Some Things Never Change

It seems things never change.  A cook in the employment of a Westerner was found guilty of sexually molesting his employer’s six-year-old daughter.

“The discovery was first made in consequence of the child having been found to be suffering from a disease that could only be contracted by contagion, and subsequently enquiries elicited the information that the man was himself suffering from the same disease.”  While most believed the man would be sentenced to a long term in prison; he was sentenced to only five months.

You can read the rest of the article below:

“Seven weeks ago, as we have already stated, a cook in foreign employ in the Settlement was arrested on charge of attempting to violate his master’s infant daughter, six years of age.  The discovery was first made in consequence of the child having been found to be suffering from a disease that could only be contracted by contagion, and subsequently enquiries elicited the information that the man was himself suffering from the same disease.  The trial lasted about a fortnight, and so far as we can learn, from the man’s confession, from the child’s evidence, and from the medical certificates submitted to the Court, there was not a shadow of doubt as to the man’s guilt.  After the case was closed, a month elapsed before judgment was delivered, and for a long time we wondered what was the cause of the delay.  We don’t wonder any longer, now that we know the result.  Instead of being punished with ten years’ hard labour, and a few doses of the ‘cat,’ or imprisonment for life, as many Japanese predicted, he has been practically acquitted with a sentence of FIVE MONTHS’ IMPRISONMENT! – exactly half the period inflicted upon a ‘boy’ recently in the same Court, for appropriating the sum of seventy yen!!  If that is Japanese law and justice we are very sorry for the people and their vaulted Criminal Code!  Not a single word was published in the native papers, condemning the man’s contemptible action, and both our contemporaries have been equally reticent with regard to the verdict, which looks very much as if they have been acting under official ‘orders.’  Many of our readers will not fail to notice the action of the native press in this case, where a foreigner’s child is concerned, and the culprit is a Japanese, as compared with their wild clamour some years ago, when a respectable Englishman in Yokohama was accused, convicted, and imprisoned for seducing a native girl who was no better than a common prostitute.  And that is called Japanese patriotism!”

I apologize in advance to all for the sensationalism – but this article is from the Rising Sun & Nagasaki Express in the summer of 1891 and I figured that most readers would not read a historical article.  Although the article has nothing to do, per se, with Korea, I think that we can all see some of the same complaints that are often echoed on the Marmot’s Hole by expats and Koreans alike.  Nothing ever changes.