THE BETHELL CASES are the only ones of note in Anglo-Korean relations during the 26 year’ period – unlike Japan where several cases featured in the story of Anglo-Japanese relations and Japan's struggle to abolish extraterritoriality. Many aspects of the story, which is remembered in Korea from an anti-Japanese perspective, were not unique to Korea but echoed earlier events in Japan and contemporary events in China and Thailand.

Bethell was a British subject from London who, from 1888, had lived in Kobe and Yokohama where he had been in partnership with his brothers in, principally, an export business, although he also dabbled from time to time in journalism. In 1901, he had been the subject of a newspaper report after he had been beaten up by a group of jinriksha coolies in Kobe after a dispute between Bethell and one of them over what he considered to be an excessive fare. Ultimately, Bethell dropped his charge of assault against the jinriksha coolies on the basis that no action was brought against him. Aged 34, he came to Korea in 1904 to cover the Russo-Japanese war as a correspondent for the London Daily Chronicle; but that newspaper dispensed with his services when London newspapers found that they were able to obtain war news more quickly from Japanese representatives in London than from their own correspondents in Asia.

Bethell remained in Korea and began to publish his own newspapers. They were the English language The Korea Daily News and the Korean language Daehan Maeil Sinbo, published, variously, in a mixture of Chinese and Korean script (the usual medium for addressing the Korean educated classes) and a separate edition published solely in Korean script (aimed at the mass of the population). He quickly developed sympathy for the Korean struggle against the increasing Japanese take-over of the country. After the Japanese Protectorate was established in 1905, his newspapers became a thorn in the side of the Residency-General which increasingly lobbied the British authorities in Seoul, Tokyo and London to curtail Bethell and what was perceived to be his abuse of the privileges of extraterritoriality to attack Japan's policies in Korea.