summarily punished without trial by the police.

The usual punishment is flogging--only Koreans and not Japanese or
foreigners are liable to be flogged. This punishment can be given in such a
way as to cripple, to confine the victim to his home for weeks, or to kill.
While it is not supposed to be practiced on women, on men over sixty-five
or on boys under fifteen, the police flog indiscriminately.

The Japanese Government passed, some years ago, regulations to prevent the
abuse of flogging. These regulations are a dead letter. Here is the
official statement:

"It was decided to retain it (flogging), but only for application to native
offenders. In March, 1912, Regulations concerning Flogging and the
Enforcing Detailed Regulations being promulgated, many improvements were
made in the measures hitherto practiced. Women, boys under the age of
fifteen and old men over the age of sixty are exempt from flogging, while
the infliction of this punishment on sick convicts and on the insane is to
be postponed for six months. The method of infliction was also improved so
that by observing greater humanity, unnecessary pain in carrying out a
flogging could be avoided, as far as possible,"[1]

[Footnote 1: Annual Report of Reforms and Progress in Chosen. Keijo
(Seoul), 1914.]

So much for the official claim. Now for the facts.

In the last year for which returns are available, 1916-17, 82,121 offenders
were handled by police summary judgment, that is, punished by the police on
the spot, without trial. Two-thirds of these punishments (in the last year
when actual flogging figures were published) were floggings.

The instrument used is two bamboos lashed together. The maximum legal
sentence is ninety blows, thirty a day for three days in succession. To
talk of this as "greater humanity" or "avoiding unnecessary pain" gives me
nausea. Any experienced official who has had to do with such things will
bear me out in the assertion that it is deliberately calculated to inflict
the maximum of pain which the human frame can stand, and in the most long
drawn out manner.

Sick men, women and boys and old men are flogged.

In the disturbances of 1919 wounded men who were being nursed in the
foreign hospitals in Seoul were taken out by the police to be flogged,
despite the protests of doctors and nurses. There were many cases reported
of old men being flogged. The stripping and flogging of women, particularly
young women, was notorious.