in the following significant way: “It was organized in April, 1898, as a token of the sincere sympathy for the lack of a sound educational basis in Korea, with the view of giving a thorough elementary course of instruction to Korean youths, and ‘thus aiming to form a true foundation of the undisputed independence of that country.’” In further proof of the undoubted fact that the reforms of 1894 had accomplished little in Seoul itself, and almost nothing at all in Korea outside of the capital, we may appeal again to the testimony of the writer in the _Korean Review_: “We do not see,” says this writer, “how the government can be made to realize the importance of this work. When no protest is made against the appropriation of a paltry $60,000 a year for education as compared with $4,000,000 for the Korean army, there is little use in expecting a change in the near future. The government could do nothing better than reverse these figures; but the age of miracles is past.” “Before suggesting a possible solution of the question,” this writer goes on to say, “we should note with care what is at present being done to provide young men with an education. There are the seven or eight primary schools in Seoul with a possible attendance of forty boys each. This means a good deal less than 500 boys in this city of over 200,000 people, including the immediate suburbs. At the least estimate there ought to be 6,000 boys in school between the ages of ten and sixteen. Practically nothing is being done. As for intermediate education there is a Middle School, with a corps of eight teachers and an average attendance of about thirty boys. The building, the apparatus, and the teaching staff would suffice for about four hundred pupils. There are several foreign language schools, with an attendance of anywhere from twenty to eighty each, and they are fairly successful.... Then there are the several private schools, almost every one of which is in a languishing condition. A Korean will start a private school on the least provocation. It runs a few months and then closes, nobody being the wiser, though some be sadder. When we come to reckon up the number of young Koreans who are pursuing a course of instruction along modern lines, we find that they represent a fraction of less than one per cent. of the men who ought to attend, and might easily be doing so.” Such was then the condition of the public education in Korea even down until after the beginning of the Russo-Japanese war, or in November of 1904.