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The question of telegraphic connection brought Japan into direct antagonism with China in Corea. Since March, 1883, there had existed a secret treaty between Japan and Corea concerning the submarine cable between Nagasaki and Fusan, according to which the Corean Government was for twenty years bound to employ this line and no other for all telegraphic communications between Seoul and abroad, and not to sanction the establishment of direct communication by land with neighbouring countries. The cable was completed the following year by means of a special arrangement between the Japanese Government and the Shanghai branch office of the Great Northern Telegraph Company. But in July, 1885, En-sei-gai succeeded in inducing the Corean Government to sign a treaty which gave China right to extend her Shanghai-Tientsin line through Gishin (Wiju, in the North of Corea) to Seoul, and control it for twenty-five years. As there existed no telegraph line between Seoul and Fusan at that time, all telegraphic communications with the foreign countries came to be made by this new Chinese line, in violation of the secret treaty with Japan. Japan, of course, remonstrated with Corea, but her reply was that she never allowed China to connect the Chinese line with Seoul, but only agreed to her connecting it with an insignificant village on the other side of a rivulet flowing outside the limits of Seoul. What a subtlety! Japan now demanded from Corea permission to establish the Seoul-Fusan line, in order at least to bring the Fusan-Nagasaki cable into direct connection with Seoul; but Corea refused this, and, on the pretext of building the line herself, gave the right to China, who completed the line and worked it under Chinese control from 1888 (till the right was transferred to Japan during the war of 1894–1895).

In 1889 the so-called anti-corn affair embittered the feeling between Japan and Corea still more. The Governors of the two Corean provinces adjacent to China suddenly prohibited the export of rice, and caused great loss to the Japanese rice importers. As this was in distinct violation of the Ninth Article of the Treaty of Kokwa, 1876, the Japanese Government remonstrated with the Corean Minister of Foreign Affairs, but without success, for five years, during which several of the rice importers were ruined. In 1893 the Japanese Government made Oishi, one of the young politicians of the popular party, Minister in Seoul, and gave him a free hand to deal with the Corean Government as best he might. Oishi threatened them with breaking off of relations, and succeeded in obtaining an indemnity of 110,000 yen out of the 140,000 demanded. All through the years of tension China was believed to be backing Corea, for the prohibition of the export of rice is a