American Missionaries in the March First Movement by Chikako Inoue
Introduction
After the First Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War in the late 19th and early 20th century, Japan was in search of natural resources like mines, fields for agriculture, marine resources, and more people to supplement the national power, which would not be possible with the limited resources on the island of Japan. Japan looked for those resources on the continent. To proceed with its colonial project, Japan had two initial tasks: kicking the Qing dynasty out of Korea and making sure that Japan had a superior position in Korea over Western Powers. To complete the first task, Japan had two treaties to reassure that Korea would be independent from the Qing dynasty’s sovereign protection. As a result of the Russo-Japanese War, furthermore, Japan gained the power to make political decisions on behalf of the Korean government and made Russia promise that it recognized and would not intervene in Japan’s political, military, and economic executions in Korea. In this way, Japan created the precondition for Japan’s annexation of Korea with the Japan-Korea Treaty of 1910.
In 1894, followers of Tonghak in Korea organized a rebellious movement against the Korean king and queen. The king and queen requested the Qing dynasty’s intervention, which invited Japanese troops based on the past treaty between Korea and Japan. Korean Nationalist sentiments had developed around Tonghak, a newly founded cult stemming from Buddhism and Confucianism with anti-Christian characteristics. Tonghak changed its name to Chongdogyo after the rebellion, yet continued the Independence movement. In 1919, a growing sense of Korean nationalism met the Wilsonian Statement. The slogan of “ethnic self-determination” inspired and mobilized the Chongdogyo and Christian leaders, leading them to write an independence declaration in 1919. (52) Korean Christians, at first, distanced themselves from Chondogyo but later joined the leaders to submit the petition to the Japanese government. (61) Korean Christians were mobilized not only by the Chondogyo leaders’ recruitment but also by Wilson’s statement on “self-determination.” Foreign missionaries, on the other hand, were not involved in the planning of the movement. (42-43) Ku argues that foreign missionaries, with a few exceptions like Dr. Gale and Dr. Schofield, did not support the independence movement despite the Japanese government seeing their activities as an instigation of the movement. (300) This article will take a closer look at whether the missionaries supported the Korean Independence Movement and the motivation behind their (lack of) support. The missionaries had criticized Japan’s inhumane rule towards people in Korea and helped the movement, but did not necessarily support the cause of the movement, the independence, or the Korean “self-determination.” I argue that the direction of the American missionaries’ support shifted from the expansion of Japanese missionaries’ work to the Korean Independence movement’s resistance against Japan’s rule to gain the most benefit for their evangelization. American missionaries initially found the shared benefit with Japanese Christians, namely the Kumi-ai Church, but later discovered their interest actually conflicted. Since Japan’s iron-fist rule targeted Christians, both Koreans and foreign missionaries, they shared the harm of Japan’s colonialism. Combined with a decrease in the shared benefit with Japan, an increase in the shared harm with Korea motivated American missionaries to show support towards their resistance against Japan’s violence.
Missionaries from 1910 to 1918
At first, American missionaries were supportive of Japan’s colonial rule because they wanted to expand their mission. [1] Right before Japan’s annexation of Korea in 1910, the missionaries showed a positive prospect towards Japan’s annexation of Korea, expecting a collaboration between American and Japanese missionaries, namely the Kumi-ai Church, in Korea. Kumi-ai Church is a Congregational church in Japan, organized and led by the Japanese Christians independently from the foreign forces. In April 1910, four months before the annexation, the American missionaries commented on the mission of the Kumi-ai church as self-support, evangelical leadership that effectively conducted the mission on behalf of the American churches. With a series of previous collaborations with Kumi-ai Church for their mission in Japan, the American missionaries saw Japan’s annexation of Korea as a significant opportunity to efficiently expand on their evangelical mission in the peninsula. As expected by the American missionaries, members of the Kumi-ai church started to conduct their evangelical mission right after Japan annexed Korea in August 1910.
Their vision for collaboration, however, soon faced conflicting interests in religious leadership in the evangelistic work in Korea between American missionaries and the Japanese, who were financially supported by the Japanese government. Count Okuma, as reported by the Japan Evangelist for October, stated that the evangelization of Korea should be conducted by the Japanese missionaries in co-operation with the American missionaries. Having dominance in religion was an urgent matter for the Japanese militarist government, which combined Shinto, the Japanese religion, with the emperor to maintain imperial rule in Korea. (28) For the Japanese empire, therefore, letting Christians win over Korea meant allowing Christianity to intervene and deconstruct Japan’s colonial ruling system. American missionaries’ evangelization and Japan’s colonial project shared the same goal to dominate Korea religiously and were in conflict. Eye for an eye–to overcome this battle, the Japanese government used Japanese Christian missionaries. The Seoul government funded the Kumi-ai Church to conduct a mission in Korea and delegated Tsuneyoshi Watase, who strongly believed that the missions should be conducted by the Japanese in cooperation with Japanese politicians and military officials, as a chief missionary in 1908.
While Japanese Christians endeavored to establish their own leadership, American missionaries continued and even expanded their mission, which developed Japan’s suspicion and caution towards them. Responding to Count Okuma’s statement on Japan’s entitlement to religious leadership, an anonymous writer in Missionary Herald expressed doubt about Japan’s capability to become evangelists in Korea, claiming the Japanese’s harsh treatment had “failed to gain confidence of the subject nation.” In 1910 and 1911, the Korean Churches sought and attained mass conversion, the so-called Million Evangelistic Campaign. Dr. Brown, an American missionary in Korea, suggested that this enormous reinforcement stirred Japan’s fear of losing the civil authorities. (8) The governor-general regulated any undesirable arrangement of private schools, which was received by the missionaries as an attack on their religious missions. (33) Rev. J. H. DeForest, an American Doctor of Divinity from Sendai, Japan, writes that the work of Christianizing the Korean peninsula can be aided by the support of the Kumi-ai Churches, assuming the American missionaries’ leadership and Japan’s secondary role. George T. B. Davis, an American missionary, acknowledged that Korea is a strategic point for Russia, China, and Japan and thus is also a religious strategic point as well for Christians, stating that “[…] to win Korea now means to win East Asia.” (3) American missionaries wanted evangelization of East Asia with a strong American leadership supported by local churches, thus Japan wanting religious leadership rather blocked them from this goal rather than assisting them.
The conflicting interests between Japan and American missionaries over Korea developed into direct conflict between them, which left an impact of Japan’s military rule, which had been imposed on Koreans, on foreign missionaries as well. American missionaries perceived this conflict mainly in two forms: oppression against Christianity and humanitarian harm against Christians. One of the examples that took both forms was the Conspiracy Case of 1911. In 1911, the Japanese police in Seoul arrested many Korean Christians and at least one missionary for a false case of planning to assassinate Governor-General Terauchi, the so-called “Conspiracy Case of 1911.” As those who were prosecuted in this case were predominantly Korean Christians with a connection to the Presbyterian Church, American missionaries suspected that this case was a religious persecution against Christianity and interpreted past conflicts as “a quiet but persistent oppression of Christianity.” American missionaries expressed strong disturbance towards Japan’s political conduct, yet they were not quite supportive of the Koreans in causing a revolt. An author of the column in Missionary Herald stated that American missionaries would never instigate political rebellion, not to mention engagement in a conspiracy of assassination, and doubted that Korean Christians as a class would plan a rebellion. What American missionaries did not tolerate was the disturbance of the evangelical mission, motivated by Japan’s suspicion towards them.
The direct conflict kept growing between American missionaries and the Japanese local agencies, like the police and gendarmes. Missionary Herald reported that the false confessions were squeezed from the arrested Koreans by torture and attributed the responsibility for this damage to the local agents and police, not the Japanese high officials. Brown prompted the intervention by the United States government, if not right away, then in the near future, stating that the rights of American citizens in Korea, including the missionaries’, were threatened by the Japanese forces. (1) Brown’s accusation was directed not only at the local forces but also at the legality of the Japanese government’s annexation of Korea based on international law. Brown pointed out that the Joseon–United States Treaty of 1882, which promised that “if other Powers deal unjustly or oppressively with either Government, the other will exert their good offices, on being informed of the case, to bring about an amicable arrangement,” had never been abandoned by the United States even after the Japan-Korea treaty of 1910. (1) The conspiracy case, overall, provided a framework for American missionaries to locate the problem in the legal system/Japanese government beyond the violence done by the gendarme.
The tension between American missionaries and Japan further heightened because of strict regulations, which disturbed the work of the foreign missionaries. In 1915, the Japanese government introduced a strict registration for all schools in Korea that requested them to cut off all religious contents from the curriculum or leave, along with the law that requires churches, chapels, and preachers to be registered and brought under legal regulations to “forbid any obnoxious person to do Christian work.” This received considerable pushback from the American missionaries. The attitude of the American missionaries towards Japanese Kumi-ai churches shifted from a friendly one to opposition, stating that many members of the mission were against letting the Kumi-ai Church lead the missionary work for Koreans from the very beginning of the annexation. The opinion from American missionaries on Missionary Herald came to represent the urge for the missionaries in Korea to resist against the Japanese and their government and prevent the Kumi-ai Church from expanding its work of Christianizing the Korean people. Dr. George M. Rowland attended the fourth annual meeting at the Federal Council of Missionaries of Korea and observed the Korean missionaries fighting back at the Japanese, which he showed support for, describing their action as “heroic.” One of the writers described Japan’s status then as “arrogant and disagreeable.” Japanese officials attempted to soothe this severe tension, but it was not effective. Governor-General Terauchi had made statements to reassure the freedom in American missionaries’ work, and the Japanese government in Korea attempted to ease the tension with such actions as granting a charter for a Christian college, which removed the restriction imposed on missionary work. Ebina Danjo, a representative of Kumi-ai Church in Korea, also made a speech, stating, “We Christians must act together with the United States of America, politically and spiritually.” Despite the Japanese attempt, American missionaries remained cautious about Japan and Kumi-ai Churches. In 1918, the American Missionary Board delegated Dr. Pedly as a field secretary in Korea to live near the headquarters of the Kumi-ai churches, tour around Korea, and be the contact point between the American Board and the Kumi-ai Church. From 1910 to 1918, in sum, American Missionaries’ attitude towards Japan was shaped into distrust because of the initial religious conflict between Japanese and American missionaries, and Japan’s iron-fisted rule, like the Conspiracy Case of 1912, and the government’s regulation that disturbed their missionary works. Those oppressions, which were only a peak of the iceberg of Japanese colonial rule in Korea, charged the frustration of people in Korea, Koreans and American missionaries, against Japan’s rule, which motivated Korean religious leaders to plan the independent movement.
March First Movement and Missionaries in 1919
The news that many Christians led the movement, as well as the fact that most of the assembly was hosted at the church, reached and cautioned the Japanese military and police. Churches had been convenient, protective shelters for Koreans as they were regarded as an extra-territorial jurisdiction, and they provided a space to open up this movement as well. (29) On March 1st, the memorial services for the latest emperor were held at three locations: the Christian boys’ school named Seunduk, at the Methodist Church, and the headquarters of Chondogyo. (3) On the same day, the Korean civilians, dominant of whom were Christians, started a protest in the Pagoda Park, Seoul. Most of the leaders were leading members of the Christian Church and the Chundogyo. Many Korean Christian officials promoted independence through preaching, and March 1st was no exception to that. At the assembly, Rev. Kim Sundu read aloud the quotes from the bible, followed by Chung Ilsun, a helper at the Fourth Church, to announce the proclamation. (4) On March 1st, the Japanese police intruded on the gathering, collected the flag from the Korean protestors, and left while Korean people protested peacefully, screaming “Mansei.” (5)
Surveillance and violence by the Japanese military and police were strengthened from the following day and directed not only to Koreans but also to the American missionaries. On March 2nd, the police announced that they had prohibited the church from doing services that day, and military officers were seen at some of the churches. (8) To protest against this, people on March 2nd started to target the police offices, burning them down and throwing rocks at them. (9) This triggered and escalated the police and the military’s suppression against the protestors: the soldiers appeared at the college and struck them with weapons. (10) This hostility towards Koreans had spread to the Japanese civilians settled in Korea, as such an incident was reported as a plain-clothed Japanese brutalizing a Korean man walking along the road, later joined by a soldier. (10) Furthermore, the Japanese started to target foreign missionaries as well. It was suspected that thousands of Christians joined the movement along with the Chongdokyo followers. This included students from Christian schools conducted by Americans and nurses from an American hospital in Seoul. (27) One of the factors that Japan determined as the cause of the protest was the foreign influence on the Korean people, specifically Wilson’s statement of self-determination and his personal communication to a Korean student in the United States. (62, 63) Japanese suspicion against the missionary was at its peak; the Japanese military was convinced that the mob was instigated by the missionaries of a certain country, and they arrested American missionaries on suspicion of having initiated the Independence outbreak and were put under secret examination.
Japan, already receiving international criticism from the Western society for the Conspiracy Case of 1911, was careful about the treatment and reaction of the Western missionaries, including Americans. Japan wanted to maintain Korea as its colony because colonialism was considered one of the three key components to win the international economic competition (trade, voyage, colonization). On March 4th, two American missionaries were faced and investigated by the Japanese military officers while they were trying to observe the protest downhill, but they got released after a few questions as soon as they answered that they were Americans and not related to the protest. (32) Soon after the protest, on March 9th, the Japanese officer Usami Katsuo hosted a conference with eight foreign missionaries in Korea to ask about their opinion on the cause and intention of the uprising. With the missionaries, Japanese officials discussed the potential reasons behind the movement and their measures against it. On the street, Japanese officials asked foreigners about their views on the cause of the uprising, such as: What the Koreans really want; What can be done to meet the present situation; How about secularization of education? Regarding doing away with private schools altogether, and regarding the part of the Church in the uprising? In the face of the independence movement, Japan’s attention was not only on how to control the rebellion of the Koreans but also on how the Westerners perceived the uprising and Japan as a Power. This suggested that Japan’s colonization of Korea was justified for the Japanese not only to extract human and natural resources for Japan’s development as a nation-state but also for a symbolic reason to present the Japanese empire as equal to Western powers.
As Japanese surveillance and brutality escalated, American missionaries started to show solidarity with the independence movement, but did not explicitly oppose Japan’s colonial rule of Korea. At the conference on March 9th organized by the Japanese government officials, British, Canadian, and American missionaries expressed their standpoint on the independence movement. . A. M. Sharrocks, an American missionary who taught at Christian Girls School, expressed on behalf of Christians that they merely stood with the British and against Japan’s rule that mimicked the German method and that what they wanted was not full independence. Furthermore, their support did not necessarily signify their sense of justice and empathy towards all Koreans, as the author of the correspondence, a British Administrator, stated that Christians were in this movement and getting caught because they were moral, while non-Christian Koreans were not. Some other American missionaries explained their mission and education as a diffuser of political and social ideas for the uncivilized people. A series of events described in the correspondence suggests that American missionaries supported the rebellion as long as it benefited the continuation and expansion of their evangelical mission, but not to the extent that it would disadvantage them, reluctant to show explicit resistance against the Japanese colonial rule. American missionaries, furthermore, used the humanitarian harm against Christians, which was a shared experience with the participants of the movement, to negotiate with the Japanese government for better conditions. Despite many Korean Christians leading the movement, Ku argues that foreign missionaries barely supported the movement. This is a valid argument as the missionaries did not necessarily uplift the Korean independence in their report or statement, yet there is still room to debate whether the American missionaries’ alignment with the Koreans’ resistance against Japanese rule was a support for the movement, even if their ultimate goal was the evangelization of East Asia.
Korean protestors used humanitarian harm, shared with the foreign missionaries and Christians in general, to negotiate with the international society to claim the invalidity of Japan’s colonization. The Korean Independence Committee sent a letter to President Wilson between February and March and appealed to Western society to explain the invalidity of Japan’s colonization using two frameworks: international treaty and human rights. The letter from Korean leaders to President Wilson traces the process of how Japan had deprived the long-standing state of Korea’s independence through the war between Japan and China and Russia. (41) To get Western attention on Japan’s human rights violations, a series of attacks on Christians was emphasized in the claims that Korean leaders had made. The Korean leaders wrote that the Korean Christians and Christianity had been exclusively persecuted and that educational courses and institutions organized by the missionaries had been severely regulated. (42) Japanese civilians in the city were having a public hate speech against Christians, that they should be removed from Korea, as well as beating up and arresting them. A series of Japan’s intense acts targeted towards civilians, with an emphasis on Korean Christians and sometimes foreign missionaries, was planned to be presented to Wilson and potentially to the international society at the Paris Peace Conference, in an attempt to prove that Korea deserves independence against Japan’s human rights violations of the Korean and American people. Despite their effort, none of those letters or appeals were brought up at the Conference and received no attention. Japan identified three branches of the independent movement: a group that wanted complete independence of Koreans, political authority even if the Governor-General was Japanese, or more suffrage granted to Korean than to the Japanese. (10)
Conclusion
From Japan’s annexation of Korea to the outbreak of the March First Movement, the American missionaries grew skeptical of Japan, which motivated them to express support for the Koreans, not for independence but to transform Japan’s military rule. At first, the American missionaries envisioned the collaboration with the Japanese Kumi-ai Church to expand the evangelization in Korea, but soon they noticed the conflicting interests. This conflict was a major blockage for the Japanese Empire’s use of Shinto in governing, so Japan attempted to remove the foreign religious influence, Christianity, as much as possible. The conspiracy case of 1911, where many Christians and a few missionaries were falsely convicted, turned the missionaries’ attention to the local Japanese agency’s brutality. Japan further introduced strict regulations for Christian schools and Churches. This heightened the tension between Japan and American missionaries, which shaped half of the foundation for the American missionaries to advocate for the transformation of Japan’s rule. In the March First Movement, as it was joined by many Korean Christians who were inspired by Wilson’s statement and occurred at Churches, American missionaries helped their movements by reporting to the Western world, providing space and medicine. The Japanese government had a suspicion that the foreign missionaries instigated this movement, which strengthened their surveillance against the missionaries. Sharing the struggle under the Japanese military’s suppression, the American missionaries started to express support for the Korean’s resistance against Japanese rule. Many of the missionaries, however, did not necessarily advocate for Korea’s independence.
The movement did not bring independence to Korea, yet provoked a change to the Seoul government. In August 1919, Makoto Saito was appointed as a Governor-General after Hasegawa, who was criticized for his iron-fisted rule. Saito switched from the military to “cultural rule.” The reform of colonial rule was advised to Japan by the missionaries and the American protestant churches, with further requests for the guarantee of religious freedom, abolition of racial discrimination against the Koreans, and adjustment to the laws related to prostitution and the liquor traffic. (115) This request reflects the American missionaries’ general attitude towards the independence movement of supporting resistance against rule, but not independence. With this stance, the American missionaries attempted to maintain their privilege of missionary work in East Asia, both Korea and Japan.
[1]In this section, I will illustrate how the missionaries started from supporting the annexation, questioning the methods, and supporting the rebellion because of the interest of three parties (Japan, Korea, US)