A History of Korea (56 page)

In August 1866 an American merchant ship,
General Sherman,
appeared off the coast of P’y
ŏ
ngan province, ascended the Taedong River to the provincial capital of Pyongyang, and asked permission to trade. Local officials refused to enter into trade talks and demanded the ship’s departure. A Korean official
was then taken hostage aboard the ship, and its crew members fired guns at enraged Korean officials and civilians on the shore. The crew then came ashore, plundered the town, and killed seven Koreans. The governor of P’y
ŏ
ngan province, Pak Kyu-su, ordered his forces to destroy the ship, and in the event the
General Sherman
ran aground on a sandbar and Korean forces burned the ship and killed the ship’s entire crew of 23. Korean officials never admitted that an American ship had been destroyed in Pyongyang; they described it as a French vessel or simply as a “strange-looking ship.”

While this troubling affair was developing in northern Chos
ŏ
n, a much greater crisis was coming to a head. At the time, as noted earlier, Koreans increasingly turned to the religious teachings of Catholicism. After experiencing several major persecutions, Catholicism was reinvigorated by the proselytizing activities of 12 French priests, including Siméon-François Berneux and Felix-Claire Ridel, who had secretly entered the country. As the number of domestic converts grew into the tens of thousands, the Taew
ŏ
n’gun concluded that Catholicism posed a direct challenge to the state’s Neo-Confucian ideology.

Although at first relatively tolerant of Catholicism partly because his wife had converted, the Taew
ŏ
n’gun came to believe that French priests and Catholicism were spearheading Western aggression against his country. He took the advice of a Korean Catholic, Nam Chong-sam, and attempted to block Russia’s southward advance into Chos
ŏ
n territory, assisted by France, a major Catholic state. Negotiations did not go well, and high officials in the court unanimously urged him to expel Catholicism from Chos
ŏ
n. He had to heed their advice if he was to maintain his power, and so he launched a massive persecution of the Western religion. In February 1866, in what became known as the
Py
ŏ
ngin saok,
or Catholic Persecution of 1866, nine French priests were killed along with large numbers of Korean believers, including Nam Chong-sam. Between 1866 and 1872 approximately 8,000 Korean Catholics were executed and thousands more were imprisoned.

When word of the French deaths leaked out (Father Ridel had escaped to China), French authorities in China concluded that punitive action had to be taken. In September 1866, to make a show of force, Admiral Pierre G. Roze, commander of the French Asiatic Squadron, came to Chos
ŏ
n with three ships, steamed up the Han River, and reconnoitered within sight of Seoul. The next month he again appeared in Korean waters, this time with a flotilla of seven
warships and about 1,000 troops. The French demanded that the Chos
ŏ
n government both severely punish the murderers of the French priests and enter into a trade treaty with France. These demands were ignored by the Taew
ŏ
n’gun. A French detachment then landed on Kanghwa-do, seizing the administrative center of the island, pillaging it, and carrying away weapons, gold and silver equivalent to some 200,000 contemporary francs, and more than 300 precious books (now housed in a museum in Paris). Another French force attempting to blockade the mouth of the Han River, the gateway to the capital, was beaten back by Chos
ŏ
n troops led by Han S
ŏ
ng-g
ŭ
n at the Munsu-san fortress, on the mainland just opposite Kanghwa-do. Also, a French landing party sent to attack the Ch
ŏ
ngjok-san fortress on the island was repulsed by Chos
ŏ
n units under the command of Yang H
ŏ
n-su. Following these defeats, the French squadron withdrew without accomplishing its mission. These engagements with the French, called the
Py
ŏ
ngin yangyo,
or Western Disturbance of 1866, resulted in a “Chos
ŏ
n victory” and reinforced not only the Koreans’ fear of outsiders but Taew
ŏ
n’gun’s determination to maintain a foreign policy of seclusion.

The French invasion was followed by another incident that would reinforce the Koreans’ negative view of Westerners. In May 1868 Ernst J. Oppert, the German adventurer cited earlier, was determined to forcibly open Chos
ŏ
n’s doors to foreign trade. To this end he concocted a scheme to break into the tomb of Prince Namy
ŏ
n, the Taew
ŏ
n’gun’s father, at T
ŏ
ksan county, Ch’ungch’
ŏ
ng province. In this expedition his intention was to steal the body and hold it for ransom; he would return the body to Chos
ŏ
n only if it permitted the West to trade with the kingdom. This scheme ended in failure as a result of Chos
ŏ
n’s quick reaction. When word of his “invasion” became known, the Chos
ŏ
n government swiftly dispatched troops to the area. Opert hastily retreated to his ship, and instead of opening Chos
ŏ
n’s doors to Western trade, Oppert’s actions only reinforced the Koreans’ suspicion about the West and Western traders. Given the importance of filial piety in Chos
ŏ
n society, a more insulting and barbaric action than that perpetrated by Opert could not be found.

In 1871, five years after the
General Sherman
debacle, the U.S. government dispatched a naval expedition to Chos
ŏ
n using the incident as a pretext to force Chos
ŏ
n to enter into a commercial treaty opening the kingdom to U.S. trade and providing protection for shipwrecked American sailors. Rear Admiral John Rodgers, commander of the U.S. Asiatic Squadron, was selected to lead the
expedition. Frederick F. Low, the U.S. minister to China, would take charge of the diplomatic negotiations. Using the 1853–1854 Perry expedition to Japan as a model, the Americans would make a show of force with five naval ships and more than 1,200 troops.

The U.S. fleet arrived off the west coast of Chos
ŏ
n in May 1871 and contacted local officials to inform them of the purpose of the expedition. The Chos
ŏ
n officials answered that they could not act upon the U.S. request but would receive government approval for any diplomatic talks. While waiting for an official response from the capital, the Americans decided to conduct preliminary surveys along the Korean coastlines, dispatching a small crew to a narrow channel leading into the mouth of the Han River, where the French had invaded Chos
ŏ
n five years earlier. Fearful that this foreign force might pose a grave threat to national security, Chos
ŏ
n’s coastal artillery fired upon the Americans. Although no Americans were killed or seriously injured, leaders of the U.S. expedition interpreted this incident as an unprovoked attack upon the U.S. flag and demanded an apology. When their demand was ignored, the Americans attacked the Korean fortifications and then landed 759 marines and sailors along the southeastern coast of Kanghwa-do. They quickly advanced upon the Chos
ŏ
n forts in the vicinity, and although the Chos
ŏ
n defenders fought courageously, the Ch’oji-jin and Kwangs
ŏ
ng-jin forts fell and more than 240 Chos
ŏ
n soldiers, including their commander,
Ŏ
Chae-y
ŏ
n, were killed. The U.S. forces suffered 13 battle casualties, including 3 dead.
²
Because of the Koreans’ determined defensive action, the Americans withdrew in June, with both sides claiming victory. This incident, called the
Sinmi yangyo,
or Western Disturbance of 1871, provided another impetus for the Taew
ŏ
n’gun to continue his closed-door policy in foreign relations.

Exultant at “victories” over the invading French and American forces, the Taew
ŏ
n’gun and his government were filled with even greater anti-foreign spirit than ever before and viewed Westerners as barbarians. The Taew
ŏ
n’gun had stone tablets erected on the Chongno main thoroughfare in Seoul and at points throughout the country declaring: “The barbarians from beyond the seas seek to invade our land. If we do not fight them, we must appease them. But to appease them is to betray the nation.”

As in previous Korean kingdoms, in the Chos
ŏ
n dynasty the king’s in-laws enjoyed great power. The Taew
ŏ
n’gun, knowing that his sons-in-law might threaten his authority, attempted to block the possible threat by selecting as a new queen an orphaned girl from among his wife’s relatives, the Y
ŏ
h
ŭ
ng
Min clan, who lacked powerful political connections. With this woman as his daughter-in-law he felt safe, but he failed to consider the cleverness and intelligence of the woman herself. After Queen Min took her place in the palace, she recruited all her relatives and appointed them to influential positions in the name of the king. She allied with the Taew
ŏ
n’gun’s political enemies, including the Confucian scholars whom he had so antagonized, and by late 1873 she mobilized enough influence to oust the Taew
ŏ
n’gun from power. When the Confucian scholar Ch’oe Ik-hy
ŏ
n submitted a memorial urging Kojong to rule in his own right in October 1873, Queen Min seized the opportunity to force her father-in-law’s retirement as regent. The Taew
ŏ
n’gun’s departure led to Chos
ŏ
n’s abandonment of its rigid isolationist policy.

When Kojong began to rule in his own right in December 1873, he initiated a more moderate policy toward the outside world. Soon after his father had been forced into retirement, he surrounded himself with a number of young advisers, many of whom concluded that the Taew
ŏ
n’gun’s foreign policy of seclusion could not be maintained in an age of growing foreign imperialism. The advisers were aware of what had happened to China in the 1840s and 1850s, and also of Japan’s more positive response to the Western powers. Thus Kojong sought to open his country to foreign trade based on the idea of
kaehwa
. Originally “kaehwa” was a Confucian term, an abbreviation meaning achievement of a project by inquiring into life’s basic principles and establishing public morals through education. Thus, it did not refer to learning about Western culture or achieving modernization but instead referred to carrying out favorable reforms, which at the time inevitably focused on the advanced science and technology of the West and Japan.

Already in the eighteenth century the Pukhak scholars had suggested promoting foreign trade, and their ideas were followed up by nineteenth-century kaehwa thinkers such as Yi Kyu-gy
ŏ
ng, Ch’oe Han-gi, Pak Kyu-su, O Ky
ŏ
ngs
ŏ
k, and Yu Tae-ch’i. When the British ship
Lord Amherst
sought trade with Chos
ŏ
n in 1832, Yi Kyu-gy
ŏ
ng urged that Chos
ŏ
n comply with the British request. After reading
Haiguo tuzhi,
or Illustrated Treatise on the Sea Kingdoms, written by the Chinese scholar Wei Yuan in 1844, Ch’oe Han-gi authored
Chigu ch
ŏ
nyo
in 1857 and called for Chos
ŏ
n to open itself to foreign trade. Pak Kyu-su,
who had commanded his men to destroy the
General Sherman
in 1866, was one of the rare enlightened high-ranking officials in the Chos
ŏ
n government; he had visited China several times and had gained considerable information about the outside world. He maintained that Chos
ŏ
n should be open to Western ideas and approaches, and stressed, in particular, that his country should attempt to establish trade relations with the United States. A translator-interpreter of the Chinese language, O Ky
ŏ
ng-s
ŏ
k, acquired books such as Wei Yuan’s
Haiguo tuzhi
and another Chinese scholar Xu Jiyu’s
Yinghuan zhilue
, or Record of the Ocean Circuit, written in 1848, and he encouraged his countrymen to read them. O Ky
ŏ
ng-s
ŏ
k’s close friend Yu Tae-ch’i, a medical practitioner, read books on Western civilization obtained from O Ky
ŏ
ng-s
ŏ
k and urged his country to engage in foreign trade and embark on enlightened reform. As the voices in Chos
ŏ
n calling for change and reform grew louder with the downfall of the Taew
ŏ
n’gun, conditions within the country became more favorable to opening its doors to the outside world.

Japan was the first nation to pressure Chos
ŏ
n to reconsider its isolationist policy. Westerners had not yet perceived Chos
ŏ
n as an important trading and diplomatic partner, whereas the Japanese saw it as a prime area for domination and expansion. Early in the Meiji period, aggressive factions in the new Japanese government demanded that their country remove Chos
ŏ
n from Chinese suzerainty and establish control over the peninsula. Perhaps recalling their own experiences at the hands of Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853–1854, the Japanese government dispatched a naval squadron to Chos
ŏ
n to force the country to enter into a new relationship with Japan.

In September 1875, in a deliberate effort to confront Chos
ŏ
n, the Japanese warship
Unyo Maru
sailed to Korean waters off Kanghwa-do, under the cloak of surveying Korean coastlines. The ship was promptly fired on by Chos
ŏ
n defenders at the Ch’oji-jin fort on the southeastern tip of the island. As planned, the Japanese government strongly protested that Chos
ŏ
n had made an unprovoked attack on a Japanese ship engaged in a peaceful mission, when, in fact, the true intent was to create a disturbance. In the ensuing period, the
Unyo Maru
destroyed the Ch’oji-jin fort, and a Japanese detachment occupied the nearby Y
ŏ
ngjong-jin fort, killing 35 Korean defenders and taking 16 prisoner before withdrawing. In late January 1876, using the
Unyo Maru
incident as a pretext, Japan dispatched a minister plenipotentiary, Kuroda Kiyotaka, along with five warships and some 400 troops, to Chos
ŏ
n; Kuroda landed on Kanghwa-do and demanded that Chos
ŏ
n enter into treaty negotiations with Japan. Although it
could have withstood this pressure (as it had previously with the the French and the Americans in 1866 and 1871, respectively), the Chos
ŏ
n government decided to negotiate a modern, Western-style treaty with Japan and sent Sin H
ŏ
n to receive Kuroda and negotiate with him. The result was the Treaty of Kanghwa or the Friendship Treaty of 1876, signed on 26 February 1876. Following a textbook display of gunboat diplomacy, the Japanese succeeded in opening Chos
ŏ
n’s doors to their country.