In general, it had hitherto been only the court officials themselves who much cared as to what persons were selected by the Emperor for the different high offices in Seoul itself. They, too, had been chiefly interested in the more serious question as to who it is of these officials that gets himself assassinated. The peasants and pedlers, who are the travelling merchants in the country districts, care only about the local magistrates and about the bearable amount of their “squeezes.” But under the administration of Marquis Ito assassination of officers whose character and official acts sustain such important relations to the vital interests of both Japan and Korea, cannot now be allowed its traditional impunity. Investigation into the authors and promoters of this plot, therefore, quietly began and was carried as far upward as seemed desirable or necessary. According to the _Korean Daily News_, the three Koreans—La In-yung, Aw Ki-ho, and Kim In-sik—who on April 1st “went to the Supreme Court in Seoul and gave themselves up, stating that they were the ones who had tried to kill the Minister of War,” “seem to have been actuated by no selfish impulses.” The same paper calls attention to the claim that the plan was to kill all the five Cabinet Ministers “who signed the last treaty with Japan”; and also to the fact that these same men had been to Japan to memorialize the Japanese Emperor with reference to the condition of Korea under the protectorate of the empire whose head was His Majesty himself. This is as far as the paper cared to go at this time in apologizing for the attempt at wholesale murder; but there is no doubt that the attempt itself was not at all displeasing to the court officials of the other party than the one in power or to the people generally.