An agreement between the United States, under President Roosevelt, and the US Secretary of War, Howard Taft, and the Japanese Prime Minister, Count Katsura Taro. Both appointed leaders agreed to place the sovereign Pacific Island nation of Hawai’i and the the Philippines under the protection and governance of the United States, and sovereign Peninsula nation of Korea under the protection and governance of Japan. Katsura claimed that Korean autonomy made alliances outside of the Japanese Meiji empire’s agreements and interests, and therefore sovereignty should be revoked, which violated the Korean American Treaty of 1882. The United States gained control of the Philippines, and was assured that Japan would not occupy the archipelago and was closer to annexing the sovereign Hawaiian lands as a United States territory. https://www.cfr.org/blog/twe-remembers-taft-katsura-memorandum-0