A VIEW OF SEOUL.
We visited the old palace where the dethroned Emperor and Empress used to live. It is rather Chinese in appearance, but not quite so handsome as the palace in Peking, which we had seen previously. The approach to it is by a broad way lined on each side with low, tile-roofed houses; this leads to the great Mon, the entrance gate, with double overhanging roofs towering above it. Inside this is a great court, next another massive gateway with two-storied upturned roofs, then another courtyard, around which are low houses, and a third gate, leading into the last court, which is approached by terraced steps of stone. Finally appears the audience hall, a building with recurving roofs of tile, beautiful carvings, and brilliant decorations in colour. Passages and courts lead from this to the pleasure pavilion, a large, open, two-storied structure with a heavy pagoda roof, which stands on a stone terrace, and is reached by three bridges with stone balustrading. Beside it is a tank where lotus grows, and near-by a park-like grove of quaint pine-trees.
In this palace, several years ago, Empress Bin of Korea was assassinated while asleep. The Emperor, however, dressed as a coolie, escaped to the Russian Legation, where he lived for two years. He afterward built himself a new palace in European style, where he resides now as a sort of prisoner, while his son lives in another palace, and the grandson is being educated in Japan. The Emperor is now known as Prince Yi the Elder, and his son as Prince Yi the Younger, while his grandson, who also bears the same name, is the last of the Yi dynasty, which has ruled Korea for five hundred years.
As we all know, Korea was involved in the two terrible wars that have been waged in the Far East in recent years. Japan needs Korea as an outlet for her surplus population, as a source of food supply and a market for her manufactured products, but still more does she need it as a strong country to stand between herself and Russian aggression. In the last decade of the nineteenth century the Hermit Kingdom was still under the suzerainty of China, and its government was weak and hopelessly corrupt. Japan refused to acknowledge this overlordship of China, and insisted that the Korean government must be reformed. China was asked to help in enforcing the changes, but refused to interfere. Neither China nor Japan would yield.
Finally the Koreans sent for Chinese troops, and then the Japanese attacked the Emperor's palace. A great naval battle was fought at the mouth of the Yalu River, in which the Chinese were defeated and five of their ships sunk. The Japanese army took Dalny and Port Arthur. Another naval battle ended in the surrender of the Chinese fleet and the suicide of the Chinese admiral. Togo and Yamagata, whom I once had the pleasure of meeting at a luncheon in Tokyo, and Nogi, were among the heroes of this war. By the treaty of Shimonoseki, in 1895, China agreed to pay an indemnity to Japan and to recognize the independence of Korea, and also ceded the Liaotung Peninsula with Port Arthur, and the islands of Formosa and the Pescadores group to Japan. No sooner was this treaty signed, however, than the Great Powers compelled Japan to restore Liaotung to China.
But within a few years, Russia obtained a lease of Liaotung, and the Powers made no protest. She soon invested immense sums in Manchuria—in building the Manchurian Railroad, in fortifying Port Arthur and making it a naval base, and extending the Chinese Eastern Railroad toward the Yalu and Korea. She made Kharbin her military base and filled Manchuria with soldiers.
Japan saw the necessity of protecting not only her freedom of trade, but her very existence as a nation, for Russia, from her vantage ground in Manchuria, had begun to take possession of the valley of the Yalu River, on Korea's northwestern frontier. Once this section was in her power it would be an easy matter to sweep down through the peninsula and across the narrow Straits of Shimonoseki to the Island Empire itself.
In vain did Japan try to open up negotiations with Russia. On one excuse or another, she was put off for months, while all the time Russia was preparing for war. Finally diplomatic relations were severed by order of Baron Komura, Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs, and war was declared February 10, 1904. Baron Kaneko, in an address before the Japan Club of Harvard University, in April of that year, said that Japan was fighting to maintain the peace of Asia and to conserve the influence of Anglo-American civilization in the East.
After Admiral Togo had destroyed the Russian fleet, and the long siege of Port Arthur had ended in its surrender to the heroic Nogi, all the Japanese armies combined for the final struggle around Mukden, which terminated in the flight of the Russians from Manchuria. The treaty of peace, which was signed at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, gave Japan Port Arthur, a protectorate over Korea, and half the island of Saghalien, and provided that both nations should evacuate Manchuria. The protectorate over Korea has since become a sovereignty.
The Japanese Governor-General, Count Terauchi, is a very strong and able man, and under his administration many improvements have been made in Korea. This has not always been done without friction between the natives and their conquerors, it must be confessed, but the results are certainly astonishing. The government has been reorganized, courts have been established, the laws have been revised, trade conditions have been improved and commerce has increased. Agriculture has been encouraged by the opening of experiment stations, railroads have been constructed from the interior to the sea-coast, and harbours have been dredged and lighthouses erected. Japanese expenditures in Korea have amounted to twelve million dollars yearly.