The Northern Region of Korea by Kim Sun Joo;

Author:Kim, Sun Joo;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Washington Press

The miners who are making a commotion at the Rohobang gold mine should go back. You should not injure or capture those who are involved with our company. The Japanese police officers that our company employs will protect those who are related to our company. Since the people living in this village are friendly to our company, they are our people. If there are any problems, they should be reported to Master Sl (Sl taein), our company’s clerk.67

This notice did not prevent several hundred miners from joining the encamped rioters on February 19, 1900, and occupying the east valley of Yonghwa subdistrict near the mine. The Japanese employees of the company carried its equipment to the western valley of the subdistrict. The battle line between the miners and the company employees extended for 3 li (nearly one mile). This confrontation escalated when the company’s Japanese interpreter, together with several other temporary laborers (kogong), came to Sunch’n on market day, February 21, where rioting miners confiscated the interpreter’s possessions and confined him in a private house. The British heard of this and dispatched twenty Japanese and several laborers to the market. They carried weapons and fired many shots in succession. The miners dispersed but reconvened the next day, destroying the houses of two Korean chief miners (sipchang) employed by the company. The British and twenty Japanese came to town again, captured one miner, struck him on the head, and battered him until he was unconscious. They also injured another miner with their swords. This bloody showdown further incited the miners and led other miners from nearby to gather in town. The local magistrate, gravely concerned that the miners would turn into rebels and attack townspeople, dispatched one hundred soldiers from the local defense army and ended the riots.68

These miners’ protests coincided with repeated assaults on Westerners in mining districts. A British technician from the nsan mine was beaten to death on August 19, 1900, after he went to a tavern to stop miners from drinking.69 An unidentified man in Anju shot at a Western-style house where an American lived.70 Two hundred Koreans attacked Americans and their clerks in the Unsan gold mine because they had sexually harassed a Korean woman.71 And American diplomats complained in December 1903 that residents of the Unsan area had thrown stones at foreigners. 72

When the Russians expanded their influence in the province, they became another source of conflict. Russians began to buy land and real estate at Yongam Port in Yongch’n in 1903. The Korean government recorded that the Russian actions violated their treaty obligations and offended local custom.73 The worst thing the Russians did was to destroy local ancestral graves during their construction projects in Yongch’n. The resentment of the residents was fierce. Local village heads in Yongch’n district submitted a petition containing the signatures of the village residents. The subdistrict head (Chonwi), An Ch’igym, complained that the Russians had dug tunnels into the mountain and had removed the soil by train. Several tombs on the mountain had caved in because of these tunnels.

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