other cases, the persons engaged to oversee the projected enterprises have been notoriously incompetent, and the whole affair has smacked largely of fraud from beginning to end. It would require too much space to recount the various undertakings of a public nature which have been attempted and have ignominiously failed. The result has been monotonously the same in every instance—namely, the payment by the Korean Government of large sums of money for useless material and for services never rendered. Another source of heavy loss has been the contracts made on behalf of the Government for all sorts of things—rice that was never needed, arms and ammunition which were worthless, railroad material which was never delivered, and so on through the long list of wasteful expenditure of the public funds. It is something hardly capable of direct proof, but there is no reasonable doubt that almost every one of these enterprises had its inspiration in the desire for illicit gain by one or another of the officials interested. The explanation of the foreigners interested may be summed up in the phrase, “that is the way business is done in Korea.” The Empire has been the happy hunting-ground for the foreign business man not over-scrupulous as to the methods by which money was to be made. Equally it has held out golden opportunities to the promoter and hunter for “concessions.” This does not include those foreigners who are willing to take the chances of success and the pecuniary risks inseparable from enterprises like mining, for example, but that other class of promoters who desire to get something for nothing, and then sell it to others. The gentlemen who have so much to say about “enlisting foreign capital” in the development of Korea’s resources will generally be found upon investigation to be prepared only to “enlist” some one else’s capital. The promoter has his uses, no doubt, and, as a pioneer in new fields, unquestionably accomplishes good in some cases. Unfortunately, in Korea the results of his activities can hardly be classed in this category.... Especially is this true of those enterprises with which His Majesty has been most prominently identified as an investor. As before said, they have invariably resulted in heavy losses to the privy purse. Various explanations have been given for this, but the fact remains and cannot be disputed. Others have prospered, but so far as His Majesty is concerned, the balance has always been on the debit side of the ledger.