This paper has been an examination of the relationship between the Prtsmouth Peace Conference and Gojong's diplomatic efforts for preserving the sovereignty of his country. The peace conference convened in Portsmouth in the US to formally end the Russo-Japanese War(Portsmouth Peace conference 1905) is the first international meeting in the 20thcentury in which the issue of Korea was given an in-depth discussion. However, even as Korean was the main theater of the Russo-Japanese War, it was not represented in this meeting. Without Korea being represented, the meeting allowed the plenipotentiaries of Russia and Japan to seriously encroach upon its sovereignty and prospects to continue to be an independent nation. The Russian and Japanese plenipotentiaries agreed to recognize Japan's protectoral rights over Korea and tacitly approved the continuous stationing of Japanese troops occupying Korea; thereby, becoming the prototype of international meetings in which the fate of Korea was decided by world powers.
However, on September 13,1905, just eight days after the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth, Nicholas II of Russia notified US President T.Roosevelt of the convention of the second Hague Peace Conference, thereby declaring his intention to review the key points of contention from the Portsmouth Peace Conference. In a letter of notification sent to the Russian Embassy in the US, the Russian Czar explained the reason why he called for this meeting, saying "Because very important issues arose during the course of the war, touching closely the 1stHague Peace Conference, Russian plenipotentiaries will be submitting agenda items that will be the starting points for discussion." It is, therefore, implied that the 2ndHague Peace Conference was called because of, or in relation to, the Portsmouth Peace Conference; hence, the causal relationship between these two meetings. As this meant a concrete possibility for reviewing the Treaty of Portsmouth, which was a serious threat to Korea's prospects to continue as an independent country, Korean Emperor Gojong started to carefully prepare for the Hague Peace Conference.
Understanding the Portsmouth Peace Conference is, therefore, important for understanding how and why the issue of Korea became an international issue ; in other words, its causes and structure. Despite the importance of this event, however, there have been few studies on the process of negotiation between Russia and Japan over the Korea issue. Worse yet, Gojong's perception of the Russo-Japanese War and his response to it remain an area completely unexplored. The purpose of this study is to examine how the Korea issue was raised at the Portsmouth Peace Conference and was negotiated on, and related agreements were reached, and to empirically investigate Emperor Gojong's perception of the Russo-Japanese War and the diplomatic efforts he engaged in order to save Korea from becoming a colony of Japan. The rest of this paper is organized as follows: In section I, the discussion is centered on the over all report on the Portsmouth Peace Conference by G.A.Planson, who attended it as a member of the Russian plenipotentiary delegation (Отчет о конференции в Лортсмуте 1905 года по заключениюмир аРоссией с Японией секретаря этойконференции Плансона), in the collection of the State Archives of the Russian Federation (ГАРФ). In Section II, analysis is conducted on letters written by Gojong, currently in the collection of the Imperial Russian Foreign Policy Archives(АВПРИ).