One can imagine the Photographer "OK, yes Mr. Sasaki and Suzuki, you sit on the ends and hold your katana. And Mr. Suho, you sit next to that foreboding X, four from the left. Very good. And when I say cheese, everybody sit stoically with a grim expression."
He then volunteered for an assignment as the director of the Leprosarium on Sorok Island in Jeollanamdo province in 1933. The role was one of prestige. The young Japanese generals viewed the American's Leper colonies in the Philippines with jealousy. They too wanted to be seen as benevolent masters over a thankful but backward territory. Humanitarian efforts on behalf of the lepers would be a way to prove their benevolence, both to the Korean population and in the eyes of the world. In 1930, the Japanese government declared a policy of leprosy eradication in the colony. They would do this by compulsory quarantine of leprosy patients and forced sterilization.
Perhaps the jealousy did not only apply to the affection of the lepers, but also the affection of the Imperial House itself. The Empress wrote a poem to American Medical Missionary Robert Manton Wilson, praising his compassionate work. "Please comfort the lepers on my behalf, since I cannot be there myself."
For whatever reason, the Japanese felt the need to establish themselves as benevolent overlords. Some Japanese were apparently successful in that role. The second director, Dr. Hanai, successfully enacted a policy which was sensitive to the patient's culture and allowed them to live according to their own customs with reasonable amounts of work. The death rates at the hospital dropped under his leadership, and the patients remembered him as a benevolent father figure.
It's possible that Suho arrived in Korea with the best intentions and was corrupted over time by the nature of the colonial machine. His record leaves the impression that he was selected from among the best and brightest of Japanese physicians. In any case, he became enamored with the idea of himself as a benevolent saint of the leprosy patient community and possessed by the desire to expand the facilities at all cost. He ran the leprosarium like a penal colony, dividing the patients into six camps and preventing group organization.
Pak Soon Joo was a Korean patient who acted as a go-between for the Japanese and the lepers. He was blind and disabled, but he served as the representative for the Hospital Patients. He was in charge of collecting fees from fellow patients among other things. He extorted 80% of patients' holdings as donations for a giant statue of Dr. Suho in 1941. The patients were required to bow to the statue daily. For his efforts, he was awarded accolades from the Japanese Society for Leprosy Prevention which met in August 1941. The next month he was stabbed to death by a fellow patient, Lee Kil-yong. Lee Kil-yong had no use of his hands and was severely disabled himself. He had to fasten the knife around the stump of his wrist using a bandage. The murder was thus clumsy and slow, but effective as Lee Kil-yong managed to pierce the throat of his target while rolling with him on the ground.
From 1937 and the start of the Pacific war, death rates steadily climbed at Sorok Island Leprosarium due to war-time deprivations. They continue to climb after Japan declared war on the US. After the murder of Pak Soon Joo, a patient named Lee Chun-sang began to form his own plot for revenge. The son of a Korean Independence activist, Lee Chun-sang first acted by volunteering to play a role in a holiday theatre performance. When asked what role he wished to play, he declared that he would play in the sword dance. He was then seen regularly practicing kendo techniques on electrical poles with a wooden stick. He would move about draped in a large cloak even as the temperature increased during the hot Jeolla summer.
On June 20, 1942, his chance presented itself. In Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Kurtz dies of a tropical disease on a steamboat to the coast under Marlowe's supervision. It was an artistic liberty taken by Coppola that led Martin Sheen to cut Marlon Brando down like some giant water buffalo. But so did Dr. Suho, that would-be-humanitarian who set himself up as a living God on his own island of 6000 leprosy patients, meet his end.
As Dr. Suho walked past on a nearby road, Lee Chun-Sang took a sword from under his cloak and, with all his strength, ran it through the good doctor's abdomen. With what was left of his strength, he pulled the sword from the abdomen and stood for a moment before the horrified patients before collapsing. The patients, fearful for their lives, fell upon Lee Chun-Sang beating and kicking him. He was sentenced to death by a Japanese court. At the court, he gave an account of the brutality of Dr. Suho. The judge called on his fellow patient Choi Il-Bong to ask if he could confirm Lee's account. Choi denied Lee's account of the brutalities. Later he would be heard beating his breast and lamenting his damnation, "I killed Lee Chun-Sang." Oh the horror.
Conrad ends his novel with an encounter with the young aristocratic woman whom Kurtz refers to as "My Intended." She sees Kurtz as an angelic figure. Dr. Suho, likewise, must have been an angel to some. Myths of benevolence are not build purely on deception and cynical megalomania. But there is a seed of such cynicism which often sprouts when a man takes it upon himself to be an angel. How much that sprout of megalomania and cruelty is nurtured and allowed to grow determines the difference between man and tyrant.
I took my information from wikipedia, a memoir from my Great Uncle Johnny, and most importantly an article by Jeong Keun-sik of Seoul National University entitled "일제 말기의 소록도갱생원과 이춘상 사건" "Sorok Island rehabilitation hospital in the twilight of Japanese empire and the Lee Chun-Sang Incident"
