Ch 27 - Rebellion and Mounting Tensions

The Kim Ok-kyun Affair

Progressive Party leader Kim Ok-kyun continued his political agitation in Japan after fleeing Korea in 1884. His assassination in Shanghai, China, just ten years later gave Japan an opportunity to reassert itself in Korea.

The Meiji Emperor's 1881 Imperial Rescript promising the Japanese people a written constitution and popular representation within ten years sent Japan into a whirlwind decade of unprecedented change. The Meiji leaders did not pursue their goal of fukoku kyohei, "Enrich the country and strengthen the military," according to some ideology. They made it up as they went along. Natsume Soseki, the first Japanese to hold Tokyo University's chair in English literature, described the transformation as an endless bad dream;  "Like a man fleeing helter-skelter, with a [long-nosed goblin] hard on his heels, we ran and jumped for our lives, hardly conscious of how we did it."

With the foundations of a modern industrial society firmly in place near the end of the 1890s, Japan's reached the "takeoff stage." Japan's modernization program needed capital however, and lots of it to launch the empire into the future. That meant access to foreign markets. While Japan's new factories hummed, China enjoyed a steadily increasing volume of exports to Korea. This served to increase Japanese frustrations and led them to try all sorts of expedient maneuvers to regain a stronger hold over the peninsula's economy.

Strategic considerations and national pride prompted the Meiji government to devote a considerable amount of attention to Korea. Large numbers of Japanese military men and secret agents arrived in Korea to detect and root out anti-Japanese or pro-Chinese activities wherever possible. Despite the expedient tactics employed by the frustrated Japanese to regain a stronger hold over the Korean economy, the Chinese continued their sway unchecked until it seemed that nothing short of open conflict could unseat them.

Domestic and foreign events of 1890 made the Chinese recovery in Korea intolerable. By 1890, Japan had laid the base for industrial power, overcome social protest, restored esteem in Japanese institutions, and modernized its military forces. Now ready to step out into the world, all that remained was for Japan to define its relationship to the rest of the world. In order to achieve full membership in the community of nations, Japan had to establish clear boundaries by treaty with neighbors, to command respect for its interests abroad, and to recover full sovereignty at home by revising its own "unequal treaties."

Meiji Japan defined itself by ensconcing the Emperor and the Imperial House as the cornerstone of its new constitution, which took effect in 1890. The 1890 Imperial Rescript on Education confirmed the Emperor's central role in Japanese government. Gone was the Meiji Charter Oath's admonition to seek knowledge in all the world, replaced by a Confucian call to piety, obedience and a willingness to give oneself "courageously to the State." Gone was the Charter Oath's appeal to "the just laws of Nature," replaced by a glorification of Japan's "national essence." Unquestioning love and obedience toward the Emperor became the highest duty of a Japanese citizen and a measure of his personal worth. Although the elected Imperial Diet had little direct power, its angry opposition leaders could always inflame public opinion by pointing to any perceived weakness in foreign policy. At the same time, the Meiji government had to contend with pressure from the Army and Navy general staffs, which answered only to the Emperor.

General Yamagata Aritomo came from a poor branch of the Choshu clan, and his parents died early in his life. Like his public partner, and private rival, Ito Hirobumi, Yamagata received his early training at Yoshida Shoin's small Village Academy in the Choshu capital of Hagi. Yoshida preached Imperial Loyalism to young men on the lower rungs of Choshu society and opened their eyes to the dangers of the world beyond Japan. He also favored the tenets of fukoku kyohei, to enrich the nation and develop a strong military.

Following a trip to Europe in 1870, Yamagata Aritomo invited Prussians to come to Japan as military advisors and teachers at the Japanese War College. His grand purpose in life was to fulfill the second half of the Meiji era slogan, "develop a strong military." Over the years, he worked energetically to modernize the Japanese Army. Appointed Army Minister in 1873, he and Katsura Taro pushed through the creation of the General Staff Office. Just five years later, in 1878, Yamagata Aritomo became Chief of the General Staff, a position that served as the principal source of his political power and that of other military officers.

He encouraged the Meiji Emperor to issue the Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors in 1882, which commanded the military to remain loyal and to cultivate Japan's traditional militarist spirit. The effect was to preserve the authoritarian and militarist ideas of Japan's feudal past in the military. The document represented the moral core of the Japanese Army until its ultimate demise at the end of World War II.

While Chief of the General Staff, Yamagata Aritomo created a special unit in 1881 known as the Law Soldier Regiment, the Kempeitai, Japan's military police. This outfit came to be feared by civilians and government officials alike. The dreaded Kempeitai became the visible arm of the Meiji government, guardians of the law and the overseers of private thoughts and morals. Under their often brutal enforcement tactics, individuals were presumed guilty when arrested.

The same year the Kempeitai came into being, General Yamagata helped Toyama Mitsuru, a former lieutenant under Takamori Saigo, form the secret society known as Genyosha, the Black Ocean Society. Toyama Mitsuru, an ardent ultranationalist, organized a powerful para-military organization comprised of organized crime figures and men with far right-wing political beliefs whose aim was to tap directly into the samurai sentiment for expansion abroad and authoritarian rule at home. By 1891, Genyosha had taken control of the Japanese army, the intelligence service and the government bureaucracy through blackmail, extortion, terror, prostitution, gun-running, assassination, and intellectual persuasion. Supported by wealthy patrons and activities such as gambling, prostitution, blackmail, strike breaking, etc., Genyosha and Toyama's ultranationalism became a driving force in Japanese politics .

Unlike Ito, Yamagata had a narrow, focused vision of Japan's future. As Chief of the General Staff, he elaborated the first principle of Japanese geopolitics;   Japan must control a "line of advantage" beyond its own shores, and the most important point on that line was Korea. Control of Korea would make the East Sea (Sea of Japan) a Japanese "lake," keep continental rivals at a distance, and provide a jumping-off point for expansion on the mainland. Yamagata believed it imperative that Korea must remain out of enemy hands and under Japanese protection "for many future years or even forever." The Japanese leadership longed to take control the peninsula and the 1876 Kanghwa Treaty with Korea was the vehicle through which they would do it.

A number of events occurred in 1894 that, taken together, gave Japan the very opportunity it needed to reassert itself in Korea. Kim Ok-kyun and Pak Yong-hyo fled to Japan with Foreign Minister Takezoe following the failed Korean coup d`état of 1884. Once there, the two men lived under the protection of Toyama Mitsuru and the Genyosha. Kim Ok-kyun continued his political agitation in Japan despite repeated unsuccessful attempts to extradite him and Pak Yong-hyo and him from Japan.

Many Koreans, including King Kojong, his ministers and relatives living in Japan never realized it, but most Japanese held Kim and his followers in very low esteem. The Japanese government actually viewed Kim as a real menace that had to be removed as a matter of self-defense. Out of frustration, King Kojong resorted to an age-old tactic to deal with the problem. He dispatched an assassin named Yi Il-sik to Tokyo in 1889 with orders to murder both men. This act did more than greatly alarm the Japanese government, it provoked an incident that inflamed an already tense situation in Korea.

Yi Il-sik left Korea for Japan in May 1892, with a large sum of money to finance and organize the liquidation of Kim Ok-kyun and Pak Yong-hyo. Not long after he arrived, Yi enlisted the help of four other men from Korea and a single Japanese citizen. His most prized recruit was Hong Chong-u, the son of a Korean Department of Justice minister killed during the 1884 coup attempt in Seoul. Hong managed to attach himself to Kim the following year. He befriended Kim and became privy to all his secrets and schemes.

In January 1894, Yi Il-sik also befriended Kim and learned of Kim's frustration over not being able to raise sufficient money to bring needed reforms to Korea. Yi advised Kim to seek Chinese support and promised to introduce him to the right people. To further calm Kim's apprehension, Yi paid off his debts, gave him the money for a round-trip ticket to Shanghai and a ¥5,000 check drawn against a Chinese bank. He even arranged for a Chinese interpreter to travel with him to China.

During the journey from Tokyo to Osaka, Yi Il-sik and Hong Chong-u made their plans about how to dispose of Kim. Yi provided Hong with Korean clothing that had special pockets sewn inside to conceal an automatic pistol and a dagger, which he also provided. Kim became suspicious of Hong during the journey, but Yi Il-sik, who did not travel all the way to China, calmed Kim by insisting that Hong had to be there to cash the Chinese bank draft in Shanghai.

With Kim out of the country, Yi Il-sik and his co-conspirators in Japan turned their attention to Pak Yong-hyo. They planned to murder him when he arrived at his Tokyo hotel room. Kim's departure for China had already alerted Pak and his fellow revolutionaries to potential trouble. Warned by friends of the assassination attempt, Pak never returned to his hotel, but took refuge in a private school instead. Pak's friends captured Yi Il-sik on March 28 and dragged him to the private school, where they forced him to confess to the entire plot against Pak and the members of his group. Shortly afterward, Japanese police closed in on the school and arrested everyone present, including Yi and his intended victims. Among the papers discovered in Yi's possession, the police found a royal document ordering the assassination of Kim Ok-kyun and Pak Yong-hyo.

Unsure of how to deal with the existence of such a disturbing document, Japanese Foreign Minister Mutsu Munemitsu consulted with Henry Denison, the American legal adviser to the Japanese Foreign Office. Denison offered the opinion that if the document proved to be genuine and the assassins had actually come to Japan under the expressed order of their king, then such royal authority constituted a sovereign act of state for which King Kojong and his government were responsible. So long as the Korean refugees were in Japan however, Japan owed them asylum and protection. Minister Mutsu suspected the royal papers were forgeries, but he nonetheless demanded an explanation from the Korean government. The head of the Korean Foreign Office denied that Kojong had ever issued such papers and took the opportunity to again request the surrender of Yi Il-sik and his two co-conspirators to Korean authorities. The Japanese refused the request, stating there was no extradition treaty between their countries.

Kim Ok-kyun and his party arrived in Shanghai, China, on March 27, 1894, and checked into a Japanese hotel in the American settlement. At around 3 o'clock the following afternoon, Hong Chong-u, wearing the special clothing provided by Yi, quietly stepped into Kim's hotel room and found his target resting in a wicker chair reading a book. Hong suddenly pulled the automatic pistol from his jacket and opened fire at close range, hitting Kim twice. Mortally wounded, Kim staggered out of the room, where Hong killed him with another bullet in the back. Hong Chong-u hurriedly fled the hotel and disappeared on the streets of Shanghai.

Settlement police captured Hong two days later and he admitted under questioning that he had assassinated Kim under royal orders that called for the elimination of enemies of the state;   one in Shanghai, one in Japan and two in the United States. While the Shanghai authorities tried to decide what to do about the matter, Li Hongzhang notified the Shanghai district chief that the Korean trade representative at Tianjin was on his way to Shanghai to pick up the two men and ordered the chief to surrender Hong and Kim's body to him. With no suitable ship in port destined for Korea, the district chief requested the governor general of Kiangsu to provide a naval vessel from the Southern Fleet to transport Hong and his cargo to Inchon at the expense of the Korean government. On April 7, Hong, Kim's body and the two Korean trade officials boarded the Chinese warship Wei-Qing, bound for Inchon. The matter was hardly settled.

King Kojong and his court were delighted to learn of Kim's death and expected an improvement in relations with Japan because of it. At the same time, they worried about the fate of his killer, Hong Chong-u, who had suddenly become a Korean national hero. Pressure mounted in Japan to bring Hong to justice. When Minister Mutsu learned that under Korean law Kim's body was still subject to punishment, he advised the Seoul government that any desecration or mockery of the deceased would be contrary to the principles of humanity. Kim Ok-kyun's body had been taken to the town of Yuang-hua-chin, where it lay in a private house under the protection of an armed guard.

Feelings ran high in Korea as well, particularly among the courtiers who had lost many relatives and friends in the 1884 revolt led by Kim. None dared to challenge the ancient custom out of fear of being branded a Kim Ok-kyun sympathizer. When Kojong discovered that none of the foreign powers could agree on how to deal with the dilemma, he ordered his chief of staff to proceed to Yuang-hua-chin on April 14, to settle the issue. In a final act of revenge, Kim's body was beheaded and quartered and the mutilated pieces were sent into the provinces of the kingdom to be displayed as a warning to other would-be traitors.

Having dealt with Kim's body, there was next the matter of what to do with Hong Chong-u. There was never a question of punishing him, only how to suitably reward him for his act. Kojong and his relatives wanted to honor Hong with some high decoration and a responsible position. On April 21, Foreign Minister Mutsu Munemitsu sent a cable to Otori Keisuke, Japan's chargé d'affaires in Korea, with instructions to advise the Yi government in the strongest possible terms to refrain from rewarding Hong. He warned that to do so would generate tremendous bad will in Japan and give every appearance that the assassin's royal commission was in fact genuine, contrary to Seoul's claim that the document was a forgery. Korean officials responded by stating that Hong's action had been noble. Although they briefly delayed appointing Hong to an official government post, they nonetheless gave him a fine house and a substantial sum of money.

During his years in exile in Japan, Kim Ok-kyun had lost not only much of the support and sympathy of his compatriots, but public and private Japanese support as well. Almost overnight however, his assassination transformed him into a revolutionary martyr in the struggle for Korea's freedom and independence. His old supporters in Japan formed the Society of Friends of Kim Ok-kyun to retrieve his remains and bury them with honor. The Society held a memorial service on May 24 at the Nishi Honganji Temple in Tokyo and ceremoniously buried a lock of his hair. The presence of many members of the Japanese Diet at the ceremony underlined the political significance of the entire affair.

The entire Kim Ok-kyun affair gave Japan the very opportunity it needed to reassert itself in Korea. Whatever his politics, Kim Ok-kyun had been a resident of Japan. He had stopped in a Japanese hotel in Shanghai. The fact that he had a round-trip ticket to Shanghai amply proved his intent to return to Japan. The assassination of Kim Ok-kyun infuriated the Japanese precisely because it was not the work of crazed fanatics but a calculated maneuver. Many Japanese suspected Chinese complicity in Kim's assassination and they regarded the fact that Kim's body returned to Korea aboard a Chinese warship as a direct Chinese insult to Japan. They also viewed the Korean government's action in rewarding Hong Chong-u as insulting.

The Japanese saw the entire Kim Ok-kyun episode as a direct affront to their national honor and agitated for a war of chastisement against Korea. Trying to avoid a needless conflict, Foreign Minister Mutsu argued in the Japanese Diet that the murder of one Korean citizen by another in China was not a legal Japanese concern, and that it certainly did not constitute a casus belli. Still, Japanese feelings on the issue ran at a fevered pitch and a number of secret societies, Genyosha among them, agitated for some kind of action. Japan's rapid military and economic growth put it in a position of such strength by 1894 that it became possible to challenge China.