Ch 25 - End of the Hermit Kingdom

Payday

Growing unrest in Korea came to a violent head in the summer of 1882 when Korea's military triggered a major revolt over the lack of pay and mistreatment by a government trying to reform itself. The Military Mutiny of 1882, directed largely by the Taewongun, had an impact that reached far beyond Seoul.

Although China never received a written acknowledgement of its suzerainty over Korea, China left no doubt that it would not willingly relinquish what it considered to be special rights in Korea. Chinese authorities regarded Japan's adoption of a civilized and progressive government with profound distrust and did all they could to prevent the spread of any such reform ideas into Korea. The task proved difficult, because the principal goal of the reform movement in Korea was to end Chinese interference in Korea's affairs and make the kingdom independent in reality, as well as in name.

The rapid internal and external changes that took place in the early 1880s shook traditional Yi Korea. The move toward modernization in Korea transcended social class status. Like-minded men joined under the banner of enlightenment and sought ways to eliminate class distinctions and renovate the political process according to the model of Japan's Meiji Restoration.

The Korean people did not comprehend the encroachment by the West, the increased presence of the Japanese, or their own government's modernization program. They neither shared nor supported the government's adaptability and rather courageous response to the challenges of the modern world. Instead, they interpreted the government's behavior as a betrayal of the old order and laid the blame for the misery of their daily lives on the government and its unorthodox policies. Unable to grasp the inevitability of such changes, they saw them as a threat to their very existence. Such dissent first found its voice in the Confucian literati protests of 1881.

One of the lesser noted changes affecting Korean life in 1882 was the weather. The summer had been unusually dry. Creeks and streams dried up and wells ran low. Without adequate irrigation, rice crops died in the fields. The sudden drop in the rice supply nearly tripled the price of rice. Many Koreans, already carrying a heavy tax burden, abandoned their frams and villages to roam the countryside as bandits, preying upon the hapless. A variety of anti-foreign elemtns took advantage of the unrest to agitate the commoners by playing on their superstitious fears. Diviners and shamans claimed the opening of the country to foreigners had angered the spirits of their ancestors, causing them to stop the rain as a sign of their anger. Confucians, outraged at their loss of power and their traditional way of life took to the streets in protest.

Korea, floundering on the verge of bankruptcy, had become a sea of unrest. The government's extravagant spending had left it unable to pay its debts, including the military's wages. As the growing unrest took on a more strident anti-government and anti-foreign tone, it found its loudest voice among the soldiers of Korea's military. King Kojong's reorganization of the military establishment did not rest well with the garrison troops, whose mistreatment over the years left them angry and resentful. In the aftermath of the military restructuring that began in 1881, the Korean government discharged more than one thousand soldiers because they were too old or disabled and no longer fit to serve. Some were dismissed without cause or reason. A large number of troops still serving in old units were equipped with outdated equipment. Many in the military anticipated that, before long, traditional army units would be scrapped altogether. The military had not been paid or given rations for the past thirteen months and many men became a burden to their famiiles and to society at large. The people took to the streets in protest.

The rash discharge of troops led to deep anti-Japanese feelings among Korea's veterans. They found the preferential treatment given to Kojong's privileged Special Skills Force (Pyolgigun) under Lieutenant Reizo particularly offensive. Realizing the danger of the situation, King Kojong ordered Min Kyong-ho, director of the tribute Bureau, to immediately pay the discharged soldiers and the unpaid Korean soldiers a month's rations of rice. Min, who controlled the distribution of stipend rice to the capital garrison troops, did what many officials had done before him;  selling the good rice, distributing rotten rice contaminated with sand and chaff to the old military units and pocketing the profits.

When disgruntled soldiers of the Muwi Regiment in Seoul went to the supply depot to demand their pay in mid-July, a minor dispute arose between the troops and the granary clerks responsible for disbursing stipend rice. Min flatly rejected the troop's demands for pay. A group of military officers then decided to rectify the intolerable situation themselves. With the help of garrison soldiers, they captured a few grain transport ships recently arrived from Cholla Province with grain taxes from the southern provinces. They intended to use the rice as back pay for the soldiers. Unknown to the troops, the depot clerks had adulterated the rice rations with chaff, using the removed grain to line their own pockets. Once the troops discovered this fraud, they furiously attacked the depot offices and engaged in pitched battles with the ration clerks, turning a verbal dispute into a bloody riot. Min immediately ordered the arrest of the military ringleaders and sentenced them to death. Faced with a fresh outrage, the excited soldiers turned against Min Kyong-ho, stormed his royal residence and left his huge mansion in ruins. What started as a simple demonstration soon became a mutiny and then a full revolt.

Min Kyong-ho, a half-cousin to Queen Min, hurriedly fled to Changdok Palace for protection. Having attacked a relative of the queen, the mutinous troops feared retaliation by the powerful Min clan. The soldiers turned to the Taewongun for protection, hoping to gain his support for their cause. He met secretly with the leaders of the mutiny and, outwardly at least, soothed the nervous soldiers with words of understanding. Behind the scenes however, the Taewongun seized on the rice riot as a long-awaited opportunity to regain power. Although no record exists of his instructions to the military, he almost certainly instigated their next bold moves against the government.

After the Taewongun took the reins of the mutiny, what began as a spontaneous and relatively minor incident suddenly transformed itself into a major upheaval. Still resentful of the queen and her relatives, the Taewongun and his followers were unhappy with the growing Japanese presence in the country and the recent signing of treaties with Western powers. The Taewongun imposed upon the unruly troops a firm program of action that included a strike against the royal palace, the extermination of the Min clan and its supporters and, most significantly, an attack against the Japanese legation. Troops of the Muwi Regiment seized weapons, stormed the prison holding their comrades and set them free. Rioting soldiers killed more than ten government officials during the rebellion.

Troops from other units and hundreds of riotous civilians quickly joined the Muwi Regiment's well-armed and determined rioters. On July 23, rumors began spreading through the mob that Japanese had attacked the royal palace. The rebellious mob of early 4,000 men quickly turned its attention to the Japanese and moved in force against the Japanese legation. When angry troops found Lieutenant Reizo, the Japanese training officer for the Special Skills Force, and three of his aides hiding in their barracks, the blood-thirsty mob literally ripped them apart. Many Japanese unfourtunate enough to be caught in the open encountered a similar fate.

Hanabusa Yoshitada and his staff had heard reports and rumors of trouble in Seoul, but the sudden, fierce assault caught them completely unprepared. Hanabusa ordered his staff to burn all secret documents and get ready to leave. The Japanese legation guards put up a determined defense, but once they realized that no government troops were coming to their rescue, the Japanese hurriedly abandonded their position. Under cover of darkness, with the legation building in flames, Hanabusa and his small staff slipped through the line of attackers and made their way through the hostile streets searching for a way out of the city.

The beleagured Japanese managed to reach a village on the banks of the Han River, where they commandeered a number of boats and crossed the river. After a long march, they reached the Japanese consulate in Inchon the following afternoon, where they were provided with clean clothes, food and a guard so they could sleep. Unfortunately, news of events in Seoul caught up with the harried fugitives and angry local Korean troops attacked them again, killing six Japanese and wounding five others in the assault. Some two dozen Japanese survivors retreated to harbor, where they seized a Korean junk and headed for nearby Wolmi Island, where the British survey ship Flying Fish took the small party aboard and returned them to Nagasaki.

Meanwhile, the mutineers' blood-lust turned against the royal palace precincts the following day. The rioters destroyed many of the homes of the Queen's relatives in their rampage through the palace grounds and killed a number of high-ranking government officials. Armed men caught up with Min Kyong-ho, Director of the Tribute Bureau, whose refusal to pay the troops triggered the mutiny, and brutally murdered him in his own home. Governor Kim Po-hyon of Kyonggi Province, who was visiting King Kojong at the time, died at the hands of the mob. The Taewongun's older brother, Yi Choe-ung, president of the Office of Royal Kinsmen and a close collaborator with the Min clan also died at the hands of the attackers.

Soldiers forced their way through the Changdok Palace gate and surrounded the queen's private living quarters, the prime target of the military's vengeance. Amidst furious fighting on the palace grounds, in the confusion of the attack, the soldiers mistakenly believed they had killed Queen Min. The clever woman hurriedly disguised herself however, narrowly escaped being captured, and fled to Chungju, where she remained in hiding at a relative's home.

Once the military found its voice and turned on the government, King Kojong could no longer depend on them for protection. Under intense pressure, he could not see a way out of the mounting danger and decided to dump the entire matter in his father's lap. On July 25, the king summoned the Taewongun back into the palace and announced that from then on all government affairs, small and large, would be decided by the Taewongun. With full government authority back in his hands, for the moment at least the Taewongun was free to do as he wished. At the king's request, he quickly suppressed the rioting and restored order. The end of the military mutiny appeared to calm things down a great deal. To placate the military, the Taewongun dismantled the two new palace garrisons and the Special Skills Force and reinstituted the former military structure of the Five Army Garrisons. He also abolished the recently created Office for Extraordinary State Affairs, the T'ongnigimu Amun. In short, he reversed virtually all of Korea's initial efforts at modernization and enlightenment.

Almost immediately after arriving in Nagasaki on July 29, Hanabusa cabled his report of the Seoul riots to the Foreign Office in Tokyo. China learned of the events in Seoul two days later from Minister Ho Ju-chang in Tokyo. News of the ferocity of the military rebellion in Korea stunned the Japanese and Chinese governments. Kim Yun-sik and O Yun-jung, who had recently arrived in Tianjin, concluded the military revolt in Seoul was only the igniting spark of a power struggle between King Kojong and his father, the Taewongun. The Chinese government readily accepted their judgment.

The Military Mutiny of 1882 and the Taewongun's grab for power unwittingly created a situation that had significance far beyond Seoul. It led directly to a rise in the level of Chinese-Japanese competition for expanded influence on the peninsula. Korea's new position within the international community had been irreversibly fixed by treaties and neither China nor Japan would allow the country to again retreat into seclusion. Neither country would willingly surrender what they considered to be their duties and rights in Korea. It was clear to the Chinese that Japan would take advantage of the opportunity to interfere in Korean affairs. The historical concept that Korea was a Chinese dependency still seemed a reliable and rational foundation for immediate action.

Even though such claims were often vague, Korea always accepted that China had the better claim of rights in Korea. The Japanese never made any such weak claim and never recognized China's pretensions regarding the status of Korea. Japan's policy from the start was to keep Korea free from any external entanglements. During a brief diplomatic skirmish with the Chinese on this subject, the Meiji government again rejected China's claim to suzerainty and adamantly contended that Japan's difficulties in Korea were of no concern to the Chinese. Japan made it abundantly clear it felt free to act according to its own will. China's traditional notion of being able to protect Korea solely by the prestige of its predominant position in East Asia faded into oblivion. China had no means left to assert its authority in Korea except direct military intervention.