AHC: USA (with others possibly) prevents Japanese annexation/vassalization of Korea?

raharris1973

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One staple of left-leaning nationalist propaganda in Korea (the South as much as the North) is that the US "sold out" Korea to be dominated and annexed by Japan in the early 20th century. This creates an even older justification for Korean anti-Americanism than the usual narrative that blames the US, but not the USSR, for the division of Korea.

I was always irritated by this type of argument. It struck me as tendentious and disingenuous. It also struck me as anachronistic, acting like the U.S. at the dawn of the 20th century had the type of powers and responsibilities of the post-WWII superpower U.S., when that was far from the case.

In OTL the Taft-Katsura agreement did say that the U.S. would not interfere with Japanese oversight of Korea, but this was not so much "setting Japan loose" on Korea as basically a recognition of spheres of influence as they existed, motivated by the geographic vulnerability of the U.S. occupied Philippines.

However, frequent discussions on this board, about Japan's dependence on British and American finance before, during and after the Russo-Japanese War got me thinking, "maybe there was something the U.S. could have done to restrain Japan, not only in China, but in Korea too".

The smart money on this board basically says that the Japanese achieved nearly their best possible result with OTL's Russo-Japanese War, and most scenarios that lengthen or otherwise alter the war pose a high risk of Japanese failure and a Russian victory of sorts.

Essentially, Japan relied a lot more than Russia on borrowed money and imported gear for its war effort.

So, with that in mind, could the U.S. have used financial and trade pressures in the late 19th, early 20th century to prevent Japanese de facto and de jure annexation of Korea?

How much blowback could Japan have generated if the US had a policy of using means short of war to keep Korea out of Japanese hands? It seems that Japan's ability to impose any serious costs on the U.S. is quite limited, especially in this era.

How well could any Korean government between 1890 and 1910 have taken advantage of opportunities provided by American diplomatic and financial and moral support?

Now at this time, Britain was an even more important financial and diplomatic and naval player than the U.S.

So, theoretically, even with America opposed to Japanese aggrandizement, Japan might have been able to achieve OTL's basic results on British support alone.

But, from the 1890s on, Britain deferred often to U.S. preferences and seemed to want to avoid getting at cross-purposes with the U.S. Notably, Britain's general attitude towards Japanese and continental European complaints about American aggressiveness in Hawaii, the Caribbean and Philippines, was "shut up, that's reality, we don't want to confront the Yanks and you don't either". Later on, Britain leaned to the US against Canada in the Alaskan Panhandle dispute.

So, could the U.S., by showing a strong desire to restrain Japan early, have rallied British and maybe other support to oppose Japan's takeover of Korea? In OTL, the 1922 USA basically demanded Britain ditch the Anglo-Japanese alliance. If it had wished, could the U.S. have indirectly vetoed the alliance's creation in 1901-1902?
 

trurle

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Essentially, Japan relied a lot more than Russia on borrowed money and imported gear for its war effort.

So, with that in mind, could the U.S. have used financial and trade pressures in the late 19th, early 20th century to prevent Japanese de facto and de jure annexation of Korea?

How much blowback could Japan have generated if the US had a policy of using means short of war to keep Korea out of Japanese hands? It seems that Japan's ability to impose any serious costs on the U.S. is quite limited, especially in this era.

How well could any Korean government between 1890 and 1910 have taken advantage of opportunities provided by American diplomatic and financial and moral support?

The primary tech and offshore construction partners of Japan of that period were France and British Empire. Therefore, US leverage on Japan was quite limited. The stubborn American resistance would extend the quasi-independence period for Korea by 5-6 years at most (until US been locked in quagmire of WWI warfare).
The Triple Entente (British, French, Russia) opposing the annexation of Korea by Japanese would make annexation difficult to dare though. IOTL, Russia was hostile, French neutral and British supportive to annexation of Korea (as part of Great Game). Earlier end of Great Game may help?
 
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raharris1973

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The primary tech and offshore construction partners of Japan of that period were France and British Empire. Therefore, US leverage on Japan was quite limited. The stubborn American resistance would extend the quasi-independence period for Korea by 5-6 years at most (until US been locked in quagmire of WWI warfare).

So you're saying that Japanese annexation would be delayed from 1910 to 1917 and US entry in WWI? Japan will watch itself and hold back until the great liberal powers are all busy? And then Japan will annex?

I see the logic, based on the idea of American priorities getting diverted.

On the other hand, a Japanese annexation of Korea in 1917 seems against the "Wilsonian" spirit of the times, and since Korea was never an enemy belligerent's territory, Japan will not even have an excuse to get a League of Nations recognized Mandate over Korea. I would note that despite their absorption in WWI, the Entente Powers and USA pushed back against Japanese attempts to dominate China via the 21 Demands.
 
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On the other hand, a Japanese annexation of Korea in 1917 seems against the "Wilsonian" spirit of the times, and since Korea was never an enemy belligerent's territory, Japan will not even have an excuse to get a League of Nations recognized Mandate over Korea. I would note that despite their absorption in WWI, the Entente Powers and USA pushed back against Japanese attempts to dominate China via the 21 Demands.

The US had a economic stake in China that was threatened by the 21 Demands. The China Lobby such as it was in 1918 included businessmen in the China trade & they saw clearly or not so clearly a threat to their profits. Korea was of very little importance to the US economically. Further the Korean recent history as the "Hermit Kingdom" had pretty much made it a nonentity to the US leaders.
 

trurle

Banned
On the other hand, a Japanese annexation of Korea in 1917 seems against the "Wilsonian" spirit of the times, and since Korea was never an enemy belligerent's territory, Japan will not even have an excuse to get a League of Nations recognized Mandate over Korea. I would note that despite their absorption in WWI, the Entente Powers and USA pushed back against Japanese attempts to dominate China via the 21 Demands.
Technically, Japanese intelligence would likely to "discover" Korean collaboration with Central Powers in 1914 as casus belli.
 
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raharris1973

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The China Lobby such as it was in 1918 included businessmen in the China trade & they saw clearly or not so clearly a threat to their profits.

Another component of the China Lobby was the missionaries. (it may have been part of the Japan Lobby, such as it was). I wonder if the Protestant missionary movement was aware before 1910 that it was having more success in proportion to the population in Korea in contrast to China and Japan. I wonder if the success was already proportionally greater by this early part of the 20th century. As late as 1945 only 2% of the Korean population was recorded as Christian. Perhaps the proportions were as high in China and Japan that year.
 
Even if they could have done so, it would have been totally out of character for TR, Root, Taft, etc. to have done anything for a small, "backward" nation like Korea against a large, "progressive" nation like Japan. See Richard W. Leopold, The Growth of American Foreign Policy, pp. 270-271

"For Korea, the Portsmouth settlement meant temporary extinction as a nation. The Japanese were determined to absorb the backward kingdom, and they faced no real opposition. They took the first step on February 23, 1904, by promising to guarantee the independence and territorial integrity of Korea in return for the right to intervene against "the aggression of a third power or internal disturbances." Roosevelt stood idly by, believing that Korea, like Nicaragua and the Dominican RepubUc, needed the guidance of a more virile people. "We can not possibly interfere for the Koreans against Japan," he told Hay on January 28, 1905. "They couldn't strike one blow in their own defense." Hence the President endorsed an "agreed memorandum" of a conversation in Tokyo on July 27, 1905, between Secretary of War Taft and Prime Minister Katsura, in which the former declared that "the establishment by Japanese troops of a suzerainty over Korea to the extent of requiring that Korea enter into no foreign treaties without the consent of Japan was the logical result of the present war and would directly contribute to permanent peace." Japan won a similar approval from England in renewing their alliance on August 12, 1905, and from Russia at Portsmouth on September 5, 1905. It kept up a pretense of freedom for five more years and then annexed the country on August 22, 1910. The United States did not protest. "It was better for the people of Korea," Root wrote to Lodge on February 26, 1916, "who were not governing themselves, to be incorporated in the liberal and progressive Empire of Japan than to remain puppets of their absurd, old opera bouffe emperor."" https://archive.org/stream/growthofamerican00inleop#page/270/mode/2up

Years later, a defender of Root indignantly denied there was any inconsistency in Root's solicitude for Belgium:

"I think I know the sort of reply that he would make to those critics of his Carnegie Hall speech who declare that you cannot make a protest without going to war about it, and that to have made a formal protest about Belgium would have involved us at once in war. I think he would say that a protest merely reserves all rights for the future, that it does not imply any action. It creates a situation in which the country protesting is left at liberty in the future to deny that its rights have been impaired by any assent to the action protested against. It would be, to his mind, a good deal like the application of the doctrine of estoppel in ordinary affairs. If a man stands by and hears a public statement made regarding an affair that he is interested in and remains silent, he may be estopped as a matter of law from ever after denying the truth of the statement, provided he was under clear duty to speak.

"And how thin the attempt in Congress to convict Elihu Root of inconsistency because. while Secretary of State in the Roosevelt Administration, he did not protest against the alleged violation of Korea by Japan! Korea had already. by treaty, given herself over to the control of Japan in much the same way as the control of England is exercised over Egypt. The Charge d’ Affaires of Korea in Washington had turned his archives over to the Japanese Embassy and notified our Government. Sovereignty had already departed from Korea. As Mr. Root has pointed out, we had no more right to interfere than we had to interfere to determine the Presidential succession in Mexico. Even to those who do not see the difference between attending to our own business and interfering with that of other people, the illumination of Mr. Root may appeal. The Koreans were not a free or self-governing people. They were subject to an absurd, effete, old Oriental despotism. They were not civilized nor on the road to civilization. They had not the vigor to set themselves free. Their government had not the vigor to stand alone in the world. They were the puppets of their absurd old opera-bouffe Emperor. From no aspect whatever is there sound analogy between the case of Korea and the case of Belgium..." https://books.google.com/books?id=Gb0xAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA748
 
Another component of the China Lobby was the missionaries. (it may have been part of the Japan Lobby, such as it was). I wonder if the Protestant missionary movement was aware before 1910 that it was having more success in proportion to the population in Korea in contrast to China and Japan. I wonder if the success was already proportionally greater by this early part of the 20th century. As late as 1945 only 2% of the Korean population was recorded as Christian. Perhaps the proportions were as high in China and Japan that year.

I don't know, but suspect not. I doubt folks kept extensive and accurate enough data to see this clearly. The missionaries were well established in China, and the raw numbers were larger which tends to get the attention over refined demographics.
 

raharris1973

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I would admit that to get the U.S. to even care, you would need different U.S. Presidents from 1896 through 1910, or alter the mindset of the historic Presidents on this issue. You would have to have Japan have bad PR in the U.S., or a popularized theory of a need to "shield" China with a Korean buffer.

However, if the U.S. made a cause of keeping Korea independent in the decade or two before the actual annexation, I think Japan would need to overcome that objection and get the deed of annexation done, or it would be too late by the time WWI happens.

The tricky part about that for Japan is that acting forcefully enough to make progress against the goal before the end of the Russo-Japanese War could have endangered the American financial support Japan needed to win the war. If Japan loses the war, Russia can augment the influences keeping Korea independent.

---Perhaps Korean nationalists inclined to blame the U.S. for "blowing" Korean independence should fault Britain instead of the U.S., since Britain provided more support to Japan all around and was allied to Japan.

...And, Britain considered, but then discarded, a potentially anti-Japanese policy in 1895. It was apparently the British who proposed multilateral international intervention to limit Japanese gains, but found no one to follow it's lead. So, Britain moved on. But very quickly then Russia organized the Triple Intervention, and Britain did not join in as a fourth and stood aloof and later backed Japan, I guess because it only wanted to be part of a coalition it was leading.

If the British and Russians can actually agree to limit Japan's gains at the same time instead of being "two ships passing each other in the night", that is a game changer that would nerf Japan considerably and create a much greater chance of Korea never being annexed.
 

raharris1973

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Switching tack here:

If Britain decided it actually did not want to see Japan expand into Taiwan or Korea for whatever reason, how much of a sweat would she need to break to prevent Japan from annexing either in the early decades of the 20th century?

Or would it be pretty much be automatic that if Britain opposes a Japanese Korea, Russia decides a Japanese Korea (or a partitioned one between Japan and itself) is a grand idea?
 
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