The preponderating influence of China was the mainspring in the intricate machinery of old Corean politics, though within the two clearly defined parties in Seoul there are also factional and family differences. “From 1834 to 1864 the royal clan was shorn of much of its power, all offices were in the hands of the Kim clan, whose head, Kim Pyong-gi, was virtually ruler of the land for the years ending that epoch.” The Kims hoped to continue the lease of their power, but the Tai-wen Kun humbled this clan and exalted his own, meanwhile doing much for the common people and compelling the yangban to bear a share of the burdens of government in paying a house tax. In his whole course toward these predatory gentry, he was “a blundering anticipator” of the great reforms of 1894. He began the suppression of the Tong-haks. He was a great builder of public edifices, not only in Seoul, but in the provinces. He protected the country against the foreigner. He meant well in his ignorance, but he knew nothing of the world at large. His first lease of power came to an end in 1873.

The first Corean noblemen, Kim and Pom, left their homes in 1875 to travel in lands beyond China. They went to Japan, and coming back, boldly told the King what they had seen and advocated the adoption of Western civilization. They tried to win over the powerful Min clan and the Queen to a liberal policy, but this to the Regent, Tai-wen Kun, meant nothing else than Christianity and radical reform, which involved popular education. That is exactly the sort of reform that every Confucian mandarin in any country of Asia hates most heartily, because he sees in the general enlightenment of the people the end of the power of the literati. The bold and crafty statesman, who, as Prince Parent, held his son the King as his puppet and had already shed the blood of thousands of native Christians, nearly succeeded in putting the [459]two young champions of Western civilization to death. When the American treaty negotiations were impending, the Min clansmen held aloof until China, as represented by Li Hung Chang, gave the nod. Then they showed so much energy in the matter as to seem to foreigners the party of progress. This roused the wrath of the Regent, who determined to crush the Min clan and to nullify the treaty. We have seen how, in July, 1882, by a masterly appeal to local bigotry and superstition, he directed the soldiers’ riot into a revolt against the pro-Chinese clan. After destroying, as he imagined, their leading men and the Queen, he seized the government himself, enjoying for a few days full lease of power.

When the news of the usurpation reached China and Japan, a fleet with soldiers was despatched from each country. The Chinese force landed first, marched to Seoul, built forts to command the river against the Japanese, and established their camp inside the walls. By this move China held a new lien on her “vassal state.” The Chinese general made his formal call on the Tai-wen Kun, and when this lord of the land returned the courtesy, he was seized and deported to China. Meanwhile the Queen, for whom a palace maid had suffered vicarious death, together with some of her chief helpers and advisers, re-entered the palace October 9, 1882. The star of the Min clan was again in the ascendant.

Thus the results of the Regent’s smart trickery were not pleasant for the Coreans, for now they had both the Chinese and the Japanese soldiers encamped in the capital and on the ground where nearly three hundred years before they had met in battle. By good discipline on both sides, collision between the soldiers was avoided, but the Government at once made provision to replace the foreign soldiery by native troops. Four battalions of Corean infantry were organized and put under Chinese drill masters, introduced by the Min leaders. Fourteen young men, mostly members of Progressive families, were sent to Tokio to study in the military school.

The treaty negotiated by Commodore Shufeldt was promptly ratified by the United States Senate, and on February 26th President Chester A. Arthur sent in the name of General Lucius H. Foote as Minister to Corea. Reaching Chemulpo May 13th in the U.S.Ss. Monocacy, the formal ratifications of the treaty were exchanged in the capital May 19th. The same cannon, and served [460]by some of the same sailors that in 1871 had shelled the Han forts,1 peacefully saluted the new national flag, emblazoned with the proofs of Corea’s intellectual servitude to Chinese philosophy and fantastic traditions. Keeping clear of the native factions, Mr. Foote dealt as directly as possible with the sovereign. He made an earnest plea for the toleration of religion, a promise to proclaim which was secured from the King.

The Corean Government responded to the American courtesy by despatching a special mission, consisting of eleven persons headed by Min Yong Ik, which arrived in San Francisco September 2d. President Arthur being then in New York, these quaintly apparelled Oriental strangers were given audience in the parlor of the Fifth Avenue Hotel. After three months’ stay in the eastern cities, one part of the embassy, headed by Han Yong Sik, returned home by way of San Francisco. A few days later, on the U.S.Ss. Trenton (afterward lost at Samoa) with Ensign G. C. Foulke (afterward of the Doshisha University, Kioto) and Lieutenant J. G. Bernadou, U.S.N. (afterward distinguished in the Spanish-American War of 1898, on the U.S.Ss. Winslow), as naval attachés to the American legation in Seoul, Min Yong Ik and two other Coreans returned home by way of Europe and the Suez Canal.

On November 27th, at the Victoria Hotel in the city of New York, I had the pleasure of spending an agreeable evening with the three Corean gentlemen, Min Yong Ik, So Kuang Pom, and Pien Su, the two latter being able to talk Japanese.2 [461]Though many of my questions were answered and a number of subjects discussed, nothing could be learned of Corean Christianity, or of the relics or reminders of Hendrik Hamel and his Dutchmen.3 Before leaving, Min Yong Ik, like a true Corean gentleman, brought out a large package of choicest ginseng roots, without which no well-to-do native of the Land of Morning Calm would think of travelling abroad. He presented me with several choice specimens of the man-shaped drug, each wrapped up in its own “arms” and “legs.”

On the same evening in Seoul, November 27th, a banquet was spread in the English-language-school building to celebrate the signing on the day before of two treaties, one with Great Britain and the other with the German Empire, the negotiator of the English treaty being Sir Harry Parkes.4 The music was furnished by the band of the German man-of-war Leipsic. Seoul now began to be the residence of foreigners from Christendom, nine of whom were already in the city.

New Year’s Day, January 20, 1884, dawned brightly. The little children who during the summer are “dressed in a hair ribbon,” made the streets brilliant with their bright clothes of many colors, and the sky was gay with kites. In the royal palace audience was given to the envoys of China, Japan, and the United States. On February 28th the electric submarine cable between Nagasaki and Fusan was completed and messages from the once hermit nation were sent into the outside world. Han Yong Sik was appointed postmaster with power to organize a national postal system, stamps for which were engraved in Tokio. From this Japanese base of supplies many novelties from the Western world poured in, and the body politic, long insulated from other nations, thrilled with new currents of life. Treaties were made with Russia and Italy, June 25th and 26th. Later on, telegraph lines connecting [462]Seoul with Peking and with Fusan were completed. The year following the arrival home of the first Coreans who had gone round the world was a year of progress, such as Corea had never known before or has known since.

Through the advice of Ensign Foulke, several reformatory measures, political and industrial, were promulgated. The most ardent member of the reform party, Pak Yong Hio, being made mayor of Seoul, immediately set to work at sanitary and municipal improvement. Some progress was made in dress improvement. A model farm, for which California live stock had been ordered, was sown by American seeds liberally given in Washington. Edison electric lights, American rifles and Gatling guns, a powder mill, a mint, a printing office for the dissemination of useful literature for the people, together with Japanese artisans to establish or improve properties, paper factories, and other industries, not excepting the fisheries and whale hunting, gave indications of the new path of national progress upon which Corea had entered. Altogether the early days of 1884 were as a morning of bright promise, for public opinion, so far as it existed, that is, among the nobles and gentry, seemed to be entirely in favor of progress. The most hopeful felt that the Corean Government, having begun lo relay the foundations of the kingdom, would persevere and possibly even excel Japan.

On the other hand, with the tide of Confucian bigotry rising and the Conservatives encouraged by Chinese reactionaries on the soil, how could there be any real advance? Yuan, the Chinese commissioner, living at the barracks in front of the palace, was ceaselessly active in the interests of his own Government, which meant active support of the Conservative party and opposition to reform. Over against enlightened liberalism, several incidents stood out in dark contrast, showing the inherent barbarism, the low state of Corean humanity, and the slight value set on human life. When the Chinese soldiery arrived, they seized ten of the rioters of 1882, court-martialled them, tied their limbs to bullocks, and tore them to pieces. Even after these men in office had returned from civilization they had eight more men, suspected of complicity with the Regent, executed by poison. Furthermore, the Kwang Wang temple was built, devoted to the interests of three thousand or more sorcerers and exorcists in Seoul, who enjoyed the [463]direct patronage of the Queen, and sucked the vitals of the nation, making respectable government impossible.

The innovations effected by the Progressives, who thought that they had the King and Queen in full sympathy with them, led them to hope that they would be able soon to reorganize the Government, to differentiate the Court from the Administration, and to make Corea a modern state. But according to the measure of their success, so also was the suspicion and hostility of the Conservatives. Min Yong Ik while abroad might be a Liberal, an individual with personal convictions and opinions, but once back in the bosom of his family and under pressure of his clan, he lost interest in reform. The Progressive leaders began to look upon him as a traitor to their cause. He took his stand with the Conservatives and it was soon evident that the Queen was withdrawing her sympathy and support from the Liberals, whose hopes seemed about to be dashed to the ground. These men therefore turned more and more to the Japanese and to their methods and spirit. They saw the revenues for the promised industries and enterprise diverted to warlike enterprises. It looked as if Corea, as tributary vassal, was to help China against France in the Tonkin complication. Added to the fears of the Liberals was the local irritation caused by the insolent behavior of the ill-disciplined native troops who had been recruited almost wholly from the peddlers and hucksters of the country fairs. The peddler’s guilds in Corea hold a truly feudal relation to the Government, often preparing the roads and escorting officials on their journeys, acting as detectives, and forming militia according to the occasion. Some astonishing proofs of their power and discipline, especially in mountain regions, were given by Min Yong Ik to Lieutenant Foulke. Instead of their being independent, as they had hoped for under the American treaty, it seemed to the progressive men that the Chinese were more than ever ruling their country, and that the Mins were their tools.

It was about October 25th that the Liberals, feeling that their heads were likely to remain on their shoulders only so long as it pleased their enemies to bring no charge against them, declared to their American friend that “for the sake of Corea, about ten of the prominent Conservatives would have to be killed.” They proposed to play the same old Asiatic game of first seizing the person [464]of the sovereign and then in his name proclaiming their own measures and reforms. The preliminaries would be a fire and a riot. Then, in the confusion, the man with a programme, knowing just what to do, would direct affairs. They believed that the Powers would condone and approve their action, make new and more favorable treaties, and loan money for national improvement. Though the Conservatives had at their call a rabble of rapacious militia eager to try their new tools of war upon their hereditary enemies, the Japanese, the Liberals knew full well the sterling qualities of the little body of Japanese infantry then in the capital, most of whom were from northern Japan and many of them deer hunters and dead shots with the rifle. There were fifteen hundred Chinese soldiers still in camp, under Yuan Shi Kai, then the lieutenant and later the successor of Li Hung Chang, but the Progressive plotters in their craft expected to secure the employment of the two hundred or more Japanese soldiers for their own purposes. The moment for action seemed to be propitious for early December. A Japanese man-of-war was expected to arrive in Chemulpo on the 5th or 6th of that month. China, pressed by France, had withdrawn half her troops. Japan with a view to strengthening her influence in Corea had, a few days before, remitted $400,000 of the indemnity exacted for the riot of 1882. The golden moment to strike off forever the chains of political slavery to China was approaching. The date was set for the 7th of December.

When, however, news arrived that the Japanese gunboat had broken down and was delayed and it was known that the Conservatives had got some intimation of what was coming, it was decided to start the fire, the riot, the coup d’état a few days earlier. On the night of the 4th of December, Han Yong Sik, the Postmaster-General, gave a dinner at the new post-office, situated in the very heart of the city. The guests were three Chinese, Yuan, Chin, and Wang, two Americans, General Foote and his secretary, Mr. Scudder, the British Consul-General, W. G. Aston, the German Foreign Adviser, Von Möllendorf, and a dozen or more Corean high officers, both Conservatives and Progressives, Han Yong Sik, Kim Ok Kiun, Min Yong Ik, Pak Yong Hio, and So Kwang Pom. Others also were present. The Japanese minister was absent on the plea of ill-health. [465]

It was noticed that Kim Ok Kiun rose and left the table several times, going out into the courtyard, but nothing was thought of this action. The guests sat down at six. At seven a fire broke out, a house just in front of the post-office being in flames. Min Yong Ik, who had charge of the city fire-brigade, rose from the table, and calling on his servants to follow him, passed out. As he did so, a man dressed in Japanese clothes leaped out of the shadow of the gateway and struck at him fiercely with a sword. Min Yong Ik fell heavily, but though wounded in head and body he recovered through the skilful surgery of Dr. Horace N. Allen. The assassin escaped, and the Corean guests, instead of leaving by the door, got away over the back wall. Hastening immediately to the old palace, the leaders of the conspiracy reached the royal presence, announced that the Chinese were coming to seize the King’s person and that he must hasten to a place of safety. Reaching the small gate leading into the Kiong-u Palace, Kim Ok Kiun requested the King to send to the Japanese minister for a body-guard, but his Majesty refused. Thereupon So Kwang Pom drew out a piece of foreign note-paper and a pencil and wrote in Chinese the words “Let the Japanese minister come and give me his help.”5 This was despatched by a servant.

When the little company reached the Kiong-u Palace, the King was saluted by the Japanese minister and his interpreter, the twelve students who had been in Japan, and two hundred soldiers under Captain Murakami drawn up in line, who by some magic were all waiting there. Here then was the new Government, king, army, and counsellors. Word was sent to three of the Corean Liberals to come and receive office under the reconstructed authority. With amazing promptness they were present within half an hour. The programme had thus far been carried out with the precision of actors on a well-regulated theatrical stage. The “summoning tablet” was sent early in the morning by royal messenger to six of the Conservative leaders. Going to the palace in the expectation of losing their lives, they first sent word to the Chinese Yuan, warning him of the state of affairs and asking his [466]help. As soon as they had passed inside the palace gates their heads were chopped off. The royal eunuch was put to death in spite of the entreaties and remonstrances of the King himself. While the Japanese surrounded the gates of the palace, Kim Ok Kiun gave passes to those who were to be allowed to go in and out. In the reconstructed Government Yo Cha Wun and Han Yong Sik were prime ministers, Pak Yong Hio was made General-in-Chief, So Kwang Pom Minister of Foreign Affairs, Kim Ok Kiun Minister of Finance, and Su Ja Pil Lieutenant-General. The young men who had studied in Tokio were also given official positions. All these proceedings simply illustrate the Corean method of the Opposition’s moving a vote of censure of the Government.

The Chinese “resident” Yuan took no immediate action, but the next morning, December 5th, great surging crowds of Coreans begged that he would interfere, because they said the Japanese were holding the King as a prisoner in his palace. Yuan sent a messenger to the Japanese minister, inquiring why he had surrounded the King with soldiers and killed the ministers, demanding that he immediately evacuate the palace. After three hours had passed, and no answer coming, Yuan moved with his Chinese troops and the Corean military, making a force of four or five thousand men, toward the old palace. He found the entrance strongly guarded with the Japanese. The battle which ensued lasted from about 3 to 4 P.M., several score of the combatants being killed. As darkness drew near, the Japanese made their way to the northeastern part of the palace grounds, whence the King escaped from them with a few of the Progressive leaders and the party of students. The Corean soldiers carried the King to the north temple, where he was saved, but Han Yong Sik and seven of the students were hacked to pieces by the mob. About 8 P.M. Captain Murakami led off his soldiers and making a masterly retreat reached the Japanese legation after forty-eight hours of absence. Pak Yong Hio, Kim Ok Kiun, So Kwang Pom, Su Ja Pil, and a half dozen or so of the military students accompanied the Japanese.

All day long on December 6th, with the cry of “Death to the Japanese,” the Corean militia and the ruffians were let loose on a wild revelry of outrage, butchery, and incendiarism. The nine white foreigners in Seoul, of whom three were ladies, together [467]with twenty-two Japanese who had escaped bullets, stones, and knives, found refuge in the American legation, which was put in a state of defence by Lieutenant Bernadou. The twenty soldiers left behind in the Japanese legation, aided by a hundred or more of their fellow refugee countrymen, defended the walled enclosure from the mob. On the afternoon of the 7th, provisions being exhausted, the Japanese with admirable coolness, discipline, and success began the march to Chemulpo. The women, children, and refugees were put inside of a hollow square formed by the soldiers, the legation buildings were fired, and despite hostile soldiers, Chinese and Corean with rifles and cannon, and armed men firing from roof and wall, they unbarred the city gates and with their wounded crossed the river. Reaching Chemulpo on the 8th, they were fed by the sailors on the Japanese man-of-war, which had happily arrived. A Japanese steamer carried the news to Nagasaki.

The short-lived Liberal Government came to an end after forty-eight hours’ existence. The conspirators fled to Japan, whence most of them reached America. A month later Count Inouye, with a guard of six hundred troops, took up his quarters outside the west gate in Seoul and negotiations were opened. On January 9th a convention was signed by which the Corean Government agreed to pay an indemnity of six hundred thousand yen, and Herr Von Möllendorf and Su Sang Yu were sent to Japan to arrange terms for the renewal of friendly relations. The Coreans, to show their regret, chopped up and distributed around the streets the flesh and bones of eleven human beings supposed to have been active in the killing of defenceless Japanese in Seoul. At Tientsin, May 7, 1885, the Marquis Ito and Li Hung Chang signed a convention, by which it was agreed that the troops of both countries should be withdrawn and that neither government should land a military force in Corea without notifying the other. Early in the spring the Japanese legation was built at Corean expense in Occidental style, this being the first of the many foreign edifices which now adorn Seoul. The Chinese and Japanese troops embarked for their respective countries at Chemulpo on the 21st of May. On October 5, 1885, the Tai-wen Kun, fresh and rosy after his sojourn in Tientsin, re-entered Seoul. He was escorted by Chinese warriors and many thousands of Coreans. Most of his immediate followers being dead or in exile, his name was not often [468]mentioned during the decade of years following. He lived in comparative seclusion until the outbreak of the Chino-Japanese war.

The Progressives of 1884 were in too much of a hurry. They had tried to hatch the egg of reform by warming it in the fire. The affair of December, in its origin an anti-Chinese uprising of Radicals, became at its end an anti-Japanese demonstration in which about three hundred lives were lost. Yet as if to show that revolutions never go backward, this bloody business pushed open the gateway through which science and Christianity entered to hasten the exit of barbarism. Dr. Horace N. Allen, an American missionary physician, had arrived in Seoul in September, 1884. When called on the night of December 4th to minister to the Min Yong Ik, he found the native doctors stopping up the sword wounds with wax. Dr. Allen, by treating the injured man in scientific fashion, saved his life. The superiority of Western methods having been demonstrated, the wounded Chinese soldiers and Coreans, with their shattered bones and torn flesh, over which they had plastered the reeking hides cut from living dogs, or had utilized other appliances of helpless ignorance, came to him in crowds. Unable to attend to all these sufferers, application was made for a hospital. The Government at once set apart the dwelling occupied by Han Yong Sik and, naming it the House of Civilized Virtue, established April 10, 1885, a hospital.

Following this event, American missionaries arrived in increasing numbers. The Government engaged three American young men, Messrs. D. A. Bunker, G. W. Gilmore, and H. B. Hurlbert, as teachers, who with thirty-five sons of noble families as their pupils opened a school September 23, 1885. Missionaries with unquenchable patience began the instruction of a people much better acquainted with malevolent demons than with beneficent beings or with one living and true God, whose only idea of sin is that it is a civil offence, and whose language has no word for the love of a superior to an inferior. In apathetic faces they were to light the fire of a new hope. To become a Christian in Corea means a complete revolution in a man’s life, especially in that of a yangban, who has the intellectual power of a man with only the actual knowledge of a child. Nevertheless, with orphanages, Sunday-schools, Christian women’s work in the home, organized Christian churches, hospitals, schools for boys and girls, and a printing [469]establishment, most of the forms of active Christianity were soon visible in Corea, the country which, in 1904, with its tens of thousands of believers, is the most hopeful of missionary fields.

A treaty with France, negotiated in the summer of 1886 and ratified May 30, 1887, enabled the French Roman Catholic missionaries to come forth into open day. They at once made preparations for the erection of a cathedral, which, when completed and dedicated, May 29, 1897, was the tallest and most imposing edifice in the capital. It is 202 feet long and from 60 to 90 feet wide, and cost $60,000. The French minister endeavored to secure the same magisterial rights for the bishops and priests in Corea which have been long enjoyed by prelates of the Roman form of Christianity in China. Although at first the Government resisted, yet these claims have been virtually validated, and France acts in Corea, as elsewhere in Asia, as the protector of Roman Catholics. Much disquiet and local disorder in various parts of the country, especially in Quelparte and the provinces of Whang Hai, may be traced to popular notions and the procedure of the priests based on this peculiarity of French foreign policy.

Corea soon found that diplomacy could not be one-sided. Having dealings with foreign nations, it was not sufficient that Western governments should have their representatives in Seoul, while there were no Corean legations or consulates abroad. An episode arising from international jealousies soon caused this desire to take tangible form, despite active opposition from China. On April 14, 1885, the British Government, in view of eventualities with Russia, ordered the temporary occupation of Port Hamilton in the Nan How group of islands, about thirty-five miles from the northeastern end of Quelparte. Corea at once protested against this seizure of territory, and, in spite of all offers of gold for purchase, and all diplomatic pressure, she secured, after voluminous correspondence and the assurance that Russia would not occupy any part of Corea, the evacuation of Port Hamilton by the British. The flag of the double cross was hauled down February 27, 1887. At once the Government at Seoul prepared to send embassies to Japan, Europe, and the United States to establish permanent legations. This plan was of course opposed by Yuan Shi Kai, the Chinese “resident,” as he called himself, in an active, impudent, and villainous manner, he acting at the beck of his chief, [470]Li Hung Chang. The right to make a treaty carries with it the right of a legation abroad, and the American minister, the Honorable Hugh N. Densmore, by order of the Government of the United States, invited the embassy to take passage in the U.S.Ss. Omaha, which was done. With his secretary, Dr. H. N. Allen, Pak Chung Wang, envoy plenipotentiary, arrived in Washington and had audience of President Cleveland in January, 1888. A minister of equal rank went also to Europe and another to Japan. The Chinese “resident” then planned, by transferring his headquarters three miles from Seoul, to get all other foreigners removed from Seoul in order to have more power, but the scheme was frustrated in good season.

The road out of fetichism, superstition, and ignorance into light and civilization was not an easy one and had many a drawback. Until schools dispel ignorance, and the certainties of science dominate the minds of the natives terrorized by superstition, Corea, long intoxicated with sorcery, will suffer from continual attacks of the delirium tremens of paganism. Even the importation of condensed milk acted on the diseased imagination of the people to develop the disease. In 1888 what is known as the “baby war” agitated the people. The report was spread abroad that Americans and Europeans were stealing children and boiling them in kettles for food, and that foreigners caught women and cut off their breasts. The absence of cows led the Coreans to believe that the condensed milk, so much used among them, came wholly from a human source. For a time there was imminent danger of an uprising, but a proclamation from the King couched in strong language calmed the excitement, which gradually died away. The local revolts against unjust taxation and dishonest officials occurred with the usual regularity of such events in Corea.

Provision was made for a stable revenue in a system which was organized under Herr Von Möllendorf on an independent Corean basis, but after his dismissal in July, 1885, the customs service was put under the management of Sir Robert Hart, and an entirely new staff of men was sent from China. Mr. H. N. Merrill was made chief commissioner and the three open ports were given in charge of men directly from the Chinese customs staff, one of the most able and valuable among whom was Dr. McLeavy Brown. Financially promising as this movement seemed [471]and has proved, it gave China her great prestige and furnished the strongest lever for carrying out her ambitious plans in the peninsula, which some Coreans suspected of going even so far as to dethrone the King and to set up a new heir—a plot which Min Yong Ik exposed. Yuan, the Chinese resident, made himself practically a Chinese mayor of the palace. In ostentatious display of gorgeous costume, palanquin and retinue, as he vibrated between the royal residence and the Chinese legation, he and his procession formed one of the notable sights of the Corean capital. In a word, Li Hung Chang’s policy, working in conjunction with the Mins at court, headed by the Queen, resulted in a vigorous and undisputed reassertion of Chinese control, so that in the emergency which was soon to arise, the Peking Government felt perfectly safe in speaking of Corea as “our tributary state.” Apparently the influence of Japan had become a cipher, while that of the United States had dwindled into a merely academic theory of Corean independence. Potentially Japan was insulted and defied by her old rival and modern enemy. To make her grip on Corea sure, China massed her forces on the frontier, bought large quantities of Nagasaki coal for her steel-clad fleet at Port Arthur, and with her German-drilled army and great fortresses on the promontories guarding the sea-gates to the capital, she seemed herself defiantly ready to maintain her prestige regained in the peninsula which she called her “tributary state.”

Thus stood, or rather, thus crouched, in the early days of 1894, the pigmy, Corea, between the continental colossus on the one hand and the insular athlete on the other. To add to troubles imported from abroad, the long-standing intestine disturbances again broke out and the Tong Hak rebellion culminated in civil war, at the local causes of which we may now glance. This uprising of sectarians became not the cause, but the occasion of the clash between China and Japan, which ended in the destruction of China’s claim of suzerainty over Corea, and the independence of the peninsular state. [472]