Among those documents is the "Korea-Japan Protocol".

In the end of 1903 when the relations between Czarist Russia and Japan were strained, the then Japanese diplomatic minister to Korea put pressure on the Emperor of the Feudal Joson Dynasty (1392-1910) to discontinue ties with Russia and discuss measures for improving relations of "friendship and cooperation" with Japan.

As the Emperor gave him no answer, he bribed, intimidated and blackmailed some officials of the feudal dynasty, while concluding a "secret agreement" with one of them. Though the "agreement" contained some rhetoric like "independence, preservation of territorial integrity and mutual cooperation", it, in its essence, was an unequal agreement aimed at obliging Korea to stand by Japan's side in case the Japanese imperialists provoke a war against Russia with Korea as a battlefield and thus bringing Korea under its colonial rule. But the Feudal Joson Dynasty rejected the illegal "agreement".

With the outbreak of Russo-Japanese War as an opportunity, the Japanese imperialists became evermore frantic in their moves to realize their policy of domination over Korea. After dislodging pro-Russian elements from the power machine of the dynasty, they made military threats to the dynasty to agree the "Korea-Japan Protocol" on Feb. 23, 1904.

Due to the protocol, Japan's interference into internal affairs of Korea was put on a legal basis. It stipulated that in case the feudal dynasty was "threatened" by rebellion or a third country, Japan would take immediate military action and the feudal dynasty had to allow the Japanese imperial army to stage military operations in its territory together with all support to it.

The agreement of the protocol by coercive means gives a glimpse of the Japanese aggressors' moves for putting the whole Korea under its control.