Japan Annexes Korea

What happened

In November 1905, Meiji statesman Ito Hirobumi came to Seoul to establish Korea as a formal Japanese protectorate and became its first resident-general. In 1907, through pressure and manipulation, he forced King Gojong to abdicate in favor of his intellectually disabled son Sunjong, and that same year Japan disbanded Korea's small 9,000-man army. Resistance followed: former yangban officials and discharged soldiers formed guerrilla bands that fought a three-year campaign against Japanese rule, killing as many as 17,000 resisters in the process, and Koreans assassinated a senior Japanese advisor in 1908 and Ito himself in 1909. By 1910 Japan had crushed or scattered most armed resistance, and on August 29, 1910, formally annexed Korea outright. A state unified and independent since the seventh century became a Japanese colony.

How we know

The 1905 protectorate treaty, the 1907 forced abdication, and the 1910 annexation treaty are all documented in Japanese and Korean official records of the period, and the Korean guerrilla resistance and its suppression are corroborated by Japanese colonial administration casualty reports from the same years.

Sources

• Association for Asian Studies (Education About Asia). Korea: From Hermit Kingdom to Colony · General sourceasianstudies.org · Cited as a "reference" source (no stronger domain match).
• National Diet Library of Japan, "Modern Japan in Archives". 2-27 Japan's Annexation of Korea · Primary source (author-declared)ndl.go.jp · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)