 If Korea were truly independent, it posed no strategic problem to Japan's national security but if the country remained backward and uncivilized it would remain weak and consequently would be inviting prey for foreign domination.The political consensus in Japan was that Korean independence lay, as it had been for Meiji Japan, through the importation of ""civilization"" from the West.Korea required a program of self-strengthening like the post-Restoration reforms that were enacted in Japan.