Russian tactics.... murder of An Kyung-su.... the Boxer troubles.... evidences of advancement.... the career of Kim Yung-jin.... the rise of Yi Yong-ik.... his methods of collecting money.... sale of Roze Island to Japanese.... attempt to remove J. McLeavy Brown.... establishment of Greek Church Mission.... French interests in Korea growing.... the French Loan.... Yi Yong-ik makes a nickel currency.... the famine of 1901.... the import of Annam rice.... tension between Russia and Japan increasing.... material advances of 1901.... deterioration.... Buddhism on the increase.... the centralization of all power.... the use of special tax commissioners.... the Russo-Korean agreement about Masanpo.... useless employees.

The return to Seoul of M. Pavlow on Jan. 15, 1900, marked the definite beginning of that train of events which led up to the declaration of war by the Japanese in 1904. The Russians had been induced, two years previously, to remove the heavy pressure which they had brought to bear upon the government, but it was only a change of method. They were now to adopt a policy of pure intrigue and by holding in power Koreans who were hostile to the Japanese to harrassharrass and injure Japanese interests in every way possible.

At this same time we see a clear indication of the trend of events in the return to Korea of An Kyung-su and Kwan Yung-jin, two of the best men that late years had developed in Korea. They had been charged with connection with the plot to compass the abdication of His Majesty, and had taken refuge in Japan. Now on the promise of the government that they should have a perfectly fair trial and on the guarantee of protection by the Japanese they returned boldly to Korea and presented themselves for trial. They were strong men and they had to be reckoned with. They strongly favored Japanese influence and the reforms that that influence was supposed to embody. In fact they were thoroughly in sympathy with the best motives of the defunct Independence Club. An Kyung-su returned on January fifteenth and was held in detention until May sixteenth when Kwan Yung-jin returned. They were to stand a fair trial, but on the night of the twenty-seventh of May they were both strangled secretly in the prison. No more dastardly crime ever stained the annals of this or any other government. Induced to return on the promise of a fair trial they were trapped and murdered. The reactionists looked upon this as a signal victory, and indeed it was such, for it indicated clearly that a man was not safe even when he had the guarantee of the Japanese authorities. Nor would it be difficult to indicate the source from which the government obtained the courage thus to flout the Japanese.

As the summer came on, all interest in things Korean was held in suspension while the great uprising in China swelled to such monstrous proportions and the investment of Peking and the siege of the foreign legations there left the world no time to care for or think of other things. There were fears that the boxer movement would be contagious and that it would spread to Korea. Indeed it was reported in the middle of July that the infection had reached northern Korea; but fortunately this proved false.

In spite of the reactionary policy of the government progress continued to be made on certain lines, just as the momentum of a railway train cannot be checked the moment the brakes are applied. A distinguished French legalist was employed as adviser to the Law Department; mining concessions were granted to British, French and Japanese syndicates; the Government Middle School was established; the Seoul-Chemulpo Railway was formally opened; a French teacher was engaged to open a School of Mines; a representative was sent to the great Paris Exposition.

This year 1900 was the heyday of another parvenu in the person of Kim Yung-jun. He was a man without any backing except his own colossal effrontery. He had acquired influence by his ability to get together considerable sums of money irrespective of the methods employed. Scores of wealthy men were haled to prison on one pretext or another and were released only upon the payment of a heavy sum. He was a man of considerable force of character but like so many adventurers in Korea he was lured by his successes into a false feeling of security and he forgot that the history of this country is full of just such cases and that they inevitably end in violent death. Even the fate of Kim Hong-nyuk did not deter him, though his case was almost the counterpart of that victim of his own overweening ambitions. Against Kim Yung-jun was ranged the whole nobility of the country who waited with what patience they could until his power to extort money began to wane, and then fell upon him like wolves upon a belated traveler at night. But it was not until the opening of the new year 1901 that he was deposed, tried and killed in a most horrible manner. After excruciating tortures he was at last strangled to death.

But even as this act was perpetrated and the fate of all such adventurers was again illustrated, another man of the same ilk was pressing to the fore. This was Yi Yong-ik, who had once been the major domo of one of the high officials and in that capacity had learned how to do all sorts of interesting, if unscrupulous, things. He was prominent in a felonious attempt to cheat the ginseng farmers of Song-do out of thousands, back in the eighties. He was an ignorant boor and even when rolling in opulenceopulence failed to make himself presentable in dress or manner. He was praised by some for his scorn of luxury and because he made no attempt to hoard the money that he bled from the veins of the people. The reason he did not hoard it was the same that makes the farmer sow his seed, that he may reap a hundred-fold. Yi Yong-ik sowed his golden seed in fertile soil and it yielded him a thousand-foldthousand-fold.

One of his favorite methods of obtaining money for his patron was to cause the arrest of shoals of former prefects who for one cause or another had failed to turn into the public treasury the complete amount nominally levied upon their respective districts. These arrears went back several years and many of them were for cause. Either famine or flood or some other calamity had made it impossible for the people to pay the entire amount of their taxes. There were many cases, without doubt, in which it was right to demand the money from the ex-prefects, for they had “eaten” it themselves; but there were also many cases in which it was a genuine hardship. Literally hundreds of men were haled before a court and made to pay over large sums of money, in default of which their property was seized as well as that of their relatives. In exact proportion as the huge sums thus extorted paved his way to favor in high places, in that same proportion it drove the people to desperation. The taking off of Kim Yung-jin, so far from warning this man, only opened a larger door for the exercise of his peculiar abilities, and it may be said that the official career of Yi Yong-ik began with the opening of 1901.

In March a Japanese resident of Chemulpo claimed to have purchased the whole of Roze Island in the harbor of Chemulpo. The matter made a great stir, for it was plain that someone had assumed the responsibility of selling the island to the Japanese. This was the signal for a sweeping investigation which was so manipulated by powerful parties that the real perpetrators of the outrage were dismisseddismissed as guiltless, but a side-issue which arose in regard to certain threatening letters that were sent to the foreign legations was made a peg upon which to hang the seizure, trial and execution of Kim Yung-jun as before mentioned. Min Yung-ju was the man who sold the island to the Japanese and he finally had to put down Y35,000 and buy it back.

Russia made steady advances toward her ultimate goal during the year 1901. In the Spring some buildings in connection with the palace were to be erected and the Chief Commissioner of Customs, J. McLeavy Brown, C. M. G., was ordered to vacate his house on the customs compound at short notice. Soldiers even forced their way into his house. This affront was a serious one and one that the Koreans would never have dared to give had they not felt that they had behind them a power that would see them through. The British authorities soon convinced the government that such tactics could be easily met and it had to retreat with some loss of dignity.

The Russian Church established itself in Seoul at this time and took active steps to start a propaganda in Korea. Considerable disturbance was caused in the Southern provinces by Koreans who had become Russian subjects pretending to be agents of the Russian church and collecting from the people large sums of money by intimidation. For many months the Russians tried to induce the Koreans to allow the Korean telegraph lines in the North-east to be connected with the Russian line from Vladivostock. Why this should not be done we cannot see but evidently the Koreans considered it a national danger and, try as they might, the Russians never really succeeded in making the connection.

The Russians and French were naturally working together in the peninsula and when Russia adopted the principle of withdrawing her military instructors from Korea she so manipulated the wires that the government threw many positions into the hands of the French. For the next three years the French population of Seoul increased many-fold. Many of the French gentlemen employed by the government were thoroughly competent and rendered good service but their presence tended to add to the tension between Japan and Russia, for it was quite plain that all their influence would be thrown in the scale on Russia’s side. The attempt to loan the Korean Government Y5,000,000 was pushed with desperate vigor for many months by the French, but divided counsels prevented the final consummation of the loan and the French thus failed to secure the strong leverage which a heavy loan always gives to the creditor. Yi Yong-ik who had become more or less of a Russian tool was pointedly accused by the Japanese of being in favor of the French loan but he vigorously denied it. It is generally admitted that Yi Yong-ik was something of a mystery even to his most intimate acquaintances and just how far he really favored the Russian side will never be known, but it is certaincertain that he assumed a more and more hostile attitude toward the Japanese as the months went by, an attitude which brought him into violent conflict with them, as we shall see.

Yi Yong-ik posed as a master in finance, whatever else he may or may not have been, and in 1901 he began the minting of the Korean nickel piece. No greater monetary disaster ever overtook this country. Even the desperate measures taken by the Regent thirty years before had not shaken the monetary system as this did. The Regent introduced the wretched five-cash piece which did enormous harm but that five-cash piece was of too small face value to be worth counterfeiting. The nickel was the ideal coin to tempt the counterfeiter, for its intrinsic value was not so great as to require the employment of a large amount of capital and yet its face value was sufficient to pay for the labor and time expended. The effects of this departure will be noted in their place.

In the summer of 1901 Yi Yong-ik performed one act that, in the eyes of the people, covered a multitude of other sins. It was a year of great scarcity. The Korean farmers raised barely enough grain for domestic consumption and in order to prevent this grain from being taken out of the country the government proclaimed an embargo on its export. In spite of the fact that Japan was enjoying an unusually good crop and did not really need the Korean product, the Japanese authorities, in the interest of the Japanese exporters in Korea, brought pressure to bear upon the Korean government to raise the embargo, utterly regardless of the interests of the Korean people. As it turned out however, the enhanced price in Korea due to the famine and the cutting of a full crop in Japan prevented the export of rice. But Yi Yong-ik saw that there would inevitably be a shortage in Seoul and with much forethought he sent and imported a large amount of Annam rice and put it on the market at a price so reasonable that the people were highly gratified. From that time on whenever the mistakes of Yi Yong-ik were cited there was always someone to offer the extenuation of that Annam rice. It was a most clever and successful appeal to popular favor.

All through this year 1901 were heard the distant rumblings of that storm that was to break three years later. Every movement of the Russians by land or sea was watched with a fascinated attention and every proposition of the Japanese was closely scrutinized. As a fact the war was already in existence, only it had not been declared. Even then Japanese agents were swarming all over Manchuria gaining exact information of its geography and products and Japan was hastening the preparation of her navy for the struggle that she felt to be inevitable.

As the year 1901 came to a close the tension was beginning to be felt. People were asking how much longer Japan would acquiesce in the insolent encroachments of Russia. But the time was not yet. As for material advances the year had seen not a few. Seoul had been supplied with electric light. The Seoul-Fusan Railway had been begun. Plans for the Seoul-Wiju Railway had been drawn up. Mokpo had been supplied with a splendid sea-wall. Building had gone on apace in the capital and even a scheme for a system of water-works for the city had been worked out and had received the sanction of the government. Education had gone from bad to worse and at one time when retrenchment seemed necessary it was even suggested to close some of the schools, but better counsels prevailed and this form of suicide was rejected.

With the opening of the year 1902 there were several indications that the general morale of the government was deteriorating. The first was a very determined attempt to revive the Buddhist cult. The Emperor consented to the establishment of a great central monastery for the whole country in the vicinity of Seoul, and in it was installed a Buddhist High Priest in Chief who was to control the whole Buddhist Church in the land. It was a ludicrous attempt, for Buddhism in Korea is dead so far as any genuine influence is concerned. Mixed with the native spirit-worship it has its millions of devotees, but so far as becoming a fashionable cult is concerned nothing is more unlikely. But it has been the case for over a thousand years that when things have gone badly in the government there has been a harking back to the old Buddhist mummery, to fortune-tellers, geomancers and the like, and the only significance of this attempt was to prove that there was something “rotten in Denmark.”

Another evidence was the constant and successful attempt to centralize the power of the Government in the hands of the Emperor. The overthrow of the Independence Party, whose main tenet was curtailment of the Imperial prerogative, gave a new impulse to the enlargement of that prerogative so that in the year 1901 we find almost all the government business transacted in the Palace itself. The various ministers of state could do nothing on their own initiative. Everything was centered in the throne and in two or three favorites who stood near the throne. Of these Yi Yong-ik was the most prominent.

A third evidence of deterioration was the methods adopted to fill the coffers of the Household treasury. The previous year had been a bad one. Out of a possible twelve million dollars of revenue only seven million could be collected. There was great distress all over the country and the pinch was felt in the palace. Special inspectors and agents were therefore sent to the country armed with authority from the Emperor to collect money for the Household treasury. These men adopted any and every means to accomplish their work and this added very materially to the discontent of the people. The prefects were very loath to forego a fraction of the taxation, because they saw how previous prefects were being mulcted because of failure to collect the full amount, and so between the prefect and the special agents the people seemed to be promised a rather bad time. In fact it caused such an outcry on every side that the government at last reluctantly recalled the special agents.

Early in the year the fact was made public that Korea had entered into an agreement with Russia whereby it was guaranteed that no land at Masanpo or on the island of KÖ-je at its entrance should ever be sold or permanently leased to any foreign Power. Russia had already secured a coaling station there and it was generally understood, the world over, that Russia had special interest in that remarkably fine harbor. Avowedly this was merely for pacific purposes, but the pains which Russia took to make a secret agreement with Korea debarring other Powers from privileges similar to those which she had acquired, naturally aroused the suspicions of the Japanese and of the Koreans themselves, those of them that had not been in the secret; and this step, inimical to Japan as it undoubtedly was, probably helped to hasten the final catastrophe. Meanwhile Russian subjects were taking advantage of the influential position of their Government in Seoul and through ministerialministerial influence some glass-makers, iron-workers and weavers were employed by the Government without the smallest probability of their ever doing anything in any of these lines. In fact at about this time the Government was induced to take on quite a large number of Russians and Russian sympathisers who never were able to render any service whatever in lieu of their pay. In many cases the most cursory investigation would have shown that such would inevitably be the result. It is difficult to evade the conclusion that the Government was deliberately exploited.

It was in the spring of this year that the project began to be seriously discussed in Japan of colonizing portions of Korea with Japanese, and a society or company was formed in Tokyo with this as its avowed purpose. This naturally evoked a good deal of feeling in Korea where the Japanese were not at the time enjoying any considerable influence at court. The fact then came out for the first time, and has been further emphasized since, that the Korean, whatever he may feel for his Government, is passionately attached to the soil.

But at this time another and a far greater surprise was in store for the world. It was the announcement of a defensive alliance between Japan and Great Britain. By the terms of this agreement Japan and Great Britain guaranteed to insure the independence of Korea and the integrity of the Chinese Empire. The tremendous influence of this historic document was felt at once in every capital of Europe and in every capital, port and village of the Far East. It stung the lethargic to life and it caused the rashly enthusiasticenthusiastic to stop and think. There can be no manner of doubt that this alliance was one of the necessary steps in preparing for the war which Japan already foresaw on the horizon. It indicated clearly to Russia that her continued occupation of Manchuria and her continued encroachments upon Korea would be called in question at some not distant day. But she was blind to the warning. This convention bound Great Britain to aid Japan in defensive operations and to work with her to the preservation of Korean independence and the integrity of China. It will be seen, therefore, that Japan gave up once and for all any thought that she might previously have had of impairing the independence of this country and any move in that direction would absolve Great Britain from all obligations due to the signing of the agreement.

The year had but just begun when the operations of counterfeiters of nickel coins became so flagrant as to demand the attention of all who were interested in trade in the peninsula. Japan had most at stake and Russia had least, and this explains why the Russian authorities applauded the work of Yi Yong-ik and encouraged him to continue and increase the issue of such coinage. In March matters had come to such a pass that the foreign representatives, irrespective of partisan lines, met and discussed ways and means for overcoming the difficulty. After careful deliberation they framed a set of recommendations which were sent to the Government. These urged the discontinuance of this nickel coinage, the withdrawal from circulation of spurious coins and stringent laws against counterfeiting. But this was of little or no avail. The Government was making a five cent coin at a cost of less than two cents and consequently the counterfeiters with good tools could make as good a coin as the Government and still realize enormously on the operation. It was impossible to detect the counterfeited coins, in many cases, and so there was no possibility of withdrawing them from circulation. The heavy drop in exchange was not due so much to the counterfeiting as to the fact that the intrinsic value of the coin was nothing like as much as the face value, and by an immutable law of finance as well as of human nature it fell to a ruinous discount. But even this would not have worked havoc with trade if, having fallen, the discredited coinage would stay fallen, but it had the curious trick of rising and falling with such sudden fluctuations that business became a mere gamble, and the heavy interests of Japanese and Chinese merchants were nearly at a standstill.