| Execution circa 1910-1920 Courtesy of Robert Neff collection |
Corpses hanged in public view for days in Joseon era
By Robert Neff
Justice in the late Joseon era was often quick and severe. People accused of crimes were often horribly tortured and those who confessed their crimes or were found guilty were subsequently punished. There were many forms of punishment ― depending on one's class and crime ― including corporal, loss of rank, confinement and banishment. Lesser crimes were often punished with beatings ― a humiliation that occasionally left its receiver bedridden for days if not permanently crippled. But the ultimate punishment was execution.
One of the most popular forms of execution was decapitation. Judging from the accounts of foreign witnesses, these were often horribly botched affairs carried out by executioners who were often under the influence of alcohol and equipped with dull rusty blades. According to one witness, an executioner “cut off the heads of the criminals after thirteen blows with a blunt sword.”
Reforms were needed and they came in late January 1895 when the Korean cabinet declared “beheading and other barbarous modes of punishment” would be replaced with “strangulation for civil, and by shooting for military capital crimes.”
But was hanging more humane? In early 1904, William B. McGill, an American Methodist missionary-doctor, visited a prison in Gongju, South Chungcheong Province. The jailer, an evil-looking man, confessed that whenever he only had a few inmates he would make sacrifices to the gods asking for more prisoners to be sent. Apparently his prayers were answered because when McGill visited there were 37 robbers and murderers. They were mainly men but there was at least one woman who had killed her husband with poisonous eels and then horribly mutilated his face in a futile effort to make him unrecognizable.
Not all of the murders were intentional. One man accidently killed a friend during a drunken altercation following a funeral. He professed great regret for the killing but his remorse could not save him ― within a week he and most of the other prisoners were hanged ― their final moments of life recorded by McGill.
“From a distance I witnessed nine of them being hung to a single branch, so close to each other that their faces touched. They had their hands tied behind them with straw rope and they walked to the tree with the constable holding them by the arm, and put their heads in the noose without any attempt at resistance. They seemed to die without the least struggle. One of the prisoners was sent up the tree to tie the straw ropes. The man to be hanged was held up off the ground a foot or so while the rope was being tied to the limb and then he was dropped and slowly strangled…. Death usually followed in three or four minutes.”
Things didn't always run smoothly. The first to be hanged that fateful day was a very large and heavy man but the initial attempt failed because the rope broke. The miserable man was hauled back up for a second and then third time but the rope continued to break. Surely some of the witnesses might have considered it divine intervention but the executioner was unmoved and ordered the execution to continue. After cursing his fellow prisoner in the tree for being clumsy, the condemned man finally met his fate on the fourth attempt.
The bodies were supposed to hang for two or three days ― a severe warning to others ― but family members would often remove their loved ones and secretly bury them. McGill recalled:
“As I was going home after witnessing the hangings … I met an old woman with a grass hook or sickle in her hand and I asked her where she was going. She said she was going to cut down her son who had been hanged. I also met another old woman and two younger ones with children going for the same purpose.”
Those bodies that were not recovered by family or friends were cut down, thrown into a ditch and halfheartedly covered with dirt leaving tufts of hair and limbs sticking out of the soil.
McGill noticed dogs roaming about the site “helping themselves” to the fresh corpses ― the unlikely beneficiaries of the reforms.
Nearby was a large patch of ground with human skulls and bits and pieces of bone scattered about ― a remnant of the cruel past. Prior to the law revision, a large number of rebels were executed here by piling brush and timber around them and burning them to death.
Robert Neff is a historian and columnist for The Korea Times. He can be reached at robertneff103@gmail.com