Isabella Bird Bishop Korea and Her Neighbors Pages 309-314

DURING January, 1895, Seoul was in a curious condition. The “old order” was changing, but the new had not taken its place. The Japanese, victorious by land and sea, were in a position to enforce the reforms in which before the war they had asked China to cooperate. The King, since the capture of the Palace by the Japanese in July, 1894, had become little more than a “salaried automaton,” and the once powerful members of the Min clan had been expelled from their offices. The Japanese were prepared to accept the responsibility of the supervision of all departments, and to enforce honesty on a corrupt executive. The victory over the Chinese at Phyong-yang on 17th September, 1894, had set them free to carry out their purposes. Count Inouye, one of the foremost of the statesmen who created the new Japan, arrived as “Resident” on October 20, 1894, and practically administered the Government in the King's name. There were Japanese controllers in all the departments, the army was drilled by Japanese drill instructors, a police force was organized and clothed in badly fitting Japanese uniforms, a Council of Koreans was appointed to draft a scheme of reform, and form the nucleus of a possible Korean Parliament, and Count Inouye as Japanese adviser had the right of continual access to the King, and with an interpreter and stenographer sat at the meetings of the Cabinet. Every day Japanese ascendency was apparent in new appointments, regulations, abolitions, and reforms.
(....)

Whang Ju is memorable to me as being the first place I saw which had suffered from the ravages of recent war. There the Japanese came upon the Chinese, but there was no fighting at that point. Yet whatever happened has been enough to reduce a flourishing town with an estimated population of 30,000 souls to one of between 5,000 and 6,000, and to destroy whatever prosperity it had.

 I passed through the Water Gate into a deplorable scene of desolation. There were heaps of ruins, some blackened by fire, others where the houses had apparently collapsed “all of a heap,” with posts and rafters sticking out of it. There are large areas of nothing but this and streets of deserted houses, sadder yet, with doors and windows gone for the bivouac fires of the Japanese, and streets where roofless mud walls alone were standing. In some parts there were houses with windows gone and torn paper waving from their walls, and then perhaps an inhabited house stood solitary among the deserted or destroyed, emphasizing the desolation. Some of the destruction was wrought by the Chinese, some by the Japanese, and much resulted from the terrified flight of more than 20,000 of the inhabitants.

 North of Whang Ju are rich plains of productive, stoneless, red alluvium, extending towards the Tai-dong for nearly 40 miles. On these there were villages partly burned and partly depopulated and ruinous, and tracts of the superb soil had passed out of cultivation owing to the flight of the cultivators, and there was a total absence of beasts, the splendid bulls of the region having perished under their loads en route for Manchuria.

 It was a dreary journey that day through partially destroyed villages, relapsing plains, and slopes denuded of every stick which could be burned. There were no wayfarers on the roads, no movement of any kind, and as it grew dusk the mapu were afraid of tigers and robbers, and we halted for the night at the wretched hamlet of Ko-moun Tari, where I obtained a room with delay and difficulty, partly owing to the unwillingness of the people to receive a foreigner. They had suffered enough from foreigners, truly!

On such an incomparable day everything looked at its very  best, but also at its very worst, for the brilliant sunshine lit up  desolations sickening to contemplate, — a prosperous city of  80,000 inhabitants reduced to decay and 15,000 — four-fifths  of its houses destroyed, streets and alleys choked with ruins,  hill slopes and vales once thick with Korean crowded home-  steads, covered with gaunt hideous remains — fragments of  broken walls, kang floors, kang chimneys, indefinite heaps in  which roofs and walls lay in unpicturesque confusion — and  still worse, roofs and walls standing, but doors and windows  all gone, suggesting the horror of human faces with their eyes  put out. Everywhere there were the same scenes, miles of them, and very much of the desolation was charred and blackened, shapeless, hideous, hopeless, under the mocking sunlight. 

Phyong-yang was not taken by assault; there was no actual fighting in the city, both the Chinese who fled and the Japanese who occupied posed as the friends of Korea, and all this wreck and ruin was brought about not by enemies, but by those who professed to be fighting to give her independence and reform. It had gradually come to be known that the “wojen (dwarfs) did not kill Koreans,” hence many had returned. Some of these unfortunate fugitives were picking their way among the heaps, trying to find indications which might lead them to the spots where all they knew of home once existed; and here and there, where a family found their walls and roof standing, they put a door and window into one room and lived in it among the ruins of five or six.  

When the Japanese entered and found that the larger part of the population had fled, the soldiers tore out the posts and woodwork, and often used the roofs also for fuel, or lighted fires on house floors, leaving them burning, when the houses took fire and perished. They looted the property left by the fugitives during three weeks after the battle, taking even from Mr. Moffett's house $700 worth, although his servant made a written protest, the looting being sanctioned by the presence of officers. Under these circumstances the prosperity of the most prosperous city in Korea was destroyed. If such are the results of war in the “green tree,” what must they be in the “dry”?  

During the subsequent occupation the Japanese troops behaved well, and all stores obtained in the town and neighborhood were scrupulously paid for. Intensely as the people hated them, they admitted that quiet and good order had been preserved, and they were very apprehensive that on their withdrawal they would suffer much from the Kun-ren-tai, a regiment of Koreans drilled and armed by the Japanese, and these had already begun to rob and beat the people, and to defy the civil authorities. The main street on my second visit had assumed a bustling appearance. There was much building up and pulling down, for Japanese traders had obtained all the eligible business sites, and were transforming the small, dark, low, Korean shops into large, light, airy, dainty Japanese erections, well stocked with Japanese goods, and specially with kerosene lamps of every pattern and price, the Defries and Hinckes patents being unblushingly infringed.  

Phyong-yang has a truly beautiful situation on the right or north bank of the clear, bright Tai-dong, 400 yards wide at the ferry. It occupies an undulating plateau, and its wall,  parallel for two miles and a half, rises from the river level at  the stately Water Gate, and following its windings, mounts es-  carped hills to a height of over 400 feet, turning westwards at  the crest of the cliff at a sharp angle marked by a pavilion,  one of several, and follows the western ridge of the plateau,  where it falls steeply down to a fertile rolling plain where the  one real battle of the late war was fought.  

This wall, which is in excellent repair, is a loopholed and battlemented structure, 20 feet high, pierced by several gates with gate towers. The city, large as it was, was once much larger, for the old wall on the west side encloses a far larger area than the modern one. The walk over the grassy undulations within the wall and up to the northern pine-clothed  summit is entrancing, and the views, even in winter, are exquisite — eastwards over a rich plain to the mountains through  which the Tai-dong cuts its way, or northwest to one of its  affluents and the great battlefield over which in 1593 the joint  forces of Chinese and Koreans poured to recover Phyong-yang  from the Japanese, or seawards where the clear bright waters  wind through fertile and populous country, or the hilly area  within the walls where pine-clothed knolls conceal the devastations, and the Governor's yamen, temples, and monasteries  make a goodly show.