The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [5]
Of the major powers, China had by far the greatest influence and was the most acceptable to Koreans. Like many others on the rim of the Middle Kingdom, the Korean kings embraced Chinese culture, paid tribute to the Chinese emperor, and received recognition and a degree of protection in return. When unified Japan began its major expansion in the sixteenth century, its leader Hideyoshi Toyotomi attacked Korea as the first phase of an invasion of the Chinese mainland. The Korean navy under Admiral Yi Sun Sin fought back with an early class of ironclad warships, known as turtle ships, which inflicted severe losses on the Japanese. Eventually the Japanese were driven out, but only after laying waste to the land, thus setting a lasting pattern of enmity.
In the wake of the Japanese invasion and a subsequent invasion by the Manchus, who were soon to take power in China, Korea established a rigid policy of excluding foreigners, except for the Chinese and a small Japanese enclave that had been established at the southern port of Pusan. The imperial rulers of the Hermit Kingdom, as it was often called, created a governmental and social system modeled on Chinese Confucianism, with strictly regulated relations between ruler and subject, father and son, and husband and wife.
Korea's isolation ended in the mid-nineteenth-century age of imperialism, when major powers, including the United States, European countries, and Japan, sent warships forcibly to open the country to trade. In 1882, as a defensive measure against its neighbors, Korea signed a "Treaty of Amity and Commerce" with the United States, its first with a Western power, in which the United States promised to provide "good offices" in the event of external threat. It was reported that the Korean king danced with joy when the first American minister to Korea arrived. Among the treaties that followed shortly was one with czarist Russia, which had recognized the importance of the strategic peninsula and would soon begin building the Trans-Siberian Railway. The Russian foreign minister, Count Vladimir Lamsdorff, would later write, "Korea's destiny as a component part of the Russian empire, on geographical and political grounds, had been foreordained for us to fulfill."
In 1902, Japan carved out a strong position for itself by entering into an alliance with Britain, the most important European power in the area. Japan recognized British interests in China in return for British recognition of Japanese special interests in Korea. Sensing the weakness along the rim of the Chinese mainland, Russia began mov ing forces into Korea and immediately came into conflict with Japan. In an attempt to head off a clash, Japan proposed that the two countries carve up Korea into spheres of influence, with the dividing line at the thirty-eighth parallel-the same line chosen by the United States for the division of Korea after World War II. Russia's refusal to accept this and other proposed compromises led eventually to the Russo-Japanese war of 1904. Japan's surprise victory, its first over a Western power, put the Japanese in a powerful position to dominate Korea.
In 1905, in what many Koreans consider their first betrayal by the United States, Secretary of War (later President) William Howard Taft approved Japan's domination of Korea in a secret agreement with the Japanese foreign minister, in return for assurances that Tokyo would not challenge U.S. colonial domination of the Philippines. Later the same year, Japan's paramount political, military, and economic interests in Korea were codified in the Treaty of Portsmouth (New Hampshire), in which President Theodore Roosevelt played peacemaker and dealmaker between Japan and Russia, and for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. With no opposition