History of Korea (0) pre-historic influences

History of Korea (1) Gojoseon [around 1000 BC ~ 108 BC]

History of Korea (2) Three Kingdoms (Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla) and Unified Silla [around 100 BC ~ 935]

History of Korea (3) Goryeo, Korea's medieval kingdom: stories, songs and Mongol invasion [918 - 1392]

History of Korea (4) Joseon, the predecessor of modern Korea(s): neo-Confucian orthodoxy and the origin of the hermit kingdom [1392 - 1910]

• Part 1: What is neo-Confucianism?
  • Women's oppression in Joseon era
• Part 2: Early prosperity and the cycles of literati purges (15~16th century)
• Part 3: Japan and Qing Invasions (early 17th century)
• Part 4: Deepening Confucian Orthodoxy, Isolationism, and Underground Spread of Catholicism [1640s~1860s]
• Part 5 (extra): Vernacular literature (17~19th century)

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So far my account of Korean history has not deviated a lot from conventional narratives in Korean history textbooks and the popular discourses. However, this section might be a little bit different.

I took an equivalent of AP Korean History when I was a high school student in Korea. I learned about a long list of events between 1850-1900 including a coup, riot, rebellion, murder, and exile, but they all looked random to me. In this post, I argue that all these events are best understood when one considers Queen Myeongseong (aka Queen Min), the wife of King Gojong, as the most influential court politician of the time who set out the direction of opening and reform.

The version of the story that is commonly remembered by the Korean public is as following:

• 1. King Gojong was a weak man, and he was under the influence of his father and his wife. His father was a strong man, and his wife also had a strong personality.
• 2. His father and his wife didn't get along well.
• 3. The queen (his wife) lavishly spent the nation's wealth, but she was a pitiful queen at the end of the day, because she was violently murdered by the evil Japanese.

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This narrative does not highlight the fact that

• 1. The queen was the one who ended the 10 years of extreme isolationist, conservative policies driven by her father-in-law
• 2. She was the one who drove the subsequent 20 years of opening and reform of the country. She was the one who opened up the border and invited Western missionaries to build modern hospitals and schools
• 3. She also had a keen sense of diplomacy, understood that Japan was the biggest national security threat, and tried to ally with China (and later Russia) to check Japan's rising influence. She was consistently anti-Japan. This eventually led to her violent murder by the Japanese.

Serious gender bias played out in her historical evaluation and later public discourses in Korea. She was often accused of being power-hungry, lavish, irrational and domineering, but the records of her contemporaries say that she was an outstanding intellectual and political figure.

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Her story is even more dramatic in a sense that she was carefully chosen as a queen by her father-in-law because she was from a peripheral aristocratic family with no father or brothers who could take power. Her father-in-law never imagined that the fatherless little girl would grow up to be his most fierce political nemesis.

Her changing relationship with her same-age husband King Gojong over 30 years was also dramatic, complex, and multi-dimensional. They essentially grew up together (from 15 years old to 45 years old), and the king was, in the end, deeply attached to the queen. His famous exile to the Russian ligation is best understood as his shocked reaction to her violent murder by the Japanese, and his will to continue his murdered wife's policy directions.

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Overall, I think her life is a Netflix show material. lol. It's a fascinating time and I hope someone will dramatize it.

The following are some of the mentions about her by her contemporaries:

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>As a diplomat, the queen demonstrated outstanding skills. When dealing with the problems of foreign powers and interests in Europe and America, the queen carefully reviewed each issue and presented her opinions before King Gojong, and her logic was precise and orderly, and she often impressed foreign diplomats.
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>- Yoon Chi-ho
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>I was impressed by the queen's graceful and charming manners, her thoughtful hospitality, her superior intelligence and dignity. Although she was communicated to me through an interpreter, her speech was excellent. I came to fully understand her bizarre political influence, her power to command, not just her king, but many others. When a conversation started, especially when she became interested in the content of the conversation, her face shone with a dazzling intellect.
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>- Isabella Budd Bishop, "Korea and Her Neighbors"
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>At that time, Japan had no choice but to eliminate the empress, a representative figure, to eliminate the possibility of collusion between Joseon and Russia. She was an outstanding person of her time.
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>- Hideo Kobayakawa

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** Disclaimer: The Queen is commonly referred to as Empress Myeongseong in contemporary Korea, because she was posthumously elevated to the status of the Empress in the short-lived Korean Empire (1897-1910) later on. But I think that this is an inflated title -- Korea was never an empire in any real sense, and she was never an empress when she was alive. In this post, I would simply refer to her as "the Queen."

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Phase 5. Into a Frightening New World [1864~1910]

The Opium Wars were a critical moment - everyone was watching what was happening in China. 6 years after the defeat of China in the Second Opium War (1860), the Japanese reformists would start a dramatic coup and achieve the Meiji Restoration in two years. From that point, they rapidly adopted Western institutions and modernized their country. This quick transition was enabled by centuries of engagement in international trades, the growth of market economies, and knowledge of the West accumulated from that. Military conscription of the ruling class did not meet resistance.

In China and Korea, such a radical coup did not happen, and the reform was only slowly being introduced by old monarchs and aristocrats. In both countries, reformists had been poisoned, killed, and executed for decades.

The first reform in those countries was military reform, but it was limited to raising an elite military unit with Western weaponry without changing institutions: commonly known as "Eastern principles, Western tools" approach. Conscription of the ruling class was unthinkable under the Confucian ideology.

The ideology that was the foundation of Joseon Korea was failing, and Koreans would go through painful soul searching and eventual annexation by Japan in 1910.

But there were two important rulers before that: Daewongun, a conservative isolationist who was the father of King Gojong, and Queen Myeongseong (aka Queen Min), who would turn out to be the most important reformist politician in Joseon court (who was originally from a peripheral aristocrat family).

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19. A royal outsider becomes the Regent of Joseon, and continues isolationist policies for 10 more years [1864~1874]

Heungseon Daewongun (link), whose birth name was Yi Ha-eung, was far in the order of succession in the royal family. It is said that he deliberately acted libertine - drinking a lot, hanging out with commoners, and visiting gisaengs (geisha/courtesan) to avoid attention.

Then his son [King Gojong] was selected as the next puppet boy king. Daewongun (the father) revealed his true color as an ambitious power-hungry man, and started gaining power as the regent. He effectively weakened the power of the corrupt Andong Kim clan, but he turned out to be a stubborn guardian of neo-Confucianism and extreme isolationism. Joseon maintained its reputation as a "hermit kingdom."

It was a time when foreign ships started appearing and demanded the opening of ports and trades (French expedition, US Gereral Sherman Incident, US expedition). China was defeated in the historic Opium Wars. However, Daewongun was stubborn and his foreign policy was simply: "no treaties, no trade, no Catholics, no West, and no Japan."

Koreans were still prohibited from leaving the country (except for a few diplomats), and all foreigners were barred entry into the country except for a few Chinese or Japanese diplomats. (link)

• e.g. Daewongun was furious about a precise map (Daedongyeojido) made by a Korean cartographer Kim Jeong-ho influenced by Western science

His most important achievement was the reconstruction of Gyeongbok Palace, which had been destroyed 250 years ago in the devastating war with Japan.

• The Korean public weirdly remembers that Queen Myeongseong lavishly spent the country's wealth, but it was actually Daewongun who imposed a huge tax burden on the public for this symbolic project of no practical importance (other than being used as a tourist attraction a hundred years later)

>A historian Bruce Cumings notes that [his reign] was not a revolution but a restoration, as the Daewongun was attempting to return to the days of King Sejong in the fifteenth century

Overall, he was a fierce guardian of Wijeong Cheoksa ("Preserve the Right, Dispel the Heresy" - heresy meaning Western science and Christianity). Japan was rapidly modernizing their country in this 10-year time period.

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20. The queen, a fatherless, brotherless 25-year-old woman from a peripheral noble family, effectively expels her father-in-law from power

Daewongun, the regent, carefully chose a 15-year old girl (birth name Min Ja-yeong) from a peripheral noble family (Min clan) who had no father and brothers as the wife of his son King Gojong (who was also about 15-year-old). He believed that it would prevent any potential consort kin problems in the future. It is an interesting irony that, by doing so, he unknowingly chose his biggest political rival in the future.

She was not a particularly feminine or attractive girl, and she did not draw any attention from the boy king for the first 5 years in their marriage. However, she was intelligent, poised, and had a love for learning. It is said that her free time was entirely devoted to reading -- she particularly read books about the ancient history and statesmenship such as Spring and Autumn Annals (the history of competing Chinese states 771~446 BC), which were not typically read by women. In the meantime, the king, a teenager boy, was fooling around with court maidens.

Then a palace maiden bore the first son of the king. It would have been an extremely humiliating and devastating news for a teenager queen. However, she calmly sent a very expensive gift to the mother, and congratulated her husband with a happy face at an official ceremony. The boy king was frightened and surprised. Some say that that was the first moment he ever paid any attention to her.

That said, this was a serious threat because queens not able to bear a son could be expelled from the palace. The queen, like any other previous queens in the court, desperately prayed to the shamanic spirits. Finally, when she was 20 years old, she delivered her first son. However, tragically and famously, the baby boy was born with an anus deformity and was not able to discharge. He died in 4 days. Still barely adult, the queen got extremely emotional, cried, and made the whole nation to hear her cry -- by inviting several hundred shamans to sing for the soul of her child for ten days straight, and by ordering thousands of Buddhist monks throughout the nation to pray.

• Unfortunately, the popular memory (before her reevaluation in the 1990s) only focused on this event in her teenage years ("she's irrational and wasteful")

After all this drama, the King Gojong became an adult, and started wanting to rule as a king himself. But he feared his father, and did not have a political knack to do so. This was the time when the queen started revealing her talent as a politician

By this time, she had already figured out the characters of the noblemen in and out of the court. She united the men in her Min clan, and started placing them in major court positions. She also won over the people who had been neglected by the Regent (her despotic father-in-law) -- including the regent's elder brother. The young queen was moving her pawns while birthing children. When the time was ripe, the king announced that he would take the reign into his own hands, and would not allow his father to enter the court. His father was effectively expelled.

• But his father didn't just get expelled silently - mysterious explosions and killings happened around the capital shortly after

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21. The queen, with the support of her husband King Gojong, drives opening and reform for 20 years [1874~1894]

Soon, she delivered a healthy male heir. This consolidated her status and power in the court. The young queen and king were now in political symbiosis -- her power depended on her position as the legitimate/primary wife of the king, and his power came from her political intelligence and shrewdness. They would maintain this idiosyncratic partnership for the next 20 years, until the queen was murdered at the age of 45.

• Many foreigners' records described the queen as "clever, intelligent, shrewd, and witty" while describing the king as "kind"

However, it was not just the symbiotic interests that bound the two. The two also seemed to share a common vision for opening and reform.

• Joseon was still a deeply isolated "backwater" of East Asia: For example, most Joseon scholars have never seen photographs of the West before this point. Such materials had been banned by the father of the king before. Only a very few fringe figures had access to the outside world.
• Both the queen and king were interested in new materials and knowledge coming from the outside world. It's famous that the king liked coffee, for example. They knew that the world was changing, and were sympathetic to young scholars' sense of urgency to change and reform.

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(1) Opening

• In 1876, there was a small skirmish between a Japanese warboat Unyo and a Korean island fortress. Unlike Daewongun (the former regent), the new regime (the queen, king, and their court officials) agreed to open commerce with foreigners. The Treaty of Ganghwa was signed.
  • This was an unfair treaty in the sense that it gave Japan the right to survey and locate two new ports in the Korean peninsula, and it bestowed extraterritoriality for the Japanese in the special port districts. The Westerners had forced this to Japan, and now Japan was doing the same thing with Joseon Korea.
  • However, the Korean history textbooks focuses only on the fact that it was an unfair treaty, ignoring the fact that it was a deliberate political decision made as an experiment.
• In 1880 a mission was sent to Japan, and they got a document from a Chinese diplomat titled "A Strategy for Korea." China wanted Korea to be modernized to play a role as a buffer zone between China and Japan. The document recommended Korea stay pro-China, learn from Japan yet maintain a distance, and ally with the United States to counterbalance Russia
  • The mission also reported that, compared to the modernized and electricity-wired Tokyo and Osaka, Seoul and Busan now looked like vestiges of the ancient past
  • The queen took special interest in the strategy document, and had copies sent out to all the ministers. This might have influenced her life-long diplomatic stance (pro-China, arm's-length relationship to Japan, and alliance with Westerners)

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During the early changes, three different political parties emerged.

(Party A) "Dispel all foreigners" - which was, unfortunately, the most popular approach

(Party B) Pro-China, arm's length relationship to Japan, alliance with Westerners (Queen's approach)

(Party C) Radicals (pro-Japan, aiming to imitate the Japanese way) - a rising faction in the court

** some radicals were sincerely attracted to Japan for ideological reasons, but later, some of those in the pro-Japan faction would be deliberately bought by Japan

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(2) Riot and coup

In 1881, the court raised an elite military unit called Byeolgigun, armed with new Western weapons and trained by Japanese officers

However, finance might have been the new regime's weakness. Joseon Korea did not inherit a functioning market economy, and corruption had been rampant at all levels of bureaucracy (legacy from the early 19th century - section 18).

Grievances arose among the old army. Many of them were discharged, and the rest of them did not get enough salary in the form of rice. The minister of treasury, who was a Min clan member, was in charge to pay them, but he was inexperienced and incompetent. A subordinate swindled the rice and replaced it with millet mixed with sand. It got rotten, and foul smelling.

• This infuriated the old army, and they raided the palace (Imo incident) - they killed the Japanese, the minister of treasury, and several other high officials. They considered the queen and her clan members as main enemies who prioritized foreigners.
• Opening and reform was not popular among the less educated populace (Party A), especially when it was driven by a woman. The rioters searched for the queen to kill her. However, the queen disguised as a palace maiden, and narrowly escaped with her guardians and maidens.

This set back the early reform efforts. When the queen was away, the (more easily pushed around) king signed a treaty with Japan that promised expensive reparations. Upon learning about that, the queen contacted China and asked for their interference. As a result, Qing China gained more influence over the Korean peninsula

This upset the radicals (Party C). In 1884, Kim Ok-gyun, a 20-something pro-Japan radical, made Gapsin Coup with Park Young-hyo and Seo Jae-pil (all 20 years old) in order to replicate the Meiji Restoration in Korea, with the aid of the Japanese guards stationed in Korea. The coup only lasted for 3 days, often known as "Three Days' Reign"

• This was quickly suppressed by a Chinese garrison stationed in Korea. This enhanced the Chinese influence over Korea until 1894
• After the failure of the coup, the coup leaders fled to Japan; Seo Jae-pil later went to the US, studied medicine, and became the "first Korean American." He married an American woman.
• While negotiating with Japan and China, the queen persuaded the Chinese envoys to keep 2,000 soldiers disguised as Joseon police without Japan knowing it. A famous Chinese general (later warlord) Yuan Shikai stayed in Korea.

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(3) 10 years of peace - diplomatic balance and reforms

Between the time period 1882~1894, the queen (and king) consistently pursued the policy of checking Japan's rising influence by allying with Qing China and Westerners. Joseon signed a treaty with the US, UK, Germany, Russia, and France.

• She chose that direction because
  • (a) she knew that Japan posed the greatest national security threat to Korea - other nations (China and Westerners) were less interested in Korea's territory
  • (b) perhaps she did not agree with Japan's radical modernization and constitutional monarchy model. At the end of the day, she was a member of monarchy, and had a class interest in preserving its power

Many important changes were happening. I will just mention a few:

Economic opening and reform

• opening ports and collecting tariff from foreign trades
• establishment of first Korean corporations
• laying telegraph lines with China and Japan
• the issue of new coinage (which unfortunately caused an inflation)

Medicine:

• an American doctor treated a severe wound of one of the queen's relatives. A rumor spread that "a foreigner with bushy red beard revived a dead noble." Later the queen and king endorsed the establishment of the first Western hospital and medical school in Seoul. (a further story)
  • Another story about smallpox vaccine

Education and culture:

• The queen invited many Western (American) missionaries to establish schools.
  • The queen herself was never a Christian, and throughout her life, she followed a syncretism of Buddhism, Shamanism, and Confucianism like any other Joseon woman back then
  • But she knew the practical importance of Western knowledge, mathematics and science
• The queen also gave her patronage to the first all-girls' educational institution, Ewha Academy (now prestitious Ewha Women's University).
  • The queen befriended several female American missionaries. The American women left many detailed, valuable records about the queen, undistorted by gender bias
• First modern newspapers were published
• Music: Christian hymns, chords, and instruments were introduced via missionaries and churches. Many of the first-generation Korean (modern) composers came from Christian families. They composed Korean anthems, children's songs, and national songs that are still taught in Korea

Continuing military reform:

• US generals were invited to Korea to provide advice and training
• Joseon court also established a new navy

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21. Peasant rebellion, the queen's anti-Japan stance, and the 45-year-old queen's violent murder by the Japanese [1894-1895]

The opening and reform was not popular outside of Seoul, among the less educated populace. The vast populace in the provinces was deeply suspicious of anything foreign, and rejected the new ideas of market economy and diplomacy.

In 1894, a large-scale peasant rebellion took place, triggered by a local magistrate's abuse of power (Gobu magistrate Cho Byeong-gap) in the historically stigmatized Southwestern province Jeolla. This got magnified by a new religious movement called Donghak ("Eastern learning" as opposed to "Western learning" aka Christianity). It was similar to China's Taiping Rebellion

• Donghak was a syncretism of some Christian creeds (equality between people) and Buddhism and shamanism. Its descendant cults and beliefs are still alive in Korea
  • My post "Korean indigenous new religious movements' holy sites in North Jeolla"

The Donghak rebels had three initial demands:

• (1) Stop the ban on Donghak
• (2) Expel Westerners, Expel Japan
• (3) Kill corrupt court officials and magistrates

Some 80,000 believers gathered under the flags of "Expel Westerners, Expel Japan" (Cheokyang Cheokwae). Later it developed more radical slogans such as "Kill all the Min clan members."

• They attached warning signs "LEAVE" to American, French, British, and Japanese residences, and Christian churches and schools
  • Ironically, many of their campaigns were influenced by Western ideas: equality, women's rights (particularly widow's rights to remarry), people's councils, abolition of slavery, etc.
• Peasants were deeply sympathetic with them, and secretly helped the rebel army. They informed the rebels about the local geography and weather (e.g. mist), and sabotaged the state army (e.g. filling water in their cannons)
• A rumor that ghosts (supernatural power) are helping the rebels spread among the state army.

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This event might indicate the weakness of the queen's regime in controlling domestic affairs and local corruption. While she was an excellent diplomat and strategist, there's less evidence that she was good at internal affairs.

However, I'd like to defend her given the constraints of her time. Noble women were normally kept in "inner chambers," (link) and banned from coming out of their residence in daylight (source). The queen was deeply hidden within the walls of the palace, and she had to be unseen. All the official commands had to come through the king. There were few contact points between her and the vast "real world" populace out there. There was a limit in her capability to control the internal affairs, compared to what was available to male rulers.

Although consort kins are normally demonized in the Confucian social systems, there is no evidence that the queen and her clan was particularly corrupt. Her personal spending was very modest, and the clan was under her control. The most famous clan member Min Young-hwan devoted himself to reforming the country, and committed suicide when Korea lost sovereignty to Japan.

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As a reaction to the rebellion, the Joseon court organized a committee for the first large-scale reform. Then a series of international events followed:

• Both Qing China and Japan tried to aid Joseon to quell the peasant rebellion, to increase their influence in the Korean peninsula
• There were both pro-China and pro-Japan factions in the Joseon court. The queen was pro-China (Party B), but there were lots of pro-Japan court officials (Party C)
• Japan was expanding their influence over the pro-Japan faction in Joseon. They also funded a military unit in the capital of Joseon, which would help Japanese operations later on
• The first Sino-Japanese War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Sino-Japanese_War occurred - and unexpectedly, Japan won, China lost.

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After watching China losing the war, the queen swiftly moved to ally with Russia to counterbalance Japan. Japan was practically the biggest national security threat to Joseon, and the Japanese officials were already discussing a military expedition into Joseon. Her foreign policy was consistently about checking Japan's rising influence.

• In 1895, while inviting Russians to the court, she ordered the disbandment of the Japan-funded military unit (Hullyeondae).

This was what rang the death knell for the queen.

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In October of 1895, dozens of Japanese swordsmen entered the Korean palace. The Japan-funded Korean military unit (that the queen had tried to disband) cooperated to open the gate. The Japanese swordsmen violently slaughtered the 45-year-old queen with katanas, "violated" her dead body (I'd rather not know what happened), displayed her dead body to Russians in the court as a warning, and burned her body to ash in a forest.

Even the most pro-Japan Western historians describe the event as "unspeakably barbaric."

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21. The shockwave of the queen's violent murder; a short-lived Korean Empire

Did the queen and king love each other?

• It is hard to tell. They were primarily political partners, their fates being intertwined. The Confucian polygamy allowed (and encouraged) the king to sleep around with different women and have children with them, while the queen had to be strictly faithful to the man. Would any modern woman be able to stand it? It must be very difficult.
  • But they grew together. For the first 5 years in their marriage, they were just children forced to be together. As they grew into adulthood, they discovered the potential as political partners in each other, and also became conjugal partners in a real sense. They had children together, explored the frightening new world, and pursued opening and reform together. While the king did not have the political astuteness and shrewdness of the queen, he was a kind and warm-hearted man, sometimes had his own opinions and discussed them with the queen based on mutual respect.
• Right after the queen's murder, the king's father Daewongun (the expelled former regent) immediately, a bit pathetically, returned to the palace upon the news. The father demanded that the king sign an edict to demote the murdered queen to a lower-rank consort. The king refused it with unusual decisiveness, saying: "I would rather have my hands cut off."

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The king was deeply depressed after the murder, and spent months in his chamber doing nothing. Then, he suddenly left his palace with his crown prince son, and voluntarily exiled into the Russian legation. There, he continued the queen's policy direction--alliance with Russia--, and started kicking out the pro-Japan faction. He got rid of them from his new cabinet, and executed several high officials in the pro-Japan faction. He willingly continued the policy direction of his murdered wife.

• Soon his father died, but the king did not even attend his father's funeral, which was an extreme violation of the Confucian social norms.

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The queen's death also shocked the nation, and strong anti-Japan sentiment rose. In 1896, young Kim Gu (later one of the most important independence fighters) murdered a Japanese man, suspecting that he was one of the Japanese assassins. He wrote in his journal:

>Could he ... one of [the killers]? Even if he is not, a Japanese man with a disguise and a sword can do nothing but harm to my country and people. I will revenge for my queen by killing this Japanese man.

He got a death sentence, but he escaped the prison (such a badass) and later organized many guerilla organizations.

Responding to the queen's murder and also the widely unpopular "Short Hair Act" , the Righteous Army was also organized by Confucian scholars and concerned commoners

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In 1897, the king proclaimed the Korean Empire as a symbol of independence from imperial powers, and was coronated in an imperial altar that had been only allowed for Chinese emperors before. In a series of reforms, his new cabinet legally abolished the class system, and kept collaborating with Westerners (Americans, British, missionaries, etc.) to build infrastructure. Street cars, electricity, and street lamps were introduced in the capital Hanyang (Seoul).

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Only one more post is left in this series!