Corea: The Hermit Nation

by William Elliot Griffis

The walls of Corean isolation, so long intact, had been sapped by the entrance of Christianity and the French missionaries, and now began to crumble. With the Russians on the north, and the sea no longer a barrier, the Japanese began to press upon the east, while China broke through and abolished the neutrality of the western border. The fires of civilization began to smoke out the hermit.

The revolutions of 1868 in Japan, culminating after a century of interior preparation, abolished the dual system and feudalism, and restored the mikado to supreme power. The capital was removed to Tōkiō, and the office of Foreign Affairs—a sub-bureau—was raised to a department of the Imperial administration. One of the first things attended to was to invite the Corean government to resume ancient friendship and vassalage.

This summons, coming from a source unrecognized for eight centuries, and to a regent swollen with pride at his victory over the French and his success in extirpating the Christian religion, and irritated at Japan for adopting western principles of progress and cutting free from Chinese influence and tradition, was spurned with defiance. An insolent and even scurrilous letter was returned to the mikado’s government, which stung to rage the military classes of Japan, who began to form a “war-party,” which was headed by Saigo of Satsuma. Waiting only for the return of the embassy from Europe, and for the word to take up the gage of battle, they nourished their wrath to keep it warm.

It was not so to be. New factors had entered the Corean problem since Taiko’s time. European states were now concerned in Asiatic politics. Russia was too near, China too hostile, and Japan too poor; she was even then paying ten per cent. interest to London bankers on the Shimonoséki Indemnity loan. Financial ruin, and a collision with China might result, if war were declared. [[421]]In October, 1873, the cabinet vetoed the scheme, and Saigo, the leader of the war party, resigned and returned to Satsuma, to nourish schemes for the overthrow of the ministry and the humiliation of Corea. “The eagle, even though starving, refuses to eat grain;” nor would anything less than Corean blood satisfy the Japanese veterans.

In 1873, the young king of Corea attained his majority. His father, Tai-wen Kun, by the act of the king backed by Queen Chō, was relieved of office, and his bloody and cruel lease of power came to an end. The young sovereign proved himself a man of mental vigor and independent judgment, not merely trusting to his ministers, but opening important documents in person. He has been ably seconded by his wife Min, through whose influence Tai-wen Kun was shorn of influence, nobles of progressive spirit were reinstated to office, and friendship with Japan encouraged. In this year, 1873, an heir to the throne was born of the queen; another royal child, the offspring of a concubine, having been born in 1869.

The neutral belt of land long inhabited by deer and tiger, or traversed by occasional parties of ginseng-hunters, had within the last few decades been overspread with squatters, and infested by Manchiu brigands and Corean outlaws. The depredations of these border ruffians both across the Yalu, and on the Chinese settlements—like the raids of the wild Indians on our Texas frontier—had become intolerable to both countries. In 1875, Li Hung Chang, sending a force of picked Chinese troops, supported by a gunboat on the Yalu, broke up the nest of robbers, and imbibed a taste both for Corean politics and for rectifying the frontiers of Shing-king. He proceeded at once to make said frontier “scientific” by allowing the surveyor and plowman to enter the no longer debatable land. In 1877, the governor of Shing-king proposing, the Peking Government shifted the eastern frontier of the empire twenty leagues nearer the rising sun, on the plea that “the width of the tract left uncultivated was of less moment than the efficiency of border regulations.” By this act the borders of China and Corea touched, and were written in Yalu water. The last vestige of insulation was removed, and the shocks of change now became more frequent and alarming. By contact with the living world, comatose Corea was to be galvanized into new life.

Nevertheless the hostile spirit of the official classes, who tyrannize the little country, was shown in the refusal to receive envoys of [[422]]the mikado because they were dressed in European clothes, in petty regulations highly irritating to the Japanese at Fusan, and by the overt act of violence which we shall now narrate.

Since 1868 the Japanese navy, modelled after the British, and consisting of American and European iron-clads and war vessels, has been manned by crews uniformed in foreign style. On September 19, 1875, some sailors of the Unyo Kuan, which had been cruising off the mouth of the Han River, landing near Kang-wa for water, were fired on by Corean soldiers, under the idea that they were Americans or Frenchmen. On the 21st the Japanese, numbering thirty-six men, and armed with breech loaders, stormed the fort. Most of the garrison were shot or drowned, the fort dismantled, and the spoil carried to the ships. Occupying the works two days, the Japanese returned to Nagasaki on the 23d.

The news of “the Kokwa [Kang-wa] affair” brought the wavering minds of both the peace and the war party of Japan to a decision. Arinori Mori was despatched to Peking to find out the exact relation of China to Corea, and secure her neutrality. Kuroda Kiyotaku was sent with a fleet to the Han River, to make, if possible, a treaty of friendship and open ports of trade. By the rival parties, the one was regarded as the bearer of the olive branch, the other of arrows and lightning. With Kuroda went Inouyé Bunda of the State Department, and Kin Rinshiō, the Corean liberal.

General Kuroda sailed January 6, 1876, amid salvos of the artillery of newspaper criticism predicting failure, with two men-of-war, three transports, and three companies of marines, or less than eight hundred men in all, and touching at Fusan, anchored within sight of Seoul, February 6th. About the same time, a courier from Peking arrived in the capital, bearing the Imperial recommendation that a treaty be made with the Japanese. The temper of the young king had been manifested long before this by his rebuking the district magistrate of Kang-wa for allowing soldiers to fire on peaceably disposed people, and ordering the offender to degradation and exile. Arinori Mori, in Peking, had received the written disclaimer of China’s responsibility over “the outpost state,” by which stroke of policy the Middle Kingdom freed herself from all possible claims of indemnity from France, the United States, and Japan. The way for a treaty was now smoothed, and the new difficulties were merely questions of form. Nevertheless, while Kuroda was unheard from, the Japanese war preparations went vigorously on. [[423]]