After winning the Russians over Manchuria, imperial Japan turned a hungry eye on Korea, the strategically important, underdeveloped kingdom to its west. On August 22, Japan formally annexed its powerless protectorate.

Japan had been eyeing Korea since 1905, when it first forced Korean ministers to sign documents that made Korea a Japanese protectorate. Japan assumed control of Korea's internal administration and foreign policy. Two years later, Korean Emperor Kojong was forced to give up the throne to his more compliant son, Sunjong. The judiciary fell to Japanese control, followed by the police force. In 1910, The Korean-Japanese Treaty, by which Korean rights of sovereignty were given to the Japanese, was announced.

Japan unleashed a reign of terror to ensure that violent protest and revolts like those of 1905 and 1907 did not repeat. Troops patrolled Seoul, the capital; censors removed anti-Japanese stories from the Korean newspapers; police cracked down on Korean nationalistic organizations.

Japan had become the strongest power in Asia. Meanwhile, the people of Korea, primitively armed and politically suppressed, read the posted official announcements, saw Japanese sentries everywhere, and suffered the resignation of the powerless government.

On May 18, 1910, thousands took to their roofs, huddling for comfort and praying for salvation. Many believed the end of the world was near. The source of their anxiety was Halley's Comet, which returned from its 75-year odyssey through space.

Many scientists were excited by the opportunity to increase the knowledge of astronomy. By late 1909, several of the world's major observatories geared up for Halley's appearance. The public too eagerly awaited the moment when the comet became visible to the naked eye. Scientists had made calculations between May 18 and 19, predicting that Halley's tail would possibly sweep across earth.

The tabloids jumped in, and discussed the catastrophic effects of the gaseous comet on the earth's atmosphere, causing many to panic. In actual fact, the tail of Halley's Comet never came any closer than 400,000 kilometres to the earth surface, and would not have been harmful at any distance.

In 1910, Wassily Kandinsky, a Russian artist completed what is thought to be the first purely abstract painting in modern art, Improvisation XIV. Kandinsky who turned to art at the age of 30, after earning degrees in law and economics in Russia, used colours and shapes to invent a pictorial equivalent of music.

Kandinsky built upon the techniques of artist such as Van Gogh and Matisse who 'liberated' colour by, for example, painting grass red. He wanted to free painting from the depiction of objects so that it could better express ideas and evoke deep emotion. In fact, he warned that abstract art for the sake of abstraction could become just decoration or patterns, "like a necktie or a carpet". Kandinsky led the Russian avant-garde after the 1917 Russian Revolution.