During the Russo-Japanese War, Japan forced Korea to yield the right to cultivate its state-owned wastelands. The Japanese decision-makers shared the image of Korea as a wild country with easily cultivable wasteland spreading widely all over it. Fifteen works on Korean agriculture were published before 1904 and of these ten presented this image. When we study them in detail, however, we find that a treatise written by Kato Matsuro 加藤末郎, a technical expert in the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce, and two works by Sako Tsuneakira 酒匂常明, the director of the Agricultural Bureau of this ministry, were the souces of the image. Sako, moreover, proves to be relying on Kato's work. Kato's inspection of Korean agriculture between April and July 1900 was closely connected with plans for the construction of a Seoul-Pusan railway. The Japanese promoters of this scheme tried to attract private capital on the plea that its prospects were good and to secure government protection on the plea that its prospects were poor. They rationalized this apparent contradiction by claining that the existence of the wastelands would in the short term make the railway unprofitable but that in the long term their cultivation would bring about an improvement in the railway's profitability. It was against the background of such activities on the part of the railway promoters that Kato emphasized the existence of wastelands and put forward the "wild" image of Korea -an image which was far from reality. When Sako was appointed head of the agricultural administration, the Japanese rice trade had just turned from an excess of exports to an excess of imports. Sako, however, opposed the import of rice for the sake of protecting home agriculture. He regarded emigration as an answer to the food supply problem. Between May and September 1902, Sako visited China and Korea. Having ascertained that there was no room for imigrants in China, he had to believe that Korea was underexploited and so could receive immigration from Japan. The reason why Sako, who had not been able to inspect Korea adequately, took over the "wild" image from Kato was that it was consistent with this demand. Subsequently, Sako was made director of the Agricultural Bureau, and his pro-agricultural stand-point veered in the direction of small farmer protectionism based on a theory of low wages such as would supplement household budgets. Since his policy was to leave small farmers as they were, however, he was unable to hope for an adequate increase in agricultural productivity. He therefore positively promoted the circulation of the "wild" image of Korea and urged people to emigrate there. Between April and June 1902, Nagamori Tokichiro 長森藤吉郎, the director of the Finance Ministry secretariat, inspected the Chinese economy and was deeply struck by the lack of Japanese activities aiming at the acquisition of economic rights. After his homecoming, he took over the "wild" image of Korea and the plan to cultivate the Korean state wastelands either from Sako's writings or from Sako himself. In 1904 he opened negotiations with the Korean government. In summary, the "wild" image of Korea was not a reflection of reality but a projection of desires originating in the characteristics of Japanese capitalism of the early twentieth century.