A casual reading of these agreements will show how far the Japanese Government had receded from the position she originally took in regard to Korea. Ever since Japan concluded her treaty with Korea in 1876,[509] which for the first time established the international position of the latter State as a sovereign Power, Japan’s policy had been to uphold the independence and the opening of the Peninsular Kingdom. From the strict terms of this policy, Japan has allowed herself to depart twice,—in her agreements, first, with China in 1885, and, again, with Russia in 1896,—not by forsaking its principles, but in each case by entering, in the pursuit of the policy, into an impossible association with an aggressive Power. In each of the two instances the attempt failed within a decade, and resulted in hostilities. In 1885, Japan and China simultaneously withdrew their forces from Korea, and thereby cleared the ground for the renewed conflict of their opposing interests, which were artificially placed on a par with one another. In 1896, Japan admitted Russia’s right to build a telegraph line in North Korea which should correspond to the Japanese line in the south, and to station in Korea a number of troops equal to that of the Japanese soldiers. Despite the millenniums of her historic relations with Korea, and the actual preponderance of her interests therein, and after her successful liberation of the Kingdom from Chinese suzerainty by a costly war, Japan, now admitted into the Peninsular politics on an equal footing with herself a Power which owed its bright success to a mere diplomacy of less than two years’ standing, and whose policy seemed to be guided by principles entirely at variance with the independence and strength of Korea. At the coronation of the Czar, Korea was represented by an influential, pro-Russian member of the Min family. It was then rumored that he concluded with the Russian Government a secret agreement by which Korea undertook to employ Russian military instructors and financial councilors. However that may be, the Russian Representatives at Seul are said to have since appealed more than once to the “secret agreement” in their attempts to force the engagement of Russian service upon the Korean Government.[510] If these reports were true, no better proof of the light estimate with which Russia from the first regarded the Yamagata-Lobanoff Protocol could be found than her alleged agreement with Min Yong-hwan, for the latter was a direct reversal of the first two Articles of the former. Russia may be credited with having succeeded, by her separate and mutually contradictory arrangements with Min, Yamagata, and Li Hung-chang,[511] in simultaneously bringing the three Eastern Powers to terms.