In spite of the favorable signs that appeared during the early months of 1896 and the hopes which were entertained that an era of genuine reform had been entered upon, the coming of summer began to reveal the hollowness of such hopes. The King himself was strongly conservative and never looked with favor upon administrative changes which tended to weaken his personal hold upon the finances of the country and he chafed under the new order of things. In this he was encouraged by many of the leading officials, who saw in the establishment of liberal institutions the end of their opportunities for personal power and aggrandisement. The old order of things appealed to them too strongly and it became evident that the government was rapidly lapsing into its former condition of arbitrary and partisan control. Open and violent opposition to such harmless innovations as the wearing of foreign uniforms by the students of Foreign Language Schools indicated too plainly the tendency of the time and the Russian authorities did nothing to influence His Majesty in the right direction. Judging from subsequent events it was not Russia’s policy to see an enlightened administration in Seoul. The political plans of that Power could be better advanced by a return to the _status ante quo_. The act of the government in substituting an Independence Arch in place of the former gate, outside the West Gate, which commemorated Chinese suzerainty, was looked upon, and rightly, by the more thoughtful as being merely a superficial demonstration which was based upon no deeper desire than that of being free from all control or restraint except such as personal inclination should dictate. The current was setting toward a concentration of power rather than toward a healthful distribution of it, and thus those who had hailed the vision of a new and rejuvenated state were compelled to confess that it was but a mirage. Pressure was brought to bear upon the court to remove from the Russian Legation, and it was high time that such a move be made. As a matter of urgent necessity it was considered a not too great sacrifice of dignity to go to the Legation but to make it a permanent residence was out of the question. The King was determined however, not to go back to the palace from which he had fled. It held too many gruesome memories. It was decided to build the Myŭng-ye Palace in the midst of the Foreign Quarter with Legations on three sides of it. The site selected was the same as that which King Sŭn-jo used in 1593 when he returned from his flight to the north before the armies of Hideyoshi. He had lived here for some fourteen years while the Chang-dok Palace was building. The present King however intended it as a permanent residence, and building operations were begun on a large scale, but it was not until February of the following year that His Majesty finally removed from the Russian Legation to his new palace.