the Japanese government as to whether or not to send a mission to Korea to settle the incident. Treaty provisions Japan and Korea signed the 'Japan Korea Treaty of Amity' on 26 February 1876. Japan employed gunboat diplomacy to press Korea to sign this unequal treaty. The pact opened up Korea, as Commodore Matthew Perry's fleet of Black Ships had opened up Japan in 1853. According to the treaty, it ended Joseon's status as a tributary state of the Qing dynasty and opened three ports to Japanese trade. The Treaty also granted the Japanese people many of the same rights in Korea that Westerners enjoyed in Japan, such as extraterritoriality. The chief treaty negotiators were Kuroda Kiyotaka, Director of the Hokkaidō Colonization Office, and Shin Heon, General/Minister of Joseon-dynasty Korea. The articles of the treaty were as follows: Article 1 stated that Korea was a free nation, "an independent state enjoying the same sovereign rights as does Japan". Article 2 stipulated that Japan and Korea would exchange envoys within fifteen months and permanently maintain diplomatic missions in each country. The Japanese would confer with the Ministry of Rites; the Korean envoy would be received by the Foreign Office. Under Article 3, Japan would use the Japanese and Hanmun in diplomatic communiques. And Korea would use Hanmun. Article 4 terminated Tsushima's centuries-old role as a diplomatic intermediary by abolishing all agreements then existing between Korea and Tsushima. In addition to the open port of Pusan, Article 5 authorized the search in Kyongsang, Kyonggi, Chungcheong, Cholla, and Hamgyong provinces for two more suitable seaports for Japanese trade to be opened in October 1877. Article 6 secured aid and support for ships stranded or wrecked along the Korea or Japanese coasts. Article 7 permitted any Japanese mariner to conduct surveys and mapping operations at will in the seas off the Korean Peninsula's coastline. Article 8 permitted Japanese merchants residence, unhindered trade, and the right to lease land and buildings for those purposes in the open ports. Article 9 guaranteed the freedom to conduct business without interference from either government and to trade without restrictions or prohibitions. Article 10 granted Japan the right of extraterritoriality, the one feature of previous Western treaties that was most widely resented in Asia. It not only gave foreigners a free rein to commit crimes with relative impunity, but its inclusion implied the grantor nation's system of law was