The Marmot’s Hole

In Choson, one of the greatest fears for city dwellers was fire.  Because Korean homes were built so close to one another and made of highly combustable material, fires quickly spread from one house to another.  Within a short period of time, whole blocks, and in some cases large parts of the city, were destroyed.

One of the worst fires in the early 20th century took place in Chemulpo in 1907.  Fortunately there were only three deaths, but the damage to the city was tremendous.  The person responsible for the fire was a young Japanese indentured servant maid who, out of guilt, fled to the mountains outside of Seoul hoping a deer or tiger hunter would mistake her for his prey and kill her.

The story and a few pictures can be found here, or you can read below:

Fire was one of the greatest threats to cities in the late Choson period. Homes were built in close proximity and out of highly combustible material. One of the worst fires in the period prior to Japan’s annexation of Korea took place in Chemulpo in 1907.

Just prior to dawn on March 5, 1907, the streets of Chemulpo were almost completely deserted due to the early hour and the bitter cold — aggravated by a fairly strong northerly wind. The few exceptions were probably along the waterfront where customs agents and watchmen prepared for a busy day of inspecting outgoing and incoming goods from the small steamers and junks in Chemulpo’s bustling harbor. There was an additional exception, Tsuneno Takahashi, who would forever change the lives of many of her fellow Japanese living in Chemulpo.

Tsuneno Takahashi was a young Japanese girl from Tokushima Prefecture who arrived in Chemulpo in December 1906 in search of a better life. Since Japan’s victory over the Russians during the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), the Japanese population in Korea had exploded, with nearly 12,000 living in Chemulpo alone. Chemulpo must have seemed an ideal climate for a young Japanese woman seeking to make her fortune, especially one who had a distant relative already living and prospering in Chemulpo.

Mr. Nakamura, Tsuneno’s distant uncle, owned a small store in the Japanese part of the city that sold “fancy goods.” He was apparently prosperous, and he, his wife and their three daughters (ages 7-16) lived in the apartments over their shop. When Tsuneno arrived in Chemulpo, she went to her uncle and asked him for a position in his household as a maid; possibly out of generosity, but more likely out of need, he hired her.
At first she was thankful for the opportunity, but soon she came to rue her decision because life in Chemulpo was not what she had expected. Within months of her arrival, she began to think of alternative places that might suit her better, and one such place was Antung where another of her uncles lived.

However, when she spoke of her plans to Mr. Nakamura he was opposed to her leaving and would not grant her permission. In frustration she decided to sneak away but could not do so without money. She was probably well watched and kept very busy by Mr. and Mrs. Nakamura, and chances to sneak away to meet her friends in hopes of borrowing money from them were few, but her chance came when Mr. Nakamura went to Yongsan, just outside of Seoul, presumably on business, the previous day. She arose early in the morning, as was her common practice, and placed her anka, an earthen vessel for heating purposes, with a counterpane, in the closet. At about 3 a.m., she snuck out of the house and went to the home of a friend who lived nearby.

According to Tsuneno, she was at her friend’s home for about 40 minutes chatting and trying to borrow part of the fare to Antung when she suddenly heard fire alarms off in the nearby distance. Fearing the worst, she raced back home and discovered the entire building engulfed in flames.

At some point, Mrs. Nakamura awoke and realizing her house was on fire, struggled to make her way out of the house with her youngest child, but tragedy befell them. “Carrying the youngest at her bosom” they were struck as they ran out of the bedroom by falling timbers and the child was killed. As for the two older daughters, they perished in the flames. Tsuneno arrived in time to aid Mrs. Nakamura out of the burning building, but was too late for the other members of the family, even though she later claimed, despite the flames and smoke, that she tried to go in to rescue the daughters.

Despite the strong northerly winds, the fire might have been quickly contained, but the winds suddenly reversed direction and caused the flames to race in all directions. Japanese and Korean fire crews rushed to the area and were supported by members of the Japanese 58th cavalry and large numbers of Korean coolies who provided the pumps with water, but it wasn’t until 10 a.m., nearly five hours after it erupted, that the fire was under control, but even then there were spots that smoldered up until 3 that afternoon.

The loss of life was comparably light, only the three daughters, but the economic loss in property was devastating — nearly one million in yen or a quarter of the total value of the city. Nearly 15,000 tsubo of land consisting of 373 Japanese, 18 Korean and 9 Chinese houses were completely destroyed. In addition, the Japanese newspaper Nichi Nichi Shinbum’s buildings, the Chemulpo Tobacco Company’s buildings, the Yoshitomo Rice Cleaning Mill, and four telegraph and telephone stations were destroyed causing telegraph and telephone services to be interrupted.

While the fire was raging, Tsuneno decided to end her life. She went down to the seaside with the intent of drowning herself, but had not counted on the large number of people who would be there in their own attempts to escape the fiery destruction. She realized that it would be impossible to drown herself, so instead she decided to flee.

That afternoon she took the train from Chemulpo to Seoul and stayed at the Nihon Hotel, across from the Japanese post office in Chin-ko-kai. She stayed, mainly in her room, until the morning of the 7th when she read in the newspapers the full extent of damage that she had caused. Afraid and in a daze, the hurriedly left the hotel on the pretext of shopping and aimlessly wandered the streets of Seoul. She eventually made her way out the East Gate and up into the mountains where, according to her, “she spent three days and nights without eating anything, and praying that she might be killed by a chance shot from a hunter’s gun.” Unable to endure it any longer, she returned to Seoul on the 10th and confessed to the police the following day.

Recovery

Within hours of extinguishing the fire, aid began to appear. Although none of the General Foreign Settlement had been damaged, many of the leading Western businesses, along with the Japanese, began to donate large sums of money or other aid. Some of the Western businesses and businessmen were: E. Meyers and Co., 400 yen; Carl Wolter, the leading German businessman in the city, 250 yen; Arthur H. Lay, British vice consul at Chemulpo, 50 yen; and David Deshler, one of the most prosperous American businessmen in Korea, who donated 250 yen. Within two days nearly 5,000 yen was collected, and in the days to follow that was increased by donations from various Japanese government officials, including Marquis Ito, and by theatrical and musical performances held at the Kabuki Theatre in Seoul.

In addition to his donation, Deshler also offered to carry “free on his steamers those sufferers who [were] desirous of going home but [had] no money to pay their passage.” Eight Japanese, devastated by the fire, quickly took him up on his offer and left on March 8 for Japan aboard Ohio 1, one of Deshlers’ fleet of steamers. Despite the destruction of so many buildings and the economic chaos that ensued, most of the Japanese residents stayed in Chemulpo and struggled to rebuild. By Friday only 30 people were still at the shelters set up for the displaced — the rest had received lodging in other Japanese homes or in temporary shelters.

Telegraph and telephone services were reestablished within days of the fire, and supplies and lumber was quickly brought in to rebuild the city. Work progressed quickly and a new city began to rise up from the ashes. A couple of weeks after the fire, George Ladd described his visit to Chemulpo:

“The impression made by the streets through which we passed was not pleasing; for there had been rain, the air was laden with cold moisture, and the ground was either rough or torn up for repairs and heavy for the jinrikisha pullers with its coating of mud. But it should be remembered that this part of Chemulpo is in the making, whereas the older part had a few weeks before been swept by a destructive fire. The Chinese town, through which we now passed, bore a decayed air; but when the Japanese quarter was reached, in spite of the recent loss of some 400 houses, there was a thrifty and prosperous look, an appearance of determination, of not-to-mind-what-cannot-be-helped, so characteristic of the people themselves. The work of rebuilding this quarter was going briskly forward.”

Chemulpo did quickly recover from the fire and from the Korean War some 40 years later that would devastate parts of the city again. Chemulpo no longer exists as city today but instead is part of the large and thriving seaport of Inchon — the gateway to Seoul.