The Annexation of Korea — The Loss of Sovereignty

Last time, we saw two wars come to a close — the First Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War. With Qing China withdrawn and Russia withdrawn, the initiative on the peninsula tilted steadily toward Japan. Yet between ‘holding the initiative’ and ‘seizing sovereignty,’ a wide gulf still remained. What we follow in this installment is the process by which that gulf was bridged over little more than five years, and a single state — the Korean Empire — vanished from the map. This is among the most sharply contested subjects in the whole series. For that very reason, we will lay out the events that happened as calmly as we can, while setting out multiple views, side by side, on how to interpret them.

The Day Diplomatic Rights Passed — The 1905 Protectorate Treaty

The story begins with the agreement of November 1905. By this arrangement — the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1905, also called the Eulsa Treaty after the sexagenary name of the year in which it was signed — the Korean Empire could no longer conduct its own foreign affairs, and its dealings abroad were said to pass through Japan. In Hanseong (present-day Seoul), a Residency-General was established to manage these affairs, and Ito Hirobumi became its first Resident-General.

This agreement has long been contested at the very level of how it came to be concluded. Japanese records have positioned it as a treaty that took effect through the prescribed procedures, while on the Korean side, voices arguing that it was an invalid arrangement — lacking the emperor’s formal ratification and forced upon the country under military pressure — have persisted strongly to this day. It is known that even repeated joint examinations by historians of both countries have failed to bring their assessments into agreement, and the dispute over how to read the historical sources remains unsettled.

Yet one thing can be confirmed across positions: that the people of the peninsula at the time were deeply shaken. That a high official took his own life in protest against the agreement, that protests in which shops closed their doors arose in many places, and that the movement of righteous armies resisting Japanese control spread — these are matters conveyed by multiple records. The people seem to have grasped, keenly, the weight of having one of the pillars by which a state is a state — the right of diplomacy — pulled out from under them.

Emissaries and Assassination — The Shapes of Resistance

The peninsula did not simply submit in silence to the stripping away of its sovereignty. In 1907, Emperor Gojong of the Korean Empire sent secret emissaries to the international peace conference held at The Hague in the Netherlands, seeking to appeal to the international community over the plight of having his country’s diplomatic rights taken by the protectorate treaty. But the emissaries were not permitted to take part in the conference, and the powers declined to involve themselves in the matter. As a result, this event is said to have worked, if anything, to win international acquiescence to Japanese control of the peninsula, and Gojong, held responsible, is said to have been forced to abdicate. The Japan–Korea Treaty of 1907 that followed shifted yet more of the domestic governing power to the Japanese side.

Resistance soon took fiercer shapes as well. In October 1909, Ito Hirobumi, who had stepped down as the first Resident-General, was shot dead by An Jung-geun at Harbin Station in Manchuria. An Jung-geun is said to have committed the act regarding Ito as a man who had disturbed the peace of East Asia, and he is also known for having written ‘On Peace in East Asia’ in prison afterward. The view that esteems him as a patriot who threw himself into the cause of independence, and the view that condemns the act as the assassination of a dignitary — an act of terror — remain sharply opposed to this day. Here too, rather than passing judgment on one side or the other, we wish to keep on record the very fact that two assessments stand side by side.

It is sometimes said as though Ito’s assassination brought about the annexation, but in the light of the sources that is not accurate. The policy of annexing the peninsula is said to have been settled in a cabinet decision of the Japanese government by the middle of 1909, before the assassination. Ito himself is said to have originally favored a gradualist line — governing as a protectorate rather than annexing at once — and there is a view that his absence accelerated the shift toward a harder line. Even over a single assassination, the reckoning of cause and effect is not uniform.

1910, A State Vanished — How to View the Annexation

And so, in August 1910, the Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty was concluded, and the Korean Empire is said to have been annexed by Japan. The Government-General of Chosen was placed in Hanseong, and the peninsula came under Japanese rule. The history of a dynasty and of an empire here drew, for the time being, to a close.

How are we to view this annexation? The assessment is perhaps the most violently divided subject in the whole series. On one side is the view that positions it as a legal treaty concluded under the international law of the time, one that also brought an aspect of modern governance to a peninsula in disorder. On the other are voices arguing that it was forced through — after a accumulation of military pressure and the stripping of diplomatic rights had taken away any real freedom of choice — and that its legitimacy cannot be recognized. The validity of the treaty’s procedures, the assessment of the international law of the time, how far the will of the peninsula’s people was reflected — on each of these points, no settlement has been reached among the specialists.

Sovereignty — that hard-to-see but decisive thing — was lost over a little more than five years, bit by bit, and then decisively. Diplomatic rights passed away, domestic governing power shrank, and at last the state itself vanished from the map. Into that process were folded, layer upon layer, the resistance of the peninsula’s people, the dynamics among great powers, and a treaty whose assessment remains unsettled.

And so the Korean Empire passed from view, and the peninsula was pushed out into a new age. What begins next is the long years of rule by the Government-General of Chosen. There, the modern trappings of railways and schools, and the realities of rule such as assimilation policy and mobilization, dwelt together inseparably. Over how to view the light and the shadow, the assessments would cross more fiercely still.