The Hermit Kingdom — On the Eve of Opening

On a map, the Korean Peninsula is no more than a small protrusion. Yet the simple fact that this small peninsula is joined by land to a great continental power in the north, and faces an island nation across the sea to the east, has long and heavily bound the fate of the people who live here. A bridge set at the boundary of continent and sea: it is a rich thoroughfare where people and goods pass back and forth, and at the same time, when great powers glare at one another, it is the place trampled first. At the end of the 19th century, this peninsula was called the ‘Hermit Kingdom.’ This series begins with the story of a single kingdom that had turned its back on the world and barred its gates shut.

A Five-Century Kingdom and the Order of Suzerainty

A single dynasty long endured on the Korean Peninsula: the Joseon dynasty, said to have been founded by Yi Seong-gye in 1392. It looked to the Ming, and then to the Qing that succeeded them, as its suzerain, regularly sending envoys and observing the rites of a vassal. This was the East Asian international order known as the tributary, or suzerain–vassal, system.

When we hear of such a system today, we are tempted to apply the words ‘domination and subordination.’ Yet for the people of that age, it was not necessarily a humiliation. A great power’s authority guaranteed one’s domestic legitimacy, and in return one rendered the proper rites. The peninsular dynasty found its place within this order, preserving the independence of its internal affairs while living in deep connection with continental civilization. Confucian learning, the culture of Chinese characters, the institutions of ritual propriety — these were polished in their own way on the peninsula and never remained mere copies of the continent.

This stability, however, rested on one premise: that the great power to the north was strong and its order unshaken. Beneath the roof of the suzerain order, the peninsula could sleep quietly, but should that roof tilt, it had prepared almost no means to stand on its own feet. In the 19th century, that roof — the Qing itself — began to creak under pressure from the West. The first tremor to break the peninsula’s long slumber came from far across the sea.

The Hermit Kingdom — Why It Barred Its Gates

By the mid-19th century, the world was already in great motion. Western powers, armed with steamships and cannon, pressed trade and the opening of ports upon lands across Asia. Neighboring Qing was defeated in the Opium War, and Japan too turned toward opening in the wake of the arrival of the ‘black ships.’ The waves had surged to the very edge of the peninsula.

Amid all this, Korea barred its gates with unusual firmness. His father, the Heungseon Daewongun, who is said to have held real power in place of the child Gojong, strongly asserted an anti-Western posture of repelling the West. Foreign ships that drew near were driven off with gunfire, and Christianity was sternly suppressed. Because of this refusal of contact with the outside world, Westerners called this country the ‘Hermit Kingdom’ — a nation that turned its back on the world and hid itself alone in stillness.

Why close so tightly? Behind it lay circumstances that cannot be dismissed as mere obstinacy. The people of the peninsula had seen how the great powers from across the sea had shaken the Qing. Open the gate, and what would come through was not the profit of trade alone — missionaries, warships, and ambitions for territory would arrive together. To close was also a desperate defense, meant to protect their own order and way of life. That said, whether the peninsula, behind its barred gate, had prepared adequately for the age to come is another matter, and one cannot say that it had.

The Opening Gate — The Ganghwa Island Incident and a Neighbor’s Shadow

The first to pry open the peninsula’s gate were not the Western powers, but the neighboring country of Japan.

Having passed through the Meiji Restoration, Japan sent a state letter to Korea, seeking to establish diplomatic relations as a modern nation. But the Joseon government, which stood under the suzerain system, is said to have refused to receive that letter, citing among other reasons that it contained characters held to be reserved for the continental emperor alone. Between the two countries, mutual misalignment and tension accumulated.

Then, in 1875, an incident occurred. A Japanese warship surveying the waters off Korea’s western coast exchanged fire with a Korean fort near Ganghwa Island at the mouth of the Han River — the so-called Ganghwa Island incident. Taking this clash as its occasion, Japan the following year, 1876, pressed Korea to open, and the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1876 was concluded. Japan, once pressed to open by the Western black ships, now played the very same role toward a neighbor.

This treaty contained a clause that cannot be overlooked: one positioning Korea as a ‘self-governing state,’ that is, an independent nation. At first glance these words seem to recognize Korean sovereignty, yet they are held to have carried the implication of severing Korea from the Qing suzerainty. To pry the peninsula out from under the roof of the northern great power and recast its sphere of influence — already at the entrance to opening, the maneuvering of great powers cast its shadow.

In the peninsula after opening, fierce conflict arose over how to lead the country. There were those who valued the established relationship with the Qing, and those who, learning from Japan, sought to hasten modernization. In 1882 the Imo Incident, an uprising of soldiers, broke out in Hanseong, and the Qing is said to have sent troops to suppress it. Further, in 1884, a faction bent on hastening modernization attempted a coup, but it is said to have collapsed within a short time owing to the intervention of Qing forces. The internal affairs of the peninsula were no longer the peninsula’s alone. Qing and Japan had begun to reach into the very center of the peninsula, each through forces aligned with itself.

And so the long-sleeping Hermit Kingdom opened its gates to the world in a manner that could not be called fully its own will. But what spread beyond that gate was not a free sea-lane; it was a turbulent sea where great powers glared at one another. Over the peninsula, the shadows of Qing and Japan quietly overlapped, and were about to collide head-on. The next to strike sparks on this land would be an uprising of oppressed peasants, and the armies of two empires that would move under its pretext. The peninsula was about to become their hunting ground.