The Japanese saw with impatience the slowness of the Koreans to take advantage of their opportunity and it was this impatience which spoiled the whole thing. If the Japanese could have realized the mental and traditional standpoint of the Koreans at that time and could have exercised tact and large patience the outcome might have been very different, but the truth is that the Japanese were as unable to understand the Koreans as the Koreans were to understand them. There were a few Koreans who seem to have taken hold of the problem in the same spirit as the Japanese but they were in such a hopeless minority and they were so far ahead of their time that the Japanese made a damaging mistake in forsaking the ruling faction and pinning their faith to these few progressives. Of course the ideas of these progressives were excellent. What they proposed would have been for the good of the country, but they had no public sentiment behind them and their views were so radical as to bar them from the field of practical politics. It is not good statesmanship to attempt what is better than the best thing possible, and the mistake the Japanese made at that critical point was in supposing that the Korean people would fall in with a radical progressive policy. The result was seen in 1884 when, throwing over diplomacy, they assisted the Korean radicals in a sanguinary _emeute_ in which seven cold-blooded murders proved the quality of the would-be reformers. Here we see a second case in which a diplomatic failure was tided over by military force. But even so they did not succeed, for the Chinese, who were on the scene and who had been making high bids for the Queen’s favor by kidnapping the Regent and carrying him away to China, were in greater force than the Japanese and virtually forced their retirement. Up to this time people had not greatly favored either the Chinese or Japanese influence but if anything were inclined toward the latter. But now the ruling faction turned wholly toward China and with it went the mass of the people. The common people did not understand nor appreciate the ideals of the progressives, and the death of seven government ministers effectually weaned away what little fealty they had given to the progressive cause.