Frightening prisons of the Joseon era

The Korea Times

The Korea Times

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Frightening prisons of the Joseon era

Posted : 2013-11-01 18:43

Updated : 2013-11-01 18:43

By Robert Neff

Prisons, both past and present, are far from comfortable or safe, but at the end of the 19th century, prisons in Seoul were extremely appalling.

These facilities were mainly made out of logs and planks with large gaps between them that served their purpose in preventing the inhabitants from escaping but did little to protect the prisoners from the elements.

There were ― according to contemporary accounts in the English newspaper, "The Independent'' ― at any one time, a couple of hundred prisoners ranging from early teens to elderly men in their 70s.

Those awaiting trial were generally held in a large holding cell with upwards of 50 prisoners while those convicted and serving their sentences were generally held in smaller cells with around 12 to 18 men.

Prisoners were often tortured during interrogation ― the severity depended on the crimes they were alleged to have committed and who their accusers were.

Unmarried men were often treated in a more lenient manner while those who had offended or impeded the plans of powerful men suffered interrogations that left them permanently maimed.

When Philip Jaisohn, the editor for The Independent, visited the prison outside the Small West Gate, he found "a number of criminals who had been caught in the country and before being sent up here to Seoul had been beaten across the legs below the knee until the bones were all fractured and the flesh had been terribly torn. The lack of surgical aid together with the heat had caused the wounds to putrefy and the whole prison was filled with an almost unbearable stench.''

Some of the accused died before they ever made it to trial. Others, however, were sent to the foreign hospitals to be treated. According to The Independent:

"Occasionally one sees a man with body bloated as with dropsy and rotting as with gangrene, carried though the streets of Seoul on a jiki. He is being carried from one of the city or national jails to be thrown, perhaps, at the gate of a foreign hospital to be fed and treated by a foreigner at foreign expense, till he recovers [or] till king death releases him from pain.''

Often prisoners were responsible for supplying their own food and clothing. When 23-year-old Prince Yi Chun-yong (the nephew of King Gojong) was sent to prison in 1894 for conspiracy against the king, Yi's grandfather (Gojong's father ― Daewongun) ordered that part of his own meal be sent to his grandson so that he would have enough to eat. But not every prisoner was fortunate to have family able to send food.

Sometimes, starvation was used as an implement of torture or execution. One official was declared knowing "no more of humanitarianism than to kill thieves by slow starvation."

So severe were his tactics that some of the inmates gnawed on anything they could ― "the straw on the floor, their clothes, and even the skin and bones of their own arms ― to satisfy their awful hunger." Their hardened jailors, "touched with pity," used their own money to buy refuse from taverns to secretly feed their wards.

An editorial in The Independent declared that it was a "mark of civilization that a Government should show no small personal resentment against a criminal. He should be punished according to the enormity of his offense, even to death if need be, but the penalty to be bestowed should not be accompanied by additional penalties of a lesser nature like beating, starving or freezing….To allow prisoners to lie with fractured limbs until they putrefy can be denominated as nothing less than barbarous. Disease is not among the list of punishment in any civilized country nor should it be here."

With the assistance of Alfred B. Stripling, an Englishman, and Clarence C. Greathouse, an American, many reforms were made in regards to the treatment of those accused and convicted of crimes.

Many prisoners who might have died had not the reforms been made went on to play important roles in Korean history.

One such man was Syngman Rhee who was released from prison in August 1904 after serving more than five years for his efforts to modernize the country ― acts that were deemed seditious by the monarchy.

Robert Neff is a historian and a columnist of The Korea Times. ― ED.