possession of the peninsula by a foreign power would have threatened the maritime route to the Chinese capital and given easy access to Manchuria, the cradle of the dynasty which ruled China. Therefore Peking statesmen endeavoured to preserve the old-time relations with the little kingdom. But they could never persuade themselves to modify the indirect methods sanctioned by tradition. Instead of boldly declaring Korea a dependency of China, they sought to keep up the romance of ultimate dependency and intermediate sovereignty. Thus in 1876 Korea was suffered to conclude with Japan a treaty of which the first article declared her “an independent state enjoying the same rights as Japan,” and subsequently to make with the United States (1882), Great Britain (1883) and other powers, treaties in which her independence was constructively admitted. China, however, did not intend that Korea should exercise the independence thus conventionally recognized. A Chinese resident was placed in Seoul, and a system of steady though covert interference in Korea’s affairs was inaugurated. The chief sufferer from these anomalous conditions was Japan. In all her dealings with Korea, in all complications that arose out of her comparatively large trade with the peninsula, in all questions connected with her numerous settlers there, she found herself negotiating with a dependency of China, and with officials who took their orders from the Chinese representative. China had long entertained a rooted apprehension of Japanese aggression in Korea—an apprehension not unwarranted by history—and that distrust tinged all the influence exerted by her agents there. On many occasions Japan was made sensible of the discrimination thus exercised against her. Little by little the consciousness roused her indignation, and although no single instance constituted a ground for strong international protest, the Japanese people gradually acquired a sense of being perpetually baffled, thwarted and humiliated by China’s interference in Korean affairs. For thirty years China had treated Japan as a contemptible deserter from the Oriental standard, and had regarded her progressive efforts with openly disdainful aversion; while Japan, on her side, had chafed more and more to furnish some striking evidence of the wisdom of her preference for Western civilization. Even more serious were the consequences of Chinese interference from the point of view of Korean administration. The rulers of the country lost all sense of national responsibility, and gave unrestrained sway to selfish ambition. The functions of the judiciary and of the executive alike came to be discharged by bribery only. Family interests predominated over those of the state. Taxes were imposed in proportion to the greed of local officials. No thought whatever was taken for the welfare of the people or for the development of the country’s resources. Personal responsibility was unknown among officials. To be a member of the Min family, to which the queen belonged, was to possess a passport to office and an indemnity against the consequences of abuse of power. From time to time the advocates of progress or the victims of oppression rose in arms. They effected nothing except to recall to the world’s recollection the miserable condition into which Korea had fallen. Chinese military aid was always furnished readily for the suppression of these risings, and thus the Min family learned to base its tenure of power on ability to conciliate China and on readiness to obey Chinese dictation, while the people at large fell into the apathetic condition of men who possess neither security of property nor national ambition.
As a matter of state policy the Korean problem caused much anxiety to Japan. Her own security being deeply concerned in preserving Korea from the grasp of a Western power, she could not suffer the little kingdom to drift into a condition of such administrative incompetence and national debility that a strong aggressor might find at any moment a pretext for interference. On two occasions (1882 and 1884) when China’s armed intervention was employed in the interests of the Min to suppress movements of reform, the partisans of the victors, regarding Japan as the fountain of progressive tendencies, destroyed her legation in Seoul and compelled its inmates to fly from the city. Japan behaved with forbearance at these crises, but in the consequent negotiations she acquired conventional titles that touched the core of China’s alleged suzerainty. In 1882 her right to maintain troops in Seoul for the protection of her legation was admitted; in 1885 she concluded with China a convention by which each power pledged itself not to send troops to Korea without notifying the other.
In the spring of 1894 a serious insurrection broke out in Korea, and the Min family appealed for China’s aid. On the 6th of July 2500 Chinese troops embarked at Tientsin and were transported to the peninsula, where they went The Rupture with China. into camp at Ya-shan (Asan), on the south-west coast, notice of the measure being given by the Chinese government to the Japanese representative at Peking, according to treaty. During the interval immediately preceding these events, Japan had been rendered acutely sensible of China’s arbitrary and unfriendly interference in Korea. Twice the efforts of the Japanese government to obtain redress for unlawful and ruinous commercial prohibitions had been thwarted by the Chinese representative in Seoul; and an ultimatum addressed from Tōkyō to the Korean government had elicited from the viceroy Li in Tientsin a thinly veiled threat of Chinese armed opposition. Still more provocative of national indignation was China’s procedure with regard to the murder of Kim Ok-kyun, the leader of progress in Korea, who had been for some years a refugee in Japan. Inveigled from Japan to China by a fellow-countryman sent from Seoul to assassinate him, Kim was shot in a Japanese hotel in Shanghai; and China, instead of punishing the murderer, conveyed him in a war-ship of her own to Korea to be publicly honoured. When, therefore, the Korean insurrection of 1894 induced the Min family again to solicit China’s armed intervention, the Tōkyō government concluded that, in the interests of Japan’s security and of civilization in the Orient, steps must be taken to put an end to the misrule which offered incessant invitations to foreign aggression, and checked Korea’s capacity to maintain its own independence. Japan did not claim for herself any rights or interests in the peninsula superior to those possessed there by China. But there was not the remotest probability that China, whose face had been contemptuously set against all the progressive measures adopted by Japan during the preceding twenty-five years, would join in forcing upon a neighbouring kingdom the very reforms she herself despised, were her co-operation invited through ordinary diplomatic channels only. It was necessary to contrive a situation which would not only furnish clear proof of Japan’s resolution, but also enable her to pursue her programme independently of Chinese endorsement, should the latter be finally unobtainable. She therefore met China’s notice of a despatch of troops with a corresponding notice of her own, and the month of July 1894 found a Chinese force assembled at Asan and a Japanese force occupying positions in the neighbourhood of Seoul. China’s motive for sending troops was nominally to quell the Tonghak insurrection, but really to re-affirm her own domination in the peninsula. Japan’s motive was to secure such a position as would enable her to insist upon the radically curative treatment of Korea’s malady. Up to this point the two empires were strictly within their conventional rights. Each was entitled by treaty to send troops to Korea, provided that notice was given to the other. But China, in giving notice, described Korea as her “tributary state,” thus thrusting into the forefront of the discussion a contention which Japan, from conciliatory motives, would have kept out of sight. Once formally advanced, however, the claim had to be challenged. In the treaty of amity and commerce concluded in 1876 between Japan and Korea, the two high contracting parties were explicitly declared to possess the same national status. Japan could not agree that a power which for nearly two decades she had acknowledged and treated as her equal should be openly classed as a tributary of China. She protested, but the Chinese statesmen took no notice of her protest. They continued to apply the disputed appellation to Korea, and they further asserted their assumption of sovereignty in the peninsula by seeking to set limits to the number of troops sent by Japan, as well as to the sphere of their employment. Japan then proposed that
