Protests and petitions followed the enactment of the Treaty of November, 1905. The Emperor refused to receive the petitions or to give audience to the petitioners. And when two men, among the most sincere and blameless of his subjects—General Min Yung-whong and Mr. Choi Ik-hiun—persisted in petitioning to be punished (as would have been in accordance with Korean custom under similar circumstances) for their disobedience to the Emperor’s commands in refusing to accept the Treaty, the Emperor declined to punish them. The petitioners then transferred their efforts from the Palace to the Supreme Court, and were disappointed there also. One of them, perhaps both, undertook to punish themselves by suicide. General Min thus became the typical martyr of the period. He is described by one who knew him well as “a man of amiable character, of dignified manners, and pleasing address. He was known at one time as the ‘good Min,’ to distinguish him from the other members of the family to which the late Queen belonged.” But it has already been shown that, during the entire course of Korea’s history, such men have almost always been without sufficient influence, or strength of character, to serve their country well and escape death—usually, at the hands of the Emperor or their rivals, sometimes, however, by their own hands. For a time the air was full of rumors of suicide and uprisings; but in fact there was little of anything of the kind, even in Seoul; the stories of wholesale suicides are false. Beyond Seoul, and outside of a few of the larger towns in which greater numbers of the Yang-bans resided, there was scarcely any excitement of any kind. The Treaty then went into effect, on the whole quietly, under Marquis Ito who had negotiated it as the Representative of Japan. In this way the Japanese Government in Korea was substituted for the Korean Government in all matters affecting the relations of foreign countries, and their nationals, to the peninsula. The retirement of the Foreign Legations followed logically and as a matter of course. It is needless to say that this change of responsibility for the conduct of these relations was accepted without dissent or formal protest from the Governments of the civilized world. Indeed, with the exception of Russia, all the nations supremely interested had acknowledged already that, under the Protocols of 1904, Korea had lost its claim to be recognized as an independent state in respect of its foreign affairs. CHAPTER XII RULERS AND PEOPLE