rily depend upon the gendarmerie for acceptable evidence
of crime."

The police tyranny does not end with flogging. When a person is arrested,
he is at once shut off from communication with his friends. He is not,
necessarily, informed of the charge against him; his friends are not
informed. He is not in the early stages allowed counsel. All that his
friends know is that he has disappeared in the grip of the police, and he
may remain out of sight or sound for months before being brought to trial
or released.

During this period of confinement the prisoner is first in the hands of the
police who are getting up the case against him. It is their work to extract
a confession. To obtain this they practice torture, often of the most
elaborate type. This is particularly true where the prisoners are charged
with political offences. I deal with this aspect of affairs more in detail
in later chapters, so that there is no need of me to bring proof at this
point.

After the police have completed their case, the prisoner is brought before
the procurator, whose office would, if rightly used, be a check on the
police. But in many cases the police act as procurators in Korea, and in
others the procurators and police work hand in hand.

When the prisoner is brought before the court he has little of the usual
protection afforded in a British or American Court. It is for him to prove
his innocence of the charge. His judge is the nominee of the
Government-General and is its tool, who practically does what the
Government-General tells him. The complaint of the most sober and
experienced friends of the Koreans is that they cannot obtain justice
unless it is deemed expedient by the authorities to give them justice.

Under this system crime has enormously increased. The police create it. The
best evidence of this is contained in the official figures. In the autumn
of 1912 Count Terauchi stated, in answer to the report that thousands of
Korean Christians had been confined in jail, that he had caused enquiry to
be made and there were only 287 Koreans confined in the various jails of
the country (_New York Sun_, October 3, 1912). The Count's figures were
almost certainly incorrect, or else the police released all the prisoners
on the day the reckoning was taken, except the necessary few kept for
effect. The actual number of convicts in Korea in 1912 was close on twelve
thousand, according to the official details published later. If they