Korea-Japan Protocol

The history of Japan’s aggression against Korea records the Korea-Japan Protocol signed on February 23, 1904.

At a meeting held in December 1903, the Japanese Cabinet passed a decision that reads in part, “It would be most convenient to conclude a treaty on protectorate as we cannot but put it (the feudal Joson dynasty) under our control by force in any case, as well as it would be a best method to choose a plausible reason.”

This shows that Japan regarded it as a fait accompli to put Korea under its military occupation, and schemed to disguise it with a “diplomatic document” for form’s sake.

Japan persistently forced the feudal Joson government to sign the Korea-Japan Protocol by resorting to all sorts of threats and blackmail for months. However, its shameless attempt met with a strong opposition of the Joson government.

Japan’s hastening of the signing of the “protocol” was related to a violent competition between big powers to control Korea at that time.

In order not to lose the competition, it did not hesitate to mobilize means of violence. As its diplomatic blackmail failed, it unleashed the Russo-Japanese War.

In early February 1904, it informed Tsarist Russia severance of its diplomatic relations with the latter, and issued an order for moving to the previously-organized advance party of its armed forces.

The advance party landed on Inchon and straightly set foot in Hansong (Seoul).

The Japanese aggressor forces fully revealed their true colours from the beginning of their invasion of Korea. They turned Korea into a theatre of blood by further intensifying their threatening military actions.

Maechonyarok (a book of historical facts from 1864 to 1910) reveals the news of that time as follows:

“The Japanese army that arrived in Hansong from Inchon consisted of 50 000 soldiers with over 10 000 horses, occupying the Imperial Palace, government offices and even ordinary houses. In the southern part it marched to Taegu via Tongrae; from the South Sea to Namwon and to Jonju via Kunsan; in the west to Pyongyang and Samhwa; in the north to Wonsan and Songjin. It advanced gradually with the distance of tens of kilometres among one another.”

After creating such a situation, the Japanese imperialists resorted more persistently to their moves to fabricate the Korea-Japan Protocol.

In a word, it was a brigandish crime reminiscent of a military operation.

First of all, it ensured that the aggressor forces sealed off the Royal Palace on the plea of protecting the Imperial Palace and the territory, completely checking Emperor Kojong from escaping as a protest against signing the protocol.

As its attempt to fabricate the protocol was faced with a stubborn resistance of the Korean government officials, the Japanese aggressor troops staged arrests of “opposition forces,” even kidnapping some of them at midnight and sending them to Japan.

And it signed the Korea-Japan Protocol, sitting face to face with pro-Japanese traitors of Korea.

As seen above, the Korea-Japan Protocol was a fraudulent and aggressive document concocted by means of military threats and blackmail of Japan from A to Z.

Later, in 1905, Japan finally forced the Ulsa Five-point Treaty on the feudal Korean government, depriving Korea of its diplomatic rights and enforcing barbarous colonial rule over it.

The aggressive nature of Japan has not changed as yet.

In last December, the Japanese government adopted three security-related documents including the new state security strategy, and made public measures for increasing defence expenditure accordingly. Japan has thus cast off the veil of the “pacifist state” that all its successive governments had put forward even though externally after the Second World War, and removed the “exclusive defensive security system,” a brake gear for form’s sake, running headlong for its reinvasion. The repetition of its bloody crimes of aggression in the past will never be tolerated.

The Korean people, always remembering the thrice-cursed crimes committed by imperialist Japan, are hardening their will to settle accounts with their pent-up grudges against their centuries-old enemy state.

Ham Kwang Hyok