August 22, 1910

Japan–Korea Treaty of 1910

Yi Wan-yong and Terauchi Masatake sign the Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty

Signed at about four in the afternoon, then withheld from publication until 29 August — when Article VIII made it effective upon promulgation.

22 August 1910: four o'clock in Seoul

At a Korean court meeting on 22 August 1910, Prime Minister Yi Wan-yong was designated plenipotentiary for the Korean Empire. At approximately 4 p.m. he and the Japanese Resident-General, Terauchi Masatake, signed the annexation instrument at the Resident-General's residence in Seoul.

Neither Emperor Sunjong nor Emperor Meiji signed the bilateral instrument personally. The Korean and Japanese versions carried Yi's and Terauchi's official seals.

What the eight articles said

Article I purported to cede all Korean sovereign rights completely and permanently to the Japanese emperor, and Article II recorded Japan's acceptance and consent to complete annexation. Article VI said Japan would assume the entire government and administration of Korea.

Article V promised peerages and monetary grants to Koreans whom Japan considered deserving of reward. Article VIII specified that the treaty would take effect only upon promulgation.

A week unpublished, a century contested

Nothing took effect that evening. The two governments published the agreement in their official gazettes on 29 August, and it entered into force then.

The signing itself is well documented; what is disputed is the treaty's legal validity. Korean scholarship emphasizes coercion, Sunjong's refusal to sign the treaty personally and defects in the Korean proclamation, while some international-law scholarship has disagreed about which rules of 1910 international law applied.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 7 sources 2 audit passes

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

What the sources leave uncertain

The signing date, place, signatories and August 29 effective date are well documented. What remains disputed is the treaty’s legal validity, not whether the signing ceremony occurred.
Korean scholarship emphasizes coercion, Sunjong’s refusal to sign the treaty personally and defects in the Korean proclamation. Some international-law scholarship has disagreed about which rules of 1910 international law applied.
The treaty instrument, the emperor’s power of attorney and the August 29 Korean imperial proclamation are separate documents. Accounts often confuse their signatures and seals.
The 1965 Basic Relations Treaty says earlier agreements were “already null and void,” but South Korea and Japan historically differed over whether that meant invalid from inception or valid until a later date.