This was what Japan wanted.  She poured troops over the channel until there were 10,000 in the capital Then she showed her hand.  The Japanese Minister, Mr. Otori, brusquely demanded of the King that he should renounce Chinese suzerainty.  The Koreans tried evasion.  The Japanese pressed their point, and further demanded wholesale concessions, railway rights and a monopoly of gold mining in Korea.  A few days later, confident that Europe would not intervene, they commanded the King to accept their demand unconditionally, and to give the Chinese troops three days’ notice to withdraw from the land.  The King refused to do anything while the Japanese troops menaced his capital.

The declaration of war between Japan and China followed.  The first incident was the blowing up by the Japanese of a Chinese transport carrying 1,200 men to Korea.  The main naval battle was in the Yalu, between Korea and Manchuria, and the main land fight, in which the Chinese Army was destroyed, in Pyeng-yang, the main Korean city to the north.  The war began on July 25, 1894; the Treaty of Peace, which made Japan the supreme power in the Extreme East, was signed at Shimonoseki on April 17, 1895.

Before fighting actually began, the Japanese took possession of Seoul, and seized the palace on some trumpery excuse that Korean soldiers had fired on them and they had therefore been obliged to enter and guard the royal apartments.  They wanted to make their old friend and ally the ex-Regent, the actual ruler, as he had been in the King’s minority but he did not care to take responsibility.  Japanese soldiers turned the King out of his best rooms and occupied them themselves.  Any hole was good enough for the King.  Finally they compelled the King to yield and follow their directions.  A new treaty was drawn up and signed.  It provided

1.  That the independence of Korea was declared, confirmed, and established, and in keeping with it the Chinese troops were to be driven out of the country.

2.  That while war against China was being carried on by Japan, Korea was to facilitate the movements and to help in the food supplies of the Japanese troops in every possible way.

3.  That this treaty should only last until the conclusion of peace with China.

Japan at once created an assembly, in the name of the King, for the “discussion of everything, great and small, that happened within the realm.”  This assembly at first met daily, and afterwards at longer intervals.  There were soon no less than fifty Japanese advisers at work in Seoul.  They were men of little experience and less responsibility, and they apparently thought that they were going to transform the land between the rising and setting of the sun.  They produced endless ordinances, and scarce a day went by save that a number of new regulations were issued, some trivial, some striking at the oldest and most cherished institutions in the country.  The Government was changed from an absolute