EXTENDING THE FIRING 
 LINE IN KOREA 
 
 As I sit in my study I can hear the tigers 
 roaring and the elephants trumpeting in the 
 forest a quarter of a mile away. Does that 
 not sound romantic, like the tales of pioneers 
 in Africa and India? It is true, but not as 
 romantic, for the animals are in the Zoo that 
 the Government is creating. However, if 
 one could believe the newspapers here, it 
 would not be hard to find tigers loose any- 
 where near by. Three times in the last week 
 in widely separated parts of the country, 
 tigers are reported to have attacked people. 
 It is true that deer are shot 15 miles outside 
 of Seoul. In spite of these things we are not, 
 as one of my friends lately intimated, ‘'in the 
 banana belt.” Our thermometer can go high, 
 but it can also go the other way, as snow on 
 the ground two months last winter testified. 
 We are only a little south of the latitude of 
 Chicago. It is likely that the Japan Black 
 Stream in the ocean east of us gives our 
 climate its semi-tropical tinge. 
 
 Summer is over and our various Annual 
 Meetings, and I want to give you a little sum- 
 mary of what has happened in these last two 
 months. We did not get our hoped-for trip 
 to Japan, but tried to console ourselves by 
 six weeks spent in straightening out records 
 and finishing up all sorts of odds and ends of 
 work. July 23-August 3 — we had a Bible 
 Chautauqua for Academy students onh r at our 
 church. About 40 boys were enrolled, and we 
 had a most enjoyable time. Through August 
 I managed to visit nearly every house in my 
 city congregation, and every Sunday after 
 preaching in the morning at the Central 
 Church went out five miles or more in the 
 
country for an afternoon or evening service, 
 or both. 
 
 With the opening of September guests be- 
 gan to pour in from the out-stations. In all 
 nearly 200 were in town, and in our own home 
 we entertained n for more than two weeks. 
 
 Of the various meetings the first was the 
 Presbyterian Council, composed of all the 
 male members of the four Presbyterian Mis- 
 sions in the country. The one great question 
 before this body was that of our relation to 
 the Korean General Assembly. Up till last 
 year the Assembly was a mass meeting body, 
 but it has grown so large that this year it was 
 made a delegate body with one pastor and one 
 elder for every five congregations. The total 
 number of Korean delegates this year was 
 120. We missionaries have heretofore been 
 full members with a vote, but it was felt 
 by many that although there were never more 
 than 40 or 50 of us at any Assembly, w'e too 
 had better be on a delegate basis. After two 
 days of discussion it was decided to over- 
 ture Assembly asking it to make our represen- 
 tation also on the two to five basis, leaving, 
 however, to the left out three-fifths the right 
 of corresponding metribers without a vote. 
 This proposition was submitted to the Assem- 
 bly and promptly laid on the table for at least 
 a year, the delegates insisting that they needed 
 more rather than less of the foreigners present 
 at the meetings. It was most gratifying to us 
 especially as an exhibition of how our people 
 think of us. With some of our neighbor 
 countries beginning to think the foreigner 
 superfluous, we wondered a little where we 
 stood. Only a few of the delegates were will- 
 ing to entertain the proposition for a moment. 
 
 General Assembly met September 7-1 1, and 
 it was a great session. Rev. G. Engel of the 
 Australian Mission was elected Moderator and 
 my old associate in the North Church, Pastor 
 Han, was made Vice-Moderator. Every even- 
 ing was given to popular meetings on Foreign 
 3 
 
Missions, and all of our missionaries spoke. 
 You have heard of our Foreign Mission Work 
 in Quelpart. That was begun in 1907 and 
 there are now 6 workers there and over a 
 dozen churches. You have no doubt also 
 heard of our work in Siberia. That received 
 a bad set-back two years ago. Our lone 
 ordained missionary up there was induced 
 partly by threats and partly by promises to 
 go into the Greek Church. For a year the 
 work has rested, but now our man wants to 
 come back, and steps are being made to send 
 another man. Two years ago we tried to 
 send a second man, but we could not get a 
 passport for him. In addition to all this, this 
 year the Assembly decided to send three mis- 
 sionaries to China proper in the interior west 
 of Chefoo. This year men went and spied out 
 the land. Several Chinese Presbyteries cor- 
 dially offered to give us a field. Three splen- 
 did fellows were chosen, one from each of 
 the northern provinces.* Their money for a 
 whole year in advance is already in the bank, 
 and they sail October 30th for Chefoo to be- 
 gin the study of the language. They all know 
 the written Chinese so that the spoken ought 
 not to be hard. They are going out backed 
 by a great volume of prayer. It was a won- 
 derful hour when they were called before the 
 Assembly, and the Moderator gave them their 
 charge and then the whole Assembly went 
 down on their faces and commended them 
 to God. Not an ordained man in the As- 
 sembly but would have given all that he had 
 for the chance of going in their places. Think 
 of a Church where every man is a volunteer 
 and the envied ones are not the men in the 
 metropolitan pulpits, but the missionaries ! 
 There is no trouble here for the Board to 
 get men. The whole ministry is before them 
 and every man praying that by the grace of 
 God the choice may fall upon him. The 
 church that we expect to form in China will 
 * See note on page 12. 
 
 4 
 
be an integral part of the Chinese Church 
 and not under us. Only our missionaries will 
 report to us. In the elections this year I was 
 elected as one of the 21 members of the For- 
 eign Board, and I consider it one of the high- 
 est honors that I have ever held. 
 
 At the Annual Meeting of the Mission at 
 Pyeng Yang steps were taken looking toward 
 the opening of a station in Manchuria. Since 
 the Japanese began coming into Korea the 
 Koreans have been going north across the bor- 
 der in trainloads. Already there are said to 
 be 800,000 in Manchuria in territory contigu- 
 ous to the Canadian’s work and 300,000 in 
 that next to ours. Whole churches in some 
 cases have gone across the border. For three 
 years our Pyeng An churches have main- 
 tained Korean pastors there, but there are 
 already 26 churches that we know of and 
 rumors of Christians in many other places. 
 It is our exclusive field. The Scotch Presbys 
 and Danish Lutherans in Manchuria are all 
 undermanned and unable to care at all ade- 
 quately for the Chinese. If we do not do 
 this work it will not be done. We are asking 
 the Board to send us three men for a new 
 station. I have been assigned the duty of 
 prospecting the field during the month of 
 November. I go first to Mukden, thence to 
 the coal mines of Fushun, thence 150 miles 
 east by cart, hold one Bible Chautauqua of 
 a week, thence to our northermost station, 
 Kangkei for another class and back to the 
 railroad. It will be a hard but interesting 
 trip. 
 
 One of my friends recently wrote asking 
 why I never wrote about the discourage- 
 ments of the work. As a rule I do not like 
 to do so for our Father gives so much that 
 it seems mean to speak of the other things. 
 I have one anxiety, though, that I want to 
 mention this time and ask you to pray with 11s 
 about i. e., that on September 1st our parochial 
 day schools at the Central Church were unable 
 
to re-open because of lack of funds. For ten 
 years the schools have been of the best in 
 town, in fact they were the first modern 
 schools of any in Seoul. We have had four to 
 six teachers and 70 to 200 children. It costs 
 now about $35 gold per month to run the 
 schools properly, and the congregation, in ad- 
 dition to salaries of their pastor, assistant 
 pastor, two Bible women and janitor, and in- 
 cidentals, lights and fuel, could only raise $15. 
 The new T Government regulations require such 
 a high standard that we could not cut down 
 and run on a small scale, so that there was 
 nothing to do but rest awhile. Yesterday I was 
 summoned to the Educational Bureau and 
 told that unless we opened before March first 
 our permit would be revoked. Some of our 
 children are attending other church schools, 
 but most of the boys have gone to heathen 
 or Government schools where they are forced 
 to join in the Shinto rites and can, with 
 difficulty, keep the Sabbath. Of the 70 that 
 used to sit around my feet as I preached 
 scarcely 20 now attend. We are devising new 
 means to hold them, but it means a hard 
 pull if we cannot re-open the school. So 
 much for difficulties. We are asking our 
 Father to show us the way over these and 
 He will. 
 
 December nth, 1913. 
 
 I have just returned from a five weeks’ 
 trip in Manchuria, one of the most interesting 
 trios I have ever made. 
 
 Ever since the Japanese began to come 
 into Korea in great numbers, the Koreans 
 have been crossing to our northern border to 
 Manchuria and Siberia. All sorts of esti- 
 mates of the total have been made but it is 
 likely that it is over a million, as half that 
 number is said to be in the territory around 
 Vladivostock. In Manchuria our American 
 Consul-General estimates that there are at 
 least 300,000. In that part of Manchuria con- 
 
 6 
 
tigitous to our Pyeng An Province work, 
 there are something like 150,000. Many of 
 these were Christians before going and in the 
 new land they have set up their churches first 
 of all. For two years or more North Pyeng 
 An Presbytery has supported an ordained 
 pastor up there, and the people have sup- 
 ported a helper. The work has grown too 
 large for such slight provision, so that last 
 Annual Meeting the Mission debated long as 
 to opening a new station and were only 
 deterred by the lack of men to send. We 
 appealed to the Board to send us the men, 
 and in the meantime I was asked to go on 
 an exploring trip to the center of the work, 
 meet Messrs. Rhodes and Hoffman of Kang- 
 kai there, and hold a Bible Class. I went by 
 first train to Mukden, 500 miles. I found 
 there a church of 40 Christians, and that they 
 had raised 80 yen towards a new church 
 building. They said there were about 200 
 
 more Christians in the country close around 
 Mukden, and many more scattered up and 
 down the railroad all the way to Chang Chun 
 and Siberia. Twenty-three miles east of 
 Mukden, at the Japanese coal mines of 
 Fushun, there is a very large settlement of 
 Koreans of whom a few are Christians. 
 
 I spent a most interesting day in Mukden. 
 The Scotch and Irish Presbyterians, each one, 
 have a large church there, the former having 
 two Chinese native pastors. I have been 
 told that it was but 133 miles from Mukden to 
 Tunghwa where our Bible Class was to be 
 held, but found in Mukden that it was 200, 
 so when we started east we had to travel al- 
 most night and day. Every morning we were 
 on the road at 3 130, and the first day we 
 started at 2:30. We traveled by Chinese cart, 
 the most exquisitely uncomfortable method of 
 locomotion ever devised. The carts are all 
 two-wheeled with wheels of massive solid 
 oak. There are no springs. One sits on boards 
 flat down over the axle. On top is a little 
 7 
 
coop of strongly braced hardwood, about 3 
 feet wide, 3 ft. high, and 4 ft. long. One sits 
 inside the coop, and every time the cart tips 
 or jolts, which it does at about every revo- 
 lution of the wheels, one gets a bump or a 
 whack on the arm or head. I did not learn 
 till the tenth and last day that a seat out on 
 the shaft with the driver, though chilly, was 
 the most comfortable. The missionaries in 
 this part of China all travel in these carts, and 
 they say that they are not so bad when one 
 can drive slowly and carefully, but making 
 130 li per day in one of them is distinctly 
 no picnic. 
 
 Each night we slept in the smoky, greasy 
 Chinese inns. Each of them is almost iden- 
 tically like every other — a great cavernous 
 barn without partitions, 20 ft. wide, and 6o 
 or 70 ft. long. Down the center is an un- 
 floored aisle 8 ft. wide. Extending from it to 
 the walls on each side is a 6 ft. wide brick 
 bench 18 inches above the floor. The teamsters 
 and travelers slept on this bed with their heads 
 to the aisle. Looking down the long room 
 they seemed corded up like firewood. All of 
 the cooking was done over a wood fire right 
 in the room with no chimney or outlet for 
 the smoke. It filled one’s eyes, and almost 
 suffocated one. Everything was drenched with 
 pig grease. One night when we got into an 
 inn, a little smaller and dirtier than usual, 
 we saw four Chinese sitting playing cards for 
 money. We got supper, went to sleep, waked 
 up at leaving time and those four Chinese 
 were still there. Evidently they had not 
 moved all night. Most of the money was in 
 front of one man, but otherwise it was easy 
 to believe they had not moved a muscle. Cer- 
 tainly they scarcely made a sound. It was a 
 fine commentary on poor China’s need, that 
 they were sitting right in front of the cur- 
 tained recess in which their household gods 
 were kept 
 
 At Tunghwa I met Mr. Rhodes and Mr. 
 
 8 
 
Hoffman and the Koreans from all over the 
 district, and we had one of the finest classes 
 that I ever was in. There were 140 enrolled, 
 five of them being women. They came from 
 16 different groups, averaging 30 miles travel 
 each. We found that not counting the 
 strip of territory along the Yalu, 80 li wide, 
 where, of course, there are a number of 
 churches that are worked from Kangkai and 
 Syen Chun, there are 28 churches now within 
 250 li of Tunghwa about equally distributed 
 to all points of the compass. There are 1,680 
 Christians and of them 800 are baptized. There 
 is a tremendously high mountain ridge parallel 
 to the Yalu, about 60 to 80 li back, that iso- 
 lates this territory. The population total is 
 very difficult to get at as the Chinese keep 
 few records, and will not tell if they do know, 
 but we asked the Koreans to give the exact 
 number of Korean households within 20 li 
 of each church, and that was 14,000. In China 
 a ‘'house” is averaged at about ten people. 
 The Koreans over there all wear Chinese 
 clothes and all are learning Chinese. All 
 have applied for naturalization and some have 
 fully secured it. Nearly all are farming stump 
 claims where they get an eight-year lease 
 free on condition that they grub out the 
 stumps and make the land usable. After 
 eight years they must pay rent. Conditions 
 are terribly hard. Most of the Chinese are 
 good to them but there are glaring excep- 
 tions. The land is poor, most of it being 
 steep uplands. There is very little of patri- 
 otic talk. All seem content to settle in China 
 and thoroughly identify themselves with her. 
 They have two schools now and others in the 
 forming. Especially to be noted is the work 
 of Dr. Kim, a graduate of our Seoul 
 Medical College. He has rented and fitted up 
 buildings in Tunghwa for a hospital large 
 enough to accommodate 20 in-patients. The 
 local magistrate has promised if Kim will get 
 guaranteed support for a hospital he will 
 9 
 
erect him a building. We talked over with 
 the Scotch Mission the project of our open- 
 ing a joint station in Tunghwa until the work 
 was large enough for us to put in a full 
 force. Dr. Kim and others said that if we 
 opened a station there, in five years we could 
 have at least four-fifths of the Koreans in 
 the territory as they feel lonesome and friend- 
 less and would give us such a hearing as few 
 heathens in Korea would. . . . 
 
 I forgot to tell you that in Tunghwa and 
 each of the county seats near it, we found 
 Mohammedan mosques. They say that they 
 have not increased in membership for fifty 
 years but they still exist and are active. 
 
 In all Manchuria, after coming 25 miles 
 from Mukden, I saw in all but two Japanese. 
 Thousands live along the railroad, but almost 
 none elsewhere. Also from 25 miles out 
 from Mukden to 100 miles from Mukden I 
 did not find a single Korean living and could 
 get no word of any. There seem to be two 
 distinct districts of Korean occupation, one 
 along the railroad, and the other centering 
 200 miles east of that. Between is this blank 
 spot 75 miles square. Of course the strip 
 along the Yalu is Korean all the way up. 
 
 Charles Allen Clark. 
 
 THE KOREAN CHURCH 
 
 The figures this year in the Korea Mission 
 show a steady progress in spite of the evi- 
 dence of the loss in some items. The total 
 of 42,913 baptized shows an increase over 
 last year of 3,438, or nearly 10%. Subtract 
 the total baptized in Fusan station, 1,881, 
 and there is still over 41,000 left. The class 
 of catechumens has not gained as many as it 
 lost by baptism and other causes by about 
 4,000, and the total of adherents has lost 
 xo 
 
about the same amount. It is impossible from 
 last year's figures to get any idea of the num- 
 ber of pastors and organized churches, but 
 comparing with the year before, there are 
 53 ordained pastors instead of 23, more than 
 double ; the 78 organized churches have in- 
 creased from 78 to 135, nearly 80%. Sunday 
 schools are reported increased in number com- 
 pared with last year, and with larger attend- 
 ance, 4,000 more gathered this year than last 
 in the Bible classes, the gain largely among 
 the women. More than half the church ad- 
 herents was gathered in these classes, seven 
 Bible institutes enrolled 503 students, one- 
 third of them women. Although there are 
 
 51 primary schools less than there were last 
 year there are more students by exactly 100 
 
 than last year. This shows that the schools 
 
 though fewer than last year are larger and 
 more efficient. 41,000 yen was given this 
 year compared with 34,000 yen last year, a 
 gain of more than 20%. In the medical 
 
 work there is only the total receipts with 
 which to compare, but in this there is a gain 
 of 7, coo yen, or 30%. Nor have the other 
 contributions fallen off. For building and re- 
 pair and for general purposes the figures are 
 within a few hundred yen of last year’s fig- 
 ures, 44,000 and 46,000 yen respectively. For 
 church and congregational expenses this year 
 there was contributed 56,000 yen, a gain over 
 last year of 14,000 yen, or 3 3 ^/ 3 %. For Flome 
 and Foreign Missions this year 10,400 yen 
 was given, 4,800 more than last year, or more 
 than 85%. The total of native gifts this year 
 was 159,000 yen ; counting native medical fees, 
 
 177.000 yen; or, counting on the same basis 
 as last year, including all medical expenses, 
 
 185.000 yen, showing a gain of 27,000 yen. 
 This means 2.00 yen per adherent, or 4.30 yen 
 per communicant, or, taking the more exact 
 figure of 159,000 yen, this represents 1.70 yen 
 per adherent and 3.70 yen per communicant. 
 These totals are surpassed only by the bumper 
 
years of 1909 and 1911, and then only be- 
 cause there was a furor for education. Con- 
 tributions for other purposes show a de- 
 cided gain. 
 
 To sum it all up, a church that is gaining 
 in baptized membership in one year more than 
 the baptized membership in any one of our 
 four smaller stations, in fact nearly as much 
 as the total adherentage in any of these sta- 
 tions, that is giving for purely evangelistic 
 work over 73,000 yen, or more than 172 
 yen for each of its 426 native paid workers, 
 that is giving over 1.00 yen per member for 
 building churches and nearly that much for 
 the running of its schools, that in spite of 
 the storm and stress of the past year has only 
 lost from those most loosely attached a little 
 over 4%, that church is on the way towards 
 the mark set before it of becoming a self- 
 propagating and self-supporting church. May 
 every member feel effectively that it is his 
 duty to add to the efficiency of this church 
 by a constant alertness that shall discover 
 the leaks and put its finger on the weak spots. 
 
 Note. — The picture on title page is that of the 
 Rev. Pak Tairo who was called from the pastorate of 
 the Chai Ryang City Church to be its first member 
 of the General Assembly’s Mission to China. 
 
 The Board of Foreign Missions 
 of the 
 
 Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. 
 
 156 Fifth Ave., New York City 
 
 Form 2103 February, 1914 
 
 12