The year 1894 marked the greatest crisis in Korean history since the seventh century, when the kingdom of Silla gained control of the whole peninsula. Considering the fact that so many of the old abuses survived after the year 1894, the above statement may seem extreme but the facts of the case warrant it. From the early years of the Christian era Korea had been moulded by Chinese ideas and had been dominated by her influence. There was no time from the very first when Korea did not consider China her suzerain. In a sense this was natural and right. Korea had received from China an immense number of the products of civilization. Literature, art, science, government, religion—they had all been practically borrowed from China. It is a thing to be marvelled at that Korea through all these centuries has preserved any semblance of individualism. She never would have done so if there had not been a radical and ineffacable difference between the Chinese and the Korean which no amount of moulding could remove. Never once during all those centuries did Korea attempt or desire to throw off the garment of her vassalage. And even in this crisis of 1894 it was not thrown off through any wish of the Korean government or people but only through hard necessity. There had been no radical change in the mental attitude of the great mass of Koreans which demanded the severing of the tie which bound them to China and even at this year of grace 1904, there is every reason to believe that a great majority of Koreans would elect to go back under the mild and almost nominal control of China. The change is not one of attitude on the part of the Korean but it is the fact that the war proved to the world the supineness of China and made it forever impossible to revive her claim to suzerainty over Korea or even, it is to be feared, to hold together her own unwieldy bulk. The outward influence of China upon Korea has ceased and other influences have been at work which are slowly drawing her away from her servile obedience to Chinese ideals. This was the first necessary step to the final emancipation of Korea and her national regeneration. It should be carefully noted that from the earliest centuries the Chinese implanted in the Korean no genuine seed of civilization and progress but simply unloaded upon her some finished products of her civilization. These the Koreans swallowed whole without question, unmindful of the fact that by far the greater part of them were wholly unsuited to the Korean temperament. The result was that as time went on these Chinese impositions were overlaid with a pure Korean product just as the little leaden Buddhas that are thrust into the shell of the pearl oyster become coated over with mother-o’pearl. Buddhism came from China but Korea has so mingled with it her native fetichism and animism that it is something radically different from the original stock.