Looking back at Great Korean Empire
By Kyung Moon Hwang
.jpg)
Last week marked the 120th anniversary of the ceremony that founded the Great Korean Empire, or “Daehan Jeguk.” For this occasion the Seoul city government sponsored a re-enactment of the ritual, centered on the monarch Gojong, who proclaimed his territory an empire and himself its emperor in mid-October of 1897.
Over the past couple of decades the common perspective on the Korean Empire, which ended when Japan annexed Korea as its colony in 1910, has changed almost completely. Historians, followed by the public at large, have revived the reputation of the Empire, which had long been derided as the last breath of the dying Joseon Dynasty and beset by disorder, corruption and mismanagement.
It is easy to see why the Japanese condemned the Korean Empire: Such a narrative of hopeless backwardness and dangerous weakness justified Japan’s takeover, which was legitimized in terms of regional security and urgent reform, as if Japan was forced to intervene. But many Koreans back then and long afterward also shared this negative view; it was the Empire, after all, that had “lost” the country through its inability to respond to the times. It must have been incompetent.
More recently, however, scholars have found reason to uphold the Great Korean Empire as a bold attempt to lead the nation toward modern change. Indeed the 1897 founding appears to have been motivated by a desire to escape Chinese, Japanese and Russian interference by establishing Korea on equal footing with these surrounding, menacing powers. Such a move, then, followed in the footsteps of the sweeping Gabo Reforms of 1894, which had formally ended Korea’s centuries-long subordinate relationship with China.
The renovating spirit of the Gabo Reforms continued in other ways as well. The Empire’s Royal Household Ministry and particularly its treasury, the Office of Crown Properties, pursued a comprehensive set of modernizing reforms. They included the government-sponsored construction, in 1899, of the first railway line and the Seoul streetcar system, as well as developmental projects in mining, commerce and trade, electricity generation, waterworks and communication infrastructure such as a telegraph network.
Meanwhile, for its part the central government, which lay outside the Royal Household Ministry, also led modernization efforts, despite being weaker financially and bureaucratically than the Crown. These steps included a new household registration system in order to streamline government management of the population, as well as a nationwide land survey in order to standardize ownership and enhance taxation methods. The government also implemented measures to improve public schooling, strengthen public health and nurture patriotic sentiment.
In sum, the Korean Empire worked to build and fortify Korea’s autonomy, nationhood and material wellbeing, which paralleled similar efforts in the broader society, especially by “enlightenment” activists who championed modernization, reform and independence. There was much to suggest, in other words, that Korea was not in such bad shape, certainly not bad enough to warrant conquest.
So what went wrong? Why did the Korean Empire fall into the status as a Japanese colony, a process that began in 1904 and ended in 1910? The short answer, of course, is that Japanese imperialism was simply too strong militarily, economically and diplomatically.
The long answer, though, is much more complicated, and there is no consensus among historians, despite the recent scholarly emphasis on the Korean Empire’s strengths, as described above. Indeed one of the unavoidable realities is that there were many Koreans, both elite and non-elite, who helped the Japanese in the takeover process, which upsets the straightforward impression of Korea being ruined by the evil forces of Japanese imperialism.
As the historians who deny the rosier picture of the Korean Empire point out, there was good reason for Koreans at the time, and for many decades thereafter, to question the Empire’s supposed advances. Gojong, the monarch whose conventional image has been reversed by the revisionist scholarship, actually was considered a stumbling block to reform by the enlightenment activists of the period. Their fears were realized soon after the founding of the Korean Empire, as Emperor Gojong shut down the reformist Independence Club because of its calls for a more constitutional, accountable form of government.
Around the same time, in 1899, Gojong and his closest advisors, who appear to have operated largely in the shadows, also issued a formal declaration of the Empire’s “state system.” This edict established the five-centuries-old Joseon Dynasty as the basis of the Empire’s legitimacy, while pronouncing that just about every sphere of government and society now lay under the monarch’s unquestioned control. Such royal absolutism was not uncommon around the world and considered by some a sign of modernity and strength, but it also showed how the Empire contained many despotic, regressive and debilitating elements and tendencies.
Still, because its end, and that of Korean sovereignty, came at the hands of the Japanese, the Empire can readily be shown as a tragic victim of history, despite its spirited demonstration of Koreans’ struggle for independence and advancement. The conventional historical view now portrays the Empire as having established a basis for achieving autonomous modern change, and it would have, had the Japanese not robbed the Koreans of this potential.
As a source of historical inspiration, then, the Great Korean Empire’s accomplishments are now celebrated despite its short life, and among its long-term fruits is the formal name, Daehan Minguk, of South Korea itself.
Kyung Moon Hwang (khwang3@gmail.com) is a professor at the Department of History, University of Southern California. He is the author of “A History of Korea- An Episodic Narrative” (Second edition, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).