Among the many embarrassments encountered by Marquis Ito as Japanese Resident-General in his efforts to reform and elevate Korea, there is perhaps no one more persistent and hard to overcome than the charges of fraud and violence made against his own countrymen. These charges come from various sources and are promulgated in a variety of ways. Sometimes they take the form of a book—as, for example, Mr. Hulbert’s “Passing of Korea.” For months the _Korean Daily News_, under the editorship of Mr. Bethell, in both its native and its English editions, filled its daily columns with complaints, wearisomely reiterated after they had been repeatedly disproved, or made anew on insufficient grounds and even without any trustworthy evidence whatever. In scarcely less degree, the same thing has been true of certain English papers printed outside of Korea, especially in China. More effective still in producing an impression abroad, but not more trustworthy, have been the published letters of many travellers and newspaper correspondents. Conspicuous among the latter class was the letter of Mr. William T. Ellis to the New York _Tri-Weekly Tribune_, in which it was stated that, under the then existing Japanese Government, “robbery, abuse, oppression, injustice, and even murder are the lot of the Korean common people.”[81] Most deplorable[82] of all are the hasty and inconsiderate charges believed on exaggerated or wholly false accounts of the Koreans themselves, and propagated by the relatively small body of missionaries who have remained—for reasons to be considered subsequently—in an attitude of open or secret hostility to the Japanese Protectorate.