Korea

Abstract

We conclude today an interesting six days in Korea, beginning with a fearful night’s passage from Moji to Fusan, when the daily steamer could not start at all for seven or eight hours, and then was tossed about for twelve hours, we lying sick in our cabin. We then had an uncomfortable night in an inferior hotel, the best that Fusan could afford; a long day’s railway to Seoul, the capital; two days there; seven hours rail to this place, the ancient capital, where we have spent an interesting twenty-four hours; and then seven hours more rail to the Manchurian frontier (Yalu River). Through the introductions of the Japanese Government, and the Mitsui firm, we have been most elaborately entertained; met at each railway station by a bevy of officials; furnished with a free pass on the railway; taken round Seoul in one of the Governor’s state carriages; and escorted about this place by officials. Certainly, the Japanese-Korean administration has spared no pains to show us hospitality, and perhaps secure our good opinion.

Or Chosen, as the Japanese called Korea when it was their colony from 1910 until 1945. Before the closing decades of the nineteenth century, Korea had been virtually a vassal of China, without any diplomatic relations whatever with other nations. But in 1876 the expansive Japanese had forced a commercial treaty on the Koreans recognising them, inter alia, as an independent people with the same sovereign rights as Japan. Fearing the implications of this but too weak to challenge the Japanese directly, the Chinese had responded by encouraging the Koreans to conclude treaties with various Western powers as a means of diluting Japanese influence — and in the course of the 1880s Korea did sign treaties aimed at encouraging commercial intercourse with the United States, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Russia and France. Many Koreans were alarmed at the speed of change. Antiforeign feeling ran high; and continued conflict between pro-modernisation and conservative factions led to an open revolt triggered by the conservative Tonghak, or ‘Society of Eastern Learning’. The Korean government of the day appealed to the Chinese for help. The Japanese responded by seizing the Korean Queen and appointing a Regent in her stead. When a British ship carrying Chinese troops to Korea in July of 1894 was intercepted and sunk by the Japanese, the Regent declared war on China, triggering declarations of war in turn by China and Japan on each other. In the 1894–95 Sino-Japanese War that ensued, the Japanese, equipped with modern weaponry, were easy victors over a Manchu dynasty in chronic decline; and in the Treaty of Shimonoseki ending the War, they imposed humiliating terms on the defeated Chinese. In addition to agreeing to pay a large indemnity to Japan and to open up further ports to foreign commerce, China was required to recognise the ‘independence’ of Korea and to cede to Japan the island of Formosa, the Pescadores Islands and the Liaotung Peninsula. But within a week of the signing of the Treaty, Russia (viewing Japanese claims to Liaotung as threatening to its own sphere of influence), joined by Germany and France, intervened to oblige Japan to return the Liaotung Peninsula to China in consideration of a further large indemnity to be paid to the victors. Once this was achieved, a secret treaty between Russia and China, concluded at the Moscow Coronation of Nicholas II less than two months later, was to grant Russia, in return for a defensive alliance, the right to build and operate the Chinese Eastern Railway across northern Manchuria. The precedent signalled a so-called ‘scramble for concessions’ in which the great European powers extracted (or extorted) one-sided leases and trading rights from the hapless Chinese, including a further 25-year Russian lease of the southern part of the Liaotung Peninsula, with the right to construct a second railway, the Southern Manchuria Railway (see Note 13 below). As earlier in Korea, anti-foreign resentment in China, culminating in the 1900 Boxer Rebellion, led Russia to strengthen further its military presence in Manchuria. Meanwhile, in Korea, the murder of Queen Min (in which the Japanese Resident, Miura Goro, was implicated) only four months after the signing of the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki ended the Sino-Japanese War, dramatically underscored Japan’s determination to dominate and reorganise the Korean government. Fearful for his own life, the Korean King sought refuge in the Russian Legation, remaining there until 1897, by which time it was clear that Russia had displaced China as Japan’s principal rival for control of Korea. Continued friction between the two, exacerbated by Japan’s lingering resentment at Russia’s success in thwarting her ambitions in the Liaotung Peninsula, was to result in the severance by Japan of diplomatic relations with Russia — followed almost immediately by a Japanese attack on Port Arthur (Ryojun) which bottled up the Russian fleet and provoked the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05. A Japanese treaty with Korea, in return for guarantees of integrity, rendered Korea a de facto Japanese protectorate, while in the war itself, the Japanese defeated the Russians in key land engagements at the Yalu River, Liaoyang, and, following the surrender of Port Arthur, at Mukden. To these the Japanese added a decisive sea victory in the Straits of Tsushima, when Russia’s European fleet of some three dozen vessels, sent to achieve the relief of Port Arthur, was annihilated by Admiral Togo on 27–28 May 1905, entering the history books as the first major military engagement in which an Asian power had defeated a European power. The Treaty of Portsmouth at the War’s end required the Russians to surrender the Liaotung Peninsula to the Japanese, to cede to her the southern half of Sakhalin, and to evacuate Manchuria. The Treaty also recognised Japan’s special position in Korea, as had the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902, and stipulated that the sovereignty of Korea should not henceforth be mentioned in any international treaty. Even before the signing of the peace treaty, Japanese diplomatic representations in the United States, England, France, Germany and Austria had been elevated to the status of embassies; and Japan’s demonstration of naval prowess had encouraged a ten-year renewal of the 1902 Anglo-Japanese alliance. Late in 1905, the Japanese secured by treaty with Korea the outright control of her foreign relations, while in a separate treaty China confirmed the terms of the Portsmouth Treaty. Two years later, the Korean Emperor abdicated in favour of his son, and Korea became a Japanese protectorate with complete control of governmental affairs in the hands of a Japanese Resident-General. Japan formally annexed Korea on 22 August 1910.