An editorial on 8 March 1907 wrote critically of the
National Debt Repayment Movement, The following day,
The Seoul Press published another editorial entitled "Korea's Friends" that singled out and criticized Bethell and Hulbert for their support of the movement.
The Korea Daily News published a reply to the editorial on 12 March.
The Japan Times wrote in support of
The Seoul Press, and claimed "The world knows the real truth, that these anti-Japanese crusaders in Korea are actually Korea's enemies". The paper was intended to justify and paint a particularly positive image of Japan's colonization of Korea. According to the historian Mark E. Caprio, articles relating to events in colonial Korea were sometimes reported differently in
The Seoul Press and
The Japan Times, but that the reportage in both coincided in depicting the "positive atmosphere that the Japanese... strove to convey to Westerners". It highlighted cases of Koreans assisting Japanese settlers, and portrayed the Korean former emperor
Sunjong as willingly and gratefully accepting Japanese rule. Some articles were more negative in tone. It reprinted reports written by Westerners that criticized Korean culture and civilization, and promoted Japan's colonization. One such article was written by
J. H. De Forest, who had spent one month visiting Korea and lived for 36 years in Japan. He argued, in Caprio's words, that Korea lacked the "necessary criteria of a civilized society, as seen in their nonexistent
traditional literature and the lack of trees on their naked hills". De Forest hopefully concluded that, because contact between Japan and Korea had increased, "a new life is coming to these wronged [naked] hills and a new hope to the tillers of the soil". == See also ==