Originally published on April 21, 2019.
This essay challenges the conventional claim that the annexation of Korea was a military act of Japanese imperialist coercion, pointing instead to the fiscal collapse and international isolation of the Korean Empire, the pro-union stance of the Iljinhoe, and the acceptance of Japan-Korea union by the great powers, including the United States, Britain, Germany, and France.
It argues that Korea lacked even the basic foundations of a modern state, and that Japan was not a plunderer but rather the side that assumed an enormous burden, while calling for a correction of the distortions of postwar historical understanding.

2019-04-21
Korea’s state finances had completely collapsed, its debts to the great powers had grown enormous, and there was absolutely no prospect of repayment.

There was also another truly unbending man who published an essay proving the correctness of my own argument.
The bold emphasis is mine.

On August 22, Meiji 43, or 1910, the “Treaty Concerning the Annexation of Korea” was concluded between the Empire of Japan and the Korean Empire.
This is what is generally called the annexation of Korea.
It was Japan-Korea union.

To say that this annexation was a coercive act carried out by Japanese imperialism through military force is an outright lie.
In Korea there existed a political organization of intellectuals called the Iljinhoe, which had rallied the energies of the Korean people and ardently desired union between Japan and Korea, whereas Japan hesitated to take on such an enormous burden.

At that time, multinational union states were a mainstream phenomenon, including such examples as the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Czechoslovakia.
Japan-Korea union was therefore in no way strange, nor was it a colonial form.

Moreover, all the great powers, including Britain, the United States, Germany, and France, approved of Japan-Korea union.
If Korea, with its habit of attaching itself first to one great power and then another, had been left as it was, the continent would never have stabilized.
The decisive matter was surely the Hague Secret Emissary Affair.

In Meiji 40, or 1907, the Korean Empire sent secret envoys to the Second Hague Peace Conference being held in The Hague in the Netherlands, appealing for the protection of its diplomatic rights, only to be completely rejected by the international community.

Tyler Dennett, the distinguished American diplomatic historian, wrote.
“The Koreans, neither their recent history nor their diplomats in Washington, had been able to arouse in President Roosevelt any sense of dignity or admiration.
To the President it appears to have been clear that Korea, like a derelict ship long abandoned on the sea and threatening navigation, must now be taken in tow, brought into harbor, and firmly secured.”

The United States approved of Japan-Korea union, and as soon as the Russo-Japanese War ended, it promptly withdrew all of its existing legations from Korea.
President Roosevelt stated that “Korea no longer possesses the substance of a state,” and told Foreign Minister Komura Jutarō, “In order to eradicate future trouble at its root, there is no course but to place it under protection.
That is the best policy for Korea’s tranquility and for peace in the East.”

Britain’s Foreign Secretary Lansdowne also said that it was only natural for a Korea incapable of standing on its own to be placed under Japan’s protection.
In the Second Anglo-Japanese Alliance, it is stated that “Great Britain recognizes the right of Japan to take in Korea such measures of guidance, control, and protection as Japan may deem proper and necessary for the advancement of its interests.”

Neither Qing China nor Russia raised any objection or issued any protest statement.
Korea’s national finances had completely collapsed, its debts to the great powers had become enormous, there was absolutely no prospect of repayment, and in that age of imperialism it had fallen into a hopeless condition in every field, political, economic, social, cultural, educational, and sanitary.

If Japan had colonially ruled Korea, then there ought to have been wealth or products there to plunder.
But in Korea there were no roads, no railways, no ports, no bridges, nothing but devastated bald mountains, rivers without embankments, neglected farmland, and ruined nature, and in order to restore these things, the Japanese people’s tax money had to be poured in for decades.
Far from Japan plundering Korea, it was Japan that was plundered.

References.
Fusosha, The Truth About Japan’s Colonies, by Kō Bun’yū.
Akatori-sha, The History the Japanese Must Not Be Allowed to Know, by Wakasa Kazutomo.
Tendensha, The Road to the Greater East Asia War, by Nakamura Akira.
WAC Publishing, Rekishi Tsu, July 2010, “A Country with Slaves, A Country without Them,” by Masayuki Takayama.

Reference site.
Wikipedia, “Hague Secret Emissary Affair.”

Attached image.
Seodaemun in the Yi Dynasty period, 1900 (PD).