INTERNAL POLITICS: CHINESE AND JAPANESE.
The preponderating influence of China was the mainspring in the
intricate machinery of old Corean politics, though within the two
clearly defined parties in Seoul there are also factional and family
differences. “From 1834 to 1864 the royal clan was shorn of much of its
power, all offices were in the hands of the Kim clan, whose head, Kim
Pyong-gi, was virtually ruler of the land for the years ending that
epoch.” The Kims hoped to continue the lease of their power, but the
Tai-wen Kun humbled this clan and exalted his own, meanwhile doing much
for the common people and compelling the yangban to bear a share of the
burdens of government in paying a house tax. In his whole course toward
these predatory gentry, he was “a blundering anticipator” of the great
reforms of 1894. He began the suppression of the Tong-haks. He was a
great builder of public edifices, not only in Seoul, but in the
provinces. He protected the country against the foreigner. He meant
well in his ignorance, but he knew nothing of the world at large. His
first lease of power came to an end in 1873.
The first Corean noblemen, Kim and Pom, left their homes in 1875 to
travel in lands beyond China. They went to Japan, and coming back,
boldly told the King what they had seen and advocated the adoption of
Western civilization. They tried to win over the powerful Min clan and
the Queen to a liberal policy, but this to the Regent, Tai-wen Kun,
meant nothing else than Christianity and radical reform, which involved
popular education. That is exactly the sort of reform that every
Confucian mandarin in any country of Asia hates most heartily, because
he sees in the general enlightenment of the people the end of the power
of the literati. The bold and crafty statesman, who, as Prince Parent,
held his son the King as his puppet and had already shed the blood of
thousands of native Christians, nearly succeeded in putting the two
young champions of Western civilization to death. When the American
treaty negotiations were impending, the Min clansmen held aloof until
China, as represented by Li Hung Chang, gave the nod. Then they showed
so much energy in the matter as to seem to foreigners the party of
progress. This roused the wrath of the Regent, who determined to crush
the Min clan and to nullify the treaty. We have seen how, in July,
1882, by a masterly appeal to local bigotry and superstition, he
directed the soldiers’ riot into a revolt against the pro-Chinese clan.
After destroying, as he imagined, their leading men and the Queen, he
seized the government himself, enjoying for a few days full lease of
power.
When the news of the usurpation reached China and Japan, a fleet with
soldiers was despatched from each country. The Chinese force landed
first, marched to Seoul, built forts to command the river against the
Japanese, and established their camp inside the walls. By this move
China held a new lien on her “vassal state.” The Chinese general made
his formal call on the Tai-wen Kun, and when this lord of the land
returned the courtesy, he was seized and deported to China. Meanwhile
the Queen, for whom a palace maid had suffered vicarious death,
together with some of her chief helpers and advisers, re-entered the
palace October 9, 1882. The star of the Min clan was again in the
ascendant.
Thus the results of the Regent’s smart trickery were not pleasant for
the Coreans, for now they had both the Chinese and the Japanese
soldiers encamped in the capital and on the ground where nearly three
hundred years before they had met in battle. By good discipline on both
sides, collision between the soldiers was avoided, but the Government
at once made provision to replace the foreign soldiery by native
troops. Four battalions of Corean infantry were organized and put under
Chinese drill masters, introduced by the Min leaders. Fourteen young
men, mostly members of Progressive families, were sent to Tokio to
study in the military school.
The treaty negotiated by Commodore Shufeldt was promptly ratified by
the United States Senate, and on February 26th President Chester A.
Arthur sent in the name of General Lucius H. Foote as Minister to
Corea. Reaching Chemulpo May 13th in the U.S.Ss. Monocacy, the formal
ratifications of the treaty were exchanged in the capital May 19th. The
same cannon, and served by some of the same sailors that in 1871 had
shelled the Han forts, [54] peacefully saluted the new national flag,
emblazoned with the proofs of Corea’s intellectual servitude to Chinese
philosophy and fantastic traditions. Keeping clear of the native
factions, Mr. Foote dealt as directly as possible with the sovereign.
He made an earnest plea for the toleration of religion, a promise to
proclaim which was secured from the King.
The Corean Government responded to the American courtesy by despatching
a special mission, consisting of eleven persons headed by Min Yong Ik,
which arrived in San Francisco September 2d. President Arthur being
then in New York, these quaintly apparelled Oriental strangers were
given audience in the parlor of the Fifth Avenue Hotel. After three
months’ stay in the eastern cities, one part of the embassy, headed by
Han Yong Sik, returned home by way of San Francisco. A few days later,
on the U.S.Ss. Trenton (afterward lost at Samoa) with Ensign G. C.
Foulke (afterward of the Doshisha University, Kioto) and Lieutenant J.
G. Bernadou, U.S.N. (afterward distinguished in the Spanish-American
War of 1898, on the U.S.Ss. Winslow), as naval attachés to the American
legation in Seoul, Min Yong Ik and two other Coreans returned home by
way of Europe and the Suez Canal.
On November 27th, at the Victoria Hotel in the city of New York, I had
the pleasure of spending an agreeable evening with the three Corean
gentlemen, Min Yong Ik, So Kuang Pom, and Pien Su, the two latter being
able to talk Japanese. [55] Though many of my questions were answered
and a number of subjects discussed, nothing could be learned of Corean
Christianity, or of the relics or reminders of Hendrik Hamel and his
Dutchmen. [56] Before leaving, Min Yong Ik, like a true Corean
gentleman, brought out a large package of choicest ginseng roots,
without which no well-to-do native of the Land of Morning Calm would
think of travelling abroad. He presented me with several choice
specimens of the man-shaped drug, each wrapped up in its own “arms” and
“legs.”
On the same evening in Seoul, November 27th, a banquet was spread in
the English-language-school building to celebrate the signing on the
day before of two treaties, one with Great Britain and the other with
the German Empire, the negotiator of the English treaty being Sir Harry
Parkes. [57] The music was furnished by the band of the German
man-of-war Leipsic. Seoul now began to be the residence of foreigners
from Christendom, nine of whom were already in the city.
New Year’s Day, January 20, 1884, dawned brightly. The little children
who during the summer are “dressed in a hair ribbon,” made the streets
brilliant with their bright clothes of many colors, and the sky was gay
with kites. In the royal palace audience was given to the envoys of
China, Japan, and the United States. On February 28th the electric
submarine cable between Nagasaki and Fusan was completed and messages
from the once hermit nation were sent into the outside world. Han Yong
Sik was appointed postmaster with power to organize a national postal
system, stamps for which were engraved in Tokio. From this Japanese
base of supplies many novelties from the Western world poured in, and
the body politic, long insulated from other nations, thrilled with new
currents of life. Treaties were made with Russia and Italy, June 25th
and 26th. Later on, telegraph lines connecting Seoul with Peking and
with Fusan were completed. The year following the arrival home of the
first Coreans who had gone round the world was a year of progress, such
as Corea had never known before or has known since.
Through the advice of Ensign Foulke, several reformatory measures,
political and industrial, were promulgated. The most ardent member of
the reform party, Pak Yong Hio, being made mayor of Seoul, immediately
set to work at sanitary and municipal improvement. Some progress was
made in dress improvement. A model farm, for which California live
stock had been ordered, was sown by American seeds liberally given in
Washington. Edison electric lights, American rifles and Gatling guns, a
powder mill, a mint, a printing office for the dissemination of useful
literature for the people, together with Japanese artisans to establish
or improve properties, paper factories, and other industries, not
excepting the fisheries and whale hunting, gave indications of the new
path of national progress upon which Corea had entered. Altogether the
early days of 1884 were as a morning of bright promise, for public
opinion, so far as it existed, that is, among the nobles and gentry,
seemed to be entirely in favor of progress. The most hopeful felt that
the Corean Government, having begun lo relay the foundations of the
kingdom, would persevere and possibly even excel Japan.
On the other hand, with the tide of Confucian bigotry rising and the
Conservatives encouraged by Chinese reactionaries on the soil, how
could there be any real advance? Yuan, the Chinese commissioner, living
at the barracks in front of the palace, was ceaselessly active in the
interests of his own Government, which meant active support of the
Conservative party and opposition to reform. Over against enlightened
liberalism, several incidents stood out in dark contrast, showing the
inherent barbarism, the low state of Corean humanity, and the slight
value set on human life. When the Chinese soldiery arrived, they seized
ten of the rioters of 1882, court-martialled them, tied their limbs to
bullocks, and tore them to pieces. Even after these men in office had
returned from civilization they had eight more men, suspected of
complicity with the Regent, executed by poison. Furthermore, the Kwang
Wang temple was built, devoted to the interests of three thousand or
more sorcerers and exorcists in Seoul, who enjoyed the direct patronage
of the Queen, and sucked the vitals of the nation, making respectable
government impossible.
The innovations effected by the Progressives, who thought that they had
the King and Queen in full sympathy with them, led them to hope that
they would be able soon to reorganize the Government, to differentiate
the Court from the Administration, and to make Corea a modern state.
But according to the measure of their success, so also was the
suspicion and hostility of the Conservatives. Min Yong Ik while abroad
might be a Liberal, an individual with personal convictions and
opinions, but once back in the bosom of his family and under pressure
of his clan, he lost interest in reform. The Progressive leaders began
to look upon him as a traitor to their cause. He took his stand with
the Conservatives and it was soon evident that the Queen was
withdrawing her sympathy and support from the Liberals, whose hopes
seemed about to be dashed to the ground. These men therefore turned
more and more to the Japanese and to their methods and spirit. They saw
the revenues for the promised industries and enterprise diverted to
warlike enterprises. It looked as if Corea, as tributary vassal, was to
help China against France in the Tonkin complication. Added to the
fears of the Liberals was the local irritation caused by the insolent
behavior of the ill-disciplined native troops who had been recruited
almost wholly from the peddlers and hucksters of the country fairs. The
peddler’s guilds in Corea hold a truly feudal relation to the
Government, often preparing the roads and escorting officials on their
journeys, acting as detectives, and forming militia according to the
occasion. Some astonishing proofs of their power and discipline,
especially in mountain regions, were given by Min Yong Ik to Lieutenant
Foulke. Instead of their being independent, as they had hoped for under
the American treaty, it seemed to the progressive men that the Chinese
were more than ever ruling their country, and that the Mins were their
tools.
It was about October 25th that the Liberals, feeling that their heads
were likely to remain on their shoulders only so long as it pleased
their enemies to bring no charge against them, declared to their
American friend that “for the sake of Corea, about ten of the prominent
Conservatives would have to be killed.” They proposed to play the same
old Asiatic game of first seizing the person of the sovereign and then
in his name proclaiming their own measures and reforms. The
preliminaries would be a fire and a riot. Then, in the confusion, the
man with a programme, knowing just what to do, would direct affairs.
They believed that the Powers would condone and approve their action,
make new and more favorable treaties, and loan money for national
improvement. Though the Conservatives had at their call a rabble of
rapacious militia eager to try their new tools of war upon their
hereditary enemies, the Japanese, the Liberals knew full well the
sterling qualities of the little body of Japanese infantry then in the
capital, most of whom were from northern Japan and many of them deer
hunters and dead shots with the rifle. There were fifteen hundred
Chinese soldiers still in camp, under Yuan Shi Kai, then the lieutenant
and later the successor of Li Hung Chang, but the Progressive plotters
in their craft expected to secure the employment of the two hundred or
more Japanese soldiers for their own purposes. The moment for action
seemed to be propitious for early December. A Japanese man-of-war was
expected to arrive in Chemulpo on the 5th or 6th of that month. China,
pressed by France, had withdrawn half her troops. Japan with a view to
strengthening her influence in Corea had, a few days before, remitted
$400,000 of the indemnity exacted for the riot of 1882. The golden
moment to strike off forever the chains of political slavery to China
was approaching. The date was set for the 7th of December.
When, however, news arrived that the Japanese gunboat had broken down
and was delayed and it was known that the Conservatives had got some
intimation of what was coming, it was decided to start the fire, the
riot, the coup d’état a few days earlier. On the night of the 4th of
December, Han Yong Sik, the Postmaster-General, gave a dinner at the
new post-office, situated in the very heart of the city. The guests
were three Chinese, Yuan, Chin, and Wang, two Americans, General Foote
and his secretary, Mr. Scudder, the British Consul-General, W. G.
Aston, the German Foreign Adviser, Von Möllendorf, and a dozen or more
Corean high officers, both Conservatives and Progressives, Han Yong
Sik, Kim Ok Kiun, Min Yong Ik, Pak Yong Hio, and So Kwang Pom. Others
also were present. The Japanese minister was absent on the plea of
ill-health.
It was noticed that Kim Ok Kiun rose and left the table several times,
going out into the courtyard, but nothing was thought of this action.
The guests sat down at six. At seven a fire broke out, a house just in
front of the post-office being in flames. Min Yong Ik, who had charge
of the city fire-brigade, rose from the table, and calling on his
servants to follow him, passed out. As he did so, a man dressed in
Japanese clothes leaped out of the shadow of the gateway and struck at
him fiercely with a sword. Min Yong Ik fell heavily, but though wounded
in head and body he recovered through the skilful surgery of Dr. Horace
N. Allen. The assassin escaped, and the Corean guests, instead of
leaving by the door, got away over the back wall. Hastening immediately
to the old palace, the leaders of the conspiracy reached the royal
presence, announced that the Chinese were coming to seize the King’s
person and that he must hasten to a place of safety. Reaching the small
gate leading into the Kiong-u Palace, Kim Ok Kiun requested the King to
send to the Japanese minister for a body-guard, but his Majesty
refused. Thereupon So Kwang Pom drew out a piece of foreign note-paper
and a pencil and wrote in Chinese the words “Let the Japanese minister
come and give me his help.” [58] This was despatched by a servant.
When the little company reached the Kiong-u Palace, the King was
saluted by the Japanese minister and his interpreter, the twelve
students who had been in Japan, and two hundred soldiers under Captain
Murakami drawn up in line, who by some magic were all waiting there.
Here then was the new Government, king, army, and counsellors. Word was
sent to three of the Corean Liberals to come and receive office under
the reconstructed authority. With amazing promptness they were present
within half an hour. The programme had thus far been carried out with
the precision of actors on a well-regulated theatrical stage. The
“summoning tablet” was sent early in the morning by royal messenger to
six of the Conservative leaders. Going to the palace in the expectation
of losing their lives, they first sent word to the Chinese Yuan,
warning him of the state of affairs and asking his help. As soon as
they had passed inside the palace gates their heads were chopped off.
The royal eunuch was put to death in spite of the entreaties and
remonstrances of the King himself. While the Japanese surrounded the
gates of the palace, Kim Ok Kiun gave passes to those who were to be
allowed to go in and out. In the reconstructed Government Yo Cha Wun
and Han Yong Sik were prime ministers, Pak Yong Hio was made
General-in-Chief, So Kwang Pom Minister of Foreign Affairs, Kim Ok Kiun
Minister of Finance, and Su Ja Pil Lieutenant-General. The young men
who had studied in Tokio were also given official positions. All these
proceedings simply illustrate the Corean method of the Opposition’s
moving a vote of censure of the Government.
The Chinese “resident” Yuan took no immediate action, but the next
morning, December 5th, great surging crowds of Coreans begged that he
would interfere, because they said the Japanese were holding the King
as a prisoner in his palace. Yuan sent a messenger to the Japanese
minister, inquiring why he had surrounded the King with soldiers and
killed the ministers, demanding that he immediately evacuate the
palace. After three hours had passed, and no answer coming, Yuan moved
with his Chinese troops and the Corean military, making a force of four
or five thousand men, toward the old palace. He found the entrance
strongly guarded with the Japanese. The battle which ensued lasted from
about 3 to 4 P.M., several score of the combatants being killed. As
darkness drew near, the Japanese made their way to the northeastern
part of the palace grounds, whence the King escaped from them with a
few of the Progressive leaders and the party of students. The Corean
soldiers carried the King to the north temple, where he was saved, but
Han Yong Sik and seven of the students were hacked to pieces by the
mob. About 8 P.M. Captain Murakami led off his soldiers and making a
masterly retreat reached the Japanese legation after forty-eight hours
of absence. Pak Yong Hio, Kim Ok Kiun, So Kwang Pom, Su Ja Pil, and a
half dozen or so of the military students accompanied the Japanese.
All day long on December 6th, with the cry of “Death to the Japanese,”
the Corean militia and the ruffians were let loose on a wild revelry of
outrage, butchery, and incendiarism. The nine white foreigners in
Seoul, of whom three were ladies, together with twenty-two Japanese who
had escaped bullets, stones, and knives, found refuge in the American
legation, which was put in a state of defence by Lieutenant Bernadou.
The twenty soldiers left behind in the Japanese legation, aided by a
hundred or more of their fellow refugee countrymen, defended the walled
enclosure from the mob. On the afternoon of the 7th, provisions being
exhausted, the Japanese with admirable coolness, discipline, and
success began the march to Chemulpo. The women, children, and refugees
were put inside of a hollow square formed by the soldiers, the legation
buildings were fired, and despite hostile soldiers, Chinese and Corean
with rifles and cannon, and armed men firing from roof and wall, they
unbarred the city gates and with their wounded crossed the river.
Reaching Chemulpo on the 8th, they were fed by the sailors on the
Japanese man-of-war, which had happily arrived. A Japanese steamer
carried the news to Nagasaki.
The short-lived Liberal Government came to an end after forty-eight
hours’ existence. The conspirators fled to Japan, whence most of them
reached America. A month later Count Inouye, with a guard of six
hundred troops, took up his quarters outside the west gate in Seoul and
negotiations were opened. On January 9th a convention was signed by
which the Corean Government agreed to pay an indemnity of six hundred
thousand yen, and Herr Von Möllendorf and Su Sang Yu were sent to Japan
to arrange terms for the renewal of friendly relations. The Coreans, to
show their regret, chopped up and distributed around the streets the
flesh and bones of eleven human beings supposed to have been active in
the killing of defenceless Japanese in Seoul. At Tientsin, May 7, 1885,
the Marquis Ito and Li Hung Chang signed a convention, by which it was
agreed that the troops of both countries should be withdrawn and that
neither government should land a military force in Corea without
notifying the other. Early in the spring the Japanese legation was
built at Corean expense in Occidental style, this being the first of
the many foreign edifices which now adorn Seoul. The Chinese and
Japanese troops embarked for their respective countries at Chemulpo on
the 21st of May. On October 5, 1885, the Tai-wen Kun, fresh and rosy
after his sojourn in Tientsin, re-entered Seoul. He was escorted by
Chinese warriors and many thousands of Coreans. Most of his immediate
followers being dead or in exile, his name was not often mentioned
during the decade of years following. He lived in comparative seclusion
until the outbreak of the Chino-Japanese war.
The Progressives of 1884 were in too much of a hurry. They had tried to
hatch the egg of reform by warming it in the fire. The affair of
December, in its origin an anti-Chinese uprising of Radicals, became at
its end an anti-Japanese demonstration in which about three hundred
lives were lost. Yet as if to show that revolutions never go backward,
this bloody business pushed open the gateway through which science and
Christianity entered to hasten the exit of barbarism. Dr. Horace N.
Allen, an American missionary physician, had arrived in Seoul in
September, 1884. When called on the night of December 4th to minister
to the Min Yong Ik, he found the native doctors stopping up the sword
wounds with wax. Dr. Allen, by treating the injured man in scientific
fashion, saved his life. The superiority of Western methods having been
demonstrated, the wounded Chinese soldiers and Coreans, with their
shattered bones and torn flesh, over which they had plastered the
reeking hides cut from living dogs, or had utilized other appliances of
helpless ignorance, came to him in crowds. Unable to attend to all
these sufferers, application was made for a hospital. The Government at
once set apart the dwelling occupied by Han Yong Sik and, naming it the
House of Civilized Virtue, established April 10, 1885, a hospital.
Following this event, American missionaries arrived in increasing
numbers. The Government engaged three American young men, Messrs. D. A.
Bunker, G. W. Gilmore, and H. B. Hurlbert, as teachers, who with
thirty-five sons of noble families as their pupils opened a school
September 23, 1885. Missionaries with unquenchable patience began the
instruction of a people much better acquainted with malevolent demons
than with beneficent beings or with one living and true God, whose only
idea of sin is that it is a civil offence, and whose language has no
word for the love of a superior to an inferior. In apathetic faces they
were to light the fire of a new hope. To become a Christian in Corea
means a complete revolution in a man’s life, especially in that of a
yangban, who has the intellectual power of a man with only the actual
knowledge of a child. Nevertheless, with orphanages, Sunday-schools,
Christian women’s work in the home, organized Christian churches,
hospitals, schools for boys and girls, and a printing establishment,
most of the forms of active Christianity were soon visible in Corea,
the country which, in 1904, with its tens of thousands of believers, is
the most hopeful of missionary fields.
A treaty with France, negotiated in the summer of 1886 and ratified May
30, 1887, enabled the French Roman Catholic missionaries to come forth
into open day. They at once made preparations for the erection of a
cathedral, which, when completed and dedicated, May 29, 1897, was the
tallest and most imposing edifice in the capital. It is 202 feet long
and from 60 to 90 feet wide, and cost $60,000. The French minister
endeavored to secure the same magisterial rights for the bishops and
priests in Corea which have been long enjoyed by prelates of the Roman
form of Christianity in China. Although at first the Government
resisted, yet these claims have been virtually validated, and France
acts in Corea, as elsewhere in Asia, as the protector of Roman
Catholics. Much disquiet and local disorder in various parts of the
country, especially in Quelparte and the provinces of Whang Hai, may be
traced to popular notions and the procedure of the priests based on
this peculiarity of French foreign policy.
Corea soon found that diplomacy could not be one-sided. Having dealings
with foreign nations, it was not sufficient that Western governments
should have their representatives in Seoul, while there were no Corean
legations or consulates abroad. An episode arising from international
jealousies soon caused this desire to take tangible form, despite
active opposition from China. On April 14, 1885, the British
Government, in view of eventualities with Russia, ordered the temporary
occupation of Port Hamilton in the Nan How group of islands, about
thirty-five miles from the northeastern end of Quelparte. Corea at once
protested against this seizure of territory, and, in spite of all
offers of gold for purchase, and all diplomatic pressure, she secured,
after voluminous correspondence and the assurance that Russia would not
occupy any part of Corea, the evacuation of Port Hamilton by the
British. The flag of the double cross was hauled down February 27,
1887. At once the Government at Seoul prepared to send embassies to
Japan, Europe, and the United States to establish permanent legations.
This plan was of course opposed by Yuan Shi Kai, the Chinese
“resident,” as he called himself, in an active, impudent, and
villainous manner, he acting at the beck of his chief, Li Hung Chang.
The right to make a treaty carries with it the right of a legation
abroad, and the American minister, the Honorable Hugh N. Densmore, by
order of the Government of the United States, invited the embassy to
take passage in the U.S.Ss. Omaha, which was done. With his secretary,
Dr. H. N. Allen, Pak Chung Wang, envoy plenipotentiary, arrived in
Washington and had audience of President Cleveland in January, 1888. A
minister of equal rank went also to Europe and another to Japan. The
Chinese “resident” then planned, by transferring his headquarters three
miles from Seoul, to get all other foreigners removed from Seoul in
order to have more power, but the scheme was frustrated in good season.
The road out of fetichism, superstition, and ignorance into light and
civilization was not an easy one and had many a drawback. Until schools
dispel ignorance, and the certainties of science dominate the minds of
the natives terrorized by superstition, Corea, long intoxicated with
sorcery, will suffer from continual attacks of the delirium tremens of
paganism. Even the importation of condensed milk acted on the diseased
imagination of the people to develop the disease. In 1888 what is known
as the “baby war” agitated the people. The report was spread abroad
that Americans and Europeans were stealing children and boiling them in
kettles for food, and that foreigners caught women and cut off their
breasts. The absence of cows led the Coreans to believe that the
condensed milk, so much used among them, came wholly from a human
source. For a time there was imminent danger of an uprising, but a
proclamation from the King couched in strong language calmed the
excitement, which gradually died away. The local revolts against unjust
taxation and dishonest officials occurred with the usual regularity of
such events in Corea.
Provision was made for a stable revenue in a system which was organized
under Herr Von Möllendorf on an independent Corean basis, but after his
dismissal in July, 1885, the customs service was put under the
management of Sir Robert Hart, and an entirely new staff of men was
sent from China. Mr. H. N. Merrill was made chief commissioner and the
three open ports were given in charge of men directly from the Chinese
customs staff, one of the most able and valuable among whom was Dr.
McLeavy Brown. Financially promising as this movement seemed and has
proved, it gave China her great prestige and furnished the strongest
lever for carrying out her ambitious plans in the peninsula, which some
Coreans suspected of going even so far as to dethrone the King and to
set up a new heir—a plot which Min Yong Ik exposed. Yuan, the Chinese
resident, made himself practically a Chinese mayor of the palace. In
ostentatious display of gorgeous costume, palanquin and retinue, as he
vibrated between the royal residence and the Chinese legation, he and
his procession formed one of the notable sights of the Corean capital.
In a word, Li Hung Chang’s policy, working in conjunction with the Mins
at court, headed by the Queen, resulted in a vigorous and undisputed
reassertion of Chinese control, so that in the emergency which was soon
to arise, the Peking Government felt perfectly safe in speaking of
Corea as “our tributary state.” Apparently the influence of Japan had
become a cipher, while that of the United States had dwindled into a
merely academic theory of Corean independence. Potentially Japan was
insulted and defied by her old rival and modern enemy. To make her grip
on Corea sure, China massed her forces on the frontier, bought large
quantities of Nagasaki coal for her steel-clad fleet at Port Arthur,
and with her German-drilled army and great fortresses on the
promontories guarding the sea-gates to the capital, she seemed herself
defiantly ready to maintain her prestige regained in the peninsula
which she called her “tributary state.”
Thus stood, or rather, thus crouched, in the early days of 1894, the
pigmy, Corea, between the continental colossus on the one hand and the
insular athlete on the other. To add to troubles imported from abroad,
the long-standing intestine disturbances again broke out and the Tong
Hak rebellion culminated in civil war, at the local causes of which we
may now glance. This uprising of sectarians became not the cause, but
the occasion of the clash between China and Japan, which ended in the
destruction of China’s claim of suzerainty over Corea, and the
independence of the peninsular state.