The greatest hardships of the regime of the Government-General have been the denial of justice, the destruction of liberty, the shutting out of the people from all real participation in administration, the lofty assumption and display of a spirit of insolent superiority by the Japanese, and the deliberate degradation of the people by the cultivation of vice for the purpose of personal profit.  In the old days, opium was practically unknown.  Today opium is being cultivated on a large scale under the direct encouragement of the Government, and the sale of morphia is carried on by large numbers of Japanese itinerant merchants.  In the old days, vice hid its head.  To-day the most prominent feature at night-time in Seoul, the capital, is the brilliantly lit Yoshiwara, officially created and run by Japanese, into which many Korean girls are dragged.  Quarters of ill fame have been built up in many parts of the land, and Japanese panders take their gangs of diseased women on tours through smaller districts.  On one occasion when I visited Sun-chon I found that the authorities had ordered some of the Christians to find accommodation in their homes for Japanese women of ill fame.  Some Koreans in China sent a petition to the American Minister in Peking which dealt with some moral aspects of the Japanese rule of Korea.  They said: 

“The Japanese have encouraged immorality by removing Korean marriage restrictions, and allowing marriages without formality and without regard for age.  There have been marriages at as early an age as twelve.  Since the annexation there have been 80,000 divorce cases in Korea.  The Japanese encourage, as a source of revenue, the sale of Korean prostitutes in Chinese cities.  Many of these prostitutes are only fourteen and fifteen years old.  It is a part of the Japanese policy of race extermination, by which they hope to destroy all Koreans.  May God regard these facts.

“The Japanese Government has established a bureau for the sale of opium, and under the pretext that opium was to be used for medicinal purposes has caused Koreans and Formosans to engage in poppy cultivation.  The opium is secretly shipped into China.  Because of the Japanese encouragement of this traffic many Koreans have become users of the drug.

“The Japanese forbid any school courses for Koreans higher than the middle school and the higher schools established by missionary organizations are severely regulated.  The civilization of the Far East originated in China, and was brought first to Korea and thence to Japan.  The ancient books were more numerous in Korea than in Japan, but after annexation the Japanese set about destroying these books, so that Koreans should not be able to learn them.  This ’burning of the books and murder of the literati’ was for the purpose of debasing the Koreans and robbing them of their ancient culture....

“How can our race avoid extermination?