A History of Korea (59 page)

In the 1880s the Chos
ŏ
n government adopted the doctrine of tongdo s
ŏ
gi to pursue the enlightenment policy in many areas. The results fell short of its expectations, and the effort only invited foreign interference in the country.

Ever since the coup d’état of 1884 China enjoyed an overwhelmingly dominant position in Chos
ŏ
n. Yuan Shihkai controlled Chos
ŏ
n’s internal affairs and blocked interference by foreign powers in order to maintain China’s suzerain-dependency relations with Chos
ŏ
n. Also, under his protection, Chinese merchants thronged to every part of the country and established a settlement in Seoul’s downtown area which virtually became Seoul’s “Chinatown.”

After concluding the friendship treaty between Chos
ŏ
n and the United States in 1882, Kojong embarked on freeing his kingdom from Chinese domination and using U.S. aid to modernize the country. The king and his adherents regarded the United States as a benevolent power that would guarantee Chos
ŏ
n’s territorial integrity and political independence, and viewed the bilateral treaty as an instrument to free Chos
ŏ
n from Chinese control. They interpreted the “good offices” provision of Article 1, as pointed out above, to mean that the United States would guarantee the integrity and independence of their country by taking sides with Chos
ŏ
n in the event of foreign aggression. With his favorable impression of the United States, Kojong was said to have “danced for joy” when Lucius H. Foote arrived in Seoul in May 1883 as the first U.S. minister. The king wanted to employ several American advisers in the Chos
ŏ
n government, and encouraged U.S. investment and trade to induce and strengthen U.S. interests in Chos
ŏ
n. As a result, the Americans invested in railroads, streetcars, a telegraph system, and the Unsan gold mine.

The United States had concluded, however, that Chos
ŏ
n was of less value economically and strategically than it had expected, and so it increasingly distanced itself from the kingdom. Thus, despite Kojong’s strong desire for more American involvement, the United States turned him down, although it formally supported Chos
ŏ
n’s independence.

U.S. reluctance to help Chos
ŏ
n led Kojong to turn to Russia. Unlike the indifference displayed by the United States, Russia took a great interest in making inroads into Chos
ŏ
n, particularly to secure an ice-free port. After signing a treaty of friendship and commerce between Chos
ŏ
n and Russia in 1884, Karl Woeber was sent to Chos
ŏ
n as a Russian minister. An able diplomat, Woeber frequently visited the court to foster a pro-Russian faction in the government. Responding to Russian efforts, a pro-Russian clique emerged among those who resented China’s excessive interference in internal affairs. This development was further accelerated by Möllendorf, Kojong’s special adviser on foreign affairs. Although he was appointed, on Li Hongzhang’s recommendation, as vice minister of the Foreign Office and inspector-general of Chos
ŏ
n’s customs service, Möllendorf tried to free Chos
ŏ
n from Chinese control by allying the kingdom closely with Russia.

Concerned about Chos
ŏ
n’s leanings toward Russia, the Chinese responded initially by returning the Taew
ŏ
n’gun to Chos
ŏ
n. But then, in August 1886, Yuan Shihkai considered dethroning Kojong. This move was frustrated by Li Hongzhang’s opposition, and, instead, China pressured the Chos
ŏ
n government to dismiss Möllendorf. After the latter’s dismissal in September 1885, Li Hongzhang divided Möllendorf’s responsibilities between the American Owen Nickerson Denny, who became the foreign affairs adviser, and another American, Henry F. Merrill, who was made chief of the customs service. During his tenure between 1886 and 1890, however, Denny, too, advocated close ties with Russia. In August 1888 he concluded an overland-trade agreement with Russia that opened Ky
ŏ
ngh
ŭ
ng, on the Russian border, , to the Russians for trade and granted Russia full navigation rights on the Tumen River.

Russian inroads into Chos
ŏ
n aroused uneasiness in Great Britain, which at the time was dealing with Russia’s southward advance into Asia Minor, among other places. With China’s full knowledge, in April 1885 the British illegally occupied K
ŏ
mun-do off the southern coast of Ch
ŏ
lla province to defend against Russia in case of an Anglo-Russian war. By building troop encampments and gun emplacements there, Great Britain demonstrated that K
ŏ
mun-do would be used as a permanent gateway to the Korea Strait. The British called the island “Fort Hamilton.”

The Chos
ŏ
n government vigorously protested the British infringement of its sovereignty, while Russia, alarmed by the British incursion, pressured China
to intervene with the British or else it, too, would occupy Chos
ŏ
n’s territory. China interceded, and two years of negotiations finally led to the British evacuation of K
ŏ
mun-do in March 1887. Great Britain withdrew its forces from the island on the condition that no nation would be permitted to seize Chos
ŏ
n’s territory. As international rivalry over Chos
ŏ
n intensified, Chos
ŏ
n was urged to become an unaligned nation by such notables as Kim Ok-kyun, Yu Kil-chun, and Möllendorf. These urgings were ignored, and by the early 1890s Chos
ŏ
n had become the focus of a three-way power struggle between China, Japan, and Russia. In its effort to preserve its political independence and territorial integrity, the Chos
ŏ
n kingdom’s only weapon was to play off one powerful nation against another.

By the early 1890s Chos
ŏ
n was ripe for a peasant rebellion as a result of the kingdom’s deteriorating economic and social conditions. Government officials were so corrupt that much of the tax collected for the central government was sidetracked by local officials. The government’s vigorous pursuit of enlightenment policy had worsened already troubled public finances, as the steep cost of huge indemnities to Japan and the introduction of new modern facilities had to be financed mostly by the peasants.

The peasantry was also wounded financially following Japan’s economic penetration, for the conclusion of the Treaty of Kanghwa in early 1876 had given Japan almost a monopoly on Chos
ŏ
n’s foreign trade. Two years later, in 1878, Japan’s Daiichi Bank established a branch office in Pusan, encouraging Japanese merchants to find their way into the Chos
ŏ
n market. (Indeed, Chos
ŏ
n gold was used as a reserve fund for the Bank of Japan.) The Japanese merchants purchased rice, soy beans, cattle hides, and alluvial gold at incredibly low prices, making huge profits at home. On the other hand, Chos
ŏ
n was faced with the pressing need of devising some way to protect its national economy against Japan. Although its position in Chos
ŏ
n weakened for a short period after the abortive coup of 1884, Japan quickly recovered its former position. By the early 1890s Japanese economic activity had reached a standard that no other nation could rival. Chos
ŏ
n’s exports, chiefly rice, soybeans, and cowhides, went almost entirely to Japan, and Chos
ŏ
n’s rice, superior in quality to Japanese rice, was used to feed the Japanese. Japan imported cowhides for military use, and Chos
ŏ
n imported cotton goods and other industrial products, mostly sundry
goods for daily use, from Japan. These trade practices devastated Chos
ŏ
n’s village economy, seriously aggravating the food situation.

To resist Japan’s economic penetration, especially its huge rice imports, the Chos
ŏ
n government prohibited certain provinces from exporting rice. Large-scale bans were imposed in Hwanghae and Hamgy
ŏ
ng provinces in October 1889. Because of strong Japanese protests, however, the Chos
ŏ
n government lifted the embargo on rice and indemnified Japan for damages. The continuously deteriorating village economy aroused deep animosity among the peasantry toward its exploiters, foreign as well as Korean. This discontent of the peasantry combined with the Tonghak movement to provoke the Tonghak peasant war.

As the country opened to foreign trade and the peasants’ plight deepened, the popular, nationalistic, and religious Tonghak movement gained wide support in the farmlands. A network of Tonghak churches had been established in the countryside, and its members were organized into
p’o,
or parishes, creating a hierarchy of church leadership, mainly educated men of considerable fortune. Since the late 1870s, the Tonghak had firmly taken root in the three southern provinces of Ch’ungch’
ŏ
ng, Ch
ŏ
lla, and Ky
ŏ
ngsang.

As the Tonghak became increasingly influential in Chos
ŏ
n society, its members channeled their energies into a movement both to clear the name of its founder, Ch’oe Che-u, of false charges that had led to a death sentence in 1864, and to allow missionaries to carry on their activities freely.To this end, several thousand Tonghak members gathered at Samnye in Ch
ŏ
lla province in December 1892, demanding that the governors of Ch’ungch’
ŏ
ng and Ch
ŏ
lla provinces posthumously exonerate Ch’oe Che-u and end the suppression of the Tonghak movement. The two governors rejected the first demand, claiming that it was beyond their jurisdiction, but they pledged that Tonghak believers would no longer suffer persecution by local officials.

Not persuaded by this pledge, in March 1893 more than 40 Tonghak members, led by Pak Kwang-ho, held vigil before the palace gate for three days where they petitioned the king directly. The government arrested the leaders of the petitioners and forcibly dispersed the throngs. The next month, some 20,000 infuriated Tonghak members gathered at Po
ŭ
n, Ch’ungch’
ŏ
ng province, hoisted banners calling for a “crusade to expel the Japanese and Westerners,” and confirmed their determination to fight to the death. Soothing the Tonghak crowd at first with promises to punish officials who had harshly persecuted the Tonghak, the government then proceeded to subdue them with a 600-man force
commanded by Hong Kye-hun. The exhausted Tonghak members dispersed voluntarily on the condition that the governor of Ch’ungch’
ŏ
ng province would be punished.

In 1894 the simmering protest came to a head, as the Tonghak movement evolved into a large-scale peasant revolution focused in the Ch
ŏ
lla region, historically the granary of Korea. This region had suffered the most severe exploitation by the financially crippled central government and corrupt local officials, and witnessed the shipping of rice to Japan in greater quantities than any other province. Thus the Ch
ŏ
lla people’s hostility toward the central government, local officials, and Japan was exceptionally fierce.

The specific trigger of the rebellion, however, was the excessive exploitation of the peasantry by Cho Py
ŏ
ng-gap, the magistrate of Kobu county. A typical corrupt official, Cho had taken every opportunity to illegally extort large amounts of grain from the peasantry, collecting, for instance, more than 1,000
yang
, equivalent to some 1,500 contemporary silver dollars, to erect a pavilion to protect his father’s tombstone. Most enraging to the peasants was the tax he forcibly levied on irrigation water from the Mans
ŏ
k-po reservoir. He had already exacted corvee labor from the peasants to construct the reservoir, and yet charged a large quantity of rice for water use. The angry peasants had repeatedly appealed for redress to the Kobu county and Ch
ŏ
lla provincial offices but to no avail. Finally, in February 1894, under the leadership of Ch
ŏ
n Pong-jun, the head of Tonghak parish of Kobu county, more than 1,000 peasants seized the county office, punished corrupt functionaries, returned illegally collected tax rice to the taxpayers, and took weapons from the armory. After occupying the town of Kobu, the peasant forces called upon the government to punish Cho Py
ŏ
ng-gap for his abuses and block the inroads of Japanese merchants into the Chos
ŏ
n market.

Thoroughly alarmed, the government dispatched a specially empowered inspector, Yi Yong-t’ae, to investigate the incident. Yi, however, wanted to place responsibility for the uprising on the Tonghak movement and was intent on ferreting out and punishing Tonghak members. This was the final blow. Enraged by this betrayal, the peasants rallied around Tonghak leaders Ch
ŏ
n Pong-jun, Son Hwa-jung, Kim Kae-nam, and O Chi-y
ŏ
ng and, in April 1894, they rose in rebellion armed with bamboo spears and cudgels, declaring they would drive out Japan, the West, and the privileged few, and provide for the people’s welfare. As peasants from the neighboring areas joined forces with the Tonghak rebels, their ranks swelled to some 8,000.

The Tonghak forces moved northward to Paeksan in battle formation and defeated government troops sent from Ch
ŏ
lla province at Hwangt’ohy
ŏ
n hill south of Kobu in May 1894. They then marched southward, successfully seizing Ch
ŏ
ng
ŭ
p, Koch’ang, Mujang, and Y
ŏ
nggwang, and then further south to occupy Hamp’y
ŏ
ng, Muan, and Naju. After this successful campaign, they turned northward. To suppress the rebellion, the central government had already dispatched Hong Kye-hun, commanding some 800 men from the elite capital garrison. Hong’s forces proved no match for the confident, spirited Tonghak insurgents. Routing these government troops in a clash at Changs
ŏ
ng in their northern campaign, the Tonghak forces met with virtually no resistance and easily occupied Ch
ŏ
nju in late May 1894. By early June all of Ch
ŏ
lla province was under the occupation of the Tonghak forces.