Farther north, upon the frontier, the long boundary line naturally divides itself into two parts, namely, the Tumên River, separating Korea from Primorsk of Siberia and the Kirin Province of Manchuria, and the Yalu River, which borders upon the strategically most important Province of Sheng-king of South Manchuria. Along the former stream, Russia acquired by a treaty of 1884[[543]] the opening of the port of Kiong-hung to the Russian land trade, and a free navigation of the Tumên. A dozen years later,[[544]] when the Sovereign sojourned at the Russian Legation, the Muscovites concluded an agreement with the Seul Government whereby they were granted the privilege of mining gold and other minerals for fifteen years, and coal for twenty years, in two districts near Kiong-hung, as well as the right to construct a railway or carriage-road from the mines to the shore. It has often been reported that the poverty-stricken people as well as the venal officers along the river have continually mortgaged their property to the Russians, who thus have acquired extensive tracts of land, circulated Russian coins among the natives, and otherwise implanted their influence far and wide. Then early in 1902, M. Pavloff sought to make a step in advance in this direction, when, without permission from Korea, a telegraph line was extended from Possiet to Kiong-hung across the Tumên River. He desired that the Seul Government should recognize the accomplished fact, and Rear Admiral Skrydloff, commanding the Pacific squadron of the Russian navy, visited the capital on February 17, and intimated his hope that the question would be amicably settled. The Foreign Minister, Pak Che-sun, however, successfully ordered on February 22 that the telegraph line so surreptitiously built be removed. In the mean while, it was discovered that the St. Petersburg Government had had nothing to do with the building of the line which had recently been removed. M. Pavloff, however, succeeded in securing the dismissal of Pak from his post. He also persisted in demanding the right of the Russians to reconstruct the line across the Tumên River. He was as much justified in preferring such a demand, as was the Korean Government in refusing to accede to it. The latter was probably apprehensive that its concession to Russia would be followed by similar demands from other Powers. At present, the Korean telegraph line reaches from Seul to Kion-song, some forty miles from Kiong-hung.[[545]]
On the Yalu River, also, M. Pavloff desired a telegraphic connection with Wiju from Port Arthur and from Harbin, which, after a failure in May, 1902, was at last granted in April, 1903.[[546]]
More important, however, is the question of the Seul-Wiju Railway, which had been the bone of contention between Japan and the allied Powers of Russia and France, until the outbreak of the present war suddenly changed the situation in favor of the former. By the temporary articles of August 20, 1894,[[547]] Korea had granted a prior right to the Japanese Government or companies to construct railways between Seul and Fusan. The actual undertaking, however, was so delayed, that, on March 29, 1896,[[548]] Mr. James R. Morse, an American citizen, succeeded in acquiring the Seul-Chemulpo concession, and began to build the line. In October, 1898, Mr. Morse sold the concession to certain Japanese capitalists, and the line, which was the first railway owned abroad by Japanese subjects, has been in running order since July, 1900. The contract for the other line—Fusan-Seul—was not made by the Japanese till September 8, 1898.[[549]] Prior to this, on July 3, 1896,[[550]] a French company had acquired a grant to connect Seul with Wiju on the Yalu by rail. Finding, however, little prospect of starting the work within the specified period of three years, the company tried to sell the concession, first to the Russian Government and then to Japan, but neither was prepared to accept the proposed terms. About 1900, Yi Yong-ik instituted in the Imperial Household Department the Northwestern Railway Bureau, over which he presided, with the express purpose of building the line with Korean capital. The French Minister at Seul, however, had a short time before obtained exclusive right to furnish material and engineers for the building of the line, so that Korean money and French skill were to be enlisted for the service.[[551]] After a long delay, President Yi held a great undertaking ceremony on May 8, 1902, but it was patent to every one that no Korean capital was forthcoming. As was expected, not a mile of rail having been laid, the work was suspended in June, and indefinitely postponed.[[552]] Considering, however, that a Seul-Wiju line would naturally pass through the gold mines of Yun-san and Yin-san and the coal region of Ping-yang, and the great agricultural province of Hwang-hai, as well as such commercial centres as Kai-song, Ping-yang, Hwang-ju, and An-ju, the advantages of controlling this line appeared too great for the competing foreigners to leave its construction to the care of the impecunious Korean Government. Particularly jealous were the Russians of the line passing into the hands of their political rivals, for then—if, furthermore, a railway connection were effected by the same rivals between Wiju and Niu-chwang—the deep-laid design of Russia to make Dalny the great trading port for Manchuria and North China would be seriously upset by the railway reaching directly from the producing centres of these regions and Korea to the port of Fusan, whence a ready communication oversea might well radiate toward Japan, Europe, and America. It was natural, therefore, for M. Stein, Russian Chargé d’Affaires, again to recommend, as he did on February 15, 1903, the honest Baron Gunzburg to the Korean Government, and to demand of the latter on behalf of the Baron the right of laying the Seul-Wiju Railway. The Government, however, declined[[553]] to entertain the application, as it was its intention to complete the line on its own resources, and not to concede it to any foreign Power.[[554]] Later, another attempt was made in August by the Seul Government to reopen the work of construction, for which a French syndicate represented by M. Rondon was to supply all machinery,[[555]] but, again, the lack of funds frustrated the attempt. Since that time, no important development of this question had transpired before the beginning of hostilities between Russia and Japan.
We have so far seen enough of Korean diplomacy to comprehend something of the Russian method of furthering her influence over Korea, and of the manner in which Japan struggled to safeguard her fast increasing interests[[556]] in the peninsula and to maintain the terms of the Russian agreements of 1896 and 1898. We have, however, reserved up to this point the latest and most important question of the timber concession upon the northern frontier. In no other matter had the characteristic method of Russian diplomacy excited more apprehension in Korea and Japan, for nothing could better illustrate the close connection, in the Muscovite policy, of Manchuria and North Korea—a connection which appeared to threaten at once the integrity of the two adjoining Empires and the safety of Japan—than the Yong-am-po incident which arose in April, 1903, in relation to the timber concession. The contract[[557]] for this concession dated so far back as August 28, 1896, when the Korean King was a guest at the Russian Legation. It had secured for a Russian merchant at Vladivostok the right to organize a Korean lumber company (Article 1), having a monopoly for twenty years of the forestry enterprise round the Mu-san region upon the Tumên River and also on the Uinung Island in Japan Sea (Article 2). The work, in order to be valid, had to be begun within one year after the signature of the agreement (Article 15). Only when work in these two regions should have been under way, the company might, within five years[[558]] from the same date, start a similar exploitation along the Yalu River (Article 2).[[559]] Accordingly, the Russian syndicate undertook to fell trees at Mu-san in 1897 and again in 1898,[[560]] though never on a large scale.[[561]] On the Uinung Island, however, where good timber had nearly been exhausted after many years of cutting by the Japanese, the Russians had at no time made a serious attempt to exploit it. Under these circumstances, the right of the Russians to exploit forests upon the Yalu so late as 1903 was at least not clear.[[562]] Nevertheless, the extensive public works at Port Arthur and Dalny and on the railways had created so great a demand for timber, that the Chinese woodmen were cutting trees along the foot of the Long White Mountains and sending them downstream to An-tung, where alone the traffic annually aggregated the sum of 1,500,000 taels.[[563]] The Russians now seemed to have planned to exploit both sides of the Yalu, and they would not have caused trouble, had they employed legitimate means to accomplish their ends. On the Manchurian side, finding that a foreigner could not get a timber concession from the Chinese authorities, they used the name of a leader of the mounted bandits whom a Russian military officer had befriended, and, after securing a concession, employed those bandits in felling trees.[[564]] In regard to the Korean side of the river, after nearly seven years’ inactivity since the grant of the concession, M. Stein, Russian Chargé at Seul, suddenly notified the Korean Government, on April 13, 1903, that Baron Gunzburg would henceforth represent at Seul the interest of the timber syndicate, which would now commence its work upon the Yalu.[[565]] Early in May, forty-seven Russian soldiers in civilian dress, presently increased to sixty, besides a larger number of Chinese and Koreans under Russian employ, were reported to have come to Yong-am-po,[[566]] a point near the mouth of the river and rather remote from the places[[567]] where actual cutting was in progress, and had begun to construct what was claimed to be timber-warehouses, but later proved to be, besides some godowns, a blacksmith plant and a six-foot mound.[[568]] At the same time, there was taking place a mysterious mobilization of troops from Liao-yang and Port Arthur towards Fêng-hwang-Chêng and An-tung on the other side of the Yalu.[[569]] The Korean frontier officers reported that a panic had been created among the inhabitants, and that the Korean-Manchurian commerce had stopped.[[570]] Presently, the Russian soldiers at Yong-am-po were reported to have been increased, first by 100, and then by 200, who purchased from the natives, under the name of a Korean citizen and against the wishes of the local authorities, fifteen houses and some twelve acres of land.[[571]] When the Korean Government had, on May 15, demanded of M. Stein to order the evacuation of the Russians,[[572]] M. Pavloff, who had recently returned from his trip to Russia, requested, on the contrary, that the Korean Government should protect the Russian subjects at Yong-am-po.[[573]] A desultory discussion then ensued between M. Pavloff and the Korean Government, while further increases of the Russian forces at An-tung beyond the river were reducing the frontier regions generally into a state of anarchy.[[574]] About the middle of June, the Russians forcibly seized rafts belonging to some Koreans and Chinese that came down the stream, and shot two Chinese who resisted.[[575]] A Japanese-Chinese syndicate, also, which had secured a timber concession in this region in March from the Korean Government, reported that its rafts had been seized, and its work had consequently been suspended.[[576]] Prior to this, four Russian war-vessels under command of Admiral Starck came to Chemulpo in the night of June 5,[[577]] and stayed there till the 11th. No matter whether there was any significance in this act, it is sufficient to record that it took place at this critical moment. Not the least serious feature of the affair was the disagreement of opinion about it inside the Korean Government. When, on June 11, the Council of State passed a resolution that the conduct of the Russians upon the frontier was contrary to the treaty arrangements between the two Powers, the Foreign Office, on the 14th, sought to refute the ground in an elaborate note.[[578]] The gravity of the situation as evinced in all these facts need hardly be pointed out. Whatever the intentions of the Russian Government or even of its Representative at Seul, the action of the Muscovites at Yong-am-po was precisely of a nature to remind one of their previous fortification of Port Arthur, which had eventually prepared their entry into the whole of Manchuria. The fact that the occupation of Yong-am-po took place simultaneously with the suspension of the evacuation of Manchuria and with the active military connection between its army centres and the Korean frontier, gave the present affair an exceedingly ominous appearance. And yet, in the face of these perilous circumstances, the Korean Government showed itself so impotent and so little alive to the situation as to be divided against itself on a minor point of the law of the case. In such a state of things, the usual method of Japan to resist Russia through Korea would be utterly futile.
It is unnecessary to recall that any attempt upon the integrity of Korea was in violation of the fundamental principle which formed the first Article of the Nishi-Rosen Protocol of April 25, 1898,[[579]] as well as against the spirit of this and the two other Russo-Japanese agreements regarding Korea. These agreements seemed to Japan to have in one way or another been palpably violated by the Russians in many of their actions in Korea, to which the Yong-am-po affair was a climax. Under circumstances so continually irritating to the peace of the East and so threatening to her own vital interests, the Government of Japan now felt justified, when the climax was reached, in opening direct negotiations with Russia, in order to arrive at such a definite understanding of the relative position of the Powers in Korea, as would insure the mutual benefit of the three nations concerned.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE RUSSO-JAPANESE NEGOTIATIONS, I
It was in view of these dangerously unstable circumstances in Manchuria and Korea that, on June 23, 1903, the four principal members of the Japanese Cabinet[[580]] and five Privy Councilors[[581]] met before the Throne, and decided on the principles upon which negotiations with Russia should be opened.[[582]] Having thus formulated the policy to be pursued, Baron Komura telegraphed to the Japanese Minister at St. Petersburg, Mr. Kurino, on July 28, as follows[[583]]:—
BARON KOMURA
Japanese Foreign Minister
“The Imperial Government [of Japan] have observed with close attention the development of affairs in Manchuria, and its present situation causes them to view it with grave concern.