UK's brazen takeover of Geomundo in 1885
By Richard Pennington
.jpg?w=728)
I am a sucker for a good historical episode, and this is one. Please allow me to summarize. On April 15, 1885, three British warships (HMS Agamemnon, HMS Pegasus and HMS Firebrand) and two transport ships steamed out of Nagasaki and headed west. They came to a three-island archipelago approximately halfway between the Korean mainland and Jeju Island.
Meeting no resistance from the natives, the Brits took possession ― not de jure but de facto. For the next 22 months, they would be in command. John Bull called it “Port Hamilton” in honor of W.A.B. Hamilton, former secretary of the Admiralty.
The British Empire in the 19th century grew by 26 million square kilometers and 400 million people. Colonialism and neo-colonialism did not yet have a bad name. Why not add a little island off Korea's south coast? From a modern perspective, however, it was a hostile and audacious act.
Richard Pennington poses at the British cemetery on Geomundo, off Yeosu, South Jeolla Province, during his visit to the island last summer. /Courtesy of Richard Pennington
The locals, whose ancestors had arrived sometime during the Bronze Age, had little contact with the government in Seoul. Taxes were paid intermittently, in the form of rice and salt. There was no military presence and no formal schooling, although literacy was surprisingly high.
It was nothing but the people, the land and the surrounding waters. In fact, Seonhodo, Sodo and the much smaller Godo (uninhabited, although I don't know why) which sat between them, made an excellent harbor, one from which an imperial navy might control trade and movement of ships in the South Sea.
For just this reason, the United Kingdom and Russia had been casting covetous eyes on Geomundo for the previous 40 years. The British apparently seized it to preclude the Russians from doing the same.
King Gojong, his foreign minister, Kim Yun-sik, and Admiral Jeong Yeo-chang were outraged when they learned that the Union Jack was flying over a portion of Korean territory, no matter how small or remote. They protested time and again. The paternalistic Brits had the nerve to say they were doing it for the Koreans' sake, to protect them from the Russians.
While the term “unequal treaty” did not come into use until the early 1920s, it surely applies to the United Kingdom-Korea Treaty of 1883. It followed the template created by the Japanese (1876), Americans (1882), Chinese (1882) and Germans (1883), and it was more of the same from the French (1886), Austrians (1892), Belgians (1901) and Danes (1902). When those British sailors dropped anchor in Geomundo Bay, they came in the guise of friends and partners.
The Englishmen, practiced in the arts of diplomacy (where saying one thing and meaning another was the norm ― unless, of course, it suited their purposes to do otherwise), held all the cards with the Koreans.
Diplomats William George Aston, William Richard Carles and Francis Richard Plunkett insisted that the seamen representing Her Majesty were there temporarily, and eventually it proved to be just that. But some of their actions, at least, gave the impression of taking permanent control. They had, after all, unilaterally imposed the Port Hamilton name.
Among their bolder proposals was to offer a large loan to the Korean government, and when it fell behind on making payments, as it surely would, a plausible reason would be at hand for the U.K. to call Geomundo its own. Had that happened, the Korean islanders would have been deported.
Relations between them and the British navy were not all bad; the economy got a boost and several hundred men found employment doing unskilled labor.
A policy of non-fraternization was strictly enforced, which means the women were treated with respect. No mixed-race babies were left behind. Make no mistake, however ― the British were in control. On three occasions, Korean thieves were flogged.
The Russian threat subsided, and the British came to realize that they had overrated Geomundo's strategic importance in terms of maritime power and trade. They departed with little fanfare on Feb. 27, 1887, and Geomundo fell back into obscurity.
Determined to see this for myself, last summer I rode the KTX down to Yeosu, hopped on a ferry to Geomundo and got a room in a “minbak.” Just down the street was a sign pointing to the cemetery where some of those English mariners are still buried. Ten men died on the islands during that time, 8,800 kilometers from their homes.
Two were killed by a bomb explosion, one drowned, and the others presumably died of natural causes. Here are four names: Charles Dale, William J. Murray, Thomas Oliver and Alex Wood. It's hard to be mad at these long-deceased guys.
Queen Victoria, the prime minister and men in the House of Lords called the shots. They ― not Dale, Murray, Oliver, Wood, et al. ― decided to come and grab Geomundo. I later learned that the British government never issued an apology or explanation for what it called the Port Hamilton affair.
Richard Pennington (raput76@gmail.com), a native of Texas in the U.S., works as an editor at a law firm in Gangnam. He has written 20 nonfiction books, including “Travels of an American-Korean, 2008-2013.” He is the director of an NGO, the Committee to Bring Jikji Back to Korea.