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A great fight followed. The Chinese sought to outflank the reformers, and to force an entry by climbing over the walls. One of the personal attendants of the King suddenly attacked the new Premier, Hong Yung-sik, and slew him. The Korean soldiers seemed to disappear from the scene as soon as the real fighting started, but the students and the Japanese did valiantly.
The Chinese official did not know Korean, but he could understand enough of the speech to follow its import. The plans were now complete. Every victim had two assassins assigned to him. The occasion was to be the opening of the new post-office, when Hong Yung-sik would give an official banquet to which all must come.
One of his chief supporters was Pak Yung-hyo, relative of the King, twenty-three years old, and a sincere reformer. Hong Yung-sik, keen on foreign ways, was a third. He was hungry for power. He was the new Postmaster General, and a building now being erected in Seoul for a new post-office was to mark the entry of Korea into the world's postal service.
Hong Yung-sik, the Postmaster General, was made Prime Minister, Kim Ok-kiun was made second officer of the Royal Treasury, and the lad So Jai-pil, on whom the chief command of the students and Korean soldiers now devolved, was made General Commanding a Guard Regiment.
One of the last things they did, in 1910, before contemptuously pushing the old Korean Government into limbo, was to make it issue an Imperial rescript, restoring Kim Ok-kiun, Hong Yung-sik and others although long dead to their offices and honours, and doing reverence to their memory.
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