The Joseon government, which could not grasp the extreme change being brought by Western society, vacillated in the power struggle between the conservative and reform parties, but from the 1880s it began to turn toward accepting Western culture, which was called “New Culture” at the time. By then it was already difficult to maneuver in the contest of vested rights between the great powers of the West and the rest of Northeast Asia. Finally, Korea was made a protectorate of Japan in 1905 and was annexed in 1910.
