Ch 30 - The Last Hope for FreedomClosing Opening DoorsEmperor Kojong, pressured by pro-Russian conservatives and fearing for his own security, crushes the Korean independence movement. As Western nations carve out concessions in Asia, the United States pushes the British idea of an Open Door Policy in China. Emperor Kojong left the Russian legation with his retinue in February 1897 largely due to the pressure exerted by members of the Independence Club. The Club's activists forcefully condemned foreign interference in Korea's internal governmental processes and opposed the granting of any economic concessions to foreign powers. In politics, power breeds enemies and Kim Hong-nuik, the interpreter at the Russian Legation, had more than his share. Most of them were Korean. While walking home on February 22, 1898, Kim was attacked by three assassins who tried to stab him in the back. A group of British and Korean soldiers saved Kim's life by running off the attackers. Afterwards, British Minister John Jordan noted that the only regret expressed by Korean citizens was that the assassination attempt failed. Russian Minister Alexis de Speyer demanded that the Korean government capture and persecute the would-be assassins. Wild rumors in Seoul that a royal prince had offered a reward of $10,000 to anyone who killed Kim only aggravated the situation. The Seoul police quickly arrested the prince, which triggered a new crisis. As a member of the royal household, the prince could not be arrested without the emperor's personal approval. The unfortunate police commissioner lost his post. With demands flying about that he be executed for abusing his office, the police commissioner fled to the safety of the Russian Legation. Infuriated, Minister de Speyer demanded justice. He saw the incident as yet another attempt to weaken Russia's position in Korea and took the attack on the commissioner as a personal attack. He wanted Emperor Kojong to come to the Russian Legation and personally apologize to him for insulting Russia. To emphasize his point, de Speyer brought 42 sailors and a naval officer from the gunboat Gremiashchii to Seoul, which raised the Russian Legation staff to about 100 men. He even threatened to shut down the legation and leave Seoul unless his interpreter received justice for the attack against him. Minister de Speyer, wholly unimpressed with Emperor Kojong, expressed his opinion to Yun Chi-ho, a leading Korean reformer; "There is no King yet in Corea. He is only a weak man who is scared at the least noise for his personal safety." Anti-Russian sentiment increased during February and March. Posters and newspaper articles clamored for Kim to resign his position or be fired from the legation. Korean hatred against Kim was also directed against aggressive Russian efforts to change policies within the Korean government. Following the appearance of a Russian branch bank in Seoul in March of 1898, rumors circulated that tax funds and money from the national treasury would be transferred to it. Seo Jae-pil voiced strong opposition to the government's delegation of its financial and military authority to Russia. Speaking at a mass rally in the heart of Seoul, Seo called on the government to reject Russian demands for the concession of Jeoryeongdo (modern Yeongdo Island) off Pusan, and for the creation of a Korean-Russian Bank. He also asked the government to dismiss the Russian military and financial consultants. Yi Sung-man (Syngman Rhee) and other speakers at the rally drew enthusiastic applause from the audience by pointing out the absurdity of entrusting Korea's financial and military authority to another country. Intense pressure from the Independence Club eventually forced the Russian-Korean Bank to close its doors. The club also conducted an investigation of the government's concession of rights in lumber, mining and railway construction to foreign powers and demanded that any concessions already extorted by foreign interests be recovered. The Korean population, already furious with Russian interference in Korea's affairs, demanded that Russian advisors and military instructors be removed from Korea and that Kim Hong-nuik be fired from his position as interpreter. Such agitation soon led to the recall of Russia's finance adviser, K. Alexeiev, and the Russian military instructors based in Seoul. The Russian government felt de Speyer had pushed matters too far. They reassigned him to a post in Brazil and installed M. Matunine as Russia's new charge d'affairs. Kim Hong-nuik's protection left Seoul with Alexis de Speyer. The new Russian minister reached Seoul at the end of March along with a new policy that did not include Kim Hong-nuik. Minister Matunine attempted to calm the Korean population by terminating Kim's service with the Russian Legation in April 1898. The Russian minister explained to Kim that he understood the dangers Kim would face once he was terminated and offered to help move him to Russia to save his life. Kim refused, which is all the Korean government needed to hear. Almost immediately, the government arrested Kim and charged him with abuse of office for personal gain and deliberately mistranslating conversations. He was exiled without trial on August 29 to the small southern island of Hook San in Cholla Province. The sentence prompted a little excitement in the foreign diplomatic community, but Minister Matunine showed little interest in the matter. Kim Hong-nuik did not go into exile quietly. Using his political contacts, he hired Kim Hong-sik, a former member of the Korean court, to murder Emperor Kojong and the Crown Prince in revenge. The plan was simple. Kim bribed the emperor's butler, Kim Chong-hwa, with 1,000 won to avoid the normal food tasters and cooks and had him lace the morning coffee with poison. On the morning of September 11, 1898, within minutes after drinking the poisoned brew, the Crown Prince and the chief eunuch became violently ill. After remaining near death for several days, both men recovered, but not without damage. The episode left the Crown Prince impotent. The emperor decided not to taste the strange smelling coffee. An investigation into the assassination attempt quickly cleared the cooks and servers and eventually led to the discovery of the real culprits. Investigators arrested Kim Hong-nuik in late September along with his wife, Kim Hong-sik and Kim Chong-hwa. They were charged with attempted regicide. After being severely tortured while under arrest, the three men confessed to the plot. The thought their confession was the result of torture alarmed many in Seoul, including a number of foreign diplomats who complained that the emperor himself had outlawed the practice years earlier by imperial decree. Minister Matunine wrote the Korean court requesting that foreigners and a doctor be permitted to visit the accused to determine whether or not they had been tortured. He ended his letter with, "I shall consider a refusal of my request as proof that it has been employed in the recent case." After British Minister Jordan complained about the alleged torture, the Korean Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs wrote Jordan and explained that the rumors of torture were unfounded and groundless. He also noted that anyone who fails to tell the truth in a criminal investigation can be whipped, adding, "Such a punishment cannot, therefore, be considered as excessive or illegal, whenever it is inflicted upon anyone charged with an offense who declines to be submissive." The Korean minister refused Matunine's request that foreigners be allowed to visit the prisoners claiming that what happened inside the prison stayed inside the prison, and that established law prohibited anyone except magistrates and inspectors to enter the prison on official business. Korean politicians frequently found their careers terminated early and few were removed by natural causes. More often, the career-ending event was exile or execution. The plotters were given a hurried trial on October 10, 1898, convicted and summarily executed in the prison by strangulation. Kim Hong-nuik's wife was also found guilty. She received 100 lashes and a three year prison sentence. The three men's bodies were tied together and turned over to the citizens of Seoul, who dragged them through the streets and horribly mutilated the corpses, which made it impossible to determine if they had been tortured earlier. The bodies were left in the street as a brutal reminder of what would happen to those who attempted to murder the emperor. Kim Hong-nuik's political career was a dangerous gamble for power that came to an inglorious end over a bad cup of coffee. Seo Jae-pil was constantly at odds with those in power, men who hated him and the ends toward which he worked. The Japanese dominated Korean government even went so far as to petition President Theodore Roosevelt to remove him from Korea. The pressures against him reached such a level that he decided to return to the United States. Even without its leader however, the ardor of the Independence Club did not dampen in the least. Club members frequently voiced their opinions on the reform of domestic administration and did not hesitate to register their opposition to the government. The agitation of the Independence Club reached its peak in the fall of 1898, and a clash with the government seemed all but inevitable. When several thousand Korean citizens thronged to the Chongno intersection in Seoul for a mass meeting on October 29. Participants included not only club members, but student groups and a number of high government officials, some of whom attended under pressure, bureaucrats, merchants, monks and even outcasts. This "Joint Conference of the Government Officials and the People" resolved to submit a list of six proposals to Emperor Kojong that, in effect, called for the establishment of a constitutional government and the rule of law. The proposed six articles presented below were first reported in the November 1, 1898, issue of The Independent.
In what appeared at the time to be a magnanimous gesture, Emperor Kojong not only accepted these proposals, he had them published in the government gazette on November 4 and actually promised to put them into effect. The most remarkable of these proposals was a plan to introduce constitutional monarchy by inaugurating a quasi-legislative senate. The new senate would be comprised of 50 members; 25 appointed by the emperor and 25 to be chosen by popular election. The first election was to be sponsored by the Independence Club on November 5, with senators chosen from the club's membership. As the only progressive movement that existed under the old government regime, its members believed they could maintain the current imperial structure by modernizing and strengthening it's branches. In their idealism, they neglected a universal truth. First and foremost, people seek self-preservation. The current lot of government officials would not tolerate the kinds of reforms being proposed by the Independence Club. Altering the traditional structure of the government did not sit well with pro-Russian conservatives in the cabinet. They had been following the activities of the independence movement for some time and were highly suspicious its motives and the potential impact of its ideas. They feared that if this new senate were ever created, their own power would dramatically decline. Worse, they believed that then reform movement would be taken over and administered by the new senate and the Independence Club in every sector of the political arena. They were not about to let the Korean government turn towards republicanism. At 9 a.m. on the morning of November 5, the Independence Club met at Independence Hall ready to conduct its first election of 25 new senators. They planned to hold the first senate meeting in Korea's history that afternoon. Despite all the preparation and enthusiasm however, the senate did not meet that day. The night before, members of the pro-Russian faction secretly posted and distributed flyers around Seoul that claimed the election was not to select new senators, but a new president. When the emperor's security guards spotted the pro-Russian party's flyers around the city, they quickly collected them and presented the documents to Emperor Kojong, who found them extremely shocking and disturbing. Emperor Kojong hurriedly summoned leaders of the pro-Russian faction and demanded an explanation. They were more than willing to comply with a premeditated deception. Second Minister of the State Council Cho Pyong-Sik reportedly produced a letter from the club that stated the election was not for the purpose of selecting senators, but to actually declare the creation of a democratic republic. They told him that the club had already voted to give a senate seat to Pak Yong-hyo, a radical reform leader in 1884 who was in currently living in asylum in Japan. In addition, they claimed that the club president and the vice-president, Yun Chi-ho, were about to be selected to establish a Korean republic with the help of Independence Club members. Emperor Kojong, already fearful of the Japanese threat, began to believe the independence movement represented a very real home-grown threat. Concerned about this perceived challenge to his own security, he cancelled all plans for a new senate and ordered the immediate arrest of Yi Sang-jae and sixteen other club leaders. He dissolved his progressive cabinet and established a pro-Russian conservative cabinet, which denounced the Independence Club as an anti-government organization trying to overthrow the present government. Independence Club members immediately mounted a campaign to free their leaders, holding a mass protest rally that lasted for days. Yun Chi-ho observed in his diary on November 5, 1898: "This is a King! A smooth-lying treacherous coward could not have done anything meaner than this Tai Whangjei of Tai Han or the Great Emperor of Korea!" When word of the emperor's actions reached the streets of Seoul, the populace erupted. Starting with a major demonstration on the night of November 5, the civil unrest protesting the action of the pro-Russian faction lasted 42 consecutive days. Even the merchants shut down their shops in protest. While the civil population demonstrated their anger and determination to fight for social justice, the pro-Russian faction continued to spread the rumor that the Independence Club was actively in pursuit of republicanism and that the club's leadership amounted to nothing more than a group of pro-Japanese traitors. Emperor Kojong's pro-Russian government acted in concert with the Russians and Japanese to impose martial law in Seoul and banned all public meetings. In preparation for even more suppressive countermeasures, the government secretly gathered a group known as the Imperial Association, an organization that employed the services of a number of thugs brought in from the Peddlers Guild designed to act as a strong-armed agent of the government. As tensions mounted in Seoul and the crisis worsened, the Yi government called in the Imperial Association to use direct violence against the Independence Club's membership. On the morning of November 21, the Imperial Association joined the demonstrations and proceeded to remove club members by force. Nearly 430 members of the club were arrested during the bloody rioting. The strength of the public protests did have an effect. In order to calm the city, Emperor Kojong issued an order that banished any further protest meetings and brought in military troops to clear the streets of the capital. He dispersed the Imperial Association, ordered those who had manufactured lies about the Independence Club be punished and allowed that the club should be re-established and that the six articles proposed in early November should be gradually adopted. The high profile demonstrations attracted a younger student intellectual base to the Independence Club. Shortly after the pro-Russian government denounced the Independence Club as an illegal underground organization, 20 year-old Ahn Chang-ho and others created the Citizens Assembly (Manmingongdonghoe), which opened the movement up to all citizens. Members came from the entire spectrum of Korean society; peasants who had become politically aware through the activities of the Tonghak peasant army, mine laborers and dock workers at the treaty ports, pioneering women, and students. In short, the Independence Club grew and prospered with support from a varied assortment of newly awakened townspeople. Ahn proposed to organize a branch office of the association in Pyongyang in an attempt to raise the self-awakening of the nation. He convened the meeting at the Kwaejaejeong pavilion and volunteered to make a keynote speech to an audience of hundreds of ranking government officials, including Pyongan's governor, Cho Min-hui. Speaking with great eloquence, Ahn captivated the crowd with rare patriotism and eloquent oratory in what came to be known as the "Kwaejaejeong Speech." Among his comments, Ahn said, "The purpose of the movement of the Independence Club is to make our country a better place to live by governing the nation with justice, but the government, instead of appreciating and encouraging the patriots, framed and dismembered those who had sincere motives to make our country better. Therefore, the government should examine what they have done." (applause) "If the members had sincere patriotism in their hearts, they should have the courage to stand firm against the guns and swords. However, they were all running scared from mere Peddlers Guild guided by the government officials. How can anyone with such a weak mind and spirit straighten up national affairs?" (applause) "If this meeting is once again going to be broken up by batons and Peddlers, it would be better not have gathered in the first place. I believe we have gathered here because of sincere motive and true patriotism in our hearts. Thus, let's all have the determination and willingness to even give up our own lives for the national independence." (applause) Left unchecked by less volatile officials of the old government, Independence Club meetings became much more presumptuous and raucous, which helped ensure the eventual downfall of the organization. On December 26, 1898, Emperor Kojong issued an imperial edict ordering the dissolution of the Independence Club. In one heavy blow, the government crushed the Independence Club and fatally wounded the one shining hope to reform the aged and ailing Yi dynasty. At its peak, the club counted nearly 2,000 members. For a brief moment at least, it seemed the nascent spirit of nationalism in Korea was going to give birth to a new era. Instead, the short-lived Independence Club died of suffocation, leaving its spirit of independence to subsequent national movements. Having witnessed the rise and fall of the independence movement, America's minister to Korea, Horace Allen later noted, "This attempt at self-government has shown that the Koreans are very far from ready for it as yet." The suppression of the Independence Club dramatically reduced the uproar over foreign concessions in Korea. At about the same time however, events were unfolding on the western horizon that would soon loom large in Korea's affairs. Ominous signs were appearing that would affect matters of daily welfare, indeed matters of life and death, to hundreds of millions of human beings. The events to come foreshadowed a century of conflict, disturbance and war, of vast territorial changes, of epoch-making political, economic and social upheavals. For many centuries, China had remained the largest country in the world governed under the effective control of a single centralized administration. China's dominance over Asia had been so great that it had recognized other states not as equals, but as tributaries. This heritage greatly complicated the challenge of adapting to the conditions created by the expansion of the Western world. The need to develop foreign relations based on the western concept of sovereignty was neither accepted nor even recognized in Asia. At the close of the nineteenth century, China was passing through a period of dynastic decline; its civil service was deeply corrupt; the Manchu garrisons responsible for security had lost most of their military prowess; the southern provinces were disaffected. The ruling Manchus placed an overriding importance on conformity with tradition and became the inflexible defenders of traditional Chinese culture. They looked towards innovation and change with increasing suspicion. Following the Japanese exposure of China's truly weak military condition in the Sino-Japanese War, the West came to see China as another Africa, a region of vast wealth to be carved up and divided. In the ensuing "Battle of the Concessions," foreign powers competed with one another in preparation for the partition of China. Foreign colonies were already well established in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tianjin, Hankow, and Canton. Led by merchants, naval commanders and diplomats, Western nations actively parcelled out the vast Chinese Empire among themselves into a number of spheres of influence. Western expansion in China was characterized by determined aggression on the one side and fumbling resistance on the other. The apparent threat of complete subjugation by foreign interests had repercussions among the Chinese throughout the country that varied in both intensity and effect. Many Chinese took advantage of the opportunities opened up by foreign activities. At each stage, any resistance, reluctance, or collaboration by the Qing government became justification for one or more Western powers to present further demands backed a display of force. The scope of encroachment in China was limited only by an anxiety not to precipitate a complete breakdown of the political order in China and by mutual suspicion among the Western powers. In 1899, Britain's share of the £55 million China trade amounted to some £35 million. With control of nearly two-thirds of China's foreign trade, Great Britain clearly held the largest economic stake in the outcome of the fight for concessions. Furthermore, the British were greatly alarmed by the Russian penetration of Manchuria that followed in the wake of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. The Russian railroad excluded English economic interests from Manchuria and presented the more serious danger that Russia would dominate northern China to within a short distance of Beijing itself. Great Britain feared that Russia would eventually subjugate China to a vassal status and induce it to invoke policies hostile to British interests in other parts of the Chinese Empire. Though Britain maintained a sphere of influence in China, it also wanted to maintain open access to trade in those regions where other powers had special influence. To assist it in this policy, Great Britain turned to the only other major foreign power with an unblemished record in East Asia; the United States. The British minister in Washington tried twice to persuade the Department of State to co-sponsor a movement for equal commercial opportunity in China - once in March 1898, and again in January 1899 - and twice he failed. Undaunted, Britain continued to promote the idea within the United States of an "open door" in China. In June 1899, Alfred E. Hippisley, an experienced China hand and a longtime member of the Chinese Customs Service, renewed his contacts with an old friend, William W. Rockhill, a former member of the American legations in Beijing and Seoul and the Far Eastern Affairs adviser to Secretary of State John Hay. The two men soon renewed discussions to explore the contemporary situation in China. On the basis of a memorandum written by Hippisley, Rockhill prepared a note to Secretary of State Hay that embraced the idea of equal commercial opportunity in China. Much of his message reflected Hippisley's feelings that the established western spheres of influence in China should be considered a fait accompli, that exclusive railroad and mining concessions already granted should be maintained, and that the Chinese trade tariff should be preserved throughout the country and equally applied in all foreign leaseholds as a measure to keep the Beijing government solvent. The United States kept out of Asia territorially before 1898, as the European powers and Japan sought to expand their own access to China by interpretation and manipulation of treaty privileges. Nevertheless, it desired that no special access to China be granted that would not be equally shared by its own traders and missionaries. President McKinley came under increasing pressure from American business and religious leaders to do something to protect American interests. The chairman of the Philippine Commission told President McKinley that Russian advances in East Asia boded ill for the West and that America should support England and Japan their efforts to prevent the further dismemberment of China. McKinley finally succumbed to the arguments of John Hay, William Rockhill and Alfred Hippisley in a meeting held in early September 1899. On September 6, 1899, Secretary of State John Hay signed the First Open Door Notes, a new touchstone of American foreign policy. The diplomatic dispatch of this document requested Britain, Germany, Russia, France, Italy, and Japan to agree to preserve the equality of commercial activity within those areas they had recently obtained, or may later extract from China, and that the Chinese government be allowed to collect customs duties. Nothing was mentioned regarding the territorial or administrative integrity of China nor, of significance to Korea, was any mention made of equality outside established "spheres of influence." Even though all Secretary Hay asked for was a statement of intentions and not a formal treaty, not one of these nations committed itself to Hay's dispatch. All responded evasively, each refusing to commit without the acceptance of the others. In what must surely be considered as an act of self-delusion, President McKinley assured Congress in December 1899, even before all the answers were in, that in China "our commercial rights under existing treaties have been everywhere maintained during the past year, as they will be in the future." By March 1900, Secretary John Hay stated without fanfare that he had received "final and definitive" agreement from all six major powers on the Open Door principle. The aim of American diplomacy was to preserve the integrity of East Asian nations and preserve an equality of opportunity for trade, most notably in China, Japan and Korea. This was also the principal object of British diplomacy, but with one big difference; the Open Door Policy in China was more emphatically British than American and Great Britain was willing to take positive action to keep the door open. Great Britain controlled the high seas from Gibraltar to Hong Kong and was firmly established in a fortified position at Hong Kong. In a war, England could close enemy ocean trade routes from Europe to the East and keep them open to itself. It was not only willing to fight for its commercial interests if necessary, but had actually done so in the past. Given no other choice, Great Britain was ready to join in a further scramble for Chinese territory to prevent any other power or combination of powers from encroaching on China to Britain's disadvantage.
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