An authentic and trustworthy history of Korea has never been written; and enormous difficulties await the investigator who, in the future, attempts this task. The native records, almost down to the present time, consist of the same uncritical mixture of legend, fable, oral tradition, and unverified written narrative which characterizes the earliest so-called histories of all civilized peoples. But the Korean civilization has not as yet produced any writer both ambitious and able to treat this material in a way corresponding to the opportunity it affords. All the narratives of events, except those of the most recent date, which have been written by foreigners, have, of necessity, been lacking in that intimate acquaintance with the Korean language, institutions, customs, and the temperament and spirit of the people, which is the indispensable equipment of the historian. The antiquities and other physical records of an historical character have, moreover, never to any considerable extent been explored. A striking example of this general truth was afforded only a short time ago when Dr. George Heber Jones discovered the fact that a wrong date (by a whole century) had been given for the casting of the Great Bell at Chong-no—one of the most conspicuous public objects of interest in Seoul; yet the correct date was inscribed on the bell itself! The reason for this petty falsifying of historical fact was characteristically Korean; it was in order that the honor of casting the bell might be ascribed to the Founder of the present Dynasty.

In spite of these facts, however, the main outlines of the development of Korea are unmistakable. Its history has been, for the ruling classes, one long, monotonous, almost unbroken record of misrule and misfortune; and for the people an experience of poverty, oppression, and the shedding of blood. That they have endured at all as the semblance of a nation, although not “as an organized state in the modern sense,” has been due chiefly to these two causes: first, to a certain native quality of passive resistance, varied by periods of frenzied uprising against both native and foreign oppressors; and, second, to the fact that the difficulties encountered in getting over mountains and sea, in order to maintain a foreign rule long enough to accomplish these ends, have prevented their stronger neighbors on all sides from thoroughly subjugating and absorbing them. This latter reason may be stated in another way: it has hitherto never been worth the cost to terminate the independent existence of the Korean nation.

Nor is it difficult to learn from authentic sources the two most potent reasons for the unfortunate and evil state throughout their history of the Korean people. These reasons are, on the one hand, the physical results of repeated invasions from the outside; and, on the other hand, the adoption and perpetuation, in a yet more mischievous and degraded fashion, of the civil and official corruptions received from Korea’s ancient suzerain, China. It is customary to attach great importance, both as respects the damage done to the material interests of the country, and also as accounting for the Korean hatred of the Japanese, to the invasion of Hideyoshi. But the undoubted facts do not bear out this contention. The lasting effects of this incoming of foreign armed forces from the south, and of their short-lived and partial occupation of Korean territory, were relatively unimportant. None of the institutions of Korea were changed; none of her physical resources were largely depleted. It was just those places in which the Japanese remained in the most intimate relations with the Koreans, where there was least permanent development of race hatred. But the results of the successive invasions from the north and northwest, by the wild tribes, by the Mongols, and by the Chinese and Manchu dynasties, were much more injurious in every way to the physical well-being of the peninsula.

It is one of the most remarkable contrasts between Japan and Korea that, whereas the more distinctly moral elements of Confucianism moulded a noble and knightly type of character in the former country, in its neighbor the doctrines of the great Oriental teacher chiefly resulted in forming the average official into a more self-conceited but really corrupt and mischievous personality. Indeed, the baleful influence of China, especially since the establishment of the Manchu dynasty, has been the principal hindrance to the industrial and civic development of Korea. The contribution made to its civilization by Chinese letters, inventions, and arts, has been no adequate compensation for the depressing and debasing character of the imported political and social system. The official institutions and practices of the suzerain have for centuries been bad enough at home; but here they have been even worse, whether admiringly copied or enforced by the influence of its Court and the power of its army. And, whereas the great multitude of the Chinese people have displayed for a long time the inherent power of industrial self-development and of successful business intercourse with foreigners, the Koreans have thus far been relatively lacking in the qualities essential for every kind of material and governmental success. Thus all the civilization of Korea has been so characterized by weakness and corruption as to excite contempt as well as disapprobation from the moralist’s and the economist’s points of view. It is China and not Japan which through some 2,000 years of past history has been the expensive and bloody enemy, and the political seducer and corrupter of Korea.

The division of the history of Korea, made by Mr. Homer B. Hulbert, into ancient and modern—the latter period beginning in 1392, with the founding of the present dynasty—is entirely without warrant. “Modern history” can scarcely be said to have begun in the so-called “Hermit Kingdom” previous to the time when a treaty was concluded between Japan and Korea by General Kuroda, acting as Plenipotentiary, on February 26, 1876. Even then, the first Korean Embassy under the new régime, having arrived at Yokohama by a Japanese steamer on the following May 29th, when it started back to Korea a month later, refused all overtures of Western foreigners to communicate with their country. From the time when the present kingdom arose by the union of the three previously existing kingdoms, the doings of the Korean Court and of the Korean people have been substantially the same. When threatened by foreign invaders or by popular uprisings and official rebellion at home, the Court—a motley crowd or mob, of King, palace officials, eunuchs, concubines, blind men, sorceresses, and other similar retainers of the palace—has, as a rule, precipitately fled to some place of refuge, deserted by efficient military escort and in most miserable plight. Only when behind walls and compelled to fight, or when aroused to a blind fury in the form of a mob, does the average Korean show the courage necessary to defend or to avenge his monarch. The saying of the Japanese that “the Koreans are kittens in the field and tigers in the fortress” characterized their behavior during the Hideyoshi invasion; it is characteristic of them to-day. Three centuries ago, when the king was in flight from Seoul to Pyeng-yang his own attendants stole his food and left him hungry; and the Korean populace, left behind in Seoul rose at once and burned and looted what the Court had not carried away. “Before many days had elapsed the people found out that the coming of the Japanese did not mean universal slaughter, as they had supposed, and gradually they returned to their lands in the city. They reopened their shops, and as long as they attended to their own affairs they were unmolested by the Japanese. Indeed, they adapted themselves readily to the new order of things, and drove a lucrative trade with the invaders”![5] In these respects, too, the voice of Korean history is a witness with a monotone; as it was in 1592 and earlier, so it has been down to the present time.

In one other most important respect there has been little variation in the records of Korean history. Brave, loyal, and good men, when they have arisen to serve their monarch and their country, have never been permitted to flourish on Korean soil. The braver, more loyal and unselfish they have been, the more difficult has the path to the success of their endeavors been made by a corrupt Court and an ignorant and ungrateful populace. Almost without exception such men—rare enough at the best in Korean history—have been traduced by their enemies and deserted and degraded by their king. Curing the Hideyoshi invasion the most worthy leader of the Korean forces by land was General Kim Tuk-nyung. It is said that the Christian Japanese General Konishi had so high an opinion of General Kim that he had a portrait of him made, and on seeing it exclaimed: “This man is indeed a general.” But, on account of Kim’s success, his enemies maligned him; the king had him arrested, brought to Seoul, and, after a disgraceful trial, executed. In all Korea’s history there has never been another man to whom the nation has owed so much for his courage, devotion, and genius in affairs of war as to Admiral Yi. It was he, more than all others—king, officers, and common soldiers—who accomplished the final ill-success of the Japanese invasion. It was Admiral Yi who destroyed all chance of re-enforcing the Japanese army in Seoul, and who thus actually did what the Russian fleet in the recent war could not begin to do. But this great patriot and successful leader, under the same baleful influences, was degraded to the rank of a common soldier and barely escaped with his life. Quite uniformly such has been the fate of the true patriots and best leaders during all Korea’s history, and this just because they were true and of the best. Such would to-day be the fate of the saving elements left in Korean official circles if the hand of Japan were withdrawn. Indeed, as we have already seen, the most difficult part of the Resident-General’s problem is to cultivate and to protect Korean leaders of a trustworthy character. It is Korea’s national characteristic to “stone her prophets”; but few of them have had “whited sepulchres” built to them by future generations.

The more ancient relations of Japan and Korea were such as are common to people who inhabit contiguous lands at the corresponding stage of civilization. “As to the relations between the two nations,” says Brinkley,[6] “they were limited for a long time to mutual raids.” On the one side, the Japanese could complain that, in the first century B.C., when a pestilence had reduced their forces, Korean freebooters invaded Kiushiu and settled themselves in the desolated hamlets of the Japanese; that the Koreans lent assistance to the semi-savage aborigines of the same island and to the Mongol invaders; and that their citizens who wished to enter into friendly relations of commerce with the neighboring peninsula were treated with scorn and even with violence. On the other side, there was valid ground for the charge that Japanese pirates, either alone or in conjunction with Chinese, often invaded the coasts of Korea; and that Japanese traders by no means always conducted themselves in a manner to win the confidence and friendship of the inhabitants of the peninsula.

The earlier trade relations between Japan and Korea were irregular and by no means always satisfactory to either party. The wardens of the island of Tsushima, which is by its very position a sort of natural mediating territory between the two countries—the So family—had virtual control of the legitimate commerce. They issued permits for fifty ships which passed annually from ports in Japan to the three Japanese settlements in the peninsula. These Japanese traders and the Korean officials behaved toward each other in so objectionable fashion that a revolt of the settlers in Fusan arose in 1610, in the effort to suppress which the Koreans were at first defeated; but afterward, being re-enforced strongly from Seoul, they compelled the settlers to retire from all the three settlements; and thus for the time being the trade between Japan and Korea came to an end. When, later, the Shogunate Government complied with the demand of the Korean Government that the ringleaders of this disturbance should be decapitated and their heads sent to Seoul, the trade was re-established. But it did not attain its previous proportions; it was limited to twenty-five vessels annually, and the settlements were abandoned. Similar troubles recurred some thirty years later. The Shogun of that period, too, caused the offenders to be arrested and handed over to the Korean authorities; but the Court at Seoul continued its refusal to allow the commerce with the Japanese to be expanded.

The amount of contribution made by Korea to the civilization of Japan in those earlier days has probably been somewhat exaggerated. Both these countries are chiefly indebted to China for the elements of the arts and of letters, and for most of the other refinements of their culture; these came to Japan, however, to a considerable extent through Korea. According to the records of the Japanese themselves, in the century before the Christian era Chinese scholars came to Satsuma through Korea, Tsushima, and the intervening islands. At about the same time Koreans also brought Chinese civilization to Japan.[7] During the reign of the Emperor Kimmei (555 A.D.), according to Japanese tradition, the king of Kudara in Korea sent to Japan an envoy bearing an image of Buddha and a copy of the Sutras. But while the Minister-President was experimenting with its worship, the occurrence of a pestilence proved that the ancestral deities were angry at the intrusion of a foreign form of worship.[8] After the “subjugation of the three kingdoms of Korea a number of Chinese and Koreans came to settle in Japan. In order to avert confusion in family names and titles which might have arisen from this cause, an investigation of family names was made in the 1430th year after the Emperor Jimmu (about A.D. 770).” It will thus be seen that there are probably in both countries families which have in their veins the mingled blood of both races.

Relations tending to exasperate the feeling of each country against the other continued through the centuries which constituted the Middle Ages in Europe. In Japan the feudal system was approaching its more elaborate and powerful development; in Korea the weakness and corruption of the Court, the ignorance, suffering from oppression, and lawlessness of the people were not improving. Thus the two nations were drawing further and further apart and were following the paths which have led to such a wide divergence in the now existing conditions—mentally, politically, and socially. The various embassies sent by Kublai Khan to Japan during the years of 1268-1274 A.D. came via Korea and were accompanied by Korean officials. The attempted Mongol invasions of Japan were assisted by Korea. On the other hand, the peninsula continued to suffer from the attacks of Japanese pirates. The inhabitants of the Southwest coasts of Japan made raids upon the opposite coasts, engaging in open conflict with the Korean troops, killing their generals, destroying their barracks, and carrying away as plunder, horses, ships, and stores of grain. In these encounters the soldiers of Korea showed their traditional lack of courage in the field, frequently retreating before the Japanese raiders without striking a single blow. Frequent envoys were sent from Korea to remonstrate and demand reparation; and one of these took back with him (1377 A.D.) several hundred Koreans who had been made prisoners by the Japanese pirates, but were returned to their own country by Imagawa Sadayo, Governor of Kiushiu. No really effective measures to stop piracy were, however, taken by the Japanese Government until the time of the ex-Shogun Yoshimitsu, who on several occasions had the pirates arrested and handed over to China, the suzerain of Korea. For later on the Japanese pirates associated themselves with Chinese pirates and pursued their business of plunder quite impartially as against either Koreans or Chinese. When the Koreans took reprisals upon those inhabitants of Tsushima who were residing in the southern part of their land, the people of that island made an attack upon Fusan and destroyed its fortifications (1510 A.D.).

The first notable conflict between Korea and Japan was the invasion of Hideyoshi. Various motives have been assigned for this war-like expedition; the real motives were probably complex. Hideyoshi was undoubtedly angry at Korea for her refusal to open the country to trade with Japan. He was willing to take his revenge for the assistance that had been given to the Yuan dynasty of Mongols in their attacks upon Japan.[9] But he was especially desirous to get at China through Korea, and to use the latter country as a base for his attack. He began (1587 A.D.) by sending a despatch to the warden of Tsushima directing him to invite the King of Korea to an audience with the Emperor of Japan; and he accompanied the invitation with a threat of invasion unless the invitation were accepted. Next, having quite thoroughly “pacified” (in Cæsar’s fashion) his own country, he sent a demand for presents—plainly of a tributary character—with the same threat accompanying. This time an envoy from his own person assured the Koreans that unless they complied they would be compelled to march in the van of the Japanese army for the invasion of China. Hideyoshi, when this insolent demand failed of its purpose, first worshipped at the tomb of the Empress Jingo—the reputed conqueror of Korea in most ancient times. In April, 1592, the Japanese invading force, which consisted according to the Japanese records of 130,000 in eight army corps, sailed in a fleet manned by 9,000 sailors with the Generals Konishi Yukinaga and Katō Kiyomasa leading the van. They were to carry out the threat of the Taiko for the punishment and subjugation of Korea. According to the statement of the authority we are following,[10] Hideyoshi expected to conquer China in two years and contemplated transferring the capital of Japan to that country. “He even went so far as to determine the routine to be followed in the removal of the Japanese Court to China.” How characteristic is this detailed planning, without sufficient regard for the exigencies of time, the enormous intervening obstacles, and the possible adverse will of heaven, of the national temperament even down to the present time!

It is not necessary to our purpose to follow the early brilliant successes and the disastrous ending of the invasion of Korea by Hideyoshi. Both nations displayed their characteristic virtues and faults during this period of intercourse by way of conflict—the knightly courage and arrogant overconfidence of the Japanese, the passive power of resistance and the weakness and political corruption of the Koreans. But as to the invasion itself our sympathies must remain with Korea; it was without sufficient warrant, conducted incautiously, and more disastrous in its result to the invaders themselves than to the country which they had, for the time being, desolated. By the courage and skill of Admiral Yi and by the assistance of China, the forces of Japan were finally, after a period of seven years, so reduced that Hideyoshi, at the point of death, recalled them; and the war came to an end in 1598. The terms of peace agreed to were on the whole humiliating to the Japanese.

The great Iyeyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa Dynasty, took measures, repeatedly and patiently, to renew those relations of a promising friendly character which had been dissolved in hatred by the invasion of Hideyoshi. He sent repeated embassies to Korea, restored prisoners that had been led captive at the time of the Taiko’s invasion, and spared no pains to make the Koreans understand that a decided change of policy had taken place in the Japanese Government toward their country. From his time onward, the official treatment given to Korea by Japan has been conspicuous, as compared with the example furnished by other civilized countries under similar trying conditions, for its fairness and its friendliness. This fact becomes amusingly obvious when we compare the way in which the claims for tribute from Korea have been made by the two countries, China and Japan. Under the Tokugawas the nominal sovereigns paid the bills; but the Korean tribute-bearers (sic) had a largely free junketing expedition of three months’ duration at the expense of the Japanese. Under the Manchu Dynasty, however, the tribute fixed for annual payment took a very substantial shape; it included 100 ounces of gold, 1,000 ounces of silver, 10,000 bags of rice, 2,000 pieces of silk, 10,000 pieces of cotton cloth, 10,000 rolls (50 sheets each) of large-sized paper, and other less important items. Even then, it can be seen, the Chinese greatly excelled the Japanese in their business ability. Moreover, when the Koreans pleaded that the payment of tribute to China had so impoverished them that they could not render what was due to Japan, the Japanese forgave them the obligation (A.D. 1638).[11] Nor was this the last time in which the forgiveness of debts was exercised toward the Korean Government in a manner unaccustomed between nations of conflicting interests.

Finally the Koreans, having obtained the consent of China, sent to Japan a letter from their king, together with some presents; and from this time onward, on the occasion of each change of Shogun, Korean envoys came to the country to offer congratulations. The Tokugawas, on their side, were careful to “treat these delegates with all courtesy and consideration”; they also discontinued the offensive custom which the Ashikaga family had followed, of assuming for the Shogun the title of “King of Korea.”[12] Meantime, the So family improved the opportunity which their position as intermediaries between Japan and Korea afforded to renew and increase the trade relations of the two countries. It is probable that lasting friendly intercourse would have been established from this time onward if it had not been, at this period, as all through Korea’s unfortunate history, for the baleful influence of China. This fact becomes prominent in all the foreign relations of Korea during the half century following the early attempts to open the Hermit Kingdom to intercourse with other nations. The French and American expeditions for this purpose were productive only of the result that the Koreans became more obstinate in their resistance to outside influences, and more secure in their pride and confidence in their ability to resist successfully through their superior craft and courage in war. These expeditions illustrate, however, the policy of China in maintaining its claims of suzerainty over Korea. To take, for example, the experience of the United States in dealing with this policy, it may be summarized in somewhat the following way:

The destruction of the American schooner General Sherman, in 1866, was the occasion of some desultory correspondence between the American and the Chinese Governments. The former presented the matter at Peking because China was supposed to sustain some sort of relationship of suzerainty, not clearly understood, toward Korea. China, however, would not admit the existence of any kind of bond which made her responsible for Korean acts; the Tsungli Yamen said, in effect, that there had existed from ancient times a certain dependency by Korea upon China; but they denied in express words that it was of such a nature as to give China any right to control or to interfere with the administration of Korean foreign or domestic affairs.

It was precisely this attitude which was the fons et origo of the subsequent trouble between China and Japan. From the Chinese standpoint, as shown by official declarations and acts, Korea was and was not a vassal state. She was so when it suited China actively to interfere, and not so when it was either difficult or dangerous, or even troublesome, to assume the responsibilities of suzerainty. China was not even willing to act the part of intermediary if by doing so she could be held to accept the onus of making or compelling the reparation which America demanded.

Finally the United States Government took matters in its own hands and the expedition under Admiral John Rodgers was sent to Korea in 1871. The failure of that expedition to accomplish anything beyond the destruction of the fort on Kang-wha Island, and Commodore Shufeldt’s subsequent attempt to open up communication with the Korean Government, were the total of American efforts regarding Korea up to the time when the Shufeldt treaty was negotiated.

After the fall of the Tokugawa Government the Korean Court desisted from the custom of sending an embassy to Japan to congratulate the succession to the place of supreme rule; it even declared its determination to have no further relations with a country which had embraced the Western civilization. When the Government of the Restoration sent an envoy to Korea to announce the change and to “confirm friendly relations between the two states,” the Korean Court refused to recognize the envoy or to receive his message. The real reason for this affront was the influence of China; the ostensible reason referred to the fact that the term “Great Empire of Japan” was employed in the Imperial letter. As says Brinkley: “Naturally such conduct roused deep umbrage in Japan. It constituted a verdict that, whereas the Old Japan had been entitled to the respect and homage of neighboring Powers, the New might be treated with contumely.” Thus, just when the affairs of the newly centralized Government were assuming that condition of strength and harmony so imperatively demanded for the present welfare and future prospects of Japan, dissension arose among the Ministers of the Crown with regard to the policy to be pursued toward Korea. Bitterness of feeling had already been excited by the fact that when Japan returned to their country some shipwrecked Koreans, and accompanied this humane act with other friendly advances, the advances were repulsed and the Court of Korea declined even to receive the envoy. And now, among the leaders of Japan, Saigo, Soyeshima, Itagaki, Goto, and Eto, insisted on war for the purpose of avenging the insult; Okubo, Iwakura, and Ito advocated peaceful means. Indeed, the so-called “Saga Party” was confederated with these two purposes chiefly in view: (1) the restoration of feudalism, and (2) the making of a punitive war upon Korea. The peace party triumphed; the Satsuma rebellion followed; and Japan made its first great contribution of treasure and blood toward the maintenance of friendly relations with a Korea that, nominally independent so far as its own selfish duplicity chose to consider it so, was virtually subservient to all manner of foreign intrigue and unscrupulous control.

This situation and the subsequent events, however, require a more detailed consideration. According to Brinkley, the great Saigo Takamori, who was a member of the Cabinet at this time, and who had been Chief of the Army and one of the most powerful agents in bringing about the Restoration, “saw in a foreign war the sole remaining chance of achieving his ambition by lawful means. The Government’s conscription scheme, yet in its infancy, had not produced even the skeleton of an army. If Korea had to be conquered, the samurai must be employed, and their employment would mean, if not their rehabilitation, at least their organization into a force which, under Saigo’s leadership, might dictate a new polity. Other members of the Cabinet believed that the nation would be disgraced if it tamely endured Korea’s insults. Thus several influential voices swelled the clamor for war. But a peace party offered strenuous opposition. Its members perceived the collateral issues of the problem, and declared that the country must not think of taking up arms during a period of radical transition.”[13]

The part of China at this time, as ever, in encouraging difficult and threatening relations between Japan and Korea cannot be overlooked. In the events of 1866 the Chinese did not maintain neutrality as between the forces of the Shogunate and of the Imperial party, but secretly sold arms to the former. They also engaged in the trade of kidnapping and selling the children of indigent Japanese.[14] When, after the treaty of 1871 was concluded (namely, in 1872), the natives of Formosa murdered some shipwrecked Loochoo islanders, the Peking Government declined to acknowledge any responsibility for the conduct of the natives of Formosa. And it was only through the offices of the British Minister that the Chinese, after procrastinating and vacillating, agreed to pay 100,000 taels to the families of the murdered, and 400,000 taels toward the cost of a punitive expedition which had been despatched against the Formosans.

In 1875 another envoy was sent to Korea, but he returned with the customary result; and in August of the same year a man-of-war en route to China, which had put into the harbor of Chemulpo for fuel and water, was fired upon by the Koreans. Whereupon the crew attacked and burned the Korean fortress. And now the same question recurred in a still more exasperating form: What shall Japan do with Korea, for whose bad conduct China, while claiming rights of suzerainty in all her foreign relations and actually exercising a determining influence over her internal affairs, nevertheless declines to be responsible; and who will not of herself regard any of those regulations, or common decencies of international intercourse, which modern civilization has established as binding upon all countries?

The considerations which prevailed on former occasions still held good when Korea offered this new affront. The peace party, of which Marquis Ito and Count Inouye were prominent members—the former being also a member of the Cabinet—thought that it was Japan’s first duty to devote all her energies to the task of domestic improvement, while cultivating friendly relations with her neighbors. The problem which confronted the advocates of peace was not an easy one. Saigo was in retirement in his native province, surrounded by his devoted supporters, and it was easily to be seen that he would take umbrage if this new insult was allowed to pass unavenged, and would possibly make it the pretext for something more serious than mere remonstrance. The decision in favor of peace instead of war required a high order of courage. The state of public feeling on the subject and the powerful opposition on which the Government had to count was well illustrated by a petition presented nearly a year later by the Tosa Association, over the signature of Kataoka Kenkichi, afterward speaker of the Lower House of the Diet. Animadverting upon the Government’s action, the petition said:

This petition no doubt accurately reflects the state of public feeling at the time to which it refers. The Government did not, however, yield to the popular clamor for war, and this was due in no small measure to the efforts of Marquis Ito. He counselled patience and advised his colleagues from the outset that advantage should be taken of the opportunity to place the relations of Japan and Korea upon a new basis by means of a treaty of peace and friendship. These moderate counsels prevailed and the Cabinet decided with the Imperial sanction to make the treaty, although two of its members, Shimadzu Saburo and Itagaki subsequently resigned.

Marquis Ito fully appreciated the obstacles which the alleged suzerainty of China opposed to the establishment of satisfactory treaty relations between Japan and Korea. Accordingly he devoted himself, with the assistance of M. Boissonade, the distinguished French publicist, and of Mr. Inouye, the well-known Japanese authority, to a careful study of this question. The decision reached was that the bond uniting China and Korea was not, either historically or according to the rules of international law, that of suzerain and vassal state. It therefore logically followed that Korea must be approached directly and dealt with as an independent Power. The importance of this decision cannot be overestimated. It was the first formal recognition of Korean national independence. More than that, it was the declaration on the part of Japan of a policy having in view the political, commercial and economical progress of her neighbor. By the treaty of 1876 Japan abandoned all of her own ancient claims to suzerainty and did what she could to place Korea upon the high road to prosperous national development which she herself was travelling. No friend of Japan will claim that it was an entirely altruistic policy. Her action was dictated as much by motives of intelligent self-interest as by consideration for Korea. The fate of the peninsular kingdom was of vital importance to Japan. As an appanage of China its condition was hazardous. China had from ancient times claimed suzerainty over all surrounding nations, but those claims had never proved a safeguard nor prevented the subjugation or absorption of these so-called vassal states by other Powers. In fact, they were an element of weakness in quarrels where China herself was principal; for it might easily happen that the vassal would be exposed to attack, in case China herself could not easily be reached. This was especially the truth as regarded Korea, concerning whom China had given direct proof that while prepared to claim all the prerogatives of suzerainty when it implied no risk to herself, she was only too likely, when a strong Power threatened, to shirk all responsibility and abandon Korea to her fate. To treat with Korea as an independent nation and thus to set an example which would in all likelihood be followed by other Powers, seemed the best way of avoiding such a catastrophe. At the same time there was good reason to hope, even confidently to expect, that Korea, drawn into intimate intercourse with the world, would be freed from the trammels which prevented progress, and would gradually attain a condition where foreign aggression would be impossible.

Count Kuroda and Count Inouye were appointed First and Second Envoys, respectively, for the negotiation of the treaty. The representatives of the Treaty Powers were frankly informed of the objects of the mission. Before he left, Count Inouye called upon Mr. Bingham, the American Minister, who cordially sympathized with the Government’s intentions, and borrowed Bayard Taylor’s abridged history of Commodore Perry’s expedition. The Count said he feared that the Koreans might show signs of obduracy, in which case it would become necessary for his colleague and himself to have recourse to some of the measures which Commodore Perry found so efficacious. Inouye wished to have the book so that he could refresh his memory and be better perfected in the part if it became necessary to play it.[15]

As before intimated, the Japanese Government was anxious that the Treaty of 1876 should be followed by like Treaties between Korea and other Powers. It cordially tendered its good offices when Commodore Shufeldt visited Japan previous to the negotiation of the treaty concluded by him, and on subsequent occasions did what was possible to facilitate the conclusion of other treaties with Korea. Its policy in that regard was illustrated in an interesting way by the statement of Count Inouye, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, to Mr. Bingham in 1882, with reference to the appointment of General Foote, the first American Minister to Korea. He said to Mr. Bingham, as the latter reported to Secretary Frelinghuysen, that the action of the American Government “in ratifying so promptly its treaty with Korea and accrediting a minister to that kingdom gave great satisfaction to His Imperial Japanese Majesty’s Government, and was accepted as another evidence of the policy of justice so often manifested by the United States toward the states of Asia.” He also said that it was considered an act of friendship toward Japan as well as Korea.

In considering all the subsequent relations of Japan and Korea two things should be kept distinctly in view as determining questions of justice and injustice, of wisdom or unwisdom, in the policy of both countries. In the first place: In order to conclude “a treaty of commerce and amity which recognized the independence of Korea,” Japan rather than engage in a punitive war, had encountered in its own territory a rebellion which cost the Government of the Restoration no less than 60,000 men and 416,000,000 yen. And second, in allowing this treaty to go through in the form which it actually took, China had been convicted of the duplicity and wholly untenable character of its claims to exercise the rights of suzerainty over Korea. On the latter point Minister Rockhill[16] affirms that the conclusion in 1876 of the treaty of Kang-wha between Japan and Korea “marks the beginning of a new era in the history of the latter country, its entry into the family of nations.” “Prior to the Kang-wha treaty,” this authority goes on to say: “The nature of Korea’s relation to China was a puzzle to Western nations. They were told, at one and the same time, that Korea, though a vassal and tributary state of China, was entirely independent so far as her government, religion, and intercourse with foreign states were concerned—a condition of things hardly compatible with our ideas of either absolute dependence or complete independence.”

“In 1871 the Chinese Foreign Office wrote the United States Minister in Peking, Mr. Frederick F. Low, who had informed it of his recent appointment by his Government as special envoy to Korea, and was about proceeding there, that: ‘Korea is regarded as a country subordinate to China, yet is wholly independent in everything that relates to her government, her religion, her prohibitions, and her laws; in none of these things has China hitherto interfered.’”[17] But the first Article of the treaty signed in 1876 with Japan reads as follows: “Chosen, being an independent state, enjoys the same sovereign rights as does Japan”; and in 1882 the King of Korea wrote to the President of the United States, when the two countries were about to enter into treaty relations, pledging his Government that the terms of the treaty should be “carried into effect according to the laws of independent states.”

It was this not merely theoretical suzerainty, but a pernicious practice of interference and dictation on the part of China over Korea, joined to the utterly corrupt and weak government of the latter country, which led inevitably to the war between the former and Japan. Similar claims of the Government of Peking, under existing political and social conditions, over the weaker states which were alleged to be dependencies of this Government, the civilized nations of the world have repeatedly found themselves compelled to disregard; and this, in the interests of the dependent people themselves.

The mental attitude and practical treatment which the Korean Court and Yang-ban class in general have accorded to the treaties with Japan and other foreign nations have been essentially unchanged from the beginning. All depends upon the apparent immediate effect of foreign intercourse on their ancient rights and privileges of office-bearing and official “squeezing.” The Mins, the family of the late Queen, have always been notoriously corrupt; and, if the Queen herself was ever sincerely opposed to the anti-foreign policy, it is likely that the opposition had its source in the selfish interests of her own family and in her hatred of the King’s father, the Tai Won Kun. The latter was always consistently and energetically opposed to all foreign intercourse.

The condition of affairs in Korea preceding the troubles of 1882 and 1884 is graphically and truthfully described by the report of Ensign George C. Foulk, of the United States Navy, in which he submitted to his Government information relative to the revolutionary attempt of the latter date. With regard to the Government of Korea, Ensign Foulk says that “it has been for an indefinite period under the practical control of the Min Family, of which the Queen of Korea is at present the highest representative. The blood of this family is largely Chinese, and it has been always, and remains, the desire and aim of this family to subject, and retain in subjection, their country to the suzerainty of China. Members of this family are accorded special privileges by China, and are, to the exclusion of other Korean noble families, on comparatively social terms with the Court of China, which they visit frequently. The family is very large, and includes the highest number of great nobles, with the greatest landed estates, of all the families of the nobility in Korea.... The great body of Korean people know little or nothing of the politics of their Government, nor do they dare to use any information they may by chance possess on Government affairs.”

Ensign Foulk then goes on to draw attention to the remarkable phenomenon that, while the Chinese “are detested for their appearance, conduct and customs,” nothing by way of cruelty and fraud that they may do awakens practical resentment; but the Japanese, on the contrary, while “even admired by Koreans of the present day for their appearance, customs, and conduct,” are so hated that the “Koreans are always ready for the license when they may vent this feeling in shedding Japanese blood.” With regard to the real attitude of the Queen’s family, he further affirms: “This energy of the Mins [namely, in conducting negotiations for a treaty with the United States] has given them the mistaken reputation of being members of the progressive party in Korea; in fact, they only acted in obedience to their hereditary lord, China, without a thought patriotic to Korea, beyond that they, in common with all Koreans at that time, felt the danger of the seizure of a part of Korea by Russia.”

Now, however, the Tai Won Kun, the bitter enemy of the Queen, had his turn at the wheel on which the fate of this unfortunate country was revolving, first in one direction and then in the other. In July, 1882, taking advantage of disaffection among the soldiers of the capital, occasioned by short rations issued by the Mins (a “steal in army contracts”), he directed their revolt against that family, and, having disposed of its members, seized the Government for himself. Many Mins were killed; Min Tai-ho (father of Min Yong-ik) was left, supposed to be fatally wounded, in a ditch; poison was to be administered to the Queen, but a maid, personating her in disguise, took the poison and died while the Queen escaped. Min Yong-ik shaved his head, and, after hiding in the mountains three days, walked to Fusan whence he escaped to Japan in the guise of a Buddhist priest. For his disobedience to its command and his attempt to annihilate its royal servants, the Mins, the Chinese Government sent its troops to Korea and carried off into banishment the Tai Won Kun; but the power of the Mins in China’s behalf having been greatly cut down by the revolt, Chinese troops were placed in Seoul to strengthen the remainder, and continued there after the revolt was suppressed.

It was, then, in connection with the armed interference of China in a domestic quarrel between the wife and the father of the Emperor,—China, which had repeatedly disclaimed all responsibility for Korean internal affairs and which had permitted Korea to make a foreign treaty on terms of equality,—that the Korean Court offered again, in 1882, another affront to Japan. This time, also, the insult was written in blood. For through no fault or offence on their part, a number of Japanese were killed in the course of a domestic riot, and the Japanese Minister was obliged to flee from the capital and to put to sea in a fishing boat, whence he was rescued by an English vessel. The provocation was greater than that for which western nations have frequently exacted exemplary vengeance, much greater than the offence given by the rebellious Daimyo of Choshin, for which the Treaty Powers had held Japan herself so strictly to account. Nevertheless, Japan made due allowance for the irresponsibility and weakness of the Korean Government. An apology, an indemnity of 550,000 yen (50,000 being for private sufferers), and a Convention of two articles defining treaty limits, etc. (signed August 30, 1882), were the sum of her demands. The payment of 400,000 yen of the indemnity was afterward remitted. The instructions of the Emperor of Japan commanding this to be done contained the following declaration: