What that purpose was, was well concealed under color of giving efficient protection to Japanese subjects in Korea, who were said to be imperilled by the successes of the Tong-haks. The rebellion in southern Korea was exciting much alarm in the capital. Such movements, though on a smaller scale, are annual spring events in the peninsula, when in one or other of the provinces the peasantry, driven to exasperation by official extortions, rise, and, with more or less violence (occasionally fatal), drive out the offending mandarin. Punishment rarely ensues. The King sends a new official, who squeezes and extorts in his turn with more or less vigor, until, if he also passes bearable limits, he is forcibly expelled, and things settle down once more. This Tong-hak (“Oriental” or “National”) movement, though lost sight of in presence of more important issues, was of greater moment, as being organized on a broader basis, so as to include a great number of adherents in Seoul and the other cities, and with such definite and reasonable objects that at first I was inclined to call its leaders “armed reformers” rather than “rebels.” At that time there was no question as to the Royal authority. The Tong-hak proclamation began by declaring in respectful language loyal allegiance to the King, and went on to state the grievances in very moderate terms. The Tong-haks asserted, and with undoubted truth, that officials in Korea, for their own purposes, closed the eyes and ears of the King to all news and reports of the wrongs inflicted on his people. That ministers of State, governors, and magistrates were all indifferent to the welfare of their country, and were bent only on enriching themselves, and that there were no checks on their rapacity. That examinations (the only avenues to official life) were nothing more than scenes of bribery, barter, and sale, and were no longer tests of fitness for civil appointment. That officials cared not for the debt into which the country was fast sinking. That “they were proud, vainglorious, adulterous, avaricious.” That many officials receiving appointments in the country lived in Seoul. That “they flatter and fawn in peace, and desert and betray in times of trouble.”