XII THE CASE OF MARY PAK

 XII THE CASE OF MARY PAK 

Her name wasn’t Mary Pak at all, but 

decency demands a certain disguise. 

However, her first name was Western, 

and Mary may very well stand for it. Her family 

name was, of course, Korean. For some months 

she was a fellow lodger of mine. We talked 

fi’equendy together, having common interests 

but divergent opinions. Which makes for con- 

versation more abundantly than agreement. 

She was so vital a personality that it seems 

unfair to make of her a “ case.” Yet she was a 

case. Expressed at its simplest her case was 

this : educated in America from the age of 

seven she returned to Korea at twenty-one, both 

in manner and at heart an alien, yet was expected 

by her people to resume her place in the family 

exactly like a Korean woman. This would have 

been difficult enough as a mere change of habits ; 

for instance, long skirts, a strange diet, sitting and 

sleepily; on the floor. But it demanded more 

than this ; it demanded a change of psychology* 

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THE CASE OF MARY PAK 141 

which was impossible. The girl didn’t know two 

words of her native tongue. When she visited 

her people they conversed in English. This was 

a barrier in itself. Surmountable, of course, if 

considered simply as a question of language. But 

it was a question of adjustment to life, of back- 

ground, of equipment, of attitude. Her outlook 

was that of an American girl. 

Then there were other complications. She 

had been taken to America by missionaries — 

to be exact, by my hosts, which accounts for our 

lodging in the same household. Yet she was 

outspokenly hostile to missions. If she had been 

politic enough to conceal her hostility many 

excellent appointments would have offered them- 

selves for her selection. But she refused to bow 

her head in the House of Rimmon. Which 

further incensed her people, staunchly Christian. 

Her father, one of the wealthiest men in Korea, 

and probably quite the cleverest, stopped all 

supplies, leaving the girl the alternatives of 

returning to home duties, living on charity, or 

cutting herself adrift from family and friends and 

making such way for herself as she could. The 

last, you must understand, no easy matter for 

an Eastern woman. Yet it was eventually this 

course that she chose. 

How we first came to cross swords I can’t quite 

142 KOREA OF THE JAPANESE 

remember. What I do remember is that I 

found myself committed to a most astonishing 

attitude. I became an ardent champion of 

imperialism, of strong and ruthless Government, 

of “ the white man’s burden,” of the duty of the 

powerful to rule the weak for their own good. 

I was driven into this position as into the last 

stronghold of an invaded land by Mary Pak’s 

pugnacious advocacy of Freedom. By which she 

meant the right of the individual to follow his 

particular crazes in utter disregard of the opinion 

of his fellows, the demands of custom, the good of 

his country, or the uplift of the world. 

“ What do you mean,” she asked me, “ by 

the uplift of the world ? ” 

Well, after all, what did I mean ? The words 

sounded simple enough, but they defied me to 

expound them. And she found it quite easy — 

I should have found it quite easy myself— to 

dismiss my specific examples of uplift as mere 

tinkerings and patchings of doubtful benefit 

if not of definite harm. It was intolerable to 

be obliged to defend myself against the very 

cynicisms which 1 delighted in pitting against 

others. But it was an amusing exercise in 

dialectics, and I came to enjoy it. 

The burden of her complaint was that life 

demanded liberty, but that custom enclosed the 

THE CASE OF MARY PAK 143 

individual within limiting prohibitions. She was 

responsible to herself, wasn’t she? Then why 

shouldn’t she satisfy her tastes, her impulses, her 

needs ? Of course I entirely sympathized with 

her. If she had been more beautiful she might 

have been a dangerous opponent. But her 

rather screwed-up face and shrill voice fortified 

a man’s resistance. I was cruel enough to tell 

her to satisfy her needs and see what came of it. 

She grew angry, which made her less attractive 

than ever. Couldn’t I see ? That was just the 

point. The world had conspired against the 

individual. And I was part of the world. I was 

too timid to rebel. Which was probably quite 

true. But I gave such fiice of wisdom as I could 

to my timidity. 

“ You must remember,” I said, " that the 

test of conduct is not its application to one but its 

application to all,” which, though I hated the 

priggishness of it, was also quite true. 

But I could understand well enough her fierce 

individualism. She was cut off from her country- 

men by her Western upbringing, and from her 

Western upbringing by her Eastern blood. 

Moreover, she was a woman. For a man with 

her training, and incidentally with her brains, 

life would have been easy. Whatever career he 

had chosen, he would have possessed an enormous 

144 KOREA OF THE JAPANESE 

advantage over his fellows. And marriage would 

have offered no difficulty, the Easterner, however 

westernized, requiring little more than a woman 

in the background to order his house and 

provide him with sons. But for Mary Pak 

marriage to a Korean was unthinkable, to a 

foreigner impossible. Which drove her to the 

emphatic declaration, unnecessarily repetitive, 

that marriage was slavery. She would never 

marry ; she needed to be free. She was forced 

to her individualistic creed ; she was so absolutely 

alone. 

It was more to the point when the debate 

turned on Korea. 

Here I had an unexpected ally, as my brother 

came over from China, his mind somewhat 

bitterly occupied with the disastrous results there 

of the gospel of liberty and the subversion of 

government. It was natural that Mary Pak 

should see in her people a magnified example of 

her own case. The Japanese imposed their laws 

on the Koreans without the Koreans’ consent. 

Her country was justified in its resentment, would 

be justified, if it had the power, in resistance. 

Indeed, the girl manifested sufficient “ dangerous 

thought ” to lodge her in jail, I should imagine, 

for the rest of her life. At this time I knew little 

enough of the benefits of the Japanese Irule, and 

THE CASE OF MARY PAK 145 

wasn’t qualified to reply, but my brother could 

quote China. Liberty under the Chinese 

nationalists meant liberty for the idle to rob the 

industrious, for the strong to rob the weak. It 

was simply that the Government had been 

removed and bandits sprang up like weeds. 

But then, Mary Pak countered, shrilly ironical, 

we were English ; of course we defended the 

Japanese, because we were doing exactly the 

same in India as the Japanese were doing in 

Korea. But what right had we in India ? 

What right had we to impose our regulations on 

the Indians against their will ? We had made 

them a nation of slaves. 

“ Certainly,” my brother said, “ we don’t let 

them burn their widows.” 

Of course the debates — they were innumerable, 

blazing up at the least provocation — resulted in 

no conclusion. But they clarified for me the 

tangled problem of dominance and subserviency. 

Not that they solved the problem — ^I don’t 

believe that there is a solution — but they estab- 

lished certain abstract and universal principles on 

which any theory of Government must be based. 

Principles which are commonplaces in the West, 

but not in the East. As, for instance, that 

without order there can be no liberty ; that 

liberty is not the birth of a moment, but of the 

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146 KOREA OF THE JAPANESE 

labour of generations. Commonplaces, I repeat ; 

yet to the Korean mind paradoxes and contra- 

dictions. Even to Mary Pak ; intellectually of 

the West, but emotionally of the East. To her, 

liberty and order (which she called restriction) 

were fundamentally opposed ; and being a gift 

of nature, like the sun and the open air, liberty 

needed no cultivation, no preparation. Simply 

one behaved as one pleased, and one was firee. 

And perhaps it is that spirit, rather than national 

resentment, that is thwarting the work of the 

Japanese Government in Korea. 

One admits the red tape, of course. One 

admits the petty officiousness, even the 

favouritism and the injustice. But the fact 

remains that Japan found Korea in a state of 

apathetic exhaustion due partly at least, and 

many will declare entirely, to the misrule of the 

native Korean Court, and from this apathetic 

exhaustion Japan is striving, with all her resources 

of ingenuity and power, to lift the country to the 

level of a modern nation. She has created roads, 

railways, postal and telegraph services, universal 

electric lighting, sanitation. Whether these 

things are benefits or not, they are now there. 

She has distributed wholesale, and free, the 

best breeds of fowls, so that the Korean egg is no 

longer a meagre thing hardly worth the shelling 

THE CASE OF MARY PAK 147 

for the meat within, but has both quality and 

size. She has planted fruit-trees on the hill-sides 

where rice cannot grow. She has set aside spaces 

for experimental farms. She has irrigated waste 

land, is rapidly damming the rivers and building 

cisterns to obviate both flood and drought. She 

is afforesting the hills, which, left to themselves, 

the Koreans completely denuded except in the 

grounds of palaces and temples and royal tombs. 

But all the Korean sees is that whereas water was 

free he must now pay three yen (six shillings) a 

year, and that he may only chop such wood for 

his house and his Are as the authorities permit. 

And it is useless to tell him that for six shillings a 

year he has perhaps a doubled rice-crop, and is 

completely relieved of the menace of famine ; 

and that, although wood-cutting is restricted, at 

least he has wood to cut, whereas before he had 

nothing but the yearly shrub that sprouted on the 

mountains. 

Well, what can you do with such a people? 

One can sympathize with the Japanese irritation ; 

indeed, one wonders why they do not retire and 

leave the Koreans to themselves. The obvious 

answer to that is that Korea is strategically 

necessary and commercially profitable. But 

there is another answer, a more fundamental 

one ; the answer which Japan, sincerely or not. 

148 KOREA OF THE JAPANESE 

prefers to make. The answer, indeed, which the 

British make when questioned concerning India. 

Left to themselves the Koreans would rot, which 

would affect not Korea alone but the whole 

world. Not that Korea is very vast or very vital. 

To allow India to rot, for instance, would be 

a much more serious proposition. But the 

principle is the same. Eventually all policy 

must become, as it is becoming, world-wide. 

No nation, however insignificant, however mean 

its contribution to mankind, can be allowed to 

fall into neglect and decay. And this is the 

essential justification of the Japanese rule in 

Korea. 

Whether Japan has set herself as a remote aim 

the training of Korea for self-government I don’t 

know. If she has, she is very optimistic. The 

Koreans are a delightful people, extremely 

approachable and full of laughter, but they show 

not the least aptitude for organized control. 

They show, indeed, a positive aversion to it, 

undermining whoever may be in power, whether 

he be a State official or the pastor of a church, 

enduring no one to be set over them — ^in spite 

of their nationalist gesturing — ^unless he be a 

foreigner. And this attitude is not only a 

negative legacy firom centuries of misrule. 

Chronic bad government is not an inevitable 

THE CASE OF MARY PAK 149 

misfortune like a chronic drought. A corrupt 

and tyrannous Court persisting from generation 

to generation is a sure sign of national debility. 

If a people continues to be badly governed it is 

because they have it in them to be badly 

governed. Actively or passively they must be 

held responsible, and not weakly pitied as 

innocent victims of an evil beyond their power. 

And the Koreans are such a people. One is 

tempted to couple with them the Chinese, 

possibly the Russians, and to formulate a theory 

that certain races, like certain individuals, are 

lacking simply in the qualities necessary for 

rule, just as certain countries may be lacking 

in the qualities necessary for industry. And in 

either case such a lack can be made good from 

outside. Brains for organization can be im- 

ported like coal and steel. And not merely 

brains for organization, but that peculiar gift 

for judicial rectitude and political honesty 

which is the portion in some measure of all 

the Western nations, but in the East of the 

Japanese alone. 

Yet it might be difficult to persuade the 

Koreans to regard the Japanese merely as a 

particular kind of import necessary to make 

good a chance national deficiency. It would be 

difficult even if you changed the figure, and 

150 KOREA OF THE JAPANESE 

suggested that Korea was the employer and 

Japan the employee, a business manager, as it 

were, for the landed gentleman living at ease on 

his estate. And the Japanese might not like it 

either. Yet for the life of me I can’t see that 

imperialism means anything other than that. 

We seem to have wandered from Mary Pak. 

Her father held a high position under the Korean 

Emperor, but, although invited to serve in the 

Japanese Government, he refused all office. The 

missionaries declared that this was interpreted 

as an insult, and that later, when he was thrown 

into prison for three years in connection with 

some plot against the Governor, it was simply the 

Japanese taking a deliberate and spiteful revenge. 

Possibly ; possibly not. At any rate my hostess 

used to tell me of her visits to the dear man in 

prison, enlarging indignantly on his hardships, 

clothed as he was summer and winter in a single 

thickness of cotton, kept in an unheated cell, 

and submitted to a daily baptism of cold water. 

But even in prison he contrived to keep a shrewd 

eye on the matrimonial affairs of his family, and 

did not lose the art of playing the Eastern 

despot over his daughter. Yet he was an amusing 

old man, entertaining the missionaries with 

stories about the Japanese. He was just that 

THE CASE OF MARY PAK 151 

cute.” But as far as I could make out he lived 

on the labour of his tenant farmers like any other 

landlord, extorting annually his full fifty per 

cent, of the produce. 

As for Mary, she had many talents. She was 

also “just that cute,” though where she got 

“ such notions ” from, my hostess even, who 

knew her from childhood, couldn’t imagine. 

She had made a brilliant college career. She was 

an admirable debater. She could write choice 

English. She could play the violin. Her 

teacher, a Czecho-Slovakian and a very excellent 

friend of mine, told me that she had “ so goot 

feeling for the museek and play so naice ” but 

only “ she vill not practees.” But I never heard 

her perform. She seemed to me to prefer gramo- 

phone records of the eukalele and the saxophone. 

But she had one unique qualification. She was 

a graphologist. She was insatiable in her 

demands for hand-writing to be analysed, and her 

analyses were astonishing. I forget most of 

what she revealed to me about my own character, 

but I remember I was logical and sensitive. So 

sensitive ! So sensitive ! She gave me to believe 

that she had never met any one else quite so 

superlatively sensitive. I didn’t know whether 

to feel flattered or rebuked. But, being logical, 

she couldn’t understand my obtuseness in not 

152 KOREA OF THE JAPANESE 

seeing through the pretences of convention ; 

and, being sensitive, she couldn’t understand my 

passive acceptance of its tyranny. I was born 

to be a rebel, but I was a slave. 

Yes, in her presence I was a slave. Possibly 

because I rebelled against her rebellion. Yet 

away from her I found myself mocking in a 

manner humiliatingly reminiscent of her own. 

But with this difference : that being detached 

from her peculiar perplexities my logic obliged 

me to include her in my mockery, though being 

sensitive I sympathized with her with all my 

heart. 

It’s a cursed combination, you will find. 

But her grapholo^ stood her in good stead. 

She is analysing hand-writing for an Anglo- 

Eastern paper. She wrote to me when she 

received the commission. 

“ Now I command the attention,” she said, 

” of the great British public.” 

She seemed hilarious with her success. Her 

fortune was assured. 

Well, she has at least achieved independence. 

For instance, she needn’t kneel to her father cm 

New Year’s Day and knock her head three times 

upon the floor. And for a Korean girl that is 

emancipation beyond the flight of dreams. 

BEVOM) THE CITY