Note 3 — Chapter IV · LIFE IN SEOUL (CONTINUED)

It is now proper to say, since his own abdication and the Convention of July, 1907, have followed, that the Korean Emperor after repeated denials, confessed at the time to a faithful foreign friend (not a Japanese) that he had given to Mr. Hulbert a large sum of money to execute a certain commission the nature of which he kept secret. In spite of this friend’s importunate urging and vivid representation of what the consequences of the act might be to himself and to his family, His Majesty refused to telegraph a recall of the commission. He did, however, so far yield to the same pleading as to agree not to furnish a further sum of money which had been asked in behalf of the influence of another “foreign friend,” the editor of the most violently anti-Japanese newspaper.