(452) Early Chinese

A Chinese-style gate stands at the mouth of Chinatown in the western port city of Incheon, where Chinese began to settle in the 1880s. / Korea Times

By Andrei Lankov

No visitor to Seoul in the 1890s would fail to notice the presence of the Chinese traders, easily distinguished by their Qing-style dress and peculiar haircut with the long queue. Their shops were everywhere, and if Koreans wanted to purchase some of the novel "modern" goods, the chances were that they would go to a Chinese or Japanese shop.

The first Chinese merchants came to Korea in 1882, following the Chinese troops who were dispatched to put down a mutiny in Seoul. The Chinese came to stay, so between 1882 and 1894, to a large extent, Korea was under Chinese political control. The Chinese merchants used this situation to their advantage and secured numerous privileges, which allowed them to become a dominant force in local commerce.

The irritated Korean merchants and their employees staged a number of strikes, demanding the removal of the Chinese shops and firms from downtown Seoul to Yongsan, then still a suburb, but all their efforts were in vain. With Chinese troops stationed in the country and Yuan Shikai, the Chinese representative, actively lobbying for the Chinese business interests, it was politically impossible to challenge their domination.

In 1894 a war erupted between China and Japan, with dominance in Korea being the major issue of the conflict. China lost the war, and had to withdraw from the country. Most of the rich and well-connected businessmen followed the retreating Chinese armies, and for a while it seemed that the Chinese community in Korea would have no future.

The Chinese businessmen who stayed in Korea had a rather rough ride, since their Korean competitors wanted revenge for the decade of humiliation and powerlessness. The new anti-Chinese policies were also encouraged by the Japanese who wanted to get rid of competition and intended to keep the entire Korean market for themselves. The Korean progressives also were very suspicious of the Chinese, since an unreformed China stood for all things old, conservative, and bad. As usual in ethnic conflicts, it was the poor who had to suffer for the real or alleged misdeeds of the rich.

The Korean government even issued a "Law for Protecting Chinese merchants,'' but its title was somewhat misleading since the law was of a discriminatory nature. According to these new regulations, the newly arrived Chinese merchants had a right to reside in Seoul, Wonsan, Busan, and Incheon only.

Those who had arrived earlier, and already settled in other parts of the country, had to apply for permission. Unlike merchants from other countries, when problems that begged a legal solution arose the Chinese had to be tried by the Korean court (in those days in East Asia foreigners usually enjoyed the rights pertaining to extraterritoriality and could be tried only by a consular court _ that is, by the officials from their own country).

Only in 1899 did a new treaty between Korea and China put an end to many of the discriminatory practices. Incidentally, this treaty allowed the Chinese to be tried by Chinese consular officials.

Nowadays it would seem to be a privilege, but back in the 1890s it was quite the norm throughout East Asia. Still, in the new situation the consuls and other officials of an increasingly powerless Qing Empire could not really protect their compatriots, so the Chinese had to fend for themselves.

Still, many people managed to succeed even in such environment. The formidable Tan Kol-saeng (Tan Jiecheng), who by the early 1920s would become the richest man in Seoul, laid foundation for his prosperity in those turbulent days.

And new Chinese were coming to Korea. These new arrivals were very different from their predecessors. They were not well-connected businessmen, but rather small-scale merchants and vendors who escaped the growing social disruption back in China and hoped to earn some money through business adventures.

By 1906, there were 3,661 Chinese settlers in Korea. Only a fraction of them _ merely 127 or 3.5 percent of the total _ were women. This gender imbalance says much about the nature of the early Chinese migration: the settlers were males who came for what they expected to be a short stay, to make some money and then either go back to China or bring their families to Korea.

Most of the people came from Shandong Province which lies on the opposite coast of the Yellow Sea. Naturally enough, Incheon was their major port of entry, and the Incheon Chinatown, in existence since the 1880s, was growing fast.

The new arrivals were not only merchants. In the late 1880s the first Chinese vegetable farms appeared in Korea. They proved to be very efficient, and soon many Chinese farmers began to come to Korea to work as hired hands on such farms.

There were also the first Chinese cooks arriving at this time, even though at that stage, until approximately 1915, there were very few Chinese restaurants in the country. In most cases the cooks operated small food stalls which sold snacks to those Chinese who had neither the time nor the inclination to cook for themselves.

However, the mass migration of the Chinese began later, after the Japanese takeover. It was under colonial rule that the number of ethnic Chinese in Korea reached its peak, but the varying fates of sectors of the Chinese community in the colonial era will be a topic of another story.

Prof. Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and now teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul.