(19) Last royals: King Kojong, Queen Myeongseong, Sunjong

King Gojong in military outfit, left, poses in a room at a palace in Seoul in this undated file photo.

By Andrei Lankov

In early 1863, Korea acquired a new king. He was merely nine years old, but this hardly surprised his subjects. The first decades of the 19th century was the time of dynastic instability, when the actual power rested in hands of a few powerful clans. The dynastic succession was often determined by the power struggle between these dignitaries, who were usually related to the ruling dynasty through marriage.

So, when in early 1863 King Cheoljong suddenly died childless and without an appointed heir, the power brokers began to look for a successor. The Korean law gave them much freedom of choice. In theory any member of any collateral branch of the royal family could be designated successor.

This is what happened in 1863 when a boy from a collateral branch was chosen to run the country (for half a century, as it turned out). In accordance with the customs of elite Koreans of the era, he had many names, but, like it was the case with all kings of the Joseon Kingdom, in the annals of history his temple (or posthumous) name is normally used. So, we’ll follow convention and call him King Gojong.

The promotion of Gojong was made possible by a low-profile campaign which his father Yi Ha-eung (known to the Westerners as Daewongun) conducted for years. Knowing that his son had fairly high chances of being selected if the incumbent king dies, the ambitious aristocrat did much lobbying and bribing. At the same time, he was careful enough to present oneself as a harmless womanizer and drinker, so he would not be seen as a dangerous competitor by the major power brokers.

The ruse worked. The dignitaries did not have many reservations about a boy king whose father evidently had no political ambitions as well. Soon they saw their mistake: Yi Ha-eung cleansed the old power cliques and, being a regent to his son, for a decade ran the country with such ruthlessness and efficiency Korea had not seen for many decades.

Yi Ha-eung’s reforms essentially revived the royal power. He dispersed factions of local gentry that challenged the royal authority, improved taxation and launched large-scale building projects in the capital.

Regarding foreign policy Yi Ha-eung was a staunch supporter of self-isolation. News of the ongoing Western expansion worried him, and he naively believed that Korea could somehow weather the crisis by refusing to talk to the “Western barbarians” and repelling their attempts to invade the country.

For a while he was successful, but in the long run it was a doomed policy. The Korean musketeers with their matchlock guns stood no chance when confronted with the machine guns of Europeans.

In a boomerang effect, Yi Ha-eung became the victim of the same ruse he used himself with such success. When it was a time for his son to marry (and Koreans married in their early teens), he chose Gojong’s bride, an orphaned daughter of an aristocratic Min family. The girl appeared to be obedient and docile, so there were no hints that in due time she would become one of the most formidable female politicians in Korean history.

The relation between Yi Ha-eung and his daughter-in-law deteriorated by 1870 and from then on the visceral hatred of these two strong and smart personalities remained the recurrent theme of Koreans politics, often producing grave consequences for the country. Queen Myeongseong wanted her father-in-law ousted from power, humiliated and, ideally, dead, and the feeling was fully reciprocated.

In the intense family quarrel Gojong tended to side with his wife, not with his father. Queen Myeongseong remained Gojong’s love and his chief advisor until her untimely death. It is telling that, in spite of having dozens of beauties at his disposal, in Queen Myeongseong’s lifetime he fathered five children with her, and only four with all his other concubines.

Gojong and his queen had a shared vision of Korea’s future. In a nutshell, they can be best described as moderate modernizers. On one hand, they wanted to keep some elements of the old order, including the monarchy itself. At the same time, they believed that Korea should change with the times.

Gojong in particular was a great admirer of all things modern. He had electricity and a phone installed in his palace during a time when such amenities were not common even in the royal palaces of Europe. He approved the plan for a Seoul tram to be established, and in later years he, being of quite advanced age, became a lover of motorcars.

In 1876 the Koreans yielded to Japan’s demands and signed the Ganghwa Treaty, opening their country to the outside world. The unavoidable happened: the Confucian monarchy found itself thrust in a modern arena.

Had Gojong and Queen Myeongseong had their way, Korea might have eventually developed into something like Thailand where the monarchy, restricted but popular and influential, coexists with modern society. However, history took another turn.

The major challenge faced by the Korean leaders was the need to confront the predatory behavior of the great powers. This was a time of imperialism when a weak Asian country was seen as fair game by the imperial-builders of Europe and, later, Japan.

Korea was weak, so the only hope was to outsmart the great powers, skillfully using their contradictions and winning time to develop. Gojong and Queen Myeongseong played this game hard. Until the mid-1890s they pinned their hopes on China. When China was defeated by Japan at the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95, their hopes switched to Russia.

Indeed, Russia looked like a perfect model for the conservative reformers like the Koreans royals. It was an absolute monarchy with hereditary nobility, but also a country which had modern industry and a modern military force.

After the Sino-Japanese War, Japanese pressure was mounting. The city of Seoul was occupied by the Japanese army, and Gojong was made to install the pro-Japanese cabinet which, admittedly, introduced a number of radical reforms. The Japanese were growing impatient with the royal couple’s attempts to undermine the Japanese domination, and they came to believe that strong-minded Queen Myeongseong was the real mastermind behind this resistance. So, the Japanese diplomats, led by Miura Goro, the then Japanese envoy to Korea, hatched a plan to kill her.

In the early hours of Oct. 8, 1895 a group of the Japanese mercenaries stormed the palace. They were joined by the soldiers loyal to Yi Ha-eung who wanted to get rid of his daughter-in-law. Queen Myeongseong and a number of her chambermaids were slaughtered, and King Gojong became a prisoner in his own palace. Soon afterwards, he fled to the Russian mission and spent a year running the country from the security of the foreign legation.

Queen Myeongseong’s death became a major blow to Gojong who missed her greatly. Following the custom, he remarried when the prescribed mourning period was over, but his new consort was a woman who once used to be Queen Myeongseong’s close personal friend.

The king (officially an emperor, since Korea was proclaimed empire in 1897) continued with his old diplomacy, trying to win time by playing great powers against Japan. However, after another of Japan’s spectacular military victories, this time over Russia in 1904-05, the chances of gaining support from the foreign powers (always slim) disappeared completely. Since 1905 Korea was a Japanese colony in everything but name.

In the last desperate attempt to use diplomacy, Gojong secretly dispatched his emissaries to a major international congress which took place in The Hague in 1907. The representatives of the major imperialist powers ignored Gojong’s pleas for help, and the outraged Japanese made aging Gojong abdicate.

Gojong was replaced by Sunjong, his son by Queen Myeongseong. Sunjong’s rule was to last until 1910, but he was a powerless figurehead, an unwilling puppet of the Japanese. In 1910 he had to sign the annexation treaty, ending the 500 years of the Yi family rule, and also transforming Korea into a Japanese colony.

After 1910 both Gojing and Sunjong lived a secluded but comfortable life under the watchful eyes of the Japanese officials. Gojong died in 1919, and his son lived until 1926. The Japanese hoped to prevent them from emerging as symbols of resistance.

They had only partial success: by the 1910s, the Korean independence movement was overwhelmingly republican, but the royals remained widely respected figures. The death of both former kings sparked major protests — especially the death of Gojong in 1919 became one of the events which triggered the March 1st movement, the largest outbreak of anti-colonial protesting in Korea.

Gojong is sometimes seen (both by contemporaries and historians) as a weak ruler. But the odds he faced were, frankly, impossible. Only a handful of Asian countries managed to keep independence in the era of imperialism. Gojong was honest and hard-working. He had a keen sense of duty as well as a curious and inquisitive mind. Under different circumstances he would become a brilliant leader. But he lived in brutal times, so he did what he could.

Professor Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and now teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. He can be reached at anlankov@yahoo.com.