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178 Japanese authorities. There is a Japanese Consul-General in Fusan, who administers Japanese law to some fourteen thousand of his fellow countrymen. Half of this number is comprised in the floating population, whose sole business is fishing. The valuable fisheries lying off the coast and in the adjacent archipelago return an annual yield of ten million herring and half a million cod. Altogether, the bustle and confusion of the place supports its claim to be the most important of the treaty ports of Korea, in spite of the neglect with which British merchants treat it. The actual Japanese population of the Fusan settlement in 1901 was seven thousand and fourteen, an increase of more than one thousand upon the returns of the previous year—six thousand and four. Since then there has been a further increase, and the population at the present time falls little short of nine thousand.

The activity of the Japanese in the open ports of Korea does not correspond in any way to the size of the port. Whatever may be the local conditions, there is no falling-off in their untiring enterprise. If the port has been established ten or twenty years, or only one, their commercial vigour is the same. After the settlements of Won-san, Fusan, and Chemulpo, a visit to the port of Mok-po, declared open in the autumn of 1897, fails to elicit much which is new or important. Mok-po is very small. To those who are interested in the subject, it gives an excellent example of the cool, resolute manner in which the Japanese build up a very flourishing settlement upon the foundations of an unprepossessing native village. The pioneers of the ports in Korea, it is natural that they should select the best available sites for their own quarter. At Mok-po, repeating a system which was adopted in the case of Fusan, Won-san, and