It must be remembered that according to the third article of the Tientsin Convention China and Japan each agreed not to send troops into Korea without first notifying the other. In this case the Chinese failed to notify the Japanese until after the departure of the troops and there can be no doubt that at this point lies the strength of Japan’s contention. When, later, the Chinese agreed to leave Korea simultaneously with the Japanese the latter naturally refused. The Chinese broke the convention first; they must leave first. But there were other important points involved. Korea was rapidly losing all semblance of independence and Japan was being jeopardized. The Chinese abrogation of the treaty gave Japan just the excuse she wanted for throwing troops into Korea and compelling those reforms which she believed could be effected in no other way. No sooner was she informed of China’s action than the Japanese Minister Otori, then on leave of absence, was recalled, and sent immediately to Seoul with 400 marines, arriving June ninth. The Chinese force did not approach the capital but landed at Asan some eighty miles south of Seoul. This force was soon augmented till it amounted to 2,000 men. But Japan was not idle. By the twelfth of June she had approximately 8,000 troops in Korea. Matters stood thus when the news came that the Tong-hak, either frightened by the rumor of the approach of a Chinese army or being pressed by the government troops, had suddenly retired and the south was at peace. This tended to hasten a crisis between the Chinese and Japanese. There was no longer any cause why foreign troops should remain in the peninsula. The Chinese had come to put down the Tong-hak and the Japanese had come ostensibly to protect their nationals. Now that the Tong-haks had retired it did not take long to discover the real reasons underlying the actions of the Japanese. On June 16th she landed 3,000 more troops at Chemulpo and matters began to look so serious in Seoul that all the Chinese residents hastened away from the city and sought safety by embarking for China. About a thousand people thus made a hasty exit from the country. On June 25th the Russian, British, French and American representatives in Seoul, in the interests of peace, jointly requested the Chinese and Japanese to simultaneously withdraw. But the Chinese refused to go until the Japanese did and the Japanese refused to go until reforms had been introduced which would clear the political atmosphere and give some semblance of truth to the fiction of Korean independence. The Korean government was thrown into consternation when on June 28th the Japanese Minister demanded a formal statement from Korea as to whether she were an independent state or not. She replied that she was an independent power.