The coverage this month has some interesting notes coming out of the US government…

The Korean Independence Movement gets taken up in a small way in the gigantic political battles in the United States while  President Woodrow Wilson was busy in Paris working on the peace deal to end WWI.

Sometimes, Korea’s name is mentioned in only one line of the coverage of titanic battles in the US Congress over Wilson’s ideas for  League of Nations and a new world order.  Korea gets mentioned in this regard, as a current colony of an empire, along side China and Ireland – with the Irish getting considerably more ink in the press and mention in the Senate…

Some of the stuff shown from these Congressional battles is well worth reading —- great cat fights…

The first article in the NY Times archives to mention Korea is another letter to the editor written by a Korean to attack Prof. Ladd’s analysis of the meaning of the March 1st Movement which I linked last month.

1 June 1919 – Far Eastern Questions – Letter to the Editor by Syngman Rhee – the future first president of South Korea

I rather welcome an article like that of Dr. Ladd…because it gives me a chance to tell more about the facts concerning Korea and the Koreans.  If I wrote to tell these facts when there was no call for them, some Japanese propagandist might call me down for criticizing that great power whose representatives are sitting with the American delegates at the peace table in Paris.

Cute back-of-the-hand smack…

May I call his attention to the fact that the Japanese police went round with a manifesto, just prior to the outbreak of the Korean independence demonstrations, and made the citizens sign it, to express their wish to remain permanently under the Japanese rules.  The scheme of picturing a Utopian stage of life under the “beneficent rule of the Mikado” in Korea before the eyes of the world during the Peace Conference at Paris, has been sadly spoiled by the recent Korean uprising.

This is a good rhetorical style…

First, the Korean independence movement at home and abroad is not an anti-Japanese agitation, and, second, the Koreans are not trying to disturb the friendly relations between the US and Japan.

It is the subtle Japanese diplomacy that has made the American people believe that anything said or done in order to uncover the true facts about Japan is “anti-Japanese,”…

Not to stretch this too far, but this is in the same ballpark as a common way to dismiss expats who are critical of South Korea’s anti-US in Korea culture.

One of the first pages I made for my Internet coverage of that culture was one headed:  Do I Hate Korea?

In it, I explained I would not have lived in Korea for several years then spent several more years studying about its history (primarily its pre-modern history) if I had hated the place.  I emphasized that focusing on the anti-US/USFK culture is looking at just one narrow aspect of the society, and that I have never tried to say that Korean society is largely defined by that one aspect of it.

I’ve also pointed out that the Internet has countless websites and pages devoted to positive or just regular information about Korea.  Tons and tons of material.  Volumes and volumes.  But how many sites can you find that covers the anti-US/USFK sentiment in South Korea???

If Professor Ladd had been in France when the thirteen American colonies were struggling to throw off the English rule and when the leaders of the American Revolution appealed to her and other European powers for friendly assistance, he would have doubtless declared that those  Americans were seeking to “foster bitterness and strife” between friendly nations.

Shin kick!!

The peace of the Orient can never be maintained permanently by compelling 20,000,000 Koreans and the 44,000,000 Chinese in Shantung to submit to the Japanese imperialistic autocracy. 

The US can at the present time set these people’s free by applying the principles of self-determination to the Asiatic nations as she has done to the European nations without resorting to arms.

Eh…don’t know about that.  Arms and/or bloody agitation seem to have been the primary means by which dictatorships and colonial establishments have fallen in history…

The whole of this article is worth a read…

Next, we move to the cat fights in the US Senate over the League of  Nations idea:

3 June 1919 – Johnson Assails League of Nations

Senator Hiram Johnson of California

“America, under the League,” said Senator Johnson, “will become the world’s guarantor, underwrite the rape of China and the partition of hundreds of thousands of square miles of territory and the transfer of millions of human beings to England, France, Italy, and Japan, in the false hope that future wars will be prevented.

The claim is interesting:

“In the construction of Article X,” the Senator said, “it will require neither an astute lawyer nor cunning diplomat to apply “external aggression” to any form of international revolution which may develop in member nations.  The League of Nations would immediately rush in.”

“Tomorrow it may be Ireland, aided in small part from the outside, demanding that of which we have made a mockery – self-determination.  Under our guaranty we must prevent it.  In the year hence stricken and cruelly despoiled Korea, or possibly even passive, humble, robbed and weak China.  And, whether it would be the one or the other subject people rebelling, the purpose of the League of Nations, under Article X, is to use the great wealth, power, and blood of the great democracy of the earth to retain revolting peoples without regard to the righteousness of their cause within the Governments and Powers from which they would be free.”

6 June 1919 – New Constitution Framed by Koreans

The first copy of the newly proclaimed Constitution of the Ta Han (Korean Republic) was received in this city [SF] today and made public by Dr. David Lee, General Manager of the Korean National Association.

Here is a link for this association giving a detailed run down of its history.

The document provides for equal suffrage, compulsory education and military training, and abolition of titles and other evidences of class distinction.  Article VII expresses the wish that the republic be admitted as a member of the League of Nations.

That line about “class distinctions” is an eye brow raiser due to what was going on around the world, especially in Russia and China and elsewhere, in terms of the spread of communist social theory.

The article goes on to reprint the Constitution – check it out…

9 June 1919 – Heated Debate in Senate – Democrats Fail in Prolonged Effort to Prevent Text Publicity

This is a very, very long article with a blow-by-blow description of what was certainly a heated debate over Pres. Wilson’s treaty negotiated among the powers in Paris, but it isn’t really worth a full read.

Korea doesn’t come in until the very end – but what is said is very interesting:

Alluding to the resolution expressing sympathy with Irish aspirations introduced by Senator Borah and passed by the Senate, Mr. Williams, who cast the sole vote against the resolution said:

“There are stories in the newspapers about Korea having national aspirations, but you have not yet introduced any  resolutions against Japan, providing for the independence of Korea, lately conquered and very much oppressed.  Why?  Because you know Great Britain will be good-humored with you and Japan will not be, and, while there are a lot of Irish-American votes, there are no Korean votes in America.  That is the honest to God truth about you.

Bam!! Swift, hard knee to the groin!!!

Here is a Wikipedia section on the opposition to the Treaty of Versailles on the biography entry for Senator Borah.

  Here is a Wikipedia post on the man speaking – John Sharp Williams.

15 June 1919 – Chinese Appeal to Senate Given Out

This is a long editorial that brings up Korea about midway through:

“The meaning of the Pan Asiatic or Japanese development of China is indicated in the Korean claim for liberation from Japan and the reconstitution of Korea as an independent State filed last week.  China arraigns Japan as a power whose soul is mediaeval, but whose methods are Prussian in their ruthlessness and efficiency.”

“China points out that Japan is ejecting the white man from Korea, and that this policy reveals continued fidelity to that instant execution in her rigidly guarded exclusion and which today expresses itself in the attempt to exclude the foreigner from Far Asia through a false Monroe Doctrine for the Far East.”

15 June 1919 – Korea Proclaims Independence

Long article to read in full.

20 June 1919 – Democrats Attack Foes of League [of Nations]

Another long article with blow-by-blow description of a Senate fight in which Korea is brought up:

Senator Thomas asserted that those interested in the Irish resolution and “the cause it urges” did not represent the Ireland of Parnell, O’Connor, Redmond, and Davitt.  They represented the element, the Senator said, which showed “but little devotion to the great principles of democracy when fighting for its life in the recent crisis of the world war.”

“They were found consorting with the enemy,” declared Senator Thomas, “giving him aid and comfort and taking him into their own domain for the undoing of the British Empire.  I do not believe we went into this war, among other things, for the purpose of insisting upon a hearing to a certain element of people, knowing that we were taking a position which was no concern of ours and that we were intruding ourselves into the affairs of one of our Allies.”

“Korea has been knocking at the doors of the Senate, asking that we pass some resolution; they have been appealing to the American people to recognize and sympathize with their cause.  Has anyone introduced a Korean resolution here?”

Interesting.  I’d like to be able to see someone responding to that, because he paints them into a very narrow corner, it seems to me…

“There are no Korean-Americans, hyphenated Americans from Korea, with votes to re-elect senators and representatives,” suggested Senator Williams.  “No, and no hyphenated Chinese, either” Senator Thomas agreed.

25 June 1919 – Borah Renews Attack on League Covenant

Another long article on another debate in the Senate concerning the implications and usefulness of the treaty to establish the League of Nations.  Korea comes up near the end much like it has so far in this political battles in the US Congress:

Go back to the proposition from which sprang the right of the Polish and Rumanian peoples to be heard,” replied Senator Borah.  “That principle was the right of self-determination.  I venture to say that the principle which was applied to the subject nationalities of Germany would have been applied to the subject nationalities the world over if the policy which the President announced had been carried out against the imperialistic designs and ambitions of the nations of Europe.  I am not criticizing the President for what he failed to do. 

I am, rather, saying that in my judgment he was prevented from doing that which he would have done by reason of the imperialistic purposes and designs of those with whom he had to contend: but there can be no doubt that the President’s policy and the sentiment of America included Ireland just as much as Poland and just as much as Rumania. 

I believe that Ireland should have been heard.  I think that Korea should have been heard.  Korea is in a state of serfdom today.”

Senator Walsh agreed with Mr. Borah that Ireland’s cause ought to have been presented to the Peace Conference and considered in the same light as that of Poland and Rumania.  If the United States had intended to be sincere in its attitude toward self-determination, it ought to have invited representatives of the Philippines to be heard at Paris.”

Touché!!

Reading this coverage opened up a new window for me:

Before, I knew Pres. Teddy Roosevelt had felt admiration for Japan and disdain for Korea for what they had accomplished in the last part of the 19th Century and first of the 20th…and that Roosevelt represented what seemed to be the dominant trend in American political circles about Korea…

…and I knew that there were a handful of books and other material written by mostly American missionaries in Korea that fought against the dominant political view point that thought Japan colonizing Korea might be a good thing for Korean progress…

…but I had never read something that brought out this kind of political in-fighting within the US government itself about Korea’s plight.

I guess it is no wonder — the chief executive office (White House) has its greatest power in its ability to control foreign policy initiatives.  So the natural tendency would be to focus on what Roosevelt said.

It is just interesting to see how members of Congress did bring attention to Korea’s plight on the floors of the Senate and House…