ime of the Government-General have been
the denial of justice, the destruction of liberty, the shutting out of the
people from all real participation in administration, the lofty assumption
and display of a spirit of insolent superiority by the Japanese, and the
deliberate degradation of the people by the cultivation of vice for the
purpose of personal profit. In the old days, opium was practically unknown.
Today opium is being cultivated on a large scale under the direct
encouragement of the Government, and the sale of morphia is carried on by
large numbers of Japanese itinerant merchants. In the old days, vice hid
its head. To-day the most prominent feature at night-time in Seoul, the
capital, is the brilliantly lit Yoshiwara, officially created and run by
Japanese, into which many Korean girls are dragged. Quarters of ill fame
have been built up in many parts of the land, and Japanese panders take
their gangs of diseased women on tours through smaller districts. On one
occasion when I visited Sun-chon I found that the authorities had ordered
some of the Christians to find accommodation in their homes for Japanese
women of ill fame. Some Koreans in China sent a petition to the American
Minister in Peking which dealt with some moral aspects of the Japanese rule
of Korea. They said:

"The Japanese have encouraged immorality by removing Korean
marriage restrictions, and allowing marriages without formality
and without regard for age. There have been marriages at as early
an age as twelve. Since the annexation there have been 80,000
divorce cases in Korea. The Japanese encourage, as a source of
revenue, the sale of Korean prostitutes in Chinese cities. Many
of these prostitutes are only fourteen and fifteen years old. It
is a part of the Japanese policy of race extermination, by which
they hope to destroy all Koreans. May God regard these facts.

"The Japanese Government has established a bureau for the sale of
opium, and under the pretext that opium was to be used for
medicinal purposes has caused Koreans and Formosans to engage in
poppy cultivation. The opium is secretly shipped into China.
Because of the Japanese encouragement of this traffic many
Koreans have become users of the drug.

"The Japanese forbid any school courses for Koreans higher than
the middle school and the higher schools established by
missionary organizations