Page:League of Nations-Appeal by the Chinese Government.pdf/54

 and favoured out of a natural sympathy for their supposed oppression. They contended that, but for the Japanese refusal to permit Koreans to become naturalised Chinese subjects and the Japanese policy of pursuing them into Manchuria on the pretext of offering them necessary police protection, this Korean colonisation in Manchuria would have created no major political and economic problems. The Chinese deny that the efforts admittedly made by their officials in Manchuria, especially after 1927, to restrict the free settlement of Koreans on the land in Manchuria, except as mere tenants or labourers, can be regarded as instances of "oppression".

The Japanese admit that the Chinese suspicion was the principal cause of Chinese "oppression" of the Koreans, but vigorously deny the allegation that they pursued any definite policy of encouraging Korean migration to Manchuria, stating that "Japan having neither encouraged nor restricted it, the Korean emigration to Manchuria must be regarded as the outcome of a natural tendency", a phenomenon uninfluenced by any political or diplomatic motives. They therefore declare that "the fear on the part of China that Japan is plotting the absorption of the two regions by making use of Korean immigrants is entirely groundless".

These irreconcilable views intensified such problems as those related to the leasing of land, questions of jurisdiction and the Japanese consular police, these having created a most unfortunate situation for the Koreans and embittered Sino-Japanese relations.

There exist no Sino-Japanese agreements which specifically grant or deny the right of Koreans to settle, reside, and conduct occupations outside the Treaty Ports, or to lease or otherwise acquire land in Manchuria, except in the so-called Chientao District. Probably, however, over 400,000 Koreans do live in Manchuria outside Chientao. They are widely distributed, especially in the eastern half of Manchuria, and are numerous in the regions lying north of Korea, in Kirin Province, and have penetrated in large numbers into the region of the eastern section of the Chinese Eastern Railway, the lower Sungari valley and along the Sino-Russian border from North-Eastern Korea to the Ussuri and the Amur River valleys, their migration and settlement having overflown into the adjoining territories of the U.S.S.R. Moreover, partly because a very considerable group of the Koreans are natives of Manchuria, their ancestors having immigrated generations ago, and partly because others have renounced their allegiance to Japan and have become naturalised Chinese subjects, a great many Koreans to-day actually possess agricultural lands in Manchuria, outside of Chientao, both by virtue of freehold title and leasehold. The vast majority, however, cultivate paddy fields simply as tenant farmers under rental contracts, on a crop-division basis, with the Chinese landlords, these contracts usually being limited to periods from one to three, years, renewable at the discretion of the landlord.

The Chinese deny that the Koreans have the right to purchase or lease agricultural lands in Manchuria outside the Chientao District, since the only Sine-Japanese agreement on the point is the Chientao Agreement of 1909, which is restricted in its application to that area. Only Koreans who are Chinese subjects, therefore, are entitled to purchase land, or, for that matter, to reside and lease land in the interior of Manchuria. In denying the claim of right of the Koreans to lease land freely in Manchuria, the Chinese Government has contended that the Chientao Agreement of 1900, which granted Koreans the right of residence with special landholding privileges in the Chientao District alone and specified that the Koreans were to be subject to Chinese jurisdiction, is in itself a self-contained instrument "purporting to settle, by mutual concessions, local issues then pending between China and Japan in that area". The Chientao