Police officers were posted at each gate, and no one was allowed in or out without a permit from a Japanese-nominated official.  At the same time many of the old palace attendants were cleared out.  The Resident-General thought that if the Emperor were isolated from his friends, and if he were constantly surrounded by enthusiastic advocates of Japan, he might be coerced or influenced into submission.  Yet here Marquis Ito had struck against a vein of obstinacy and determination that he could scarce have reckoned with.

The Emperor had taken every opportunity to send messages abroad protesting against the treaty.  He managed, time after time, still to hold communication with his friends, but the Japanese took good care that traitors should come to him and be loudest in their expressions of loyalty.  Little that he did but was immediately known to his captors.  In the early summer of 1907 the Emperor thought that he saw his chance at last of striking a blow for freedom through the Hague Conference.  He was still convinced that if he could only assure the Powers that he had never consented to the treaty robbing Korea of its independence, they would then send their Ministers back to Seoul and cause Japan to relax her hand.  Accordingly, amid great secrecy, three Korean delegates of high rank were provided with funds and despatched to the Hague under the guardianship of Mr. Hulbert.  They reached the Hague only to be refused a hearing.  The Conference would have nothing to say to them.

This action on the part of the Emperor gave the Japanese an excuse they had long been looking for.  The formation of the Korean Cabinet had been altered months before in anticipation of such a crisis, and the Cabinet Ministers were now nominated not by the Emperor, but by the Resident-General.  The Emperor had been deprived of administrative and executive power.  The Marquis Ito had seen to it that the Ministers were wholly his tools.  The time had come when his tools were to cut.  The Japanese Government assumed an attitude of silent wrath.  It could not allow such offences to go unpunished, its friends declared, but what punishment it would inflict it refused to say.

Proceedings were much more cleverly stage-managed than in November, 1905.  Nominally, the Japanese had nothing to do with the abdication of the Emperor.  Actually the Cabinet Ministers held their gathering at the Residency-General to decide on their policy, and did as they were instructed.  They went to the Emperor and demanded that he should abandon the throne to save his country from being swallowed up by Japan.  At first he refused, upon which their insistence grew greater.  No news of sympathy or help reached him from foreign lands.  Knowing the perils surrounding him, he thought that he would trick them all by a simple device.  He would make his son, the Crown Prince, temporary Emperor, using a Chinese ideograph for his new title which could scarce be distinguished from the title giving him final and full authority.  Here he overreached himself, for, once out, he was out for good.  On July 19th, at six o’clock in the morning, after an all-night conference, the Emperor was persuaded to abdicate.