Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1904-03-26
HOW KOREANS FEEL
They Hate the Japs and Fear
the Russians.
HAVE GOOD CAUSE
LAND HAS FOR CENTURIES BEEN
A BLOODY GROUND.
overrun by Contending Armies-A
Government of Grafters-An
Unlucky People.
HAVE GOOD CAUSE

written Tor The Evening Star by Archer Il. HUI
BERT formerly Editor Of the Korean Independent.
For centuries Korea has been overrun by
the contending armies of Japan and China,
and while the national dress in Korea is
pure white, only the children wearing col
ors, according to American standards it
should be mourning black.
Nor have the enemies of Korea lived
only on her east and west sides; the Man
chu conquerors. who spread south and east
to conquer China and Russia, overran ko-
rea and starved one of her old-time kings
out OF his fortified capital, Nom-hou.
Korea Is once again in the track of con-
tending armies; once again her rice fields
are to be ravaged, her cities despoiled and
her people driven to the bitterest of ex-
tremities. Little do the contending armies
care what the Koreans think; but the world
naturally asks, Whom do the Koreans fear
and what do they desire?
In the first place, the people, as people,
don't know any more about the burning
question of far eastern politics than the
dray horses in New York know whether
Tammany Hall, their political oppo-
nents, rule the city. So far as their prac-
teal knowledge of the situation goes, they
are without consciousness: and, once given
their choice between Russian rule and jap
anese domination and total humiliation,
the nation, as nation, would choose ami
hilation simply because they did not know
what it meant; whereas, they have had
several tastes of Japanese rule and one
good strong dose of Russian domination,
and are sure that they never want either of
these again.
The Bloody Ground.
Japanese sovereignty in Korea has been
spasmodicaIly exercised throughout the
centuries of the Christian era; for many
years a long, bloody conflict went on be-
To- nd
the battle-ground; just as in early American
history Kentucky was the battle-ground be-
tween the IroQuois Indian nations of the
north and the Cherokees and Creeks of the
south. And as Kentucky was known as the
"bloody ground even before the white
mans day. so Korea has been the bloody
ground of Asia for five centuries.
China claimed Korea, and has BEEN for
the greater part of the time, her nominal
master. From China Korea has received
her literature and official language, most
of her customs, her court and official meth
DDS, much of her architecture, her military
which will hound her for as many years to
come. Yet the Koreans are not in any
sense Chinese, any more than they are
Japanese; the difference between the ko-
reans and her two neighbors is so great
that it may be stated with certainty that
the people came originally from the Malay
peninsula, by way of the islands along the
Chinese coast, until they entered the PENN
SuId Oh WHICH liiSy diC touoy'
No Racial Connection.
This is to be remembered as a point il,
the case, the Koreans cannot and do not
favor one of these nations because of any
racial connection, there is none. Nor is
there any racial connection or sympathy
between the Koreans and the peoples to
the north. the Manchus, with whom Rus
sian statists have long affirmed that Rus
STA will assimilate, because the ancient
Manchurians under Ghengis Khan con-
quered European Russia. The Manchus are
distinct from even the Chinese proper, they
are pastoral people and speak an agglut-
native language Containing declensions and
conjugations) which far removes them, so
far as basic traits can do so, from the real
Chinese. The Koreans are not of Manchu
stock and have no utilization with it. In
fact the Ghengis Khan, who broke down
the great wall and stretched his conquests
to the Atlantic, never subdued central and
southern Korea.
Thus the Korean people are as strange
considered historically, as is their position
politically. They have fought Chinese. Jap
anese and Manchu as far back as their
hoary records go. And now, passing down
into modern days, there has been no as
sanitation and no change in the depth of
their hatred and distrust of the people who
surround them. Japan, always Jealous of
China's claim as suZerain over Korea,
jumped at the chance in 1895 to free Korea.
Internal trouble in Korea gave her an OPP
portunity to throw her troops into that
land, precipitating war with China. Korea
did not resent Chinese suzerainty, for it
was only nominal, and she did not ask or
want Japan to free her from China. And
this is a remarkable fact that cannot be
forgotten today-throughout the Japan
China war, in which Japan freed Korea
from China, the sympathy of the entire
British populace of the far east was with
the Chinese and not with the japanese.
A Menace to China.
In that war Japan's armies swept up the
Korean peninsula to the Yalu and drove the
weak Chinese hordes back to the Liaotung
peninsula; there, on the tip of the tigers
tail. they captured Port Arthur, the Glib
raltar of the Yellow Sea and northern