The affair would have been more quickly forgotten but for the overbearing attitude of Japanese settlers towards the Korean people, and of Japanese Ministers towards the Korean Government.  Officially they advanced claims so unjust that they aroused the protest of other foreigners.  The attitude of the Japanese settlers was summed up by Lord (then the Hon. G.N.) Curzon, the famous British statesman, after a visit in the early nineties.  “The race hatred between Koreans and Japanese,” he wrote, “is the most striking phenomenon in contemporary Chosen.  Civil and obliging in their own country, the Japanese develop in Korea a faculty for bullying and bluster that is the result partly of nation vanity, partly of memories of the past.  The lower orders ill-treat the Koreans on every possible opportunity, and are cordially detested by them in return."[1]

[Footnote 1:  “Problems of the Far East,” London, 1894.]

The old Regent returned from China in 1885, to find his power largely gone, at least so far as the Court was concerned.  But he still had friends and adherents scattered all over the country.  Furious with the Chinese for his arrest and imprisonment, he threw himself into the arms of the Japanese.  They found in him a very useful instrument.

Korea has for centuries been a land of secret societies.  A new society now sprang up, and spread with amazing rapidity, the Tong-haks.  It was anti-foreign and anti-Christian, and Europeans were at first inclined to regard it in the same light as Europeans in China later on regarded the Boxers.  But looking back at it to-day it is impossible to deny that there was much honest patriotism behind the movement.  It was not unnatural that a new departure, such as the introduction of Europeans and European civilization should arouse some ferment.  In a sense, it would not have been healthy if it had not done so.  The people who would accept a vital revolution in their life and ways without critical examination would not be worth much.

Few of the Tong-haks had any idea that their movement was being organized under Japanese influences.  It did not suit Japan that Korea should develop independently and too rapidly.  Disturbances would help to keep her back.

When the moment was ripe, Japan set her puppets to work.  The Tong-haks were suddenly found to be possessed of arms, and some of their units were trained and showed remarkable military efficiency.  Their avowed purpose was to drive all foreigners, including the Japanese, out of the country; but this was mere camouflage.  The real purpose was to provoke China to send troops to Korea, and so give Japan an excuse for war.

The Japanese had secured an agreement from China in 1885 that both countries should withdraw their troops from Korea and should send no more there without informing and giving notice to the other.  When the Tong-haks, thirty thousand in number, came within a hundred miles of Seoul, and actually defeated a small Korean force led by Chinese, Yuan Shih-kai saw that something must be done.  If the rebels were allowed to reach and capture the capital, Japan would have an excuse for intervention.  He induced the King to ask for Chinese troops to come and put down the uprising; and as required by the regulations, due notice of their coming was sent to Japan.