Ch 21 - Mounting Pressure Against Choson

Strengthening Resolve

The Taewongun broke the political power of Choson's private academies and launched widespread persecutions of Catholics in his attempt to restore the authority of a decaying Confucian monarchy. Western attempts to open trade relations with Choson were met with determined resistance.

By the 1860s, hundreds of private academies, sowon, flourished throughout Choson. Free of government control, they evolved evolved beyond their traditional role over the years and became a training ground for political factions. They also wielded significant political force in the countryside. Taking advantage of their tax-exempt status, many sowon operated as large agricultural estates worked by slave labor. Given their special exemption from conscript manual labor, they also provided the means to evade military service. The continued existence of these private academies devastated Choson's economic foundation and made it virtually impossible to build a strengthened administrative hierarchy under the paramount authority of the king.

The Taewongun took complete control of both the royal court and the government at the beginning of his rule in 1864. He quickly began to display an eager willingness to challenge Choson's existing government establishments. Soon after taking his new post, he began to redirect the bureaucracy and set in motion a resolute reform program intended to "restore" the golden age of the dynastic founder Yi Song-gye.No clan or faction could stand against him.

The Taewongun sought to stop the future growth of factionalism by moving against their historic power base, the sowon. First, he issued a ban on the rebuilding or unauthorized construction of private academies. Four years later he ordered them to pay taxes. Seven years later, in a move designed to fully break the power of the various factions and prevent their reemergence in the future, he decisively ordered the closure of all but forty-seven of the sowon and nationalized their property. Between 1864 and 1871, roughly 3,000 sowon and miscellaneous shrines were destroyed. In addition, nearly 100,000 men were added to the military roles and thousands of acres of land were recovered for taxation. The Taewongun's determined suppression campaign against the sowon provoked bitter opposition from Confucian scholars that later came back to haunt him.

The Taewongun's basic approach to dealing with Choson's political problems also served him well in dealing with the country's economic troubles. His reforms sought to restore the proper operation of Choson's traditional "three systems" - land tax, grain relief and military service - all of which had become thoroughly corrupted over the years. The military service tax one bolt of cloth per eligible male was converted to a household tax and, for the first time, was assessed against yangban and commoners alike. He also restructured the state granaries of the rice-loan program to create a system of locally administered village granaries. He restored the original system of interest-free loans to farmers in time of need and ordered a thorough inventory of grain storage facilities. In an attempt to improve the ethics of local officials, those caught fraudulently administering rice loans and lining their own pockets were sentenced to banishment or death.

The Taewongun stunned the aristocracy by instituting a resolute policy that appointed officials to high government positions without much concern for their regional or social class background. By appointing men in equal proportions from each of the four principal political factions, he effectively removed members of the Andong Kim clan from positions of power they had held through previous reigns and destroyed the pattern of rule by a few powerful lineages or royal in-law families. In addition, he introduced a number of new laws and regulations that raised the traditional status of royal family members, both living and dead. He revised the civil law codes, household laws of the royal clan and the rules defining court rituals and took steps to promote solidarity and fraternity among royal clansmen. The Taewongun also tried to bolster military strength by building fortresses, training some twelve thousand riflemen with modern arms and giving the military class more prestige. As far as was possible, he restored the royal court to the organization and status it held in the early years of the Yi dynasty.

Kyongbok Palace was originally built by Yi T'aejo, founder of the Choson Dynasty, in 1395. The largest and most beautiful of Seoul's major palaces, it contained over 200 buildings and reigned as the centerpiece of the kingdom until 1533, when the majority of its structures were destroyed by fire. The rest of the palace was lost in 1592 during the Imjin War with Japan. Since the resources to rebuild it could not be found, the "the palace of shining happiness" lay in ruin for nearly three centuries. On April 26, 1865, Dowager Queen Cho Sin-chong proposed the complete reconstruction of the palace.

This radical proposal came at a time when the royal court was already dealing with a growing economic threat; the drain of money and grain to pay for foreign commodities, especially British textiles, that had begun appearing in Choson ports and border cities in ever-increasing quantities. Faced with a chronic shortage of government funds and no new sources of revenue, high government officials adamantly opposed Queen Cho's proposal. Despite such opposition and the exorbitant cost involved, the Taewongun approved the massive project. It became an enduring symbol of his determination to restore and enhance the Yi dynasty's failing authority and prestige.

Work on rebuilding Kyongbok Palace began in earnest on May 14, 1865. Old construction plans were used to recreate the palace on its original foundations and ancient sites were ransacked for building stones. Buddhist monk carpenters were summoned to Seoul from across the kingdom. At one point during the early stages of the project, some 36,000 laborers were employed at one time. To finance the lavish reconstruction, a special land surtax was imposed on all landholders and a transit tax, or "gate tax" was imposed on everyone and everything entering or leaving Seoul. Government officials and commoners alike were urged to contribute large sums of money, cleverly designated as "gift money," to pay the colossal bills, sometimes by force. Donors of large sums of money were usually rewarded with appointments to government posts, promotion to higher positions, or titles and ranks.

After seven years and five months of diligent labor, Kyongbok Palace was restored in all its magnificence, graced by such structures as the Hall of Diligent Rule, the Pavilion of Felicitous Gatherings and the Gate of Radiant Transformation. Perhaps the most costly and ambitious project ever undertaken in the entire history of the Yi Dynasty, the palace reconstruction left the government on the verge of bankruptcy. The financial drain on the national treasury caused by the restoration caused a dramatic rise in economic inflation. Furthermore, the huge labor demand needed to support the lavish project earned the Taewongun the enmity of a great many people.

The Taewongun's preoccupation with internal reforms in his early years left him little time to deal with the deepening problem of Christianity in Choson. Although he was a vigorous exclusionist, his early domestic policy was relatively tolerant of Catholic activities. By the end of King Cholchong's reign in 1863, there were reportedly 12 French missionaries and some 20,000 Catholic converts in Choson and the spreading foreign religion effected a number of prominent families. His own wife had been inclined toward Catholicism for some time, even going so far as to ask the French priest Simon-Francois Berneux to pray for her son, the future King Kojong. The Taewongun had a number of contacts within the Namin faction, many of whom were hereditary Catholics. Two of his close associates, Hong Pong-ju and Nam Chong-sam, were Catholic leaders. Nevertheless, his early relationships with Catholics in no way mitigated the inherent anti-Christian attitude of the Yi government.

In the hope of legalizing the propagation of Catholicism, not to mention furthering their own political ambitions, Nam Chong-sam and Hong Pong-ju devised a plan in early 1866 to take advantage of renewed Russian movements along Choson's northeastern border. The Russians had appeared sporadically along the Tumen River and northeast coast ever since 1854, when two armed Russian vessels sailed along the Hamyong coast and inflicted deaths and injuries among the people they encountered. Nam and Hong wanted to prevent the Russians from moving south by concluding an alliance among England, France and Choson. The two men asked Fathers Berneux and Marie-Antoine-Nicolas Daveluy if they would sound out the French minister in Beijing about the possibility of Choson concluding such an alliance. The two French priests showed little enthusiasm for the proposal.

At the same time, Nam and Hong submitted a formal proposal of their treaty plan to the Taewongun, who enthusiastically embraced the idea. He felt the proposed alliance would inevitably expose the presence of foreign officials to government authorities. Nam and Hong's rash proposal drew the Taewongun directly into the Catholic problem and forced him to take a strong stand against the religion and its followers. Under increased pressure from anti-Christian elements in the government to order the arrest and trial of missionaries and heretics, he soon came to understand the real extent of Catholicism's influence in Choson. The Seoul government had long connected the presence of Christians in Choson with the implied threat of foreign intervention, largely because of Hwang Sa-yong's famous "Silk Letter," written in 1801. The activities of the twelve French priests who entered the kingdom during the reign of King Cholchong had reinvigorated the spread of Catholicism and ensured its survival beyond the earlier persecutions.

The Choson government received a number of reports indicating that the Qing government was actively attempting to suppress Catholicism in China. It might have made sense to Europeans, but the royal court did not understand how Westerners could try to develop friendly relations with Choson while they continued to smuggle missionaries into the kingdom in direct violation of the law. It seemed quite strange, even among Choson's many Christian converts, that the very men who preached the virtues of peace, obedience, kindness, and truth also violated these same qualities. Not only did the missionaries cross frontiers illegally and travel about in disguise - no doubt to prevent capture and probable execution - they showed no hesitation to advise their own followers to behave in a similar manner toward Choson authorities. If the Christians were being dealt with so harshly in China, how could Choson hope to contend with them? The increasing fear of collusion between foreigners and native Christians caused the Choson government to tighten its border and coastal security and step up its drive against the Catholics.

Chief State Councilor Cho Tu-sun and other high officials persuaded the Taewongun to pursue a policy that strictly excluded foreigners. Driven by the desire to avoid contamination by Western influences and ideas, the Taewongun launched a full-scale persecution of Catholics in February 1866. By March 23, Nam Chong-sam and Hong Pong-ju along with nine of the twelve French missionaries and some forty native converts were arrested and executed. Fathers Felix-Clair Ridel, Stanislas Fèron and Adolphe-Nicolas Calais managed to escape into the provinces where they remained in hiding.

Ernest J. Oppert, a German merchant based in Shanghai, first visited Nagasaki in 1859 in an unsuccessful attempt to establish a trading business in Japan. After returning to Shanghai, a number of his friends, "enterprising and intelligent Chinese merchants," began urging him to consider opening Choson to foreign commerce, "the last of the forbidden lands in the East." A French squadron had surveyed the islands along Choson's west coast in 1846, loosing two ships in the process, but had not located the Han River estuary. In March 1866, with assistance from Mr. Whittall of the British firm Jardine, Matheson & Company, Oppert left Shanghai aboard the steamer Rona to find the mouth of the Han River leading to Seoul.

The Rona approached the coast in Asan Bay ( - Central Choson), where Ernest Oppert met with a local official who did all he could to dissuade the German from continuing further. Nevertheless, the official agreed to forward a letter to Seoul which described the reasons for the voyage.

While waiting or a reply, a small landing party went ashore for an excursion into the countryside. Oppert and his men came across a group of local villagers who blocked the road and tried to prevent them from going any further "by threatening looks and calls." Oppert put an end to their obstruction by placing his hand on his pistol and gesturing just how little their threats meant. It was the first and last time any attempt was made to stop these foreign visitors on the road. According to Oppert, after that encounter "everybody seemed eager to receive us as kindly as possible." The landing party remained ashore until finally receiving a formal denial of permission to continue their voyage in Choson. Disheartened, but not deterred, Oppert returned to Shanghai, where he learned that nine French missionaries had been arrested and executed in Choson on orders from the Taewongun in the spring of 1863. Fathers Ridel, Fèron and Calais had escaped capture and were hiding in fear of their lives at the very time he was in Asan Bay. The news did nothing to lessen Oppert's determination to open trade in Choson.

The immediate problem facing the French missionaries was to get word of the executions to French authorities in Beijing and to seek protection for themselves. Father Ridel was entrusted with the task. On June 20, 1866, Father Ridel, accompanied by several local Catholics, slipped aboard a junk owned by Song Un-o and sailed from Choson to Yantai, China, where he arrived on July 6.

Traveling on to Tianjin, he contacted Admiral Pierre Gustave Roze, commanding officer of the French Asiatic Squadron, and pleaded for help to rescue his two fellow priests still in Choson. The admiral promised to send an expedition to Choson as soon as his squadron returned from a mission in Indochina. Pleased by the response, Father Ridel traveled to Shanghai, where he awaited further developments. Admiral Roze, worried that the two French priests might be captured and executed before he could reach Choson, reported Father Ridel's news directly to the French chargé d'affaires, Monsieur Henri de Bellonet.

Monsieur de Bellonet was enraged by what he termed the "wanton murder" of missionaries in Choson. To clear the way for future action, he sent a strong letter to Prince Gong at the Zongli Yamen on July 13 that was more of an ultimatum than a plea for mediation:

"The Chinese government has declared to me many times that it has no authority or power over Corea [sic]...We have taken note of these declarations, and we declare now that we do not recognize any authority whatever of the Chinese government over the kingdom of Corea."

He also implied direct intervention when he wrote that China

"... can have no objection if France, in order to protect the rights of her citizens ...and avenge the barbarous murder of priests, deposes the king and places that savage land under the protection of the 'French' emperor."

Three days later Prince Gong replied that if Choson had killed missionaries and converts, it seemed best to first get proof and an explanation of the affair to learn why it happened. Since war between France and Choson would affect the lives of many people, Prince Gong tried to soothe de Bellonet with an offer of mediation. Meanwhile, the Zongli Yamen decided to warn the Yi government of French intentions.

For nearly a century Catholicism had been the object of official fear and suspicion in Choson and the royal court and the bureaucracy were solidly anti-West and anti-Christian. Despite his reputedly friendly attitude toward some individual Catholics, his Confucian training and outlook were definitely incompatible with Christianity. Dowager Queen Cho in particular had inherited her family's strong antipathy toward Christianity and was uncompromisingly anti-Catholic. In addition, as the lawful regent to the Taewongun's son, she alone held the authority to deprive the Taewongun of his power. Being a pragmatist, the Taewongun saw Christianity as a heretical faith and the agent of aggressive foreign powers. As Choson's de facto ruler, he was determined to restore the authority of a decaying Confucian monarchy and could not tolerate Christianity's challenge to ideological orthodoxy.

Despite its exclusionist sentiments toward foreigners, Choson typically treated shipwrecked foreign sailors and fishermen in distress with kindness. Except for Japanese sailors, who were returned to officials at the Japan House in Pusan, foreign shipwreck victims were delivered to Chinese authorities in Manchuria for repatriation. After the American schooner Surprise, enroute to the Ryukyu Islands from Yantai (Chefoo), sank off the coast of Pyongan Province in northern Choson near Sun-sa-po (modern Cholsan) on June 24, 1866. Captain McAslin and his seven-man crew were rescued and housed as guests of the Pyongan provincial governor, Pak Kyu-su. Governor Pak treated the men well and provided them with food, clothing and medical attention. He also had them escorted to the northern border gate at Uiju where they were handed over to the Chinese.

Choson viewed the repeated appearances of strange foreign vessels off its coast as yet another threat to a country already troubled by a variety of internal ills. Influenced by a pervasive fear and worry about the spread of Catholicism, the government concluded that the simplest way to protect the peninsula from disasters such as those overtaking China was to reject all Western demands for trade relations. While the underlying purpose behind this isolation policy was more to avoid contamination by Western ideas than to exclude Western trade, the Taewongun tightly closed Choson and regarded all contact with Westerners, even the Japanese, as dangerous. He had good reason.

Although the United States displayed a general lack of interest in trade with Choson, the British found the isolated peninsula a tempting target of opportunity. During the Opium Wars, the British acted on the principle that they had a right to seize and retain any ports or islands which suited their convenience for trade or residence. Applying the same strange logic to Choson, some British adventurers stated that "if the Chinese ports and islands are ours, the Corean are also; Corea needs 'to be opened to trade' as well as China."

While cruising the Yellow Sea, ships of the British Fleet discovered that some of the islands along the Choson coast had sizable cattle herds. When the twenty-gun warship H.M.S. Nimrod and the transport Hooghly were dispatched to the area with orders to capture a supply of fresh meat, British sailors saw the action as "a piece of rare sport." They embarked on one of the islands, herded a number of bellowing and terrified cattle onto a narrow beach, tripped them with taut ropes, hog-tied them, and then dragged them into the waiting boats.

The resistance, threats and emotional pleadings of the farmers and herdsmen were in vain. They explained to British officers that they had no right to give up the cattle herds, which had been entrusted to them by the king. They were responsible for the animals and would be punished, perhaps with death, if the animals were taken. Their plight only added to the sailor's enjoyment. True to form, the British tried to cover the theft by offering to pay for the cattle. The locals, some of whom were evidently men of high position, refused to accept payment for property that was not theirs to sell in the first place. They believed, as did the British, that if Englishmen had a right to take the king's cattle, they also had a right to take the pastures which fed the cattle, the rivers from which the cattle drank, and the trees, hills and towns which sheltered them.

China's Taiping Rebellion left a number of lawless, desperate characters looking for action. Among the many men eager to embark on almost any enterprise which promised excitement and profit was Lieutenant Henry A. Burgevine, Frederick Ward's second-in-command of the "Ever Victorious Army." After switching sides, he and a small band of his former mercenaries commandeered the U.S.S General Sherman, formerly the U.S. Navy warship Princess Royale, near Shanghai in 1865 and steamed off to link up with a Taiping rebel force on Taiwan. The British Royal Navy soon captured the General Sherman and sent it back to Amoy. The ship was later sold to Mr. W.B. Preston, an American merchant seeking to conduct trade in Choson.

In late July 1866, Preston arranged with the British firm Meadows & Company in Tianjin to outfit the General Sherman for a trip to Choson to "survey the waters." Captain Page, Chief Mate Wilson and Mr. Preston were the only Americans aboard. Cargo Master George Hogarth was British. Thirteen Chinese and three Malays, former fighters with the "Ever Victorious Army," rounded out the ship's crew. Reverend Robert Jermain Thomas, a twenty-seven-year-old Welshman, was scheduled to sail with Admiral Roze to Choson when the French admiral postponed the expedition. As fate would have it, the young Anglican missionary accepted an offer from Mr. Preston to act as interpreter on what would become the General Sherman's final voyage.

Loaded with a cargo of cotton goods, tin sheets, glass, and general merchandise, which Preston hoped to trade for paper, rice, gold, ginseng, and tiger skins, the armed merchant ship left Tianjin on July 29, stopping briefly at Cheefoo (modern Yantai) on the Shandong Peninsula to take on water and supplies. The General Sherman sailed on August 9 and arrived off the Choson coast at the mouth of the Taedong River just seven days later, where it dropped anchor at the Keupsa Gate, the line between Pyongan and Hwanghae provinces. There it waited.

The timing of their arrival could not have been much worse. Just four days earlier, on August 12, Seoul received the warning about French intentions from the Qing Board of Rites, including a copy of Minister de Bellonet's letter to Prince Gong. In its reply dated August 17, the Yi government admitted to executing the French priests and stated they deserved their fate for illegally entering the kingdom and propagating a forbidden faith. Their reply also stated that the royal court would not resent the execution of its own nationals by another country for similar offenses. The French protest was incomprehensible to the royal court, which asked for Chinese guidance and protection.

Prince Gong's warning failed to moderate Seoul's uncompromising attitude toward the French, but it had disastrous consequences for the surviving Catholics within its borders. The government concluded the only way the French could have learned of the execution of the missionaries was through secret communications from native converts. This belief revived old suspicions that the Roman Catholic church was simply an agent of the French government and that native converts were were not only heretics, but traitors serving a hostile foreign power. The same day Choson's reply was sent to Beijing, the Taewongun approved Chief State Councilor Cho Tu-sun's recommendation that provincial and local officials and military commanders execute anyone trying to contact foreign ships or engaging in suspicious conduct along the coast.

Undeterred by his previous failure to open trade with Choson, Ernest Oppert again got the assistance of Jardine, Matheson & Company, which provided him with the small, armed-steamer Emperor. Manned by six Europeans and nineteen Chinese gunners and natives along with a single nine-pound cannon, a few swivel guns, muskets, revolvers, lances, cutlasses, etc., the Emperor reached Asan Bay in early August and dropped anchor near the same spot of his previous visit aboard the Rona. The next morning, the ship's captain went ashore to make observations and returned with a letter from the French priest Father Ridel asking for help. Although they replied to Father Ridel's request, circumstances prevented anyone from offering help at that time.

Despite the lack of navigation charts, the Emperor steamed north toward the Han River a few days later and anchored near the village of Kiau-tong, some fifty miles west of Seoul. Again, local officials tried to convince the Emperor to leave Choson waters, but without success. Just before nightfall, the Emperor anchored off the city of Kanghwa, where a great crowd gathered to watch their arrival. While a small launch sailed to the Han River estuary to take soundings, Oppert met with the governor of Kanghwa prefecture and announced his intentions to steam up the Han River to Seoul. The governor managed to talk Oppert out of such a move by offering to send a special letter to the Taewongun.

Within days, a special messenger from the royal court along with a government envoy arrived at Kanghwa and declared it was impossible to open Choson to foreign trade without the Qing Emperor's permission. Oppert understood this to mean the Taewongun might still be open to ending his exclusion policy just as Japan had done less than a decade earlier. Oppert's second mission to Choson ended abruptly once the Emperor's captain learned the passage into the Han River was too shallow to proceed and that there was only enough coal remaining aboard to take the ship back to Shanghai. Soon after the Emperor steamed away from Kanghwa Island, Choson had another visit from a foreign ship seeking trade, a visit that had grave consequences for everyone involved.