To accomplish this better, the Koreans were isolated, not allowed to mix
freely with the outer world, and deprived of liberty of speech, person and
press. The Japanese brought certain material reforms. They forgot to supply
one thing--justice. Men of progressive ideas were seized and imprisoned in
such numbers that a new series of prisons had to be built. In six years the
total of prisoners convicted or awaiting trial doubled. The rule of the big
stick was instituted, and the Japanese police were given the right to flog
without trial any Korean they pleased. The bamboo was employed on scores of
thousands of people each year, employed so vigorously as to leave a train
of cripples and corpses behind. The old tyranny of the yang-ban was
replaced by a more terrible, because more scientifically cruel, tyranny of
an uncontrolled police.

The Japanese struck an unexpected strain of hardness in the Korean
character. They found, underneath the surface apathy, a spirit as
determined as their own. They succeeded, not in assimilating the people,
but in reviving their sense of nationality.

Before Japan acquired the country, large numbers of Koreans had adopted
Christianity. Under the influence of the teachers from America, they became
clean in person, they brought their women out from the "anpang" (zenana)
into the light of day, and they absorbed Western ideas and ideals. The
mission schools taught modern history, with its tales of the heroes and
heroines of liberty, women like Joan of Arc, men like Hampden and George
Washington. And the missionaries circulated and taught the Bible--the most
dynamic and disturbing book in the world. When a people saturated in the
Bible comes into touch with tyranny, either one of two things happens, the
people are exterminated or tyranny ceases.

The Japanese realized their danger. They tried, in vain, to bring the