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VII

THE TONG HAK INSURRECTION

T the same time that the Tai-ping Rebellion was ravaging the Yang-tse Valley, proclaiming a monotheistic religion free of all idolatry, and protesting against the corruption of the Government, there arose in Korea a movement of very similar character, but so totally independent of it that it may be doubted if the Tong Haks had ever heard of the Tai-pings. Yet like them, they proposed a religious reformation, and the influence which dominated the new conception was at the beginning at least, the influence of the Christian movement upon Asia as represented in the Roman Catholic mission in Korea. As with the Tai-pings, the movement began as a purely religious reform, and only later because of the oppression of corrupt officials, took a political direction. Its founder, unlike Hung Siu-tsuen, had no imperial dreams. For fortyfive years it pursued its course, and then, in 1894, broke out into an insurrection whose consequences we shall trace, finding in them some of the most significant events of the last century.

It is impossible not to feel a sense of deep pity for a movement like this of the Tong Haks. It is one of many movements of men whose minds have expanded to take in a new thought, who have struggled hopelessly with the social conditions which held them, and have accepted persecution and death and failed, without even the consolation of knowing that the world has watched them and will remember them. There must have been scores of such movements in the unrecorded history of Asia during the centuries that have passed.

Aside from the interesting features of the Tong Hak movement itself and the great consequences that flowed from it, we should be concerned to know about it because we have been as a people related in a peculiar way to Korea. It is the one Asiatic nation, prior to

our participation in the relief of Peking, with which we have waged war, and our country was the first of Western nations to secure a treaty with her. For generations we have felt a special interest in the land. In 1845 it was voted by Congress that "immediate measures be taken for effecting commercial arrangements with the empire of Japan and the Kingdom of Korea." Nothing was done, however, to carry this resolution into effect in the case of Korea, Commander Perry scarcely mentioning Korea in his narrative of his great treaty expedition. Indeed Korea was in no mood for foreign intercourse. The same year that Congress voted to effect commercial arrangements with Korea, a Korean named Kim was put to death in Seoul "for communicating with the Western barbarians."

Our first contact with the people was in 1866, when an American schooner, Surprise, was wrecked on the coast. The crew were treated hospitably, supplied with clothing and food, and sent through Manchuria to New-chwang. In the fall of the same year occurred the affair of the General Sherman, a merchant schooner which sailed up the Ta-tong River ostensibly for trade, but under circumstances which aroused suspicion. Its crew soon got into difficulties with the people and were killed, while the ship was totally destroyed. The following year an American organized a piratical expedition to pilfer the royal tombs of Korea, but it returned, happily unsuccessful, to Shanghai. In 1871, an armed expedition was sent to attempt to negotiate a treaty. The matter was handled without tact, and a needless conflict was precipitated, which resulted in the loss of three Americans and about four hundred Koreans, and the useless capture of the ports at the mouth of the River Han. The only consequence of the war was to confirm the hostile feeling of the Koreans, and to give them increased contempt for the barbarians who came on futile expeditions of piracy or robbery, or on expeditions to avenge the failure of the pirates and robbers which met with the same fate. In 1882, Japan having six years before by the pursuit of Perry's wise tactics made treaties with Korea, the Western nations, by Japan's influence, succeeded at last in breaking through the walls of isolation, and opening Korea to the world. Our past relations with Korea accordingly, ended well, but they included some disreputable proceedings and they have placed us under a debt of sympathy and in1 Griffis, Korea, The Hermit Nation, Chs. XLIV-XLVI.

terest to Korea which forbids our passing by an episode in history like the Tong Hak uprising.

But in any event a movement like this is the most fascinating and significant of all subjects of study. It shows us new ideas working into minds hampered by the traditions of centuries. It shows us the curious compromises which these ideas make with older notions. It testifies to the power of truth even though partial and perverted to compel men to endure and to suffer. It indicates the practical nature of religious ideas. They are bound to affect life and custom and institution. And it shows us also that while a movement like this may die, failing utterly both in its primary and in its derivative purpose, the results at which it aimed, may be secured through its ruin in a way of which it never dreamed.

The Tong Hak movement originated in 1859 at Kyeng Chu, a walled town forty-five miles north of Fusan, in the province of Kyeng Sang. Its founder Choi Chei Ou was a Confucian scholar, and he began his work under the pressure of an experience somewhat like Hung Siu-tsuen's. He had watched with deep interest the progress made by the Roman Catholic Church in Korea, and he began to think deeply as to whether it was the true religion. It was proscribed by the Government, and even then its adherents were being pursued and slain, but resolutely refused to deny their faith. The whole affair profoundly impressed Choi Chei Ou. "Since the missionaries have come so far," he argued, "and spent so much in the propagation of their religion, it must be true; and yet, if it is true, why are its followers now being killed by the Government as criminals?" As he brooded over this question from day to day, he fell sick. Though he used much medicine, he became no better, and was finally at the point of death. One morning just as the sun rose over the hills, he fell into a kind of trance, and there appeared unto him some supernatural being, who called him by name. "Choi Chei Ou-a!" "Yea," answered Choi. "Knowest thou not who speakest unto thee?" "Nay," replied Choi. "Nay," replied Choi. "Who art thou?" "I am God," was the answer. "Worship Me and thou shalt have power over the people." Choi then proceeded to ask him concerning the question nearest to his heart. "Is the Roman Catholic religion the true religion?" "No," was the reply, "the word and the time are the same, but the thought and spirit are different from the true." With

this God departed. Choi, seizing a pen close by, grasped it, and there came out in circular form upon the paper these words: "Since from aforetime we have worshipped Thee, Lord of heaven, according to Thy goodness do Thou always bestow upon us to know and not forget all things (concerning Thee) and since Thine unspeakable thoughts have come to us, do Thou abundantly for us according to our desire." This scrawl Choi picked up, burned it, and pouring the ashes into a bowl of water, drank it. Immediately he arose and his sickness was entirely gone.

Choi felt called to found a new religion. He was not satisfied with Confucianism or Buddhism or Taoism, the systems he already knew, and his divine revelation as he believed it to be, dismissed the claims of Christianity as taught by the Roman Catholic priests. Accordingly, he set about constructing a new system. Tong Hak, he called it, or Eastern Learning, in distinction from Romanism, which was called Su Hak, or Western Learning. The name was appropriate, also, because his new faith was a composite of what was best in the Eastern systems under which he had grown up. From Confucianism he took the Five Relations, father and son, sovereign and subject, husband and wife, friend and friend, and elder brother and younger brother: from Buddhism the law for heart cleansing and from Taoism the law of cleansing the body from moral as well as from natural filth. One of the names of the Bible of the new religion which Choi made and called "Great Sacred Writings," is made by combining the names of the three religions, Yu Poul San Sam To. Beside the Bible he composed a prayer for the Tong Haks, in which the influence of Romanism was seen in his choice of a term for God.

It was from Romanism also, doubtless, that Choi got his strong monotheistic convictions. He and his followers rejected the Buddhist belief of the transmigration of souls and they did not use images in worship. "Their rites," wrote Mr. Junkin, to whose article on the Tong Haks I am indebted for the preceding statements,1 "are free and simple. When members are to be initi

The Episode of the Tong Haks is an almost unworked field in history. Three or four articles in the Korean Repository are all that I have been able to find: Vol. II, No. 2, Art. "The Tong Hak," by the Rev. Wm. M. Junkin; Vol. II, No. 6, Art. "Seven Months Among the Tong Haks;" Vol. II, No. I, Editorial, "A Retrospect ; " Vol. V, No. 6, "Confession of a Tong Hak Chief."

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ated, a master of ceremonies calls the candidates before him. candles are lighted. Fish, bread and sweet wine are placed before them. Then they repeat twenty-four times in concert the Tong Hak prayer, Si Chun Chu.' Bowing before the candles completes the ceremony, when they rise and partake of the banquet-the expenses of which are paid by the newly initiated. They claim that they do not sacrifice, making a distinction between the words Chei Sa and Tchi Sung. They worship as follows: Cement, red clay, and one smooth stone are taken and an altar is made. Before this a bowl of pure water is placed, and at night the worshipper bows before this with forehead on the floor, praying the Si Chun Chu.' When his prayers are over, he drinks the water, calling it the cup of divine favour." 1

From its birthplace in Kyeng Sang the Tong Hak religion spread westward and north into the provinces of Chulla and Chung-chung, and drew adherents steadily. It is evident that it bore strong resemblance to Romanism, and when in 1865 the persecution against the Catholics became deadly, the Tong Haks suffered also. Ever since the heroic missionaries of the Church of Rome had come to Korea in 1845, they had been obliged to carry on their work secretly, with now and then a temporary respite when the authorities at Seoul had momentary relaxations of bitterness or passing frights at the possibilities of foreign invasion. But in the sixties the last and greatest persecution broke in all its fury. In 1864 the Queen Cho, a bitter enemy of Christianity assumed the regency, adopting a lad of twelve, the present Emperor, and entrusting to his father "the rudder of state," as Father Wallays of Penang, says in his account of the Catholic mission in Korea. Shortly after, the Russians pressed the confines of their empire to the border of the Korean province of Ham Kyung and appeared in Gensan harbour, and applied to the Korean Government for powers to trade and settle. "The Korean Government was in the greatest straits. On this," says Father Wallays, "certain Christian nobles, Thomas Kim Kei-ho, Thomas Hong Pong-chu, house stewards to the Bishop of Copsa, and Anthony Ngi, thinking that by so doing they would be advancing the interests of religion and of the country, wrote a letter to the King's father, pointing out to him that the only way of saving the kingdom from a Rus

1 Korean Repository, Vol. II, No. 6, pp. 57, 58.