DragonsOfTheYellowSea:HistoricalBackground

Timeline of events

1590s - Japanese troops invade. Turtle boats, Admiral Yi. Cities burn. Ceramic artisans and others enslaved and taken to Japan (200,000+ skilled workers).

1620s-1640s Manchu invasion (mostly in the north) Manchu influence at court.

1628 Dutch shipwreck gives Koreans some gun-making slaves. Hendrik Hamel escapes and writes a book.

1674-1720 King Sukchong bunch of reforms, builds up military, irrigation building, coining.

1700s in general: Shirhak (Practical Learning) movement gains more power. New ideas, break with tradition encouraged, economic and social reforms/justice, study of science, geography, culture, economics, education, agriculture.

1712 New treaty between Korea and China on northern border

1724 - 1776 King Yongjo, many tax reforms, secret inspectors instituted, financial reform, organized merchant groups. Starved his misbehaving son to death, to uphold principle

1776-1806 King Chongjo relief for poor, reform continues, scholarship, freeing of most govt. slaves, rise of artisan class

1806 child king age 11, unrest in Korea, court intrigue, families of queens, Kim and Cho clans

Slavery is slowly disappearing in Korea. All government slaves freed. (Around 1806).

Droughts. Corruption. People migrating to mainland. Aristocracy (yong-ban) is slowly losing its grip, there is a rising merchant class.

1834 young king age 8 More "power politics" and court intrigue

"The disarray of the three administrations": mismanagement by local tax collectors (land tax, military service tax) buying their positions, adding surcharges and fees; and the mismanagement of state granaries (illegal usury, fees for needy who borrowed from granary). Government going bankrupt. Popular discontent, "fire brigands" and "water bandits".

Slavery continues to disappear, middle class rising.

China's influence waning, Japanese influence rising. There are starting to be Japanese advisors in Korean military.

1846 the French frigates Gloire and Victorieuse sent to investigate massacre of missionaries. The ships grounded and the crews were transported home by English ships.

1850 - The Taiping Rebellion in China, lasts around 15 years. Ideals of equality. dragons too! 1850- There are around 15,000 Korean Catholics.

1853- U.S. gunboat South America stops in Pusan. Stays 10 days without inicident.

1855 and also in 1865, a number of shipwrecked American sailors were picked up on the Korean shores.

1862 - Peasant rebellion in Korea. Donghak rebellion Tonghak, religious movement, equality "In the spring of 1862, a disgruntled ex-officia brought about an uprising in Chinju, Kyongsang Province, which was followed by ones of Cheju Island and Iksan, Cholla Province, plunging the country into chaos" (Nahm 138).

Paek nak-sin oppressive military commander. (Yi nong-nyun), intellectual who led the rebellion. Investigator sent to the scene.

1864 - King Gojong, an 11-year-old prince, is adopted by the elderly Queen Cho (mother of the previous king) and made king. His father as regent becomes a powerful force for reform.

1860s-1870s American and French attacks on Korea were driven off. 1866 another French expedition was defeated at the mouth of the Han River 1866 burning of the General Sherman, an armed American merchantman. US considers war. 1871 American expedition led by Admiral Rodgers defeated

King Gojong

In 1864, Gojong Gwangmuje would ascend the Korean throne at the age of 12 -- the last Korean king and the first emperor of Joseon. His father, known as the Daewon-gun ("Prince of the Great Court"), attempted to enact a series of reforms. He was largely successful, but faced considerable resistance from all sides -- including in the following years Gojong's wife Queen Min who eventually ousted him from power. The story of Gojong's ascension is described in Bruce Cummins Korea's Place in the Sun as follows:

Foreigners found the dynasty near its lowest point in four centuries. Through much of the nineteenth century Korea had no strong ruler, only a succession of child kings and weaklings. Queen dowagers and their clans (especially the Andong Kims) controlled the government and dominated the court behind the scenes. Sunjo was but ten years old when he became king in 1800; Heonjong, who came to the throne in 1834, at the age of eight, died suddenly fifteen years later, and Dowager Queen Kim, fifty-nine years old, picked the third son of Prince Chongye to be the king. He was nineteen years old and had no accomplishments of note; royal messengers dragged him back to Seoul from where they found him, behind a cow and a plow on Kanghwa Island, and made him the twenty-fifth Joseon dynasty king, Cheoljong. As (James Scarth) Gale commented, he was someone with whom Dowager Queen Kim "might play as a college girl does with her tennis ball." Thus were born "contests between queens, clan fights, palace intrigues, all of which lent themselves to Korea's speedy downfall." (From "History of the Korean People.", 1972)

Cheoljong died at the age of thirty-two in January 1864, a victim of the excesses and extravagances of the court. Three dowagers now dueled in the palace: Queen Cho, mother of King Heonjong; Queen Hong, Heonjong's wife; and Queen Kim, wife of the just-deceased king. The ball they batted around now was the absence of a direct heir to the royal line; the new king would have to be an adoptee from one of the consort clans. Queen Kim of the Andong coterie summoned a retired minister nearing eighty and told him to go find the eleven-year-old son of Prince Hungson, who turned out to be flying a kite in a nearby garden. Runners perched him on a royal sedan chair and carried him off to the palace. Before anyone else (including Queen Kim) could act, Dowager Cho rushed forward exclaiming "My son!" and grabbed his hand hand and took him behind the queenly curtain. Presently she announced through the veil, "I have made the new king the son of Ikchong... I have hung up the screen and now take command of the government." The assembled ministers had no choice but to bow and accept the nation's fate. Why?

If we think about this thing called "the state," it can be a set of representative institutions, a bureaucracy, or the exercise of sovereign power by a dowager. As Marx once wrote of the German monarchy, state sovereignty can be "sprinkled" by the king, as if he were wielding a salt shaker. Dowager Cho cast her salt and thus was produced King Gojong, adopted son of Ikchong (who had died twenty-two years before Gojong's birth), last monarch of Korea, and a fateful historical symbol.