Houses of Moral Suasion:Between Rehabilitation and Punishment
This article traces the conceptual, legal, and institutional development of Korean "houses of moral suasion" by exploring the example of the first such institution, the Yŏnghŭng School, founded in 1923. The appearance of houses of moral suasion in this era showcases the institutionalization of children deemed problematic and thus undesirable. The idea of rescuing and disciplining children became interconnected and conflated as these children were conceived of as both victims and threats, a process of othering that defined them as simultaneously needy and problematic. In dealing with children, social work aimed to be both disciplinary and protective, and the discourse surrounding the institutionalization of vulnerable children demonstrated the methods through which Korean society criminalized, disciplined, and corrected marginalized children. The link between vagrant or orphaned children and delinquency can be read as a fundamental reordering of the relationship between modern disciplinary power and marginalized children. This in turn reinforced the regulatory approach to undesirable children more generally in colonial Korea.
orphans and vagrant children, welfare, social work, kamhwawŏn, Yŏnghŭng School
The goal of the institution is to make orphans enjoy labor so that they are instilled with a strong work ethic. The disciplinary instruction inside the orphanage is meant to instill good working habits from small children to bigger ones.
—Sin Tonga, "Kyŏngsŏng min'gan chasŏn kigwan yŏkpanggi" [End Page 25]
A reporter for Sin Tonga, one of the oldest Korean magazines still in circulation, wrote the above epigraph in 1931, describing the "successful reform"of orphaned children through institutionalization. According to the reporter, these children were "reborn"through this process of institutionalization, leaving behind begging and insolvency to lead diligent and industrious lives.1 While the idea of the child's pure heart, or tongsim, acquired currency, and the innocence of children became a widely circulated discourse in colonial Korea, as Dafna Zur effectively argues,2 other children emerged in the popular imagination as delinquent and corrupt, thus undesirable, during the same era. The concepts of childhood and disciplinary rules were further developed by officially categorizing certain children as problematic. According to Chosŏn ilbo's estimate, over eighteen thousand delinquent children were running around the streets in 1936, and observers requested institutions to accommodate them.3 The discourse on delinquent children accompanied a new type of institution that accommodated orphaned and vagrant children: houses of moral suasion (感化院; J: kankain; K: kamhwawŏn). Kamhwa means "reform of feeling"or emotional transformation, suggesting a strong hint of reforming someone by infusing morality. I adopt the term house of moral suasion to indicate this sense of inculcating morality based on the emphasis placed on labor ethics in their curriculum and purpose. This new type of institution aimed to transform "abnormal"children into "normal"children by engaging them in productive work and discipline, and the children were expected to take the initiative to transform themselves into contributing members of society, which reflected the discourse of labor. How and why did this new type of institution emerge in colonial Korea, particularly under the so-called era of Cultural Rule?
This article investigates the conceptual and institutional development of social work as it related to questions of child welfare in the 1920s and 1930s. I argue that the conflation of terms surrounding orphans into a broader notion of undesirable children distinguished this era's responses to children in need. At the turn of the twentieth century, orphans and vagrants were deemed undesirable based on their lack of family or abode; however, from the 1920s and 1930s delinquency became strongly associated with orphaned and vagrant children (pullyang sonyŏn or pullyanga), gradually coming to dominate this representation of undesirable children. With the appearance of this criminalizing discourse, new institutions, the houses of moral suasion, were introduced by the colonial state. The colonized Koreans, including nationalists, also demanded this new institution as a remedy for the social issue of delinquent, vagrant, and orphaned children. For the first time in English, this article analyzes the historical conditions of the first state-run reformatory school, the Yŏnghŭng School, as a case study based on previously unexamined state sources on Yŏnghŭng. By doing so, this article explores how the emphasis on labor at such institutions reflected larger conceptual developments as well as the state's increasingly regulatory focus. Simultaneously, this article argues that the popular discourse and its resultant institutions legitimized the use of labor as a tool for rehabilitation. [End Page 26]
The treatment of women and children was at the center of heated arguments in this era, as liberating women from the shackles of obligations within the traditional extended family was an important issue not only for women's rights but also for the general modernization of Korean families. While the conservative ideology of the "wise mother and good wife"was powerful in quelling more radical feminist ideas, locating women within the modern nuclear family represented an important part of the larger modernizing conversations.4 Furthermore, it was argued that, by raising children in modern nuclear families, a new generation of Koreans would emerge freed from repression and unfettered by outdated traditions. According to Zur, the transformation of familial institutions made the child visible for the first time in colonial Korea in the 1920s and 1930s.5 Despite the ample scholarly focus on the state's so-called Cultural Rule and the possibility of assimilation in colonial Korea, little attention has been paid to children and the state in this era.6 Zur's work is an exception to this trend, analyzing representations of colonial Korean childhood in literature. However, as a literary scholar, her work focuses on fictional portrayals of the idealized child's pure heart (tongsim), which does not incorporate marginalized children who were marked as problematic and thus undesirable. This article highlights the issue of marginalized children who became targets of social work and engineering aimed at "correcting"their unfortunate natures, thereby demonstrating that the history of marginalized children, beyond the idealized childhood, was an important part of the modern Korean experience.
For children who were marked as undesirable, the 1920s and 1930s signified an era of tightened control. Orphans and vagrant children were often at the center of charitable activities but were also the targets of police roundups and institutionalization. Hence, when dealing with undesirable children, both state authorities and social actors took a dualistic approach in the 1920s and 1930s, treating them as both victims and threats. The state also moved to regulate children on the streets more closely by establishing organizations, such as the houses of moral suasion, which were equivalent to reformatory schools. Reformatory schools proclaimed themselves as the protectors of children, but their policies emphasized discipline and regulation, represented in the term kamhwa, discussed above. Thus, saving victimized children through institutionalization appeared less about the interests of the children and more about minimizing their potential as social threats. In this process, the institutions highlighted the value of labor to correct the children's habitual delinquency. This regulatory approach was accepted and endorsed as part of the wider sphere of child protection, accompanying the conceptual development of social work.
SOCIAL WORK AND CHILDREN
The concept of charity has existed for millennia, but social work as an occupational or professional activity is a modern construct. The Korean term sahoe [End Page 27] saŏp is a literal translation of "social work,"and sources show that this word began circulating in the early 1920s and came into official use by 1923.7 The Japanese had adopted the term shakai jigyō five years earlier (1918), using the same characters, 社会事業.8 However, in Korea and Japan sahoe saŏp/shakai jigyō encompassed more than the original concept of professional social work and included anything that served the public good, particularly activities traditionally counted as charity or philanthropy. Several terms in Korean, as well as Japanese, demonstrated the development of concepts surrounding social work, including rescue (kuhyul) and charity (chasŏn), showing other terms related to philanthropy rather than social work. In later years of the Pacific War (1937–45), the Japanese developed the concept of social work further into welfare, adopting the term kōsei (厚生; K: husaeng). The Japanese empire enacted new welfare laws for the wartime mobilization period as well. In short, the term social work bridged the concepts of charity or philanthropy and modern welfare.
A brief overview of the development of Japanese social work illustrates a correlation between war, nationhood, and welfare within the Japanese empire, which in turn served as the source for the models and concepts introduced into colonial Korea. After the Meiji Restoration (1868), amid Japanese elites' fervor to achieve national unity, the state enacted the Relief Regulations in 1874, which remained the legal basis for Japan's relief program until 1929. The promulgation of the Relief Regulations represented the articulation of mutual aid aimed at reintegrating the poor into local society.9 Such communal relief efforts were an expression of familial and social bonds that transcended "the external entity of the state."10 After the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95, such sentiments increased into "a broad agreement concerning the need to assist demobilized soldiers, wounded veterans, and their families."11 According to W. Dean Kinzley, Gotō Shimpei (1857–1929)—who held a variety of high government posts, including the Governor-General of Taiwan, mayor of Tokyo, and home minister—attempted to extend this idea of a social welfare system within the Japanese empire through the creation of a Relief Activities Bureau, though his proposal was never enacted.12 The Military Relief Law, which offered help to families of fallen and wounded veterans, went into effect in 1917 as a result of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5.13 Then, in 1929 the Imperial Diet enacted a Relief and Protection Law sponsored by the Ministry of Home Affairs, but its statutes did not extend to the colonies.14 The lack of the word kōsei (welfare) in official policy prior to the wartime mobilization period suggests a close relationship between the Pacific War, beginning in 1937, and the establishment of Japan's welfare state. For instance, the Welfare Ministry (Kōseishō), which "was the prime mover behind wartime social policy,"was not created until 1938.15 In colonial Korea, the Japanese word kōsei (K. husaeng) started to circulate in the 1940s, concurrent with the intensification of wartime mobilization, and eventually replaced the term previously used for social work, shakai jigyō (sahoe saŏp).
The story of how the modern map of Korea took shape illustrates the colonial state's power to extend the implications of social work and welfare (fig. 1).16 The [End Page 28] colonial government collected regional information to create updated maps, and in them we can discern hints toward the development of the term sahoe saŏp. The Jongno Public Library in Seoul currently holds collections of the colonial government's regional information and the resultant maps, which also contain information on charity and social work. Over time, and particularly by the 1920s, the geographical surveys included the category of sahoe saŏp with greater frequency, implying a process of word replacement: from chasŏn (charity) to sahoe saŏp (social work).
![[AI Generated Alt Text] Grayscale cover with Japanese text Taisho 15th Year, Torii gate inset, barcode reading Jongno Library above two pages of tabular Japanese tables](/article/787276/image/fig01?format=thumb)
Information collected for the inclusion of social work on maps, 1926.
In the 1920s both terms were used, with regional variations. However, by the 1930s sahoe saŏp became standard in representing issues concerning the protection of children, including orphans. As such, the concepts of state welfare and charity were not, at first, clearly distinguished. Although the state's concern for childhood was intensified throughout the colonial period, the distinction between charity, social work, and welfare was blurred until at least the 1930s. Orphanages were officially classified under the category of charity, according to state statistical annals such as Tōkanfu tōkei nenpō (Statistical Yearbook by the Residency General of Korea) or Chōsen Sōtokufu tōkei nenpō (Statistical Yearbook by the Government General of Korea). In the latter, when the state orphanage was introduced as the foremost example of the General Government of Korea's (GGK) benevolence, it was recorded under the category of "Charitable Organizations"or "Charity and Rescue"until 1931. While charity often carried the implication of an [End Page 29] individual act reflecting one's conscience or faith, social work generally referred to efforts undertaken by the state or formal institutions. Therefore, the changing emphasis from charity to social work is noteworthy in demonstrating a conceptual transformation in the state's obligation to respond to children in need.
Over time, more regulatory institutions appeared and were registered under the category of social work in state records. The Social Work Division (社会課, Shakaika) was first created by the GGK under the Domestic Affairs Bureau (内務局, Naimukyoku) in 1921 and later transferred to the Education Bureau (学務局, Gakumukyoku) in 1932.17 In 1923 the Korean Social Work Association (J.: Shakai jigyō genkyukai; K.: Sahoe saŏp yŏn'guhoe), a quasi-governmental organization, was established and began publishing its magazine, Chōsen shakai jigyō (Korean Social Work). Throughout this period, the concept of social work was further formulated and adopted by the state and its subsidiaries. As mentioned above, the government-run orphanage was introduced and advertised as the GGK's achievement under the category of charity and relief works in the Chōsen Sōtokufu tōkei nenpō until 1931 and in the Chōsen Sōtokufu shisei nenpō (Annual Report of Administration of Korea) until 1927. Interestingly, the colonial authority published the Chōsen Sōtokufu shisei nenpō in both English and Japanese, with the English edition also categorizing the state-run orphanage as charity and relief work, under the subsection "Charitable Works."18 But from 1928, the colonial government placed the state orphanage under a new category in the Chōsen Sōtokufu shisei nenpō: social work. From 1931 the state adopted a different approach to organizing statistical records, and the state orphanage and reformatory schools were put under the category of social work, as the section for charity disappeared from the statistical charts.19
The concept of child protection (adong poho saŏp), furthermore, appeared as a subcategory. In Japan, the Bureau of Social Affairs in the Home Office stated that child welfare "has come to occupy a most important position among the various branches of social work."20 According to Japanese government publications, by the end of 1931, 1,381 agencies—over one-quarter of the just over 5,000 social work agencies at the time—were dedicated to child welfare in Japan proper.21 According to contemporary estimates, there were 104 orphanages during the Meiji era and 120 by 1934, mostly operated by Christians and Buddhists.22 All were private organizations except the Tokyo City Asylum, the only public orphanage in Japan.23
As was the case in Japan, child protection in colonial Korea emerged as an important subfield of social work, and the Social Work Division of the GGK published booklets and hosted lectures to provide information on the topic.24 The Social Work Division asserted that protecting orphans, abandoned children, and other needy children had a long history in Korea and that the facilities for this effort were well developed compared to other categories of social work.25 According to a 1936 publication by the Social Work Division, the total number of child protection organizations in Korea numbered approximately forty-nine, including twenty-three orphanages and five institutions for vagrant and delinquent [End Page 30] children.26 Thus, over half of the organizations dedicated to child welfare were specifically aimed at orphans and vagrants.
![[AI Generated Alt Text] Table listing nine facility types in the left column and annual counts for each from 1915 to 1924 across columns headed by year.](/article/787276/image/tab01?format=thumb)
Numbers of Korean Rescue Facilities, 1915–1924
The increasing number of orphanages in the 1920s compared to the 1910s indicated the broader increase in attention paid to child protection and regulation in society as a whole. The second largest increase from 1915 to 1924 was in facilities providing education to orphans and poor children (table 1). The number of social work institutions in table head continued to grow into the 1930s (table 2), though colonial Korea still lagged behind mainland Japan in the number and scope of these facilities. [End Page 31]
![[AI Generated Alt Text] Table with rows for eight welfare categories and total and columns for years 1928 to 1937 showing numeric data.](/article/787276/image/tab02?format=thumb)
Overview of Social Work Institutions in Korea, 1928–1937
In dealing with children, social work aimed to be both protective and disciplinary. Child protection efforts sought to rescue children in need, to be sure, but the state's ultimate goal was to regulate, discipline, and reform them into a desirable population. Reformatory schools were never categorized as prisons or punitive facilities in the statistical records; instead, they were recorded as belonging to social work, usually under the subcategory of child protection. Indeed, the literal translation of reformatory school was "house of moral suasion,"and activities surrounding reformatory schools often referred to the centrality of moral suasion and rescue work. The idea of rescuing and disciplining children thus became interconnected and conflated through the conception of them as both victims and threats, a process of othering that defined them as simultaneously needy and problematic.
DEFINING ORPHANS AS PROBLEMATIC CHILDREN
Menacing images of orphans and vagrant children appeared throughout the 1920s and 1930s alongside the popular discourse of tongsim, or child-heart. These threatening images often justified a call for collective institutionalization to constrain and discipline problematic children. The concepts of childhood and disciplinary rules were further developed by officially categorizing certain children as problematic. According to one estimate, there were over eighteen thousand delinquent children in 1936, and observers requested more reformatory schools to accommodate them.27 Who were these children?
During the colonial period as a whole, the definition of orphan remained flexible, and the boundaries between orphans and other undesirable children were often blurred. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s the word used to designate orphans (koa, 孤児) was conflated with the words for vagrant children (puranga, 浮浪児), poor children (pina, 貧児), and delinquent children (pullyanga, 不良 児). No one word encompassed all these terms, but they were all the targets of orphanages and reformatory institutions. Once in the custody of orphanages and reform schools, they were called wŏna (園児), literally "institutionalized children."By becoming institutionalized, these children were also automatically defined as delinquent.28
The names for orphanages also imply the flexible and conflated terms related to orphans: child-care association (育児会; K: yugahoe; J: ikuzikai), nursery school (保育園; K: poyugwŏn; J: hoikuen), orphanage (孤児院; K: koawŏn; J: koziin), and nursery home (育児ホーム; K: yuga hom; J: ikuzi hōmu).29 It is noteworthy that the word orphanage was not dominant, and the concept of raising children in surrogate homes, yuga hom or yugawŏn, was prevalent. While children were often rounded up, arrested, and forcibly sent to these homes, yuga hom or yugawŏn literally meant "nursery home"or "daycare center,"implying rescue through a family-oriented environment.30 Such institutions rounded up children from all the aforementioned groups, as orphanages and reformatory institutions in this period had a mixed group of orphans, children from the streets, and children from poor families. [End Page 32]
According to contemporary discourse, these children all had the potential to become delinquents, and therefore the police and other state agencies were often directly involved in bringing such children to these institutions. For instance, in 1931 the magazine Sin Tonga depicted orphans as having congenital defects, being lazy, and engaging in bad behavior: "[Children here at the orphanage] are generally not smart and have defects in their bodies since they are from extremely poor families or are bastards from inappropriate relationships. . . . Thus, they are lacking courage and a spirit of independence, and their school records are inferior to those of children who are under their parents' protection."31 Disdainful perceptions of orphans were occasionally even held by those who were engaged in helping them. For instance, the magazine Koa (Orphan), which was published by the association that ran the Kyŏngsŏng poyugwŏn (Kyŏngsŏng Nursery School), a well-known private orphanage, contained similar premises about orphans.32 In 1933 An Sŏkju (1901–50), a popular intellectual and artist, wrote in Koa, "These orphans are kicked out of human society and become a vagrant population. This creates unique characteristics in orphans, who hate community ties or collective lifestyles, and they come closer to living an animalistic life. . . . Already bestiality is growing inside their small hearts. . . . They come to hate human society and human beings; furthermore, they are burning with vengeful thoughts. Therefore, as they grow up, they can perform dreadful acts, detached from humanity."33 Having lived on the streets, the children were perceived as unruly and dangerous, indeed, harboring an inherent criminality. An went on to insist that people should consider rescuing orphans not out of superficial charity but, rather, as a prevention against social evils. Such perceptions of orphans and vagrant children demonstrated the increasing social anxiety concerning these children.
An article featured in the newspaper Tonga ilbo in 1925 demonstrates this social anxiety by blurring the boundary between orphans and delinquent children: "Recently in P'yŏngyang the number of delinquent children grew again, increasing the number of thefts, thus the P'yŏngyang police station started to arrest delinquent children. . . . These boys are mostly orphans whose situations are very sympathetic yet their characters are delinquent. Thus, even when they are accommodated in orphanages, they hate the disciplinary and regular life. They escape from the orphanages immediately and wander around, stealing habitually."34 Here we see that the delinquent children engaging in criminal behaviors, such as theft, were automatically assumed to be orphans. Their vagrancy was viewed as evidence of their flawed characters, which predisposed them to be threats to the established order. This criminalization of undesirable children is found in multiple sources, giving rise to its own discourse.
Individual stories recorded in this era featured a similar pattern, creating the stereotypical story of orphaned and vagrant children. For instance, the story "The Admission of a Young Thief"featured the following: "Four children, who do not have parents, relatives, or regular addresses including Kim Suman [End Page 33] (fourteen years old) and Kim Poksŏng (fourteen years old), steal things day and night. They were caught by the Jongno police the other day. It has since been decided that they will be admitted to the Yŏnghŭng House of Moral Suasion, Yŏnghŭng School."35 This example testifies to the link between criminalization and orphanhood and the subsequent need to institutionalize these orphans.
Reports on the institutions for undesirable children consolidated and reinforced these images of orphaned and vagrant children, justifying their institutionalization. In 1934 Tonga ilbo serialized a report, "A Paradise for Unhappy Children, an Enchanted Land with an Excellent Natural Environment: A Report on the Yŏnghŭng Reformatory School,"which reiterated the assertion that vagrant children posed a terrifying social threat:
The most pitiable child in the world—a child who committed innumerable sins of murder, arson, pickpocketing, theft, robbery, lies, adultery, and so on that eat away the young body and mind. As a consequence, this led to self-abuse and self-loathing. Those are the ones who are accommodated at the Yŏnghŭng School, a house of moral suasion. Yŏnghŭng School was established to reform these children into upstanding men. What kind of school is this that has separated these awful children from their [harmful environment] and attempted to revive their lives?36
Furthermore, the report suggested that there was an urgent need to institutionalize and discipline these problematic children. According to the second installment of the report, orphans and delinquent children sprang from similar sources:
The direct causes for why the children came here were theft, wandering without reason, mischief, trickery, and murder. Most of them were ill-treated by their parents or neighborhoods and came here through the police. But according to the Chosŏn Reform Division [Chosŏn Kamhwach'ŏng], the children here are the ones who do not have parents, who are between eight to eighteen years old, and who have committed misconducts. . . . Too many miserable conditions have driven them onto the wrong path. Although there are exceptions, the majority of the children came from desperately poor families.37
These children were the "ones who were abandoned even by their biological parents"and thus could "commit unimaginable sins."38 Here, a child could be classified as an orphan or vagrant not only for being parentless but also for coming from a poor family. The reporter cited above listed the status of such children and their parents, such as children without fathers and brothers; children whose parents are day workers, peasants, unemployed, or rickshaw workers; and children whose parents were involved in liquor sales. The list provided a wide range of circumstances; however, the common link was that the children came from harsh environments. If the children had parents, the parents' occupations were considered shameful and the families were looked down on as being second [End Page 34] class. The reporter bemoaned their pitiable realities: "What kind of good behavior could we expect from these children, unfortunate beings, who came from a dark hell of poverty like this!"39 Such environments were said to have corrupted their minds and bodies, causing them to follow their parents down an undesirable path.
This perception of certain groups of children shows a clear contrast to the popular discourse of tongsim. According to Dafna Zur, tongsim distinguished the child from the adult because it assumed the "child's inherent innocence and purity"that "demanded simultaneous protection and careful engineering."40 As Zur explained, tongsim was highlighted as the feature of nonadults. The eminent intellectuals in the colonial period, such as Ch'oe Nasmsŏn and Pang Chŏnghwan, argued for the importance of tongsim for children, and psychologists and educators also emphasized that the child-heart had a close affinity with nature due to the innocent characteristics of children.41 However, this focus on tongsim does not offer an explanation for the coeval discourse of nonadult's delinquency. The discourse of delinquency suggests that only certain classes of children preserved tongsim and thus deserved social protection of their innocence. Uneducated and poor families were said to produce children who were also uneducated and poor, with no chance of becoming desirable children with tongsim, thus reproducing undesirable citizens who could threaten the social order. For those believed to lack or have lost their tongsim, institutionalization was suggested as a way to save them from their "distorted mindset."
The same reporter of Tonga ilbo was certain these children had the habit of wandering and misbehaving, offering one example of attempted escape from the reformatory school without interviewing a single child. According to the reporter, the children were lamentable because they had an "unimaginably distorted mindset."42 With these intensifying loops of conflation, controlling these undesirable children through institutionalization was believed to be the only solution to the problem. The reporter thus depicted the school's guidance counselor as a contrast to the undisciplined children. The teachers were "sincerely taking care of the children and teaching them"even if it meant "whipping their heads in order to expel the devils in their brains."The report concluded that the children were at "a crossroads between a dark and a bright future."After being tamed through the civilizing mission in the reformatory institution, the children would "choose to reorient their lives toward the bright future."43 Thus, the reporter argued, it was socially imperative to civilize vagrant children and orphans.
The link between delinquency and the neediest members of society was not unique to Korean society. For instance, Janet Chen, who examined the lives of the urban poor in China in the early twentieth century, also effectively demonstrated the denigration of the nonworking poor as "social parasites."According to Chen, policing homelessness and vagrancy produced new welfare policies and institutions.44 The link between vagrant or orphaned children and delinquency in colonial Korea can be read as a fundamental reordering of the relationship between the modern disciplinary power and marginalized children. During the [End Page 35] Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910), children were not seen as targets of reform at all, and there was no association between these children and delinquency. Orphaned children played a role in Confucian semiotics during the Chosŏn era, but institutions for these children were not developed.45 These Chosŏn traditions of dealing with undesirable children were significantly different from the modern institutionalization of children in need. In addition to the physical separation of children from society and their collectivization, institutionalization entailed disciplinary measures enacted through education and punishment. Throughout the Chosŏn dynasty, receiving the state's help or support entailed no disciplinary actions. Orphans were not viewed as threats to the social order but were simply baseless people looked down upon by Korean society, which placed a great deal of importance on having a firm ancestry. Children in need were offered assistance or gifts of free grain or clothing, but the state did not attempt to place such children in collectivized institutions. Rescue, not regulation, was the emphasis in treating vulnerable children. But the modern colonial state, which was creating institutions and investing in new categories of human development and scientific understanding of the colonial subject, recognized these "delinquent children"as a group that appeared with urbanization and industrialization. The colonial state's involvement in establishing houses of moral suasion can be understood in this context.
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF HOUSES OF MORAL SUASION
In 1923 the GGK promulgated the Chosŏn Reformatory Act (Chosen kankarei, 朝鮮感化令), which served as the legal basis for establishing the first house of moral suasion, the Yŏnghŭng School, that same year.46 The first article of this ordinance stated that the Governor General of Korea could place children in houses of moral suasion if any of the following three criteria were met:
1. They were between the ages of eight and eighteen, had exhibited bad behavior or were suspected of potentially exhibiting bad behavior, and lacked parental authority.
2. They were under eighteen and their parental authority or custodian appealed for their admission.
3. They were entering a disciplinary institution by court order.
The first set of criteria did not define what constituted bad behavior and was not limited to those who had already committed misconduct but, rather, applied to those who potentially could commit it. Thus, the first condition technically included anyone from eight to eighteen who lacked a parental authority figure. This meant that any orphans or vagrant children in this age range could be sent to a reformatory institution. Moreover, it was often difficult to prove the exact age of vagrant or orphaned children, which further increased the interpretive ambiguity. [End Page 36]
Once children entered a reformatory school, they could remain until age twenty-three, the maximum age dictated in the second article of the Chosŏn Reformatory Act. However, they could stay longer if the head of the school received approval from the GGK. (In 1942 the law was revised to decrease the age limit from twenty-three to twenty.) The fourth article of the Chosŏn Reformatory Act stated that the head of a reformatory school exercised parental authority over the institutionalized children. A second clause added that the biological parents or guardians relinquished all custody rights when the children entered the institution, which rendered the head of the reformatory school the children's legal and symbolic guardian.
Of the estimated 18,000 delinquent children in 1936, only around 80 were taken in by the Yŏnghŭng School, which remained the only state-run reformatory school.47 But there were also seven private reformatory schools, together accommodating approximately 260 children: Myŏngjinsa, Sonyŏn pohoso, Susaek kaengsaengwŏn, Pyŏngyang kaengsaengwŏn, Pusan chŏkkihakwŏn, Chŏnnam kongjehoe, and Mokp'o kongsaengwŏn.48 In 1939 Tonga ilbo estimated the number of delinquent children to be over 20,000 and deplored the lack of institutions to accommodate them.49 Korean intellectuals who called on the colonial state to divert more attention and resources to reformatory schools suggested that these institutions could serve primarily as welfare institutions for delinquent children.50 However, by the end of the colonial period, only three government-run reformatory schools remained: Yŏnghŭng School (1923), Mokp'o School (1938), and Sŏngam School (1942). Among them, Yŏnghŭng School deserves special attention as it served as the model for the other institutions.
THE YŎNGHŬNG SCHOOL
Even before the establishment of the Yŏnghŭng School as the first house of moral suasion, Korean newspapers expressed the need for the colonial state to establish such a place. For instance, Maeil sinbo delivered the request of Nakamura, the director of the Prosecutors' Office, to establish houses of moral suasion in Korea in 1917, and both Tonga ilbo and Chosŏn ilbo, two of the major mouthpieces for Koreans, covered news of the plan to build one in 1923.51 South Korean historian So Hyŏnsuk claims there was a consistent demand for houses of moral suasion by judicial bureaucrats in this era.52 Once the establishment of a house of moral suasion was officially announced, various media outlets delivered regular updates, from the announcement of the Chosŏn Reformatory Act to the opening ceremony of the first institution, Yŏnghŭng School.
Of the three reformatory schools run by the state, Yŏnghŭng was the first and received a great deal of attention. The GGK published digests of Yŏnghŭng School (hereafter the Y-Digest) three times: in 1930, 1933, and 1936.53 The GGK actively promulgated the idea of reformatory schools as facilities of relief [End Page 37] and rehabilitation, and the Governor General, Saito Makoto, and other high officials attended the opening ceremony of Yŏnghŭng in 1923.54 Koreans, as well as Japanese colonial authorities, perceived reformatory schools as part of the child welfare system, alongside orphanages.55
Yŏnghŭng was located far from the urban environment, in Yŏnghŭng Bay near Wŏnsan in South Hamgyŏng Province, where the navy's Coastal Command was previously housed.56 After remodeling the Coastal Command's buildings, Yŏnghŭng opened in December 1923 with nineteen boys.57 From that point on, the average number of institutionalized boys was around eighty per year.58
The Yŏnghŭng School could accommodate fewer than one hundred boys, functioning more as a showcase than a large-scale operation. The children at Yŏnghŭng were gathered from all over Korea. Korean elites constantly requested more institutions like Yŏnghŭng School. A social commentary (sip'yŏng) by Tonga ilbo, for instance, criticized the lack of houses of moral suasion in Korea and the associated absence of social protection and guidance for Korean children, particularly those who might turn into delinquents and undesirables. According to the author, "The majority of boys in Korea are running wild as if they were wild plants without care."He went on to state that those who did not get menial work "ended up becoming delinquent boys, wandering around the streets."The author further cited statistics as evidence to support his claim of widespread criminality: "In P'yŏngyang alone, the number of crimes that have been committed by delinquent boys under sixteen or seventeen reached 1,100 per year. . . . When you hear this total number for all of Korea, you can't help but feel surprised. Thus, crimes by delinquent children can only increase over time."The author concluded by saying that "it would be most effective to inculcate morality before crimes are committed and to teach vocational skills. These kinds of facilities must be all across the country."59 This endorsement of houses of moral suasion demonstrates the support of elite Koreans for the initiatives of institutions like Yŏnghŭng School. Another editorial by Tonga ilbo, "Building Additional Houses of Moral Suasion Is a Shortcut to Lead Delinquent Boys into the Right Path,"should be understood in this larger context, as the authors make direct requests to the state for the establishment of additional houses of moral suasion.60
Children targeted for placement in Yŏnghŭng were those who fell into the three categories of the first article of the Chosŏn Reformatory Act, as listed above: those who committed or might commit bad behavior (first clause), those who were sent by a parental authority (second clause), or those who were entrusted by the court (third clause). However, the Y-Digest of 1930 suggests that, in practice, all of the children at Yŏnghŭng fell into the first two categories, meaning they were brought by a parental authority or through the state's decision that the children had misbehaved, or at least had the potential to do so.
The first clause about the potential to misbehave targeted those orphaned and vagrant on the streets. For instance, on May 9, 1925, three children were sent to [End Page 38] Yŏnghŭng precisely because of their vagrancy: "In downtown, three children—Choe Sambong (fourteen years old) at 32 Iksŏn district, Ha Tonsŏng (thirteen years old) at 45 Suŭn district, and Yi Ŭnjun (fifteen years old) at 100 Kahoe district—basically do not attend schools and wander around without regular jobs. Thus, the Jongno district police decided to send them to Yŏnghŭng School in Wŏnsan of South Hamkyŏng Province for moral suasion."61 These children did not commit any crimes, and thus no court order was issued to send them to a juvenile detention center. Yet, these children needed to be removed and rescued from the streets and corrected somehow. This example clearly indicates that being on the streets became a reason to be sent to Yŏnghŭng for protection and discipline. In this process, the police acting as the state agent served as an important intermediary.
![[AI Generated Alt Text] Counts: 76 bad behavior; 64 parental appeal; 0 court decision; total 140. Source: Japanese 'Chōsen sōtokufu eiko gakkō ichiran' (schools list)](/article/787276/image/tab03?format=thumb)
Reasons for Admission to the Yŏnghŭng School up to 1930
As demonstrated in table 3, in practice Yŏnghŭng operated as a protective institution for children in need rather than as a court-ordered juvenile detention center.62 As mentioned previously, the criteria for potential bad behavior (first clause) was ambiguous, and the Y-Digest stated that the increasing numbers of vagrant and delinquent children countrywide required more facilities for protection and supervision, which indicates that, indeed, vagrant children represented part of the targeted population. In looking at admissions through parental appeal (second clause), the high incidence could mean that the institution worked as a kind of poorhouse providing relief for poverty-stricken families.
Of the 140 children who entered Yŏnghŭng by 1930, 73 were brought in by the police. This suggests that these children were either arrested or found living on the streets. Another 33 children were sent by local government offices. Only 17 children were sent from other child protective services, while parents or elder brothers directly brought in an additional 17 children. These numbers are incongruent with the information in table 3. Though 64 children were admitted to the school under appeal of parental authority (second clause), only 17 children were actually brought in by their parents or elder brothers, according to the Y-Digest.63 This gap means that the state, such as local governmental offices or the police, must have appropriated parental authority over vagrant or orphaned children. Among the 140 total children, 32 had no supporters, indicating they were orphans. For those who were not orphaned, 45 still had two living parents and 63 had at least one living parent, relative, or sibling. However, the Y-Digest states that [End Page 39] some of the children were not honest about whether they had living relatives during their initial processing and presented themselves as orphans when they were not.64 There could be many reasons for this: for instance, fear of the people interviewing them and not wanting to be punished by their parents. The surviving details make clear that it was difficult to distinguish the boundary between reformatory schools and orphanages.
![[AI Generated Alt Text] Table showing weekly hours per course for grades 1–6; practical courses 14–28 hours; other courses 0–7 hours.](/article/787276/image/tab04?format=thumb)
Curriculum at the Yŏnghŭng School (hours per week)
The Yŏnghŭng School emphasized a practical curriculum in addition to six years of primary education.65 The regular courses were ethics, Japanese, Korean, math, Japanese history, geography, science, drawing, singing, and gymnastics. In contrast, at Yŏnghŭng vocational courses seem to have had greater importance. While many of the practical courses were electives at regular schools, they were compulsory and met daily at Yŏnghŭng. These included such subjects as agriculture, woodworking, fishery, and sewing. Vocational courses were scheduled each afternoon and lasted between two and four hours. Agriculture was the most popular vocational subject, with 60 of the 76 children at Yŏnghŭng enrolled in 1930. As table 4 shows, the hours differed, while practical courses were supposed to gradually increase as the students got older. When the children first entered Yŏnghŭng, they all took a course on agriculture for six months as their vocational training. In later terms, they were divided according to their personal aptitudes.
Compared to the rest of the curriculum, the practical courses were clearly prioritized, taking up the most time each day. The goal of these courses was to train [End Page 40] and discipline the children's spirits and bodies so that they could have self-supporting lives in the future. The emphasis on labor was thus common in state-run facilities. In addition to their practical courses, the children engaged in labor while at Yŏnghŭng, which was very different from the experience of students in ordinary elementary schools. There were a variety of small animals and plants on the school's campus, which the children tended to daily. The Y-Digest described this activity as contributing to the "cultivation of sentiments and emotions."66 The repetition of words about discipline, training, and obedience in the YDigest sheds light on another purpose of the practical curriculum: creating docile bodies through labor. The treatment of children in the reformatory schools was thus clearly bent toward reforming children into disciplined and docile subjects, beyond simply rescuing or training them. As table 4 shows, Japanese language coursework was also prominent, as it was in ordinary schools during the colonial period, which further reinforced the purpose of Yŏnghŭng to cultivate productive imperial subjects. Although most students were from Korean backgrounds, from 1923 to 1930 a small number (14 of 114) of ethnically Japanese children also entered Yŏnghŭng.67
Since the state viewed the children's lives before coming to the school as ones of license, vagrancy, and indiscipline, daily life at Yŏnghŭng was very strict and rigorous. The children woke up at 6 a.m. every day, made their beds, cooked their breakfasts, cleaned the lights, and took care of the livestock.68 At 8 a.m., the children ate breakfast and prepared for their classes. From 9 a.m. to noon the children studied, following the regular curriculum, and at noon they had lunch and checked on the livestock. Then they cleaned the classroom and prepared for their practical courses that started at 1 p.m. When the practical courses ended at 5 p.m., they again looked after the livestock and then prepared dinner, which they ate at 6 p.m. before taking their baths. But that was not the end of the day: the children still had to study and listen to admonitory lectures. At 9 p.m. the children went to bed.69 Except during meals, they were afforded no breaks or leisure time.
This daily schedule showed a contrast between the institutionalized children and the idealized conception of childhood that developed during this period. Prior to the modern era, it would have been perfectly normal not to give children leisure time or toys. But ideas about the sanctity and innocence of childhood developed in the modern era, particularly with the discourse of the child's mind, tongsim, as discussed above.70 However, this idealized childhood was not translated into practice for the institutionalized children, as suggested by the rigid schedule at Yŏnghŭng, which included no breaks or leisure time. Where was the newfound emphasis on childhood as an important and unique developmental stage for the institutionalized children? The daily schedule showed a contrast between the idealized conception of childhood and the real children who lacked or had been neglected by their families.
In addition to these daily routines, the institution imposed spiritual discipline, which was intended to both edify and reinforce imperial allegiance. On the first, [End Page 41] eleventh, and twenty-first of every month, Days of Gratitude (Kansha no hi) were observed during which the children gathered around the Welcome Day Tower (Mukai hi dai) in the early morning, bowed toward the Japanese Imperial Palace, and recited the Oath of Imperial Subjects.71 Furthermore, the children were expected to recite this oath every morning, sing various military and imperial hymns, and express gratitude toward their parents, the Imperial Army, and the country.72 By doing so, these spiritual exercises, interestingly, located parents, the army, and the state on the same reverential level. Here, the colonial state became a surrogate parent and instilled the ideology of loyalty and filial piety into the children.
![[AI Generated Alt Text] Discharged: reform claim 93; sickness 2; death 5; escaped/crimes 37; Enrolled: conditional release 32; entrustment 14; Yongheung School 82; Total 265.](/article/787276/image/tab05?format=thumb)
Enrolled and Discharged Children at Yŏnghŭng School to 1936
As shown above, life at Yŏnghŭng was rigorous, with an emphasis on labor and spiritual discipline. Strict punitive measures were meted out for misbehavior. The "Regulations of GGK Reformatory Schools"stated that the principal of the school could reprimand students with solitary confinement for up to seven days, require them to complete additional labor, reduce their daily food allotment for up to three days, or place them in disciplinary confinement.73 Discipline, training, and diligence were viewed as the keys to creating upright imperial citizens, and the measures taken to achieve this could mirror those found at penal or military institutions.
Children could be discharged from Yŏnghŭng for a variety of reasons, as demonstrated in table 5, based on the 1936 Y-Digest. By this time, 93 of the 265 children had been released after the school decided that they had successfully reformed. The fact that 37 additional children (14 percent of the total) were categorized as escapees or criminals demonstrates, however, that the disciplinary measures at Yŏnghŭng had limited effect. An additional 7 children were reported to have died or left due to sickness.
What kind of lives did people have once they were discharged from Yŏnghŭng? A 1935 magazine article written after the author visited Yŏnghŭng offers a glimpse into this matter. After stating that around 100 children who were discharged from Yŏnghŭng had been remodeled into good citizens, the reporter [End Page 42] identified them as now working as agricultural workers (14), domestic workers (6), carpenters (5), clerks (5), day laborers (5), crewmen (3), shoemakers (3), office workers (2), fishermen (2), chauffeurs (2), employees at the Monopoly Bureau (2), street vendor for vegetables (1), brewery worker (1), tailor (1), potter (1), printmaker (1), blacksmith (1), silk-reel worker (1), confectionary apprentice (1), peddler for miscellaneous goods (1), coal miner (1), cook (1), and circus rider (1), with 4 unemployed, 13 unknown, and 2 identified as deceased. Based on this record, the author claimed that "after spending several years at the house of correction, in general [these people] live at least performing their duties."74 The various vocations at the lower strata of Korean society hint that their lives after Yŏnghŭng would have not been dramatically different from those before Yŏnghŭng. Several of their occupations required specific skills, yet many of them did not, indicating the irrelevancy of the education they received at Yŏnghŭng in terms of choosing their vocations. More important, these occupations can be connected to the categorized definition of delinquency in the earlier section. For instance, peddlers had to wander around, thus becoming vagrant by nature. Day laborers and street vendors also easily became vagrant. Thus, these people or their children could fall into the arbitrary category of "potentially"exhibiting bad behavior or becoming vagrant, which was the basis for being sent to the house of moral suasion.
CONCLUSION
The appearance and development of reformatory schools show an interesting move toward greater surveillance of unprotected children, based on assumptions about delinquency. Many groups now fell into the broader category of targeted children, including orphaned, vagrant, delinquent, and poor children. The terms used to refer to these undesirable children were conflated, and the perpetuation of negative impressions centered on criminality and social threat created a discourse focusing on rehabilitation through regulation and discipline. Thus, institutionalized children were now firmly equated with problematic children. The establishment of houses of moral suasion hence epitomized a regulatory approach toward undesirable children as those who needed not simply to be rescued but to be "corrected"and disciplined. As a remedy, labor was emphasized as the key to disciplining these children and transforming them into a productive workforce. It put the onus on individuals to take responsibility for their own successes and failures, discouraging emphasis on underlying structural inequalities. The children's routines at the Yŏnghŭng School reflected this emphasis, promoting industriousness, labor, and individual reform as mutually reinforcing indicators of personal rehabilitation. [End Page 43]
Young Sun Park is assistant professor at Saint Mary's University of Minnesota. She is currently working on a book about modern treatment of orphaned children in Korea.
NOTES
I thank Kyung Moon Hwang, Hye Eun Choi, Hyojin Pak, and the anonymous reviewers. This article was presented first at the 2018 Conference of the Association for Asian Studies. Another version was presented at East Asian Child Welfare Workshop organized by the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University in February 2019.
3. Chosŏn ilbo, "Pullyang sonyŏn kamhwawŏn Kyŏnggi-do nae e sinsŏl."
4. For the ideology of the "wise mother and good wife" in relation to the radical ideas of the New Women, see Shin, "Social Construction of Idealized Images,"162−73.
7. The inauguration of the representative magazine on social work, Chōsen shakai jigyō (Korean Social Work, May 1923–January 1944), by Chosŏn Sahoe Saŏp Hyŏphoe, a government-aided organization, exemplifies this point.
12. Ibid., 18–21.
16. Topography collections at the Jongno Public Library are digitized and open to the public: jongnolib.koreanhistory.or.kr/dirservice/main.do.
17. Chōsen no shyakai jigyō, 50.
18. For instance, see Government-General of Chosen, Annual Report, 102–3.
19. However, the increased official usage of the concept of social work did not result in the allocation of more government resources to the Social Work Division, as the budget for social work remained minuscule throughout the colonial era. For instance, in 1931, when the budget to maintain the railroad system exceeded 60 million won, the Social Work Division only received around 160,000 won. The number did not increase dramatically in subsequent years. Thus, the contemporary leftist intellectual Yi Yŏsŏng (b. 1901) openly criticized the limited resources allocated to social work—including for unemployment, disaster relief, and child protection. See Yi and Chŏn, Sutcha ro pon singminji Chosŏn, 121–27 (originally published with five volumes from 1931 to 1935 with the title Sutcha Chosŏn yŏn'gu [Research Korea through Numbers]). The colonial government usually allotted the biggest part of its budget to the railroad system.
20. Bureau of Social Affairs, Social Work in Japan, 96.
21. Ibid. The children who fell into this subcategory included "weak children, poor children, maltreated children, children to be reformed, abnormal children."Orphanages, often referred to as "orphan asylums,"were the earliest examples of relief work in Japan, with the oldest one, Ono Jizen-in in Kanazawa in Ishikawa Prefecture, dating back to 1864. In 1887 Ishii Jūji (1865–1914) established the Okayama Orphan Asylum, which became famous among contemporaries due to its successful operation. Bureau of Social Affairs, Social Work in Japan, 97, 114. For the contemporary record of Ishii Jūji, see Pettee, Mr. Ishii and His Orphanage.
22. Bureau of Social Affairs, Social Work in Japan, 114.
23. Ibid.
24. For instances of this, see Chōsen Sōtokuhu, Gakumukyoku Shakaika; and Chōsen Sōtokufu gakumukyoku shakaika, Chōsen no shakai jigyō, 1933, 1936.
25. Chōsen Sōtokufu gakumukyoku shakaika, Chōsen no shakai jigyō, 1936, 84.
26. Ibid., 49–50, 84, 91.
27. Chosŏn ilbo, "Pullyang sonyŏn kamhwawŏn Kyŏnggi-do nae e sinsŏl."
28. The lack of clarity regarding the definition of orphan is universal in the sense that orphanages often accommodate children whose parents are alive. However, the conflation of words from the 1920s in Korea was unique in that the term for orphan included problematic children, like delinquents and vagrants. My examination of materials from the earlier period shows a distinction between orphans and other troubled children, without the degree of conflation found in the 1920s and 1930s. For instance, on December 14, 1907, Hwangsŏng sinmun (Capital Gazette) reported on an unusual event in Seoul: around one hundred courtesans (kisaeng) announced a charity concert as a fundraiser for Kyŏngsŏng Orphanage. Many kisaeng were recruited as young girls whose parents could not exercise parental authority and provide proper child-rearing, but they were not considered orphans in popular discourse and were not the targets of orphanages. Hwangsŏng sinmun, December 24, 1907.
29. See, e.g., Chŏsen oyobi Manchū, "Keijō no kakukoziin o tazunete."
32. Kyŏngsŏng poyugwŏn is also known as Kyŏngsŏng koawŏn (Kyŏngsŏng Orphanage). Throughout this article, I use the name Kyŏngsŏng poyugwŏn to avoid confusion with a different orphanage, Kyŏngsŏng koawŏn, in the 1900s.
34. Tonga ilbo, "Kyŏkchŭng hanŭn pullyang sonyŏn."
35. Tonga ilbo, "Yunyŏn chŏldo ibwŏn."
36. Tonga ilbo, "Pulhaenga ŭi nakwŏn,"August 31, 1934.
37. Ibid., September 2, 1934; emphasis added.
38. Ibid., September 1, 1934.
39. Ibid., September 5, 1934.
41. Ibid., 73–74, 79–80.
42. Tonga ilbo, "Pulhaenga ŭi nakwŏn,"September 6, 1934.
43. Ibid., September 7, 1934.
45. Orphans played a role in Confucian semiotics in three ways during the Chosŏn era. (a) Above all, the rhetoric of helping orphans justified the Confucian state's political legitimacy. (b) Orphans represented one of the weakest segments of the population whom the state was duty bound to care for, thus presenting its benevolent disposition. The Annals of King Sejong the Great, who is known as the exemplary ruler of the Confucian state of Chosŏn, expresses this point best. Records about orphans appear in these annals more often than in the annals of any other Chosŏn kings, and whenever orphans are mentioned, the record describes how generously the king helped them and how much affection he had for these pitiable subjects (such as Sejong sillok 3:13a [1419/03/12]). On the other hand, having a large number of orphans was considered indicative of a lack of Confucian virtue, a signal from the heavens, like a natural disaster, that the king was behaving inappropriately. According to the Annals of the Chosŏn Dynasty, the state often released prisoners to relieve the grievance of heaven and extended help to the four helpless groups of people (hwan'gawgodok, i.e., widowers, widows, orphans, and the childless) when natural disasters occurred. (c) The state reshaped helping orphans into one of the nation's proud traditions. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, King Kojong declared the principle of kubon sinch'am, an initiative to modernize old traditions and create new ones as Korea transitioned into a modern state. The Annals of King Kojong stated that offering help to orphans had been a fine example of this principle (Kojong sillok 41:61b [1901/ 10/09]). In other words, taking care of orphans represented the greatness of conventional politics of the Chosŏn state when the state was undergoing modern transformation. The Annals of King Kojong describes, for example, how Kojong announced the establishment of Hyeminwŏn in 1901, the first modern, state-run rescue organization for the helpless and poor (Kojong sillok 41:61b [1901/10/09]). The king was quoted as saying that caring for the four groups of helpless people was a "beautiful tradition."However, in reality, orphaned children were often taken as slaves or village servants, which saved their lives yet limited their freedom and social mobility, relegating them to the bottom rungs of society. The fact of the children's survival offered a justification for this customary practice.
46. "Chōsen Sōtokufu seirei dai 12 gō."
47. Tonga ilbo, "Man-p'alch'ŏn pullyang sonyŏn hunyuk ŭi kigwan ŭn myŏlyŏ."
48. Ibid.
49. Tonga ilbo, "Sip'yŏng."
50. The Chosŏn Reformatory Act was abolished in 1962. The only slight change to the law during the intervening years was the 1942 revision, and thus the state regulations of reformatory schools remained the same after liberation in 1945. The continued existence of the Chosŏn Reformatory Act demonstrates that the state could institutionalize children who lacked parental authority and place them into reformatory schools at any time with nothing more than the ambiguous suspicion of a potential for bad behavior.
51. Maeil sinbo, "T'arak ŭi kyŏngno nŭn p'ich'a ilban"; Chosŏn ilbo, "Kamhwawŏn sŏlch'i"; Tonga ilbo, "Wŏnsan kamhwawŏn kaewŏn ch'oech'o."
53. Chŏsen sōtokufu eiko gakkō, Chŏsen sōtokufu eiko gakkō ichiran (hereafter YDigest), 1930, 1933, 1936.
54. Ibid., 1930, 2.
55. See, e.g., Tonga ilbo, "P'albaengman ŏrini chosŏn e poho pŏpkyu chŏnmu,"July 30, 1936.
56. Y-Digest, 1930, 1.
57. Ibid., 1–2. Although the ceremony was in December, the official opening date was designated as October 1, 1923. Ibid., 2.
58. Tonga ilbo, "Man-p'alch'ŏn pullyang sonyŏn hunyuk ŭi kigwan ŭn myŏlyŏ."There were 76 in 1930, 86 in 1933, and 82 in 1936. Y-Digest, 1930, 9–10; 1933, 118–19; 1936, 14–15.
59. Tonga ilbo, "Sip'yŏng: pullyang sonyŏn."
60. Tonga ilbo, "Sasŏl."
61. Tonga ilbo, "Pullyang sonyŏn kamhwawŏn e."
62. Juvenile detention centers did exist but were separate from the houses of moral suasion and are not examined here.
63. It is an interesting point that elder brothers were mentioned but never elder sisters, signifying a strong patriarchy.
64. Y-Digest, 1930, 13–19.
65. Ibid., 5–7.
66. Ibid., 8. Income earned from the products of these courses was supposed to be distributed among the children, but there is no evidence that this happened. The Y-Digest goes on to proudly state that some students were so absorbed in the practical courses that they cultivated land near the school that had previously lain fallow. Ibid., 7.
67. Ibid., 13. While no records remain for the Japanese children except for their number, I speculate that they were the children of Japanese people living in Korea. It is unclear who brought them, but it could be that police or their families thought the children needed discipline and correction.
68. In 1936 the children woke up at 5 a.m. Y-Digest, 1936, 26.
69. Ibid., 1930, 26–27.
71. Chōsen shakai jigyō, "Chōsen Sōtokufu kankain no genkyō,"34–35. Reciting the Oath of Imperial Subjects was a widespread practice in the 1940s, including at the regular schools. But the emphasis on spiritual discipline at Yŏnghŭng seems to have begun earlier than at regular schools.
72. Ibid., 35–36.
73. Y-Digest, 1930, 40.
