empt was made to stir up the Japanese population against the
Americans. Numbers of houses of American missionaries and leaders of
philanthropic work were searched. Several of them were called to the police
offices and examined; some were stopped in the streets and searched. Unable
to find any evidence against the missionaries, the Japanese turned on the
Korean Christians. Soon nearly every Korean Christian pastor in Seoul was
in jail; and news came from many parts of the burning of churches, the
arrest of leading Christians, and the flogging of their congregations. The
Japanese authorities, on pressure from the American consular officials,
issued statements that the missionaries had nothing to do with the
uprising, but in practice they acted as though the rising were essentially
a Christian movement.

In the country people were stopped by soldiers when walking along the
roads, and asked, "Are you Christians?" If they answered, "Yes," they were
beaten; if "No," they were allowed to go. The local gendarmes told the
people in many villages that Christianity was to be wiped out and all
Christians shot. "Christians are being arrested wholesale and beaten simply
because they are Christians," came the reports from many parts.

Soon dreadful stories came from the prisons, not only in Seoul, but in many
other parts. Men who had been released after investigation, as innocent,
told of the tortures inflicted on them in the police offices, and showed
their jellied and blackened flesh in proof. Some were even inconsiderate
enough to die a few days after release, and on examination their bodies and
heads were found horribly damaged. The treatment may be summed up in a
paragraph from a statement by the Rev. A.E. Armstrong, of the Board of
Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church of Canada, who was on a visit
to Korea at the time:

"The tortures which the Koreans suffer at the hands of the police
and gendarmes are identical with those employed in the famous
conspiracy trials. I read affidavits, now on their way to the
United States and British Governments, which made one's blood
boil, so frightful were the means used in trying to extort
confessions from prisoners. And many of these had no part in the
demonstrations, but were simply onlookers."

Within a fortnight, the arrests numbered thousands in Seoul alone. Every
man, particularly every student, suspected of participation was jailed. But
it wa