“Having got so far,” wrote a spectator, “the old man broke down and began to weep, crying louder and louder.  He said something as he wept, but the interpreter could not make out what it was.  The Court evidently pitied him and told him to stand down.  He withdrew, sobbing.”

A Presbyterian student from Sun-chon, Cha Heui-syon, was arrested and kept for four months in the gendarmes office, becoming very weak.  Then he was taken to the police headquarters.

“First I was hung up by my thumbs, then my hands and legs were tied, and I was made to crouch under a shelf about as high as my chest, which was intensely painful, as I could neither sit nor stand.  Something was put in my mouth.  I vomited blood, yet I was beaten.  I was stood up on a bench and tied up so that when it was removed, I was left hanging.  The interpreter who has often been in this court (Watanabe) tortured me.  My arms stiffened so that I could not stretch them.  As I hung I was beaten with bamboos three or four feet long and with an iron rod, which on one occasion made the hand of the official who was wielding it bleed.”

At last he gave in.  He was too weak to speak.  They took him down and massaged his arms, which were useless.  He could only nod now to the statements that they put to him.  Later on they took him to the Public Procurator.  Here he attempted to deny his confession.  “The Public Procurator was very angry,” he said.  “He struck the table, getting up and sitting down again.  He jerked the cord by which my hands were tied, hurting me very severely.”

The case of Baron Yun Chi-ho excited special interest.  The Baron being a noble of high family, the police used more care in extracting his confession.  He was examined day after day for ten days, the same questions being asked and denied day after day.  One day when his nerves were in shreds, they tortured another prisoner in front of his eyes, and the examiner told him that if he would not confess, he was likely to share the same fate.  They told him that the others had confessed and been punished; a hundred men had admitted the facts.  He did not know then that the charge against him was conspiracy to murder.  He determined to make a false confession, to escape torture.  He was worn out with the ceaseless questioning, and he was afraid.

The rehearing in the Court of Appeal lasted fifty-one days.  In the last days many of the prisoners were allowed to speak for themselves.  They made a very favourable impression.  Judgment was delivered on March 20th.  The original judgment was quashed in every case, and the cases reconsidered.  Ninety-nine of the prisoners were found not guilty.  Baron Yun Chi-ho, Yang Ki-tak and four others were convicted.  Five of them were sentenced to six years’ penal servitude, and one to five years.  Two other appeals were made, but the only result was to increase the sentence of the sixth man to six years.  Three of the men finally convicted had been members of the staff of the Dai Han Mai Il Shinpo.  The Japanese do not forget or forgive readily.  They had an old score to pay against the staff of that paper.