In a Christian day school, in another city, the girls resigned their places. The American woman who was their principal was troubled when they did so, but her pupils laughed and said they would not have her whom they loved punished for what they might do. That same evening she was summoned by the Chief of Police. She made haste to go to his office and he led her to the main street and there were her pupils, waving banners they had made, demanding the release of the prisoners who were accused of plotting to assassinate the Governor-General. The girls had stirred up the citizens and men had joined them and began to shout against the Chief of Police.
Not all Japanese were cruel, and this Chief was in distress. “I cannot arrest them all,” he exclaimed. “The prison is already full.”
The missionary went out and pleaded with the girls to go home, but they only embraced her and greeted her with cheers, and they would not listen.
“Arrest me, then,” she told the Chief of Police. “I will take their place.”
He was a man of good heart, however, and he refused, for the missionary was a small old woman, her hair white, her pale face wrinkled and her eyes very blue and brave.
“I will tell them you will arrest me if they do not go home and I demand that you arrest me if they do not obey,” she declared.
What could her pupils say when she stood before them, her white hair blowing in the winter wind? They looked at each other, and their leader said to those men who had gathered to help them, “You men, fight on! At least we have shamed you into battle.” And so saying, she led them home.
This story Il-han read in the early dawn, forgetting to shut the door while he read, and the cold wind blew through his thin garments and chilled the marrow in his bones. He took the sheet and put it in the kitchen stove and lit a match and held his hands to warm them over the quickly dying flame. All that day he thought of the woman Yul-han loved, and in spite of himself his heart softened toward his son because of the brave schoolgirls who were Christian.
Not all women were treated so kindly by the police. Students continued in many cities to rebel and girls were beaten and kicked by police wearing heavy boots. The printed sheets lay almost daily now under Il-han’s door.
“I was cross-questioned three times,” a girl student said. “A police officer accused me of wearing straw shoes. I said my father was in prison and for me it was as though he were dead, and I wear the shoes of mourning.
“‘It is a lie,’ the officer said and with his hands he pulled my mouth so wide that it bled. Then he forced me to open my jacket to show my breasts and he sneered at me, saying, ‘I congratulate you.’ Then he slapped me and struck my head with a stick until I was dazed, and he said, ‘Did the foreigners teach you to rebel?’ I told him I knew no foreigners except the principal of the school. Then he yelled at me that I was pregnant and when I said I was not, since I was not married, he ordered me to take off all my clothes. He said he knew the Christian Bible, and it teaches that if people are sinless they may go naked. Were not Adam and Eve naked in the Garden of Eden? Only when they sinned did they hide themselves. He tried to take off my clothes and I fought him. And while he said these vile things the Korean interpreter stood sorrowfully by, refusing to speak, so that the officer had to use his own broken Korean, and he was angry and ordered the Korean to beat me, but the Korean said he would not beat a woman and he would bite his hand off first, so the officer beat me with his own fists.”
Il-han read this and he kept his silence, but he knew the storm that was rising among his own people. Out of the depths of their despair the storm was rising. Throughout the months of that dreary year many Koreans were taken prisoner and every Christian was suspect. If the women were among them, they were treated with obscenities, and those who were young were abused in special ways. All this Il-han read in the small sheets of paper thrust under his door. Still he kept his silence even with Sunia and with Yul-han.
In the fourth month of that sun year, when spring was come, trials were proclaimed for those who had been accused of the attempted assassination of the Governor-General. The day set to begin was the twenty-eighth day of the sixth sun month and Il-han prepared to attend the trials.
The morning of that day dawned with a red sun in a sky white with heat, and Sunia scolded him.
“Why must you go to the city this day of all days? Crowds, dust, noise — you are too old for such things on a hot day. And what if you are recognized? Though who will see in your bag of bones the handsome man you are—”
She scolded him through tears of tenderness and he knew the tenderness and said not a word while she helped him to put on the garments she had washed snowy white for him and pounded smooth and ironed until not a crease remained. She tied the strings of his hat under his beard and bade his old servant take the packet of cold rice and beans she had prepared for his meal and the jar of tea, and she stood at the gate and watched them walking down the village street toward the city, Il-han’s skirt swaying from side to side as he planted one foot after the other in the fashion that old scholars walk, their toes turned outward. She felt a deep aching pain in her breast and watching those two she began quietly to weep, for what reason she did not know except that life had become a burden she could scarcely bear. And yet bear it she must, for what would Il-han do without her? Impatient with him she often was, and too quickly, and why, when she loved him, she said something unloving, she did not know.
“I am a sinful woman,” she muttered, her eyes on his tall frame, dwindling in the distance, “but of all sins, there is one I will not commit. I will not die before you, my husband — I promise — I promise—”
… The sun was well over the horizon when Il-han reached the hall where the trials were to be held. It was a special building behind the district court and built for the purpose for these hearings, a large place some eighty-four or eighty-five feet long and thirty feet wide. The door was open wide, but guarded by soldiers.
“Where is your permit, old man?” a soldier asked when Il-han came to the door. “You cannot walk in as though you were the Governor-General.”
Il-han did not know such a permit was necessary. He drew himself up to his best height, and stared at the soldier.
“I am Kim,” he said with strong dignity. “My name is Il-han.”
The soldier hesitated, but seeing before him a gentleman of rank, he allowed Il-han to enter. Inside the hall Il-han now saw the prisoners already seated in two groups in the middle, each group divided into smaller ones of ten men, manacled together. On the sides were seats for the counsels and for reporters. At one end of the hall were the seats for the judges, and at the other end were seats for the people. The prisoners were separated from both judges and people by a barrier, and Il-han pushed his way as closely as he could to this barrier so that he might see the faces of the prisoners. He searched each face and cursed the dimness of his eyes because those in the center were not clear. Was Yul-chun there? He could only wait for the trials to proceed.
Alas, the whole morning was wasted in preparations. Impatiently he waited while after long delay the judges took their places, their interpreters beside them, one Japanese, one Korean. Impatience grew in him while the names of the prisoners were read. He did not hear his son’s name and if Yul-chun were there, it could only mean that he used a false name. The indictment was then read, an hour in length, another hour in translation from Japanese into Korean.
By this time the judges were hungry and the Court adjourned for an hour. In the hour Il-han ate his food and drank his tea and made haste to return early and get himself a seat again next to the barrier, but on the opposite side from where he had sat before. Behind it the prisoners waited, unfed and thirsty. One man just inside the barrier, within reach of his hand, sat with his back toward him and his head bowed. His hair was cut short as all prisoners had their hair cut, so that this man’s neck showed bone thin and slender as a broken bamboo. Through the holes in his ragged garments his shoulder blades stood out like wings. The garment was filthy and soaked with sweat, for heat filled the hall with a hot fog, a miasma of evil odors and stagnant air. Il-han, observing this prisoner, saw his body heave in great gasps, and with instinctive pity he seized his half-empty jar of tea from his servant, crouching on the floor at his feet, and he reached over the low barrier and held the bottle before the prisoner. A claw of a hand, the man’s right hand, grasped the bottle, and in that instant Il-han recognized the hand. It was the hand of his son. It was the hand of Yul-chun.