Japan sought to make the land a show place. Elaborate public buildings
were erected, railroads opened, state maintained, far in excess of the
economic strength of the nation. To pay for extravagant improvements,
taxation and personal service were made to bear heavily on the people. Many
of the improvements were of no possible service to the Koreans themselves.
They were made to benefit Japanese or to impress strangers. And the
officials forgot that even subject peoples have ideals and souls. They
sought to force loyalty, to beat it into children with the stick and drill
it into men by gruelling experiences in prison cells. Then they were amazed
that they had bred rebels. They sought to wipe out Korean culture, and then
were aggrieved because Koreans would not take kindly to Japanese learning.
They treated the Koreans with open contempt, and then wondered that they
did not love them.

Let us examine the administration more closely in detail.

Its outstanding feature for most of the people is (I use the present tense
because as I write it still continues) the gendarmerie and police. These
are established all over the country, and they have in effect, although not
in name, power of life or death. They can enter into any house, without
warrant, and search it. They destroy whatever they please, on the spot.
Thus if a policeman searches the room of a student, and sees a book which
does not please him, he can--and does--often burn it on the spot. Sometimes
he takes it into the street and burns it there, to impress the neighbours.

One of the police visits most feared by many villagers is the periodical
examinations to see if the houses are clean. If the policemen are not
satisfied, they do not trouble to take the people to the station, but give
them a flogging then and there. This house examination is frequently used
by police in districts where they wish to punish the Christians, or to
prevent their neighbours from becoming Christians. The Christian houses are
visited and the Christians flogged, sometimes without even troubling to
examine the houses at all. This method particularly prevails in parts of
the Pyengyang province.

The police can arrest and search or detain any person, without warrant.
This right of search is freely used on foreigners as well as Koreans. Any
Korean taken to the police station can, in practice, be kept in custody as
long as wanted, without trial, and then can be released without trial, or
can be