Ch 26 - Coup d`état and International Rivalries

First Contacts

Korean emigrants moving into Russia's Maritime Province to find a better life and lead to the first direct negotiations between Russia and Korea. King Kojong begins searching for a new "older brother" to replace the Chinese.

Koreans living in the barren landscape of northeastern Korea along the Tumen River suffered a harsh life. The bitterly cold weather, low rainfall and early frosts made productive farming next to impossible. Adding to their economic burdens were the military tax, the grain system and the chronic abuses of local governments in the former old "Six Garrisons" district. The combined impact of maintaining local Chinese trade officials in the few border towns and some of the heaviest land taxes in the country forced people off their land leaving many towns and garrisons deserted. The Treaty of Beijing, signed in November 1860, made Russia and Korea next door neighbors along a short, 19 kilometer stretch of the Tumen River where it empties into the East Sea.

In 1654 and 1658, Korean military detachments participated in Russian-Chinese clashes along the Amur River. Ever since that time, Korea maintained an alert attitude toward Russia. Korean envoys to Beijing regularly met with Russian envoys to China and their diaries reflected a constant sense of alertness towards Russia. When Russia became a direct cross-border neighbor in 1860, that alert attitude changed to fear, fueled in part by the West and by Korean Catholics. The West wanted to block any relations between Korea and Russia out of concern that such a relationship would lead to a stronger Russian influence on the peninsula. The Korean Catholics fostered the claim that Russian was a danger to Korea in order to accelerate the conclusion of treaties with European nations in the hope such treaties would give them more freedom of religion.

The governing powers in the Russian Far East ruled a vast uninhabited territory and needed to attract people to work the land. In 1861, Emperor Alexander II approved a an incentive plan to attract newcomers to the area known as "The Rules for Settling of Russians and Foreigners in the Amur and Maritime Regions." Under these new rules, anyone who chose to settle in the region would be given up to 270 acres of state land for either temporary use or outright ownership. They would be exempt from personal taxes forever, exempt from land taxes for 20 years and excused from military service for 10 years. Furthermore, Russian citizenship was available to any foreigner, with or without the permission of his native government. To many Koreans living across the Tumen River, the opportunity for a better life proved to be an irresistible temptation.

Korean law regarded emigration to a foreign country as treachery. During Korea's isolationist period under the Taewongun it was a crime punishable by death. A group of 14 Korean families totaling 65 people arrived in the small Russian village of Novokievskoe (modern Kraskino) in January 1864, beginning years of cross-border movement. In 1867, over 1,800 Koreans crossed the Tumen River, nearly 80% of whom had no means of support. The following year, Chinese bandits raided, looted and burned numerous small Russian villages. Famine hit many villages hard. In the autumn of 1869, following a particularly bad harvest and famine in the region, about 6,500 Koreans voted with their feet and crossed into Russian territory. The increased number of immigrants meant a loss of taxpayers in northeast Korea, which aggravated a worsening economic situation and caused political problems between Korea and China. Both countries vigorously protested Russia's favorable stance on immigration.

Russian authorities overcame extreme difficulties to provide housing, food, loans, land, farm tools and supplies, etc., to thousands of starving, desperate people who showed up unexpectedly, had no means of support, spoke a different language and belonged to an alien culture. The Russians also protected the Korean immigrants from Chinese bandits and attempts by Korean and Chinese authorities to establish their jurisdiction over them. The refugees were simply given something they did not have in Korea;  a chance to survive. Even without Russia's generous support, the desire to escape Korea's feudal and bureaucratic disorder for a better life would have been motive enough for Koreans to leave their homeland.

Russian border authorities began feeling the pressure from the continued flow of Korean immigrants by the winter of 1869. Supplies had to be imported from European Russia by sea or purchased in China at premium prices to help support the growing Korean population. Grain supplies in warehouses could barely feed local garrisons. Nevertheless, Rear Admiral I.V. Furugelm, military governor of the Ussuri Maritime Province, ordered food distributed to the Koreans and jobs for unemployed Koreans in Vladivostok and other parts of the region. Even the Governor of Eastern Siberia ordered the use of Amur Region funds to satisfy the Korean's primary needs.

On December 5, 1869, the acting Border Commissar of the South Ussuri Region, Count Troubetskoi, received a pair of telegrams from Rear Admiral Furugelm ordering him to travel to the Korean border and meet with the highest available Korean official there to discuss ways of halting Korean immigration and to persuade the Koreans not to punish anyone who returned to Korea. The Korean border authorities had historically rejected any attempt by the Russians to establish normal border relations, but the situation in the winter of 1869 had become critical. They immediately agreed to a meeting.

Count Trubetskoi, accompanied by Colonel D'yachenko, traveled to the town of Kyonghun (modern Wonjong-ni, northern Hamgyong Province) and met with the local magistrate who assured them of his wish to stop the emigration and promised to "cordially" receive those emigrants who would like to return home. The emigration continued. On December 20, Governor Furugelm ordered Trubetskoi to return to Kyonghun and get a written promise from the magistrate not to punish returning emigrants. Count Trubetskoi immediately wrote an official letter to the Kyonghun authorities asking them to put a halt to continued emigration from Korea adding that Russia "wanted to take those measures under an agreement with Korean authorities."

Following his letter, Count Trubetskoi, Colonel D'yachenko, an interpreter, and 12 Russian soldiers arrived in Kyonghun to a friendly welcome on January 24, 1870. At a dinner arranged in their honor, Trubetskoi presented the magistrate with a gold watch as a sign of Russian gratitude. After lengthy negotiations on the subject of Korean immigration, the first such talks between Koreans and a great western power, the Kyonghun magistrate gave Trubetskoi a written commitment which read in part,

Presently many our people have gone to You, over the border, because of poor harvest. Now they want to return, and Russians also turn them away. If they really return, I promise not to punish them and receive kindly. I oblige to prevent the movement of Koreans across the border into the Russian lands with all measures

With the Kyonghun magistrate's written commitment in hand, Rear Admiral Furugelm visited a Korean village in the Tizinkhe region just north of Novgorod Bay, where 642 families of newly arrived Koreans lived, in order to persuade them to return back. He gathered the village elders and explained the results of Count Trubetskoi's meetings in Kyonghun to them. He said that families with no means of subsistence could not stay and were to return to Korea. If they would not go voluntarily they would be withdrawn by force. Furugelm promised to provide food and carts for the women and children for their trip to the border.

The Korean immigrants living in Russia knew their homeland considered them to be "traitors" and did not believe the Kyonhong magistrate's promises. After a short discussion, all the Koreans categorically refused to leave. They claimed that according to Korean laws, all of them would be executed when they returned. If the Russian government would not provide for them, then they would rather die of starvation in Russia than return home. If Russia wanted to use military force to drive them out, they would rather die at the hands of a Russian than a Korean. The response stunned Rear Admiral Furugelm, who, by his own words, "could not resort to extreme measures." He allowed the Koreans to stay in Russian territory.

Although insignificant at first glance, the Kyonghun talks marked the beginning of serious changes in Korea. The Korean government introduced a wide range of economic and military reforms between 1870 and 1873 intended to improve the lives of Koreans living in the northern districts and enforce the country's border defenses. The reforms included the abolition of tribute payments, the total or partial cancellation of government grain loans, the cancellation of taxes of fallow land, the temporary abolition of levies on trade goods, increased prices for cattle and pigs, and permission to use money instead of rice to pay interest on grain-loans.

Throughout the Taewongun's rule however, Korea took active measures to curb emigration. Following one incident in 1866, when 75 Koreans from the border villages of Paegan and Samdongsa crossed the Tumen River into Russian territory, the Korean government's attitude toward defending its northern border changed. The authorities began construction of numerous small guard posts and barriers along the border and introduced over fifty rifle units into the area, each comprised of between 20 and 300 soldiers. Boat traffic along the Tumen River was abolished and soldiers were ordered to shoot deserters.

Korean emigrants crossing the river were attacked by soldiers from Chinese border units and robbed of their meager possessions. Korean soldiers conducted raids that turned back the emigrants in large crowds, killing men and boys and leaving their corpses on the river banks as a warning to others.

In stark contrast, Russia never banned immigration from Korea;  just the opposite. Although the administration of the Maritime province thought itself partially responsible for the mass immigration, Russia's Foreign Ministry actually approved the immigration activities in Eastern Siberia and the Maritime Province. In a letter to the governor of Eastern Siberia, the Director of the Asian Department wrote that, "the increase of population in our deserted regions .... arouses best hopes for quickest and firm establishment of prosperity in that region."

Most Korean immigrants moved into the Ussuri region simply to avoid death by starvation and Russia didn't want to aggravate their already desperate situation. Border officials and ordinary Russians alike treated them quite humanely. Local Russians adopted Korean orphans and the children of the poorest Korean refugees, generously granted them money, wrote text-books for them, learned their language, etc.. The Koreans had never known this kind of treatment. Legends of a great "White King" who saved them from their problems and "protected them from despotic and greedy rulers" spread across northeast Korea, increasing the desire among Koreans to migrate to Russia.

The Kyonghun talks in the winter of 1869 showed Koreans for the first time they could solve international problems without Chinese help. Both sides entered the talks voluntarily because of pressing social and economic conditions, not because of military threats or political pressure. The talks were direct, peaceful, businesslike, mutually respectful, and held without Chinese mediators. China's Tsungli Yamen refused to negotiate with Russians on behalf of the Korean government.

Korean immigration to the Russian territories in the 1860s demonstrated the failure of Korea's isolation policy, provided a rare historic chance to develop a new relationship with a great foreign power and marked the first step toward opening the country. Sadly, China's influence and Korea's rigid isolationist policies made it impossible to take advantage of the opportunity. Never again would Korea have the unprecedented freedom of choice and independence it experienced in December 1869.

Tsar Alexander III came to the throne in 1881, at a time when Russia began looking anew at Siberia. Prompted by a new law encouraging emigration to Siberia and a major gold strike in the Amur River region, Russia completed its first railroad across the Ural Mountains in 1883 and Siberian immigration boomed. Within six years, more than forty thousand Russians had crossed the Urals into Siberia. Although Russia's Far East military strength was almost insignificant, Russian inroads in East Asia aroused not only China and Japan, but England, which anxiously monitored Russian expansion.

King Kojong knew little about the realities of European politics and in his search for a new "older brother" to replace the Chinese, he followed the traditional policy of revering one's elders, a policy that fully defined his idea of relations with a stronger neighbor. Regardless of the outcome, his principal aim was to maintain the status quo in Korea. Kojong himself hoped the Russians would be able to protect Korea not only from British and Japanese encroachments, but from China's continuing pressure to put the Korean court completely under its control. He could not and did not ask for "protectorate" status, for that would mean the loss of Korean sovereignty and limitations on his absolute power.

From the start of his service in Seoul, Paul George von Mollendorff displayed a determination to accelerate Korea's entry into the modern age and believed that Korea would have to lean on some power other than Japan to do it. The Military Mutiny of 1882 and the severe conditions imposed on Korea in the Treaty of Inchon with Japan convinced him that Japan was Korea's "natural enemy." He also doubted China's ability to defend the peninsula against a serious Japanese onslaught.

For years, Germany had supported close relations with the Russian Empire and, as a Prussian aristocrat, Paul Georg von Mollendorff had been familiar with Russia since his childhood. Russia lagged behind Europe and Great Britain in terms of its social and economic development, but it undoubtedly had the world's largest land army. After careful calculation and a balanced estimation of the international situation, von Mollendorff believed that Russia could well replace China as Korea's new "elder brother" in international relations. A Russian "protectorate" over Korea would create a modernized analog of Korea's former relationship with China.

In the summer of 1884 von Mollendorff recommended to King Kojong that he turn to Russia for support. In one sense, von Mollendorff's recommendation amounted to "preaching to the choir," since the king, Queen Min and a number of Min clan aristocrats close to the throne already felt a degree of sympathy for the Russians. Although Korea's highest leadership placed a great deal of trust in von Mollendorff's advice, King Kojong had more than his German advisor's reputation to rely upon. There were substantive reasons underlying Kojong's decision to use Russia to protect Korean independence and integrity.

The successful settlement of the border issue along the Tumen River and the absence of border clashes in that area for more than 10 years following the negotiations in Kyonghun laid a firm foundation for the future development of Korean-Russian relations. It is not surprising to understand why Kojong readily agreed with von Mollendorff's recommendation. Beginning in the summer of 1884, on orders from King Kojong, Paul George von Mollendorff began exploring ways to establish a protective relationship with Russia. Mollendorff understood that Korea could not take the initiative for improved relations with Russia. It had to display strict neutrality. As the first high-ranking Korean official to make direct contact with Russian officials, he began a dialogue between two completely different cultures, neither of which had much knowledge of the other and limited experience in diplomatic communication.

In August 1884, he tried to pressure Russian Colonel Shneur in Beijing to support a proposal for joint Russian, British and Japanese protection of Korea with guarantees to maintain its neutrality. He hinted that if it were not done quickly, Korea might become a British protectorate. After a similar proposal the same month to Rear Admiral Fyodor Crown, Commander of the Russian Squadron at Chefoo, von Mollendorff was again informed that he should first appeal to Russia alone for protection. In December 1884, von Mollendorff met with Vasilii I. Kostileff, the Russian Consul in Nagasaki, and suggested that Russia assume a protectorate over Korea. He also requested the dispatch of Russian warships and 200 sailors to Inchon to guard King Kojong.

Paul George von Mollendorff's proposals and his assertion that Britain sought a protectorate over Korea came as an unpleasant surprise to the tsarist government, which had no desire to see Korea harm its relations with China or the other Western powers. Russia had consistently maintained a policy of staying out of Korea's affairs. The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a policy statement in 1854, implemented in 1860, that outlined the direction of future relations with Korea. The main focus of that statement was the preservation of China's suzerainty over Korea. Russian policy makers considered the status quo would act as a major obstacle to any Western nation that tried to threaten Russia's borders and its interests in the Far East. Non-interference however, did not mean indifference.

When news of Kim Ok-kyun's December 4 coup attempt reached the government in St. Petersburg, they sent Russian First Secretary Alexis de Speyer from Tokyo to Inchon to keep an eye on developments. After arriving in Seoul, Secretary de Speyer informed King Kojong that Russia had no desire to see a war on the peninsula. Mollendorff repeated his request for a Russian protectorate to Secretary de Speyer, who took the proposal to the Russian Minister Aleksandr Petrovich Davydov in Tokyo when he returned to Japan in January 1885. The tsarist government rejected von Mollendorff's proposals and on January 20, instructed Minister Davydov to avoid the issue of a Russian protectorate altogether. He should advise Korea simply not to solicit the protection of any power.

The imaginative and often inconsistent German advisor to King Kojong, though admired in the royal court, had plenty of enemies in the Asian diplomatic community, European and Asian alike. Many considered him to be "headstrong and opinionated," intent on doing things his own way. To make his job even more difficult, a number of foreign diplomats conspired against him, spread rumors about him, or openly interfered in his work. Almost nobody believed in his sincerity, even those he tried to help.

In March 1885, von Mollendorff sent a handwritten note to Minister Davydov which again asked for Russian aid. He understood the differences between the negotiating sides and faced many difficulties while translating the appropriate language. In his note, von Mollendorff carefully avoided using the word "protectorate," writing instead that Korea "could normally develop only in case a third state - stronger than China and Japan - would take it under their protection." Acknowledging the difficulty in formulating suggestions on Korea's behalf, he continued, "That is why the Russian government should define the contents of its relations with Korea and elaborate an agreement, which would guarantee the neutrality and integrity of Korea."

In view of the impending withdrawal of Chinese and Japanese troops, von Mollendorff argued that a sufficient number of Russian officers sent to Korea could train several regiments of soldiers and discourage Japan from renewing its support for Korean insurgents. He added that if Russia expressed a willingness to send military instructors to Korea, Kojong's government would make an official request to that effect to the Russian representative either in Seoul or Tokyo.

This time, Paul George von Mollendorff's proposal struck a responsive chord in St. Petersburg. Tsar Alexander III, who did not want to miss an opportunity to furnish Russian military instructors to Korea, ordered Foreign Minister Nikolai Karlovich Giers to immediately study the present state of Korean internal affairs and the reliability of von Mollendorff's proposals. In May 1885, chargé d'affaires Karl Ivanovich Waeber received orders to go to Seoul and instill trust in Russia into the Yi government, to demonstrate to King Kojong the need for better relations with Russia, and to encourage an appeal to send Russian military instructors to Korea.

Just weeks earlier, on April 10, a new player arrived on the scene when ships from the British Royal Navy's China Squadron had arrived in Korean waters to set up a forward naval base of operations in the sea lanes south of Cholla Province at the gateway to the Tsushima Strait.