and pierced by eight massive gates. The palace that was first built was the Kyong-bok Palace. A celebrated monk named Mu-hak is said to have advised that it be built upon a different site from the one determined upon, and declared that if his advice was not followed the country would suffer a terrible war in just two centuries. His advice was not taken, and the Japanese invasion was the fulfilment of his prophecy!

The cardinal principle upon which this radical revolution was based was the necessity of freeing the country from the baneful influence of Buddhism. Yet the new ruler was wise enough to see that even this must be accomplished with moderation and tact. There was no great persecution in which thousands of people were massacred. The change of the capital and the appointment of an entirely new officiary, in which Buddhist ideas were not at all represented, was a long step in the right direction. It set the fashion, and the Buddhist element accepted the decision as final. We hear of no attempt being made to reinstate the Buddhist hierarchy in their former place of power. Gradually other laws were passed depriving Buddhist monks of various privileges. They were disfranchised and forbidden to enter the gates of the capital on pain of death. Immense tracts of land that had been absorbed by the powerful monasteries were taken from them and given back to the people. But it would be a mistake to think that Buddhism lost its influence upon the people. Its political power was gone, but by far the greater part of the populace still remained Buddhists, and it was only during the lapse of centuries that the monasteries fell to the decadent state in which we now find them. The very fact that Korea is still filled with them, and that funds can be found to keep them in any sort of condition, proves that Buddhism is not even yet in a moribund condition. The mysticism of the cult had taken too deep a hold upon the Korean temperament to be thrown off with ease, and it gradually became assimilated with the nature worship and fetichism of the country, until to-day the whole forms a conglomerate in which the ingredients are indistinguishable. No Korean perhaps ever grasped the idea of esoteric Buddhism or worked out the philosophy of the thing. It may have been largely because he did not know what it all meant that he liked it.

The Ming Emperor had been led to look with suspicion upon Korea, because of the queer antics of the last kings of the Koryu dynasty, and when he heard of the startling change he sent asking why General Yi had usurped the throne. A celebrated scholar was sent to the Chinese court, and when the Emperor learned the facts he was well satisfied, and cemented a friendship with Korea which lasted without interruption until the Manchu hordes struck down the Ming power.

The first half of the fifteenth century was characterised by a series of marvellous advances in every sphere of life in Korea. One of the earliest kings determined to secure for the people a phonetic alphabet, in order that they might be freed from the necessity of learning the Chinese character. A commission was appointed which, after long and careful investigation, evolved an alphabet which, for simplicity of construction and phonetic power, has not its superior in the world. The consonants are all simplifications of the Thibetan consonants, which are of course Sanscrit in character, and the vowels are all taken from the simplest strokes of the ancient " seal character " of China. It was a work of genius, and might have been of incalculable benefit to the people had not the Chinese character been so firmly fixed upon them that change was practically impossible. Such a change must begin with the educated class, but the very difficulty of learning the Chinese was a barrier between the upper and lower classes, and to have let down this barrier by the encouragement of a popular alphabet would have been to forego their claims to exclusive consideration. The caste feeling was too strong, and the alphabet was relegated to women, as being beneath the dignity of a gentleman. A terrible wrong was done to the people by this act, and the generous motive of the King was frustrated. About the same time the King ordered the casting of metal printing-types. These were the first movable metal printing-types ever made, and anticipated their manufacture in Europe by fifty years. A few samples of the ancient types still survive.

The dropping of Buddhistic ideals in government was like the dropping of sand-bags from a balloon, and the rebound was marvellous, proving that there was still a splendid virility in the Korean people. Art, literature, science, economics, agriculture and every other form of human activity felt the impulse, and before long the former degraded condition of the people was transformed. The most admirable thing about all this change was the moderation which marked it. There was no attempt to force changes in advance of public opinion, but the changes went hand in hand with education. The whole of the century beheld a continued advance. Great literary works were published, monasteries were turned into schools, the system of taxation was made more uniform, all sorts of mechanical devices were invented, including a clepsydra. The great bell was cast and hung in the centre of Seoul, the land was at peace with all its neighbours, and friendly envoys came from many contiguous lands. The piratical raids of the Japanese stopped, and it is probable that, even as early as this time, a trading station of some kind existed at Fusan by permission of the Korean government. Curiously enough the century closed in gloom, for a prince of most depraved character, the son of a concubine, came to the throne, and made it his business to play the fool exceedingly. There was no excess of rioting to which he would not go, and for a time he inflicted untold miseries upon the people; but he was out of tune with the times, and before long he was violently deposed and sent into banishment, and the former state of prosperity again prevailed.

The middle of the sixteenth century witnessed the rise of the so-called political parties of Korea. Before that time there had been no extensive political feuds, but now the officials became divided into hostile sets which warred against each other to the knife. There were no great political opinions or " platforms " underlying these parties. It was simply the fight for political preferment, the very sublimation of the " spoils system." This marked the beginning of another period of retrogression. From that day to this there has been a steady and lamentable decline in political morals, and the idea of political position being essential to the acquisition of wealth has gained such a hold of the Korean mind that reform resembles a surgical operation which, in curing the disease, bids fair to kill the patient. This war of factions, in which the winner thought nothing of taking off the heads of all the leaders of the vanquished party, was the first great cause of Korea's inability to make any headway against the Japanese invaders.

As the century wore on, and the great Hideyoshi became Shogun in Japan, the ambitious designs of that unscrupulous usurper, together with the extreme weakness of Korea, made a combination of circumstances which boded no good for the peninsular people. A succession of bloody civil wars had put in Hideyoshi's hands an immense body of trained veterans, and the cessation of war in Japan left this army on his hands without anything to do. It could not well be disbanded, and it could not safely be kept on a war footing with nothing to do. This also gave Hideyoshi food for thought, and he came to the conclusion that he could kill several birds with one stone by invading Korea. His main intention was the conquest of China. Korea was to be but an incident along the way. It was necessary to make Korea the road by which he should invade China, and therefore he sent an envoy suggesting that, as he was about to conquer the four corners of the earth, Korea should give him free passage through her territory, or, better still, should join him in the subjugation of the Flowery Kingdom. To this the King replied that, as Korea had always been friendly with China, and looked upon her as a child upon a parent or as a younger brother upon an elder, she could not think of taking such a wicked course. After a considerable interchange of envoys, Hideyoshi became convinced that there was nothing to do but crush Korea, as a preliminary to the greater work.

It was in 1592 that Hideyoshi launched his armies at Korea. He was unable to come himself, but he put his forces under the command of Hideyi as chief, while the actual leaders were Kato and Konishi. The Korean and Japanese accounts agree substantially in saying that the Japanese army consisted of approximately two hundred and fifty thousand men. They had five thousand battle-axes, one hundred thousand long swords, one hundred thousand spears, one hundred thousand short swords, five hundred thousand daggers, three hundred thousand firearms, large and small, but no cannon. There were fifty thousand horses. Many of the Japanese wore hideous masks with which to frighten the enemy, but it was the musketry that did the work. The Koreans had no firearms at all, and this enormous discrepancy is the second of the main causes of Japanese success. The Koreans could not be expected to stand against trained men armed with muskets.

Korea had long expected the invasion, and had kept China well informed of the plans of Hideyoshi and his demands, but when the blow was struck it found Korea unprepared. She had enjoyed the blessings of peace so long that her army had dwindled to a mere posse of police, and her generals were used simply to grace their empty pageants. There may also have been the notion that Japan was simply a medley of half-savage tribes, whose armies could not be truly formidable. If so, the Koreans were greatly mistaken. At the first blow it became apparent that Korea could do nothing against the invaders. Fusan, Tong-na, Kim-ha, and the other towns along the route to Seoul fell in quick succession. It was found that the Japanese army was too large to advance by a single route, especially as they had to live off the country, in large part. So the army divided into three sections: one, led by General Konishi, came north by the middle road; another, to the east of this, was led by General Kato; and a western one was led by General Kuroda.

It was on the seventeenth of the fourth moon that the terrible news of the landing of the Japanese reached Seoul by messenger, though the fire signals flashing from mountain top to mountain top had already signified that trouble had broken out. The King and the court were thrown into a panic, and feverish haste was used in calling together the scattered remnants of the army. The showing was extremely meagre. A few thousand men, poorly armed and entirely lacking in drill, were found, but their leaders were even worse than the men. It was resolved to send this inadequate force to oppose the Japanese at the great Cho-ryung, or " Bird Pass," where tens of men in defence were worth thousands in attack. The doughty general, Sil Yip, led this forlorn hope, but ere the pass was reached the gruesome tales of the Japanese prowess reached them, and Sil Yip determined to await the coming of the enemy on a plain, where he deemed that the battle-flails of the Koreans would do better execution than among the mountains. The pass was, therefore, undefended, and the Japanese swarmed over, met Sil Yip with his ragged following, swept them from their path and hurried on toward Seoul.

We must pause a moment in order to describe the Japanese leaders, Kato and Konishi, who were the animating spirits of the invasion. Kato was an old man and a conservative. He was withal an ardent Buddhist and a scholar of the old school. He was disgusted that such a young man as Konishi was placed in joint command with him. This Konishi was a new-school man, young and clever. He was a Roman Catholic convert, and in every respect the very opposite of Kato, except in bravery and self-assertion. They proved to be flint and steel to each other. They were now vying with one another which would reach Seoul first. Their routes had been decided by lot, and Konishi had proved fortunate, but he had more enemies to meet than Kato, and so their chances were about even.

General Yi Il was the ranking Korean field officer, and he with four thousand men was hurried south to block the path of the Japanese wherever he chanced to meet them. He crossed Bird Pass and stationed his force at Sung-ju, in the very track of the approaching invaders. But when his scouts told him the numbers and the armament of the foe, he turned and fled back up the pass. This was bad enough, but his next act was treason, for he left the pass where ten men could have held a thousand in check, and put a wide stretch of country between himself and that terrible foe. He is not much to blame, considering the following that he had. He never stood up and attempted to fight the Japanese, but fell back as fast as they approached.

Konishi with his forces reached the banks of the Han River first, but there were no boats with which to cross, and the northern bank was defended by the Koreans, who here had a good opportunity to hold the enemy in check. But the sight of that vast array was too much for the Korean general in charge, and he retreated with his whole force, after destroying all his engines of war.

Meanwhile Seoul was in turmoil indeed. There was no one to man the walls, the people were in a panic of fear, messengers were running wildly here and there. Everything was in confusion. Some of the King's advisers urged him to flee to the north, others advised to stay and defend the city. He chose the former course, and on that summer night, at the beginning of the rainy season, he made hasty preparations and fled out the west gate along the " Peking Road." Behind him the city was in flames. The people were looting the government storehouses, and the slaves were destroying the archives in which were kept the slave-deeds ; for slaves were deeded property, like real estate, in those days. The rain began to fall in torrents, and the royal cortege was drenched to the skin. Food had not been supplied in sufficient quantities, and the King himself had to go hungry for several hours. Seven days later he crossed the Tadong River, and was safe for a time in Pyeng-yang.

Meanwhile the Japanese were revelling in Seoul. Their great mistake was this delay. If they had pushed on resolutely and without delay, they would have taken China unprepared, but they lingered by the way and gave time for the preparation of means for the ultimate victory of the Koreans. The country was awakening from the first stupor of fear, and loyal men were collecting forces here and there and drilling them in hope of ultimately being able to give the Japanese a home thrust. Strong though the Japanese army was, it laboured under certain difficulties. It was cut off from its source of supplies, and was living on the country. Every man that died by disease or otherwise was a dead loss, for his place could not be filled. This inability to obtain reinforcements was caused by the loyalty and the genius of Admiral Yi Sun-sin, a Korean whose name deserves to be placed beside that of any of the world's great heroes. Assuming charge of the Korean fleet in the south, he had invented a curious iron-clad in the shape of a tortoise. The back was covered with iron plates, and was impervious to the fire of the enemy. With his boat he met and engaged a Japanese fleet, bringing sixty thousand reinforcements to Hideyoshi's army. With his swift tortoise-boat he rammed the smaller Japanese craft right and left, and soon threw the whole fleet into confusion. Into the struggling mass he threw fire-arrows, and a terrible conflagration broke out, which destroyed almost the entire fleet. A few boats escaped and carried the news of the disaster back to Japan.

This may be called the turning-point in the war, for, although the Japanese forces went as far as Pyeng-yang, and the King had to seek asylum on the northern frontier, yet the spirit of the invasion was broken. China, moved at last by Korea's appeals, was beginning to wake up to the seriousness of the situation, and the Japanese, separated so long from their homes and entirely cut off from Japan, were beginning to be anxious. The mutual jealousies of the Japanese leaders also had their effect, so that when the allied Koreans and Chinese appeared before Pyeng-yang and began to storm the place, the Japanese were glad enough to steal away by night and hurry southward. They were pursued, and it was not till they had gone back as far as the capital that they could rest long enough to take breath. It should be noted that China did not come to the aid of Korea until the backbone of the invasion was practically broken. It was a pity that Korea did not have an opportunity to finish off the Japanese single-handed. With no hope of reinforcement, the Japanese army would have been glad to make terms and retire, but the peculiar actions of the Chinese, which gave rise to the suspicion that they had been tampered with by the Japanese, gave the latter ample time to reach the southern coast and fortify themselves there. The very presence of the Chinese tended to retard the growth of that national spirit among the Koreans which led them to arm in defence of their country. It might have been the beginning of a new Korea, even as the recent war gives hope of the beginning of a new Russia, by awakening her to her own needs.

Intrenched in powerful forts along the southern coast, the Japanese held on for two full years, the Koreans swarming about them and doing good service at guerilla warfare. Countless are the stories told of the various bands of patriots that arose at this time and made life a torment for the invaders. The Japanese at last began to use diplomacy in order to extricate themselves from their unpleasant position. Envoys passed back and forth between Korea and China continually, and at last, in the summer of 1596, the Japanese army was allowed to escape to Japan. This was a grievous mistake. Konishi was willing to get away to Japan, because the redoubtable Admiral Yi Sunsin was still alive, and so long as he was on the sea the Japanese could not hope to bring reinforcements to the peninsula. They had lost already one hundred and eighty thousand men at the hands of this Korean Nelson, and they were afraid of him.

We here meet with one of the results of party strife, the seeds of which had been sown half a century earlier. When the immediate pressure of war was removed, the various successful generals began vilifying each other and laying the blame for the initial disasters upon one another. Not a few of the very best men were either killed or stripped of honours. Some of them retired in disgust, and refused to have anything more to do with a government that was carried on in such a way. But the most glaring instance of all this was that of Admiral Yi Sun-sin. When the Japanese went back to their own country, they began to plan another invasion, this time for the less ambitious purpose of punishing Korea. Only one thing was necessary to their success. Admiral Yi must be gotten out of the way. Korean accounts say that this was accomplished as follows.

A Korean who had attached himself to the fortunes of the Japanese was sent by the latter back to Korea, and he appeared before one of the Korean generals and offered to give some very important information. It was that a Japanese fleet was coming against Korea, and it would be very necessary to send Admiral Yi Sun-sin to intercept it at a certain group of islands. The King learned of this, and immediately ordered the admiral to carry out this work. Admiral Yi replied that the place mentioned was very dangerous for navigation, and that it would be far better to await the coming of the Japanese at a point nearer the Korean coast. His detractors used this as a handle, and charged him with treason in not obeying the word of the King. After refusing for a second time to jeopardise his fleet in this way, he was shorn of office and degraded to the ranks. He obeyed without a murmur. This was precisely what the Japanese were waiting for. Hearing that the formidable Yi was out of the way, they immediately sailed from Japan. The Korean fleet had been put under the command of a worthless official, who fled from before the enemy, and thus allowed the Japanese to land a second time. This was in the first moon of 1597, and it took a thousand boats to bring the Japanese army. When it landed, all was again in turmoil. A hasty appeal was made to China for help, and a loud cry was raised for the reinstatement of Admiral Yi Sun-sin in his old station. This was done, and he soon cut off the new army of invasion from its source of supplies, and "had them exactly where they were before. But this time the Japanese army did not have its own way upon the land as in the former case. The Koreans had been trained to war. Firearms had been procured, and their full initiation into Japanese methods had prepared them for defence. Small bands of Koreans swarmed about the Japanese, cutting off a dozen here and a score there, until they were glad to get behind the battlements of their forts. A powerful army of the Japanese started for Seoul by the western route, but they were met in Chiksan by the allied Koreans and Chinese, and so severely whipped that they never again attempted to march on the capital. For a time the war dragged on, neither side scoring any considerable victories, and in truth for part of the time there was so little fighting that the Japanese settled down like immigrants and tilled the soil, and even took wives from among the peasant women. But in 1598 it was decided that a final grand effort must be made to rid the country of them. The Japanese knew that their cause was hopeless, and they only wanted to get away safely. They had some boats, but they dared not leave the shelter of the guns of their forts, for fear that they would be attacked by Admiral Yi Sun-sin. They tried to bribe the Chinese generals, and it is said that in this they had some success. But when, relying on this, they boarded their vessels and set sail for Japan, they found that the famous admiral was not included in the bargain, for he came out at them, and, in the greatest naval battle of the war, destroyed almost the whole fleet. In the battle he was mortally wounded, but he did not regret this, for he saw that his country was freed of invaders, and he felt sure that his enemies at court would eventually compass his death even if he survived the war.

It was during this second invasion that the Japanese shipped back to Japan a large number of pickled ears and noses of Koreans, which were buried at Kyoto. The place is shown today, and stands a mute memorial of as savage and wanton an outrage as stains the record of any great people. During the years of Japanese occupancy they sent back to Japan enormous quantities of booty of every kind. The Koreans were skilled in making a peculiar kind of glazed pottery, which the Japanese admired very much. So they took the whole colony bodily to Japan, with all their implements, and set them down in western Japan to carry on their industry. This succeeded so well that the celebrated Satsuma ware was the result. The remnants of the descendants of the Koreans are still found in Japan.

Only a few years elapsed before the Japanese applied to the Korean government to be allowed to establish a trading station at Fusan, or rather to re-establish it. Permission was granted, and elaborate laws were made limiting the number of boats that could come annually, the amount of goods they could bring, and the ceremonies that must be gone through. The book in which these details are set down is of formidable size. The perusal of it shows conclusively that Japan assumed a very humble attitude, and that Korea treated her at. best no better than an equal. This trading station may be called the back door of Korea, for her face ever was toward China; and, while considerable trade was carried on by means of these annual trading expeditions of the Japanese, it was as nothing compared with the trade that was carried on with China by junk and overland through Manchuria.