Page:League of Nations-Appeal by the Chinese Government.pdf/58

 The Japanese assert that, about the end of 1927, a movement for persecuting Korean immigrants in Manchuria broke out, under Chinese official instigation, as an aftermath of a general anti-Japanese agitation, and state that this oppression was intensified after the Manchurian provinces declared their allegiance to the National Government at Nanking. Numerous translations of orders issued by the central and local Chinese authorities in Manchuria have been submitted as evidence to the Commission of a definite Chinese policy of oppressing the Koreans by forcing them to become naturalised as Chinese, driving them from their rice-fields, compelling them tore-migrate, subjecting them to arbitrary levies and exorbitant taxation, preventing them from entering into contracts of lease or rental for houses and lands, and inflicting upon them many brutalities. It is stated that this campaign of cruelty was particularly directed against the "pro-Japanese "Koreans, that Korean Residents' Associations, which are subsidised by the Japanese Government, were the objects of persecution, that non-Chinese schools maintained by or for the Koreans were closed, that "undesirable Koreans "were permitted to levy blackmail and perpetrate atrocities upon Korean farmers, and that Koreans were compelled to wear Chinese clothing and renounce any claim of reliance upon Japanese protection or assistance in their miserable plight.

The fact that the Manchurian authorities did issue orders discriminatory against non-naturalised Koreans is not denied by the Chinese, the number and character of these orders and instructions, especially since 1927, establishing beyond a doubt that the Chinese authorities in Manchuria generally regarded the Korean infiltration, in so far as it was accompanied by Japanese jurisdiction, as a menace which d€served to be opposed.

Because of the seriousness of the Japanese allegations and the pitiable plight of the Korean population of Manchuria, the Commission gave special attention to this subject and, without accepting all these accusations as adequately descriptive of the facts, or concluding that certain of these restrictive measures applied to the Koreans were entirely unjustified, is in a position to confirm this general description of the Chinese actions towards the Koreans in certain parts of Manchuria. While in Manchuria, numerous delegations, who represented themselves as spokesmen of Korean communities, were received by the Commission.

It is obvious that the presence of this large minority of Koreans in Manchuria served to complicate the Sino-Japanese controversies over land leasing, jurisdiction and police, and the economic rivalries which formed a prelude to the events of September 1931. While the great majority of the Koreans only wanted to be left alone to earn their livelihood, there were among them groups which were branded by the Chinese or Japanese, or both, as "undesirable Koreans ", including the advocates and partisans of the independence of Korea from Japanese rule, Communists, professional law breakers, including smugglers and drug traders, and those who, in league with Chinese bandits, levied blackmail or extorted money from those of their own blood. Even the Korean farmer himself frequently invited oppression by his ignorance, improvidence and willingness to incur indebtedness to his more agile-minded landlord.

Aside from the involvement of the Koreans, however unwittingly, in the controversies which, in the Chinese view, were the inevitable results of the general Japanese policies with respect to Manchuria, the Chinese submit that much of what has been termed "oppression "of the Koreans should not properly be so called, and that certain of the measures taken against the Koreans by the Chinese were actually either approved or connived at by the Japanese authorities themselves. They assert that it should not be forgotten that the great majority of the Koreans are bitterly anti-Japanese and unreconciled to the Japanese annexation of their native land, and that the Korean emigrants, who would never have left their