om
the torture of hanging there.

"When I came to, I found myself lying on the floor, the police giving me
water. They showed me a paper, which they said was the order of release for
Yi Keun-tak and O Hak-su, who had confessed. If I wanted to be set at
liberty I must do the same. Then they beat me again. I saw the paper and
managed with difficulty to read it. It was to the effect that they did
confess and promised never to do such things again.

"I was then introduced to Yi Keun-tak, who, they said, had confessed and
been acquitted, and they urged me to follow Yi's example. I urged them to
treat me as they had treated Yi. They told me what to confess, but as I had
never heard of such things I refused, and they said they had better kill
me.

"They resumed their tortures, and after two or three months, being unable
to bear it any longer, I confessed all that is required."

Paik Yong-sok, a milk seller and a Presbyterian, with eleven in his family,
said he had been a Christian for fifteen years and had determined only to
follow the teachings of the Bible; he had never thought of assassination or
considered establishing the independence of the country. Having to support
a family of eleven, he had no time for such things.

He had made the confession recited by the Court, but it was under
compulsion and false. "For a number of days I was tortured twice by day and
twice by night. I was blindfolded, hung up, beaten. Often I fainted, being
unable to breathe. I thought I was dying and asked the police to shoot me,
so intolerable were my tortures. Driven beyond the bounds of endurance by
hunger, thirst and pain, I said I would say whatever they wanted.

"The police told me that I was of no account among the twenty million
Koreans, and they could kill or acquit me as they pleased.... Meanwhile
five or six police dropped in and said, 'Have you repented? Did you take
part in the assassination plots?' It was too much for me to say 'Yes' to
this question, so I replied 'No.' Immediately they slapped my cheeks,
stripped me, struck, beat and tormented me. It is quite beyond my power to
describe the difficulty of enduring such pain."

The man paused and pointed to a Japanese, Watanabe by name, sitting behind
the judges, "That interpreter knows all about it," he said, "He was one of
the men who struck me." Watanabe was pointed out by other prisoners as a
man who had been prominent in tormenting them.

Im Do-myong, a barber and a Pre