It is, then, no cause for surprise that a recent writer[55] affirms: “If it seems a hopeless task to lift the Chinaman out of his groove, it is a hundred times more difficult to change the habits of a Korean.... The Korean has absolutely nothing to recommend him save his good nature. He is a standing warning to those who oppose progress. Some one has said that the answer to Confucianism is China; but the best and most completely damning answer is Korea.” Can Korea—such a people, with such rulers—be reformed and redeemed? Can her rulers be made to rule at least in some semblance of righteousness, as preparatory to its more perfect and substantial form? Can the people learn to prize order, to obey law, and to respect human rights? Probably, yes; but certainly never without help from the outside. And this help must be something more than the missionary can give. It must lay foundations of industrial, judicial, and governmental reform: it must also enforce them. Such political disease does not, if left alone, perfect its own cure. The knife of the surgeon is first of all needed; the tonic of the physician and the nourishment of good food and the bracing of a purer air come afterward. We cannot, therefore, agree with the small body of Christian workmen—now, happily, a minority—who try to believe that the needed redemption of Korea could be effected by their unaided forces. A union of law, enforced by police and military, with the spiritual influences of education and religion, is alone available in so desperate a case as that of Korea to-day. It is to the task of a political reformation and education for both rulers and people in Korea that Japan stands committed before the world at the present time. As represented by the Marquis Ito, she has undertaken this task with a good conscience and with a reasonable amount of hope. Among the administrative reforms in Korea[56] one of the most important is the “Purification of the Imperial Court.” This “singular operation the Resident-General caused to be resolutely carried out in July, 1906.” At that time “men and women of uncertain origin and questionable character ... had, in a considerable number, come to find their way into the royal palace, until it had become a veritable _rendezvous_ of adventurers and conspirators. Divining, fortune-telling and spirit-incanting found favor there, and knaves and villains plotted and intrigued within the very gates of the Court, in co-operation with native and foreign schemers without. By cheating and chicanery, they relieved the Imperial treasury of its funds, and in their eagerness to fill their pockets never stopped to think of what dangerous seeds of disorder and rapine they were scattering broadcast over the benighted peninsula.”