We feel sure that this publication will meet a very decided need in our
community and the fact that it is not a party organ nor committed to any
faction makes it doubly valuable. We shall expect to see facts published,
whoever may be pleased or displeased thereby. Almost all the news that
foreign papers in Japan get about Korea is taken from the reports in
native papers, from Japanese reporters in Korea. They thus get but one
side of the story. The world wants to know what is being _done_ in
Korea not mere statements of plans and theories. Every effort which the
Japanese authorities or private citizens put forth for the benefit of the
Korean people should be clearly and fully stated and full acknowledgement
should be made, and if there are evils which need to be remedied they
should be, in a kindly way, brought to the notice of the public so that
an intelligent opinion can be formed as to the exact situation here.
Public opinion is a mighty agency either for good or ill, but the only
way it can be legitimately used is by feeding it upon cold, hard facts.
That is what makes the difference between public opinion in England, and
in Russia. So we hope that this new periodical will hunt assiduously for
facts, and give them to us. We would rather have one column of facts
about Korea than ten columns of clippings from abroad. For this reason we
are pleased to see that the management of the _Seoul Press_ intends to
increase gradually its staff of reporters and correspondents throughout
the peninsula.
We wish this journalistic venture all success. The past ten years of
Korean history are strewn with wrecks of similar ventures but we trust
the time has now come when something permanent can be undertaken; and
when in about 1970 the citizens of Seoul look over the back files of the
_Seoul Press_, which will then be in its sixty-fifth year, they will say
with pride “This is the first genuine foreign newspaper in Korea.”
News Calendar.
The Home Department has written to all the provinces to the effect
that many of the laws are being disobeyed and people without means
of livelihood are wandering about the country accompanying powerful
Koreans or foreigners and tempting young people to sell or pawn their
rice fields or other property, generally in secret and then spend the
proceeds in riotous living. These debts have finally been collected of
parents or brothers by force, and these innocent parties complain that
their property is taken from them without cause. It is a shameful state
of affairs, and hereafter a father will not be compelled to pay the debts
of his son, and the son cannot sell the fields of his father. Any one
charged with this offence in future will be severely punished and the
governors are asked to notify all the magistrates.
Early in the month it was reported that the Russian soldiers in northern
Korea had exhausted all their funds and were demanding both money and
rice from every village.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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