Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/178

 strong and upright man in Seoul, and never had a Japanese minister in Seoul opportunity for greater distinction. There are those who believe that he despaired of accomplishing anything so long as the two opposing factions in Seoul were led by personalities so strong and so implacable in their mutual hatred as the Queen and the ex-regent. It is not unlikely that he felt that until one or other of these should be permanently removed from the field of action there could be no real opportunity for the renovation of Korea. This by no means implies that he desired such removal to be effected by forcible means, but it is not unnatural to suppose that he must have given expression to the conviction as to the futility of doing anything under existing conditions in the peninsula. There have been some who have believed that the Japanese authorities in Tokyo determined upon the removal of the obstacle in Seoul by any means in their power. Subsequent events gave some colour to this surmise, but we cannot and do not believe that the Japanese government was a party to the plot which ended in the tragedy of the following October, but that a fanatical and injudicious Japanese minister to Korea privately gave his sanction to an act which the Japanese government would have sternly forbidden had they been consulted.

On the first day of September Viscount Miura arrived from Japan to assume the duties of minister. Over a month had elapsed since the departure of Count Inouye. The viscount was an enthusiastic Buddhist, and evidently belonged to the old rather than the new Japan. He was, withal, a strenuous man, and is said to have considered the settlement of the Korean difficulties merely a matter of prompt and vigorous action. At the time of his arrival the ex-regent was living at his summer-house near the river, and from the very first he was in close relations with the new Japanese minister. It was quite evident that the latter had espoused the cause of the ex-regent as against the Queen, and that instead of trying to close the breach which was constantly widening between these two powerful personages he was preparing to make use of this estrangement to further what he