The Government commanded the mission schools to cease using their own text-books and to use the officially prepared text-books.  These are carefully prepared to eliminate “dangerous thoughts,” i.e., anything that will promote a desire for freedom.  They directly teach ancestral worship.  The missionaries have protested in every way they can.  The Government-General is adamant.

Before the start of the Independence movement the mission schools were being carefully watched.  Dr. Arthur J. Brown gives one example of their experiences,[1] in connection with the graduating exercises at the Pyeng-yang Junior College last year.

[Footnote 1:  “The Mastery of the Far East,” by Arthur Judson Brown.]

“Four students made addresses.  The foreigners present deemed them void of offence, but the police declared that all the speakers had said things subversive of the public good.  The students were arrested, interrogated and then released, as their previous records had been good.  The provincial chief of gendarmes, however, summoned the students before him and again investigated the case.  The president of the college was called to the office, and strictly charged to exercise greater care in the future.  The matter was then reported to the Governor of the Province, and then to the Governor-General.  The latter wrote to the president of the college that the indiscretion of the students was so serious that the Government was contemplating closing the school.  A similar communication was sent by the Governor-General to the provincial Governor, who thereupon called the president to his office, and said that unless he was prepared to make certain changes the school would have to close.  These changes were enumerated as follows:  (1) Appointment of a Japanese head master; (2) dismissal of three of the boys who had spoken; relief of the fourth from certain assignments of teaching which he was doing in the academy, and promise not to repeat the oratorical program in the future; (3) secure more Japanese teachers, especially those who could understand Korean; (4) do all teaching, except the Chinese classics, Korean language and English, through the medium of the Japanese language; prepare syllabi of the subjects of instruction, so as to limit it to specified points, teachers not to deviate from them nor to speak on forbidden subjects; (6) conform to the new regulations. (That is, eliminate all Christian instruction.) When the president replied that he would do all that he could to make the first five changes desired, but that as to the sixth change, the mission preferred to continue for the present under the old permit which entitled the college to the ten year period of grace, the official was plainly disappointed, and he intimated that number six was the most important of all.”

The Independence movement in 1919 enormously increased the difficulties of the missionaries, although they refrained from any direct or indirect participation in it, and the Koreans carefully avoided letting them know anything ahead about it.  The difficulties of the missionaries, and the direct action of the authorities against Christianity at that time is told later, in the chapters dealing with the movement.