This treaty had called for the notification of the other side if ever there was a cause for dispatching troops to Korea. And this is exactly what happened in June of 1894, when the Korean government turned to China, almost reflexively, to help put down the Tonghak rebellion. The influx of Chinese troops was met by a quick Japanese response likewise, and before long this powder keg was lit. Under the pretext of protecting the Japanese consulate and other possessions, Japanese soldiers filled the Seoul streets. They provided support for the diplomatic pressure exerted by envoy Otori, who demanded fundamental government reforms at self-strengthening that would ensure a Korean buffer against Chinese threats to Japan. When these troops chased away the conservative pro-Chinese government leaders, the Japanese orchestrated the creation of the Deliberative Assembly (Kun’guk kimuch’ ), which would henceforth act as the highest governing body.
While the Deliberative Assembly went about its work, the Japanese forces prosecuted their confrontation with China, declaring war on August 1 and swiftly gaining the upper hand. In a series of clashes, from Pyongyang, where the largest land battle of the war left much of the city in ruins, to the Manchurian areas of Dalian and the Shandong peninsula, to naval exchanges in the Yellow Sea,
the Japanese won decisively. Just as they had attempted, but failed, to do in the 1590s, the Japanese sought supremacy in East Asia by provoking a direct confrontation with China in Korea, and this time the result was a shift in the East Asian regional balance of power that would endure for a century.
THE SPIRIT OF KABO
This momentous reversal of the East Asian order would present a psychological and cultural shock to the Koreans, akin to the effect of the fall of the Ming dynasty two centuries earlier (Chapter 10). But for many Koreans, China’s downfall represented good riddance, a crucial external ingredient for furthering the internal process of enlightenment, reform, and self-strengthening. The Deliberative Assembly in fact could not have been clearer in its approval of this newfound independence from the centuries-long subordination to the Chinese: the first article of its reform program declared that Korea’s official dating system would no longer be based on the Chinese imperial calendar but rather on the founding, in 1392, of the Chosn dynasty—1894, for example, was now “Year 503 After Foundation.” The second article called for a new kind of diplomatic relationship between Korea and China. But the articles that followed definitively set the stage for the staggering changes in state and society that the Deliberative Assembly would promulgate. In the rest of the first ten articles, in fact, the Deliberative Assembly declared an end to hereditary social status and slavery, a cessation of contract marriages of adolescents along with a lifting of the prohibition on widow remarriage, and the opening of the path to government service by commoners. By the time the Deliberative Assembly gave way to a cabinet-based government at the end of 1894, it had passed over 200 such bills, systematically overhauling patterns of Korean government, society, and economy that had been in place for centuries. With the exception of those concerning governing structure, most of these resolutions were not immediately implemented into practice, but they provided a blueprint and impetus for reform that would continue for decades.
The end of slavery in Korea
“Laws allowing public and private public slavery are completely abolished, and the sale of human beings is forbidden.” One is tempted to take this resolution of July 1894, the ninth passed by the Deliberative Assembly, as the Korean equivalent to the American Emancipation Proclamation of three decades earlier. Indeed this comparison inspires thinking about the striking parallels as well as differences between the Korean and American forms of slavery. Korea’s system was more ancient and endured in a population with no physical differences, while that of the US was based on, and had a lot to do with furthering, the notion of race. But the two slave systems shared fundamental features: hereditary slave status, the treatment of slaves as chattel property, and the dependence of the social structure and economy on their exploitation. In both cases as well, the perpetuation of slavery and discrimination relied upon the insistence of the “one drop of blood” rule in the face of widespread “miscegenation” through sexual exploitation. The similarities extended, in fact, to the gradual and pained process of true emancipation following legal eradication.
The fading of slavery in Korea had actually begun long before the Kabo Reforms, both legally and customarily. After reaching a peak, according to estimates from household registration records, of approximately 30 percent of the population in the late seventeenth century, economic trends toward the use of more wage labor made slavery gradually less efficient. And growing calls from scholar-officials condemning the practice as a violation of Confucian morality contributed to the government’s decision to eliminate the holding of “public,” or government, slaves (kong nobi) in the early nineteenth century. By the time of the Kabo Reform declaration that extended this ban to the private slaves, slavery had already been significantly diminished. The official emancipation of 1894, then, was largely a symbolic gesture; indeed, some forms of servitude did not end, and even the first major revision of the household registration system in 1896 still made room for bound servants. It was not until 1909 that the registration form eliminated any possibility of accounting for them. Even these steps, however, did not totally destroy the reality of bondage, especially in the countryside, where servile laborers (msm) continued to tend to their masters until the Korean War (1950–53) period.
These legal steps of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, were still significant, for once slavery, bound servitude, and the legal distinction of “mean” or “low-born” people were eliminated from Korean society, their descendants truly enjoyed social liberation. This perhaps stems from the fact that Korean hereditary slavery, though meticulously maintained through record-keeping and other factors, had not been based on physical differences like “race.” In other words, in the modern era, with increasing urbanization and mobility, no one could really know who was a slave descendant. The contrast with America could not be starker. The flip side to this, however, is the contemporary Korean tendency, bordering on national amnesia, regarding this troubling component of the past: the casual claim that Korea’s form of slavery was somehow less inhumane finds easy support in the quirky belief among almost all (South) Koreans that they are descendants of the Chosn aristocracy.
The Deliberative Assembly, in short, kick-started the Kabo (“1894”) Reforms of 1894–6, the significance of which would reverberate over the course of Korea’s modern transformation.
The makeup of the Deliberative Assembly and of the Kabo Reform governments was equally revolutionary. Of the twenty or so members of the Deliberative Assembly, half came from the non-aristocratic secondary status groups. And while the Kabo government cabinets were formally led by men with traditional aristocratic ancestry, the ranks immediately below, from vice minister to administrators and their assistants, were filled with those from non-aristocratic backgrounds. This bespoke the prominence of people from secondary status groups, especially northerners and the chungin technical specialists, in the Korean enlightenment movement from the 1860s onward. Their ascendance to the higher ranks of the new officialdom, in breaking through the centuries-old barriers of hereditary status, had much to do with the particularities of their longstanding roles, but also with their readiness to discard traditional ideas and ways. This tendency, shared by the enlightenment activists as a whole—both aristocratic and not—also drew them to Japan as a model of reform and self-strengthening. Such ties were reinforced in the fall of 1895 by the assassination, at the hands of Japanese soldiers and Korean accomplices, of Queen Min, who from the beginning had been a thorn on the side of Japanese interests.
The uproar over this craven act eventually engulfed the political scene and, by the opening weeks of 1896, anti-Japanese elements close to the monarch spirited away the Korean king to the safe haven of the Russian consulate, beyond the reach of the Japanese s
oldiers and Korean government officials. This provided the impetus for the widespread distaste for the Kabo government to erupt into a mob that helped to kill several top officials while chasing the rest to Japan. Thus ended the Kabo Reforms, the same way as they had begun back in the summer of 1894, with Korean progressives under the protection of the Japanese.
The forces unleashed by the events of 1894, however, would pave multiple paths of historical development determining the country’s modern fate: China would weaken further and not regain its dominant standing in northeast Asia for another century; the Tonghak Uprising would inspire countless other eruptions of armed anti-foreign resistance movements well into the period of Japanese colonialism (1910–45); and the Kabo Reforms would stand as a microcosm of Korea’s uneasy transitions at the turn of the twentieth century—at once embracing the models of the outside world, but ultimately becoming swamped by forces beyond Koreans’ control.
15
. . . . . . . .
The Great Korean Empire
CHRONOLOGY
1896 April Founding of the Independence Club and publication of The Independent newspaper
1896 Revision of the household registration system
1897 Proclamation of the Great Korean Empire
1898 Start of the nation-wide land survey
1899 Government shutdown of the Independence Club and The Independent newspaper
1899 May Operation of the first streetcars in Seoul
1899 September Opening of the Seoul-Inch’n Rail Line
1904 Opening of the Seoul-Pusan Rail Line
1904 Outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War
THE OPENING OF THE SEOUL–INCH’N RAIL LINE, 1899
“The noise from the rolling fire-wheeled chariot was like that of thunder, as the earth and heavens shook and the smoke from the chimney of the engine erupted into the air,” wrote a newspaper reporter who rode the inaugural rail trip in Korea in September of 1899. “As I sat in the car and looked out the window, the whole world seemed to be racing past us, and even flying birds could not catch up.” Such awestruck accounts accompanied the introduction of railroads throughout the world in the nineteenth century, as the enormous bellowing machines heralded the onset of a new era. In Korea, the opening of the first rail line between Seoul and Inch’n, a distance of approximately twenty miles, took on a similarly epochal significance. This event furthermore came to reflect the mixture
of confidence, potentiality, and wariness that came to mark the “Great Korean Empire,” the brief period, from 1897 to 1910, when the Chosn kingdom became an “empire” in line with the foreign powers that surrounded the country. As with the railroad, the Great Korean Empire period witnessed the birth of many fundamental features of the modern era, not only in communications and transportation infrastructure, but in the wider realms of technology and commerce, and as well as in culture and institutions.
However profound its altering of life and perception, the railroad in Korea also cannot escape the discomfiting connections to the history of national misfortune, for these early rail lines eventually served the purposes of the Japanese takeover of Korea. The initiation into the modern era, like the railroad, constituted a double-edged sword, as the promises of “enlightenment” and progress were tempered by threatening forces beyond the Korean people’s control. It is this duality that renders judgment on the Great Korean Empire contentious. Once largely derided for its failures, this period is now mined for signs of an autonomous Korean modernity.
KOREA AND THE NEW EMPIRES
At the turn of the twentieth century, Korea was immersed in the age of high imperialism. The social Darwinian ethos of the “strong eating the weak” played itself out in the global arena, and northeast Asia became one of the fiercest zones of competition. Once again, Korea, at the center and crossroads of this region, unwittingly stood as a target for territorial gain or commercial exploitation. The imperialist rivalry penetrated and, in turn, was appropriated by competing political groups at court. During the closing years of the nineteenth century a new imperial power, Russia, eyed the peninsula as a key component in its geopolitical strategy, and likewise the pro-Russian sentiment among higher officials, who looked upon Russia as a protector, gained the upper hand. But the Russian empire’s ambitions of establishing a strong presence in northeast Asia clashed with those of another rising power with support from Korean high officials: Japan. The Japanese empire had defeated Qing dynasty China in the 1894–95 war on Korean soil and gained Taiwan and parts of Manchuria as its war booty. At the turn of the twentieth century, however, it found itself chafing against the constraints on its regional ambitions imposed by the European powers, especially Russia. And finally, China, too, lurched toward refashioning itself as a modern imperial power even while trying to fend off the Western forces.
Korea, traditionally China’s most reliable tributary state, now sought to escape this subordinate relationship altogether. “Independence” from China had been a central motive behind the Kabo Reforms of 1894–96 (Chapter 14). And even after the fall of the Kabo government in early 1896, the Korean monarch and government advisors pursued this diplomatic path in order to establish autonomy not only from China but from all the ravenous imperial powers that surrounded the country. After months of entreaties, from both within and beyond the court, to take a bold step in this direction, in 1897 the Chosn monarchy officially joined the ranks of empires. On the surface, this seemed delusional, for Korea, with no command over different ethnic or civilizational groups, did not look anything like an empire. But in traditional East Asian statecraft, the distinction between empire and kingdom was one of diplomatic recognition and self-declaration. When the Chinese “Son of Heaven” no longer appeared as the pinnacle Under Heaven, Korean officials felt compelled to take such a step, believing this would bestow equal standing in the global order. Hence the birth of the “Great Korean Empire,” or “Taehan cheguk”—shortened to “Han’guk” then as now (at least in South Korea, or Taehan min’guk)—and, with it, the coronation of the Korean monarch in 1897 as emperor. One of the best known images from this period shows Emperor Kojong, appropriating the circulating symbols of imperial splendor and might, posing resplendently while dressed in a faux Kaiser uniform. Little wonder, then, that henceforth his reign would be called officially that of the “Glorious Military” (Kwangmu).
The construction of the Korean monarchy’s new status and legitimacy went far beyond the emperor himself, however. It encompassed a range of changes, both symbolic and organizational. The ceremonial declaration of the “Great Korean Empire” borrowed from a mixture of old and recent traditions, surrounding the monarch in ancient customs and symbols while emphasizing that his ascent represented “the foundation of independence” in the new era. The standardization of other symbols accepted globally as emblems of state sovereignty soon followed, including a flag and national anthem, and even national holidays. The strengthening of the monarchical state progressed on the level of institutional changes as well. The formal description and proclamation of the “Imperial System,” which appeared two years later in 1899, employed concepts and terminology establishing legitimacy in the vocabulary of late nineteenth-century international law. But most of the content in this proclamation reinforced the ties to the Chosn dynasty and declared monarchical absolutism, with each article explicitly covering a different realm of governance over which the emperor had total control.
Even the economic activities directed by the royal house contributed to this emperor-centered state legitimacy, for they bathed the monarchy in the aura of modern advances. The Office of Crown Properties and a host of other organs subordinated under the Royal Household Ministry took the lead in sponsoring major economic projects in electricity, streetcars, waterworks, telegraph and telephone, printing, and minting. Furthermore the monarchy rescinded the concessions already granted to foreign railroad and mining operations and took control over the further development of these industries. This pattern of connecting th
e imperial state’s legitimacy to economic development would serve as the basis upon which the intensified developmentalist efforts of Korean states would emerge later in the modern era. The Korean government that coexisted uneasily with the Royal Household Ministry did its part, too, in strengthening the state, particularly by revamping the household registration system and undertaking a nationwide land survey. Both efforts sought to increase the central government’s capacities for mobilization and extraction, and to a certain extent they achieved these goals. But ultimately they paled in comparison to the accomplishments of the Royal Household Ministry in solidifying legitimacy through the promotion of material advances.
TRADE AND INDUSTRY
The Royal Household Ministry was, in fact, responsible for a substantial portion of the many developments in commerce, industry, and infrastructure during the Korean Empire, which laid the foundation for the material transformation of modern Korea. In some areas, such as electricity generation, Korea benefited from a “late developer” status, gaining immediate access to recent technological breakthroughs through borrowing. The first and most advanced electrical generation system in East Asia had been installed in the royal palace in Seoul in the mid-1880s and built by the Edison Electrical Company. Within a decade, Korea’s capital city could boast of hundreds of electric streetlights. By May of 1899, four months before the opening of the Seoul–Inch’n railway, the Seoul Electrical Company unveiled, to great fanfare, the first electric streetcar line, connecting the city’s East Gate to a neighborhood on the outskirts of the city. The Seoul streetcars, appearing frequently in photographs that implied a range of accompanying social and economic changes, would remain the most visible symbol of rapidly changing Seoul in this era.
A History of Korea Page 16