“ Officials must be straightforward and outspoken, and not give outward acquiescence while privately criticising or hindering their superiors.
(e) Officials must not listen to suggestions from outsiders or talk with them on official business.
(f) Officials must be frank with one another, and not form cliques.
(g) No official must wilfully spread false rumors about another or lightly credit such.
(h) No official must absent himself from office without permission during office hours, or frequent the houses of others. ”

“ The Privy Council is prohibited from having any correspondence on public matters with private individuals, or with any officials but Ministers and Vice-Ministers. The President presides. Two-thirds of the members must be present to form a quorum. Votes are given openly, resolutions are carried by a majority, and any Council- lor dissenting from a resolution so carried has a right to have his reasons recorded in the minutes. ”

“ It is difficult to make the importance of the Gazette intelligible, except to foreigners who have re- sided in China and Korea. The reason for dwelling so long upon it is, that for several centuries the publication in it of Royal Edicts has given them the force of law and the cur- rency of Acts of Parliament. ”

“ A Village Council is composed of the Headman and one man from each family, and is empowered to pass resolutions on matters connected with education, registration of house- holds or lands, sanitation, roads and bridges, communal grain exchanges, agricultural improvements, common woods and dykes, payment of taxes, relief in famine or other calamity, adjustment of the corvee, savings associations, and by-laws. The Headman, who acts as chairman, has not only a casting vote, but the power to veto. ”

“ Local Government" define the jurisdiction, powers, duties, period of office, salaries, and etiquette^^^ of all officials, along with many minor matters. It is in this Department that the re- forms instituted by the Japanese are the most sweeping. Very many offices were abolished, and all Govermiient property be- longing to the establishments of the officials holding them was ordered to be handed over to officers of the new regime. A Local Government Bureau was established with sections, under which local finance in cities and towns and local ex- penditure of every kind were to be dealt with. ”

“ Agreements with China cancelled. Distinctions between Patrician and Plebeian abolished. Slavery abolished. Early Marriages prohibited. Remarriage of widows permitted. Bribery to be strictly forbidden. No one to be arrested with- out warrant for civil offences. Couriers, mountebanks, and butchers no longer to be under degradation. Local Councils to be established. New coinage issued. Organization of Police force. No one to be punished without trial. Irregular taxation by Provincial Governments forbidden. Extortion of money by officials forbidden. ”

“ The Minister for War, who must be a general officer, has charge of the military administration of an army lately fixed at 6,000 men, and the chief control of men and matters in the army, and is to exercise supervision over army divisions, and all buildings and forts under his Department. ”

“ Officials are thereby forbidden to divulge official secrets even when wit- nesses in a court of law, unless specially permitted to do so ; or to show despatches to outsiders. They are not allowed to become directors or managers in a public company ”

“ Resolutions which the King approves, on publication in the Gazette become law.
Thus perished the checks which the Japanese sought to impose on the absolutism of the Crown, and at the present time the Royal will (or whim) can and does override all else.
This Eui-chyeng Pu or Council, like the Nai Kak, its pred- ecessor, is both a Council of State, and a State Department presided over by the Chancellor. ”

“ Family of a criminal not to be involved in his doom. Great modifications as to torture.
Superfluous Paraphernalia abolished. School of Instruction in Vaccination. Hair-cropping Proclamation. Solar Calendar adopted. "Drilled Troops" (Kun-ren-tai) abolished. Legal punishments defined. Slaughter-Houses licensed. Committee of Legal Revision appointed. Telegraph Regulations. Postal Regulations. Railways placed under Bureau of Communications. These ordinances are a selection from among several hundred promulgated since July, 1894. ”