Corea: The Hermit Nation

by William Elliot Griffis

The pro-Japanese party, beginning with the bloody morning of October 8, 1895, when Queen Min was murdered, had been in power during four months, during which time a tremendous blow was dealt to the prestige of Japan in Corea. For eleven months the King transacted the national business in the Russian legation buildings, going only occasionally to the palace to give audiences to the foreign envoys. One of these from the Mikado presented a claim of indemnity for $146,000 for his subjects slain during the riot.

The flight of Corea’s sovereign was like that pictured in the proverb “from the frying pan into the fire.” In fierce reality, it was escape from bloody to inky tyranny, from an iron to a silken chain; but in both cases it was humiliation and slavery. While the guest of the Russians, the King paid well his bill as tenant by signing a concession to his hosts, permitting them to cut timber “in the Yalu valley.” The Russian Government liberally interpreted this document, according to the vast scale of Muscovite geography, as meaning the whole basin drained by the Yalu and its tributaries, that is, a region half as large as Corea. The Russians thus obtained for a year’s rent of part of their legation buildings a lien on Corean property valued at fifty millions of dollars.

Revolutions do not go backward, and the general proceeding of the Government was along the line of progress. The external reforms are particularly noticeable in the capital, in which Corean officers trained in Washington have greatly improved the streets, the methods of cleaning and the drainage. The police and soldiery were uniformed and disciplined, and preparations made for a national census. The untrustworthy “census” of Seoul showed a population of 144,626 in 27,527 houses, and in the suburbs 75,189 in 18,093 houses, or a total of 219,815, and of houses 45,350, in which district are 36 Buddhist temples with 442 priests and 204 nuns. The original width of the streets, as laid out in 1392, of 55 feet, has been regained over many miles of the city thoroughfares. Foreign trade steadily increased. American capital and energy helped to make what was once one of the filthiest and most unprogressive [[486]]cities of the Far East a clean and attractive place, bright with electric lights and railway and modern water-works. A railroad was built from the seaport to the capital and opened for traffic September 1, 1899. The steel bridge, made at Chattanooga, Tenn., spanning the Han River is nearly a mile long. The electroliers give light to the palace and to part of the city of Seoul. The trolley line, besides traversing the city, runs to the mausoleum of the Queen, which has been built in superb style. There her scant remains, escorted by a vast procession characterized in all its features by the old barbaric grandeur of Corea, were laid with appropriate ceremonies.

In the spring of 1896 the Independence Club, with a membership of over 2,000, was formed. It was composed entirely of natives actively interested in social and material development as well as in the independence of Corea. On October 21st the cornerstone of Independence Arch was laid on a site but a few yards distant from the old Chinese Gate under which the ambassadors of China had for centuries received the vassalage of the Corean sovereign. It is a structure in stone, alike of architectural beauty and of political significance. The subsequent history of this club and of the general movement, in which the publication of a daily newspaper in both English and native script, The Korean Independent, were prominent features, is not a happy one. It showed clearly that independence or freedom must be something more than a word, in order to bring forth the fruits seen in America or among the nations that have most cultivated liberty, safeguarded by law. In this Seoul movement the seed may have been good, but good and well prepared soil did not exist. Rock, brambles, and the beaten road of bad precedent, in which Corea is so rich, received the sower’s hopes. The movement ended in sedition or evaporated. Nevertheless, it was vastly better than the Seoul mobs that so often dictated imperial policy to the ministers of the Government. As late as May, 1902, the former members of the Independence Club were being arrested and executed. More promising in ultimate results was the celebration on September 2d of the forty-fifth birthday of the King by a great gathering of Corean Christians in the pavilion near the old Chinese Gate.

After a stay of one year and nine days, the King left his Russian quarters and took up his residence in the new palace of Kyeng-wun, [[487]]built in 1896 in the western part of the city, where are gathered the foreign legations and residences, some of them very handsome and substantial.

Corea, being now free and independent, between the two great empires of Japan and China, and Corean conceit of national history and antiquity, real or supposed, being never at any time lacking, it was thoroughly appropriate and financially very profitable for the yangban and palace officials to take measures to proclaim the once “little outpost state” an “empire,” and their sovereign an “emperor.” Besides suffering from imperialism in an acute form, the Corean office-holders knew well the significance of this nominally political act, in relation to their own fortunes; for in the assumption of the King of Corea of the title of Emperor, $100,000 was taken out of the treasury to celebrate the event, most of which, as a matter of course, went into the pockets of the King’s faithful servants. His Majesty protested in vain against the proceedings, but finally yielded gracefully. At 3 A.M. on October 12, 1896, with great pomp and state, before the altars of the Spirits of the Land, the King assumed the title of Emperor of Ta Han, or the Great Han—in distinction from the ancient San Han. “The King is dead, long live the Emperor.”

This, too, was the time of Russia’s political dominance, when a Russian military commission of fourteen were drilling the Corean military and when the Minister of Foreign Affairs at Seoul and the Russian envoy, Mr. Speyer, signed an agreement, November 5th, by which Dr. McLeavy Brown, the Englishman in charge of the national finances—able, faithful, and unterrified—should be ousted and a Russian, Mr. Kuril Alexieff, put in his place. Mr. Brown’s contract not having expired, he refused to vacate his post, and a large British and Japanese fleet having appeared off Chemulpo, he was able to maintain his ground. The three countries, Russia, Great Britain, and Japan, made an agreement that Mr. Brown should remain in office and that a Russian and a Japanese commissioner of customs should share in the collection of foreign duties at the ports. On December 23, 1897, a telegram was received from the Czar of Russia recognizing the Emperor of Corea, whereat the imperial party in Seoul was greatly elated. This whole incident illustrates the rather theatrical methods of Russian diplomacy in Corea during the past twenty years, showing [[488]]how entirely her interests were military and strategic, but not commercial, she having usually scarcely a score, and never at any time a hundred, of subjects in the empire commercially engaged, and only a few fishermen who are whale hunters on the coast. One Baron Guntzburg was busy as a promoter of Russian interests, and the wife of the Russian minister was not inactive in social affairs and even as an influencer of political action.

It was not long before there were signs of a popular reaction against Russia. On January 22, 1898, an attempt was made to assassinate Kim, the native Russian interpreter. By March 10th this feeling had taken form in a great anti-Russian demonstration, which ended in the apparently total though not real withdrawal of Russian influence in the peninsula. The military commission soon after departed and the Russo-Corean Bank was closed. After much excitement, Russia and Japan, on April 25th, agreed on a modus vivendi, both recognizing the sovereignty of Corea and engaging to refrain from direct interference in her internal affairs. No military or financial adviser was to be nominated without mutual agreement, and Russia bound herself not to impede the commercial relations between Japan and Corea. It was evident (probably in large measure on account of Russia’s new interests in Manchuria) that she considered Corea for the present beyond her sphere of influence. No serious revival of the claims of Russia to any part of Corea were made again openly until 1903. When the correspondence between Tokio and St. Petersburg, leading to the war of 1904, opened, the ambitions of Russia were seen to be serious and all-embracing.

The first year of the Corean empire was completed after the celebration of the King’s birthday with unusual demonstrations of loyalty. The founder’s day (that of Ki-tsze, or Ki-ja, whose tomb and temple are at Ping-an and which suffered during the war of 1894) and the 506th anniversary of the establishment of the dynasty, as well as the celebration of the coronation, were honored with unusual demonstrations, including the illumination of the capital. This year was noted for a revival of Confucianism among the yangban, Buddhism having already enjoyed a “recrudescence”—both systems being galvanized into a similitude of life by the powerful induction, and evidences, both in leaven and bloom, of the new faith. On the whole, the year 1898 [[489]]was characterized by an intense conservative reaction in the Government and by an absence of important diplomatic or political events, except the chronic local rebellions in the provinces and the plots of rivals and partisans in the capital. Notwithstanding that the solar calendar had been adopted in 1895, and had been officially observed, the people still celebrate New Year’s Day with a fortnight of oldtime rejoicings, merrymakings, and customs according to the lunar calendar.

The year 1899 was one of comparative quiet in the capital and provinces. During the Boxer agitation in China, there was danger of eruptions across the border which were duly guarded against, and a Russian escort of fifty soldiers to the refugee Danish missionaries from China was given free passage. Corea virtually joined the allies marching to Peking, by giving aid and comfort in the form of a thousand bags of cleaned rice, two thousand bags of flour, and several hundred cases of cigarettes.