Japan -- Foreign relations -- Korea; Korea; Korea -- Foreign relations -- Japan
My first experience of lecturing to a Korean audience came on the evening
of the same day. While waiting in the small, dingy rooms of the Korean
building, then used for offices by the Young Men’s Christian Association
of Seoul, I was introduced to several prominent Korean Christians. The
most interesting of these was the pastor of one of the Korean churches, a
member of a high-class family and one of the very few of his countrymen
who combines a truly manly native character with a profession of the
foreign faith. This man had been chosen by the Crown Prince to assist at
the obsequies of his mother, the murdered Queen. The struggles with his
conscience, which forbade him either to take part in heathenish rites, or
escape with a lie, by feigning illness, or crawl out of the dilemma by
resigning the official position he then held, made an interesting story.
This man solved his problem of conscience in truly loyal style. And when
the Christian pastor told his heathen prince that he could not go, and,
as well, the reason why, instead of ordering him punished the latter
said: “Why did you not let me know beforehand that you are a Christian,
and then I should not have asked you? Go in peace.”
The lecture began late. The hall was crowded with some 600 Koreans,
seated on the floor, standing in the open space about the door, and
perched in the windows. Besides the native audience, a few missionaries
and three or four Japanese friends were the only foreigners present.
The arrangements for enforcing order were unusual and interesting. A
number of young men, designated by badges, were posted near the door or
distributed about the hall. Their office resembled, apparently, that of
the tithing-man in the Puritan churches of a century gone by. Boys who
became too restless were admonished and sometimes even gently rapped or
pulled into place; and those who wished to leave the hall were prevented
from doing so unless they could give peremptory reasons for the wish.
It was deemed complimentary to the speaker that he did not develop
any considerable number of this class of hearers; and, indeed, this
particular audience was called attentive. It was, in truth, fairly so;
although not after the pattern of the altogether respectful and quiet
manners of the Japanese audiences. Indeed, there was always considerable
restlessness and undoubted evidence of that kind of applause which
imitates what the French call _claque_, in the Korean audiences at Seoul.
On the one hand there was a lack of that intelligent and serious interest
in the discussion of questions of education, morals, and religion which
one meets everywhere in Japan; while, on the other hand, there was
response by clapping of hands to any remarks which touched one’s hearers
on the side of sentiment in an appeal to their personal or national
experiences of injustice, pride, and weakness mingled with a certain form
of ambition. These different characteristics may safely be interpreted
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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