STRICTLY, BRITISH SUBJECTS’ claims against Koreans were not matters of extraterritoriality for Britain had no jurisdiction over them. If a Briton had a charge or complaint against a Korean subject in Korea, the case was to be heard, and decided, by the Korean authorities, although a British official could attend the hearing and call, and examine, witnesses or protest against any proceedings or decision.

This reflected the current state of play in Japan at the time the Treaty was negotiated. The Treaty of Yedo had provided that a Briton wishing to complain against a Japanese was required to state his grievance to a consul who would inquire into its merits and try to arrange it amicably and, if he could not make such an arrangement, request the Japanese authorities’ assistance so that they could together examine the merits and decide it equitably. But, by the 1880s, most Britons in Japan with claims against Japanese subjects proceeded direct to the Japanese courts without any consular intervention. In 1877, H. S. Wilkinson and the Tokyo Superior Court had even drawn up an agreed procedure and forms – in English – for appeals by Britons in the Japanese courts.

This never happened in Korea even though an 1887 Korean circular announced the appointment of a Korean judge to the Magistracy of Seoul to treat on an equal footing with the foreign consuls with the intention that, going forward, ‘all litigation whatsoever in connection with international trade matters will be investigated and dealt with by him’. It is possible that only one British civil claim was brought before the Korean courts; and only one criminal case in relation to a British subject.

Despite this, most correspondence was still between the Consuls and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. ‘Making the system work’ required good relations between Consuls and the local Korean authorities: without it, British claims against Koreans could not be pursued effectively.

In the early days in Japan, there were many fraudulent claims by Westerners against the authorities and, after the Meiji Restoration, many British traders lodged claims – many spurious or significantly inflated – against the former han authorities.