In Korea with Marquis Ito

by George Trumbull Ladd

Japan’s good wishes for Korean independence are all the more sincere and reliable because her vital interests are bound up with those of your country. A danger to Korean independence will be a danger to Japan’s safety. So you will easily recognize that the strongest of human motives, namely self-interest, combines with neighborly feelings to make Japan a sincere well-wisher and friend of Korean independence.

Let me repeat once more that Korea may rest assured of the absence of all sinister motives on Japan’s part. Friendship between two countries in the circumstances of Japan and Korea ought to be free from any trace of suspicion and doubt as to each other’s motives and intentions. In conclusion, allow me to express my heartful hope that you may long remain in office and assiduously exert yourselves for the good of your sovereign and country.

With the coming of M. Pavloff to Korea as its Representative, in December, 1898, the diplomacy of Russia in this part of the Orient abandoned the traditional method of patient, persistent effort at advance, together with more or less perfect assimilation of the new tribes and peoples brought under its control, and adopted the more brilliant but dangerous policy of a swift promotion of obviously selfish schemes by a mixture of threats and cajolery. It is not even now certain how far this policy was supported by, or even known to, the home government of Russia. The war with Japan, to which these acts led steadily and irresistibly forward, seemed, only in its actual results, to reveal at all fully to this Government what its representatives had been doing in the Far East.

Among the various attempts of M. Pavloff and his coadjutors to obtain concessions for themselves and for their country, those which looked toward the establishment of a Russian naval base in certain localities of the Korean coast were threatening to Japan. “But Russia’s conduct on the Northern frontier of Korea along the Tumen and Yalu rivers was”—to quote again from Hershey—“the greatest source of anxiety to Japan.”

In 1896 Russia had obtained valuable mining concessions in two districts near the port of Kiong-hung at the mouth of the Tumen River, and later sought to extend her influence in that region. More important and dangerous, however, to the interests of Japan were the attempts of Russia to obtain an actual foothold on Korean territory at Yong-am-po on the Korean side of the Yalu River. As far back as 1896, when the King was a guest of the Russian Legation, a Russian merchant had obtained timber concessions on the Uining Island in the Sea of Japan and on the Tumen and Yalu rivers. The concession along the Yalu was to be forfeited unless work was begun within five years in the other two regions. This condition does not appear to have been complied with when the Korean Government was suddenly notified on April 13, 1903, that the Russian timber syndicate would at once begin the work of cutting timber on the Yalu. Early in May sixty Russian soldiers in civilian dress, later increased by several hundred more, were reported to have occupied Yong-am-po, a point rather remote from the place where actual cutting was in progress. At the same time there was taking place a mysterious mobilization of troops from Liaoyang and Port Arthur toward Feng-hwang-cheng and Antung on the other side of the Yalu. Early in June four Russian warships paid a week’s visit to Chemulpo. In August M. Pavloff appears to have been on the point of obtaining an extension of the Yong-am-po lease, but this was prevented by the receipt of an ultimatum from the Japanese Minister. Mr. Hayashi threatened that if the Korean Government were to sign such a lease, Japan would regard diplomatic relations between the two countries as suspended, and would regard herself as free to act in her own interests.

In this connection it should be said, that while the Korean Government did not formally renew the lease, the Emperor did secretly enter into an arrangement with M. Pavloff concerning Yong-am-po, practically conceding all that was asked on Russia’s behalf. This document was discovered after the war began and hastily cancelled by the Emperor, of his own accord, upon the recommendation of the Korean Minister for Foreign Affairs.

Meantime another conflict of interests between Russia and Japan was developing and contributing to the same result—namely, the Russo-Japanese war. This was the so-called “Manchurian Question.” It is not necessary for the purposes of our narrative to trace with any detail the origin and different stages of that succession of successful intrigues and encroachments upon foreign territory which had been for some time carried on with the Chinese by methods similar to those now being employed in Korea. Some of the more salient points in the history of the preceding period of nearly a half-century need, however, to be called to mind. In 1860, when the allied forces occupied Peking, the Russian Minister, General Ignatieff, by a brilliant stroke of diplomacy, secured for his country the cession of the maritime province of Manchuria, with 600 miles of coast, and the harbor of Vladivostok, down to the mouth of the Tumen. For this he gave nothing in return beyond the pretence that it was in his power to bring pressure upon the allies and thus secure their more speedy evacuation of the Chinese capital.

Thirty years later, after the new province had been developed and the harbor of Vladivostok converted into a powerful fortress, Russia determined upon building an all-rail route across Siberia, and immediately began to press for other concessions in Chinese territory that in 1897 resulted in the association which constructed what is now known as the Manchurian Railway. This enterprise was ostensibly a joint affair of the two countries; but it has been fitly described as “only a convenient bonnet” for an essentially Russian undertaking. Russian engineers now came in large numbers to Manchuria; Russian Cossacks accompanied them for purposes of their protection. Later in the same year the seizure by Germany of Kiao-chau, in satisfaction for outrages committed upon German missionaries, was followed by Russia’s request to the Chinese Government for permission to winter her fleet at Port Arthur. In March of the next year Japan had the added mortification, bitterness, and cause for alarm, of seeing Russia demand and obtain from China a formal lease of the same commercial and strategic points of the peninsula of Liao-tung of which Russia, by combining with Germany and France, had deprived Japan when she had won them by conquest in war. These enterprises in Manchuria were financed by the Russo-Chinese Bank, an institution which had recently been founded in the Far East as a branch of the Russian Ministry of Finance. So important is this last-mentioned fact that one writer places upon M. Pokotiloff, Chief of the Russo-Chinese Bank in Berlin, the responsibility for the whole Port Arthur episode, and declares it was he who dictated the policy of Russia in Manchuria after the Boxer uprising.[24]

The occupation of Port Arthur and Ta-lien-wan (renamed Dalny) was accompanied by assurances from the Russian Government—chiefly designed to quiet Great Britain and Japan—that it had “no intention of infringing the rights and privileges guaranteed by existing treaties between China and foreign countries;” and that no interference with Chinese sovereignty was contemplated. To the objections raised when it proceeded to fortify Port Arthur, the reply was made that Russia “must have a safe harbor for her fleet, which could not be at the mercy of the elements at Vladivostok or dependent upon the good-will of Japan.” Under this plea she refused to change the status of Port Arthur as a closed and principally military port. The effect of all this upon the attitude of public feeling in Japan toward Russia can easily be imagined. Even when, in August, 1899, the port of Dalny was declared “open” by an Imperial ukase, regulations with respect to passports and claims to a monopoly of mining rights continued to lessen the confidence of other nations in Russia’s good faith with respect to the occupation of Manchuria. It is now sufficiently well established that during this period secret agreements between Li Hung Chang and the Russian Government were made which enlarged the special privileges of Russia in Manchuria. Meantime, also, her military hold was being strengthened; so that by December, 1898, she had 20,000 men at her two ports, while Cossack guards—“the pennons on their lances showing a combination of the Russian colors and the Chinese dragon”—were patrolling the railway line and protecting the work of fortification at Port Arthur.