But his heart turned to his country, and after the Japanese war and the establishment of Japanese prestige, he returned to Korea, where he became adviser to the king, and soon after started a newspaper called the “Independent,” which was printed half in English and half in the native character. Mr. So proved himself a gifted, brilliant and eloquent man, full of enthusiastic devotion to the emancipation and welfare of his country, perhaps too impatient and precipitate in trying to hasten the accomplishment of these great ends, a fault common with young and ardent patriots. Mr. So was the first president of the club, and was succeeded by Mr. Yun Chee Ho, a son of General Yun, who had led the attack on the palace for the rescue of the king. Like Mr. So, he had been for some years away from Korea, having been educated partly in China in an American Methodist Mission school, and partly under the same auspices in America. Both he and Mr. So are members of American Protestant churches. Mr. Yun, who, however, still retains his Korean citizenship, is also both a fine writer and speaker, and an enthusiastic patriot and progressionist. He afterwards succeeded Mr. So in the editorship of the “Independent.” Their following consisted quite largely of impulsive, eager young men, many of them Christians, very many of them students, and probably included the majority of the brilliant, energetic, and sincerely patriotic young men of the capital. As has been said, after Mr. Waeber’s removal and the king’s departure from the Russian legation, and a new Russian minister had arrived, Korea became more than ever subject to Russian influence. Russians swarmed in the palace, the army and the treasury were completely in their hands, and their absolute supremacy seemed only a question of a few brief weeks or months. At this time, February, 1898, the Independence Club offered a petition to the king asking the removal of all Russians from the army and government offices. The Russian minister requested the king to state his wish in this matter, and soon after, being informed in the affirmative, the Russians were all withdrawn for the time. April 12, 1898, coincident with this, Port Arthur was ceded to the Russians by Japan, a fact which it was thought by many had much to do with the retirement from Korea. It is most improbable that the action of Russia was in this case out of consideration for the preferences of Koreans. The Independence Club now grew more and more popular and held frequent loud and clamorous meetings, at which public affairs were discussed with great freedom, the wrong doings of high officials severely censured and held up to public scorn, and unpopular laws sharply criticised and bitterly inveighed against. They were full of hope and patriotism, their aim and expectation seeming to be to have all wrongs righted, all abuses done away with, and Korea remade in a day a free government and people.