Korea: history 1637–1953

For Korean history prior to 1637, see Korea: history to 1637.

General characteristics of the late Yi dynasty, 1637–1910 There followed over two centuries when Korea acquired the reputation of being ‘The Hermit Kingdom’ (as it was known to the West in the 19th century). The name was well deserved. Some trading relations with Japan were maintained, but they were extremely restricted on both sides. Otherwise all Korea's foreign relations, such as they were – the return of shipwrecked seamen and a minimal amount of trade – were carried on through the Qing court in China until 1876. Within Korea the economy remained almost stagnant, except that a change in the taxation system following the upheavals of around 1600 did allow some small-scale manufacturing to develop. Politically the effect of a fixed state income and an educated elite seeking posts for ever more descendants led to an intensification of the factional struggles that had grown out of the State Council–Censorate quarrels of the earlier period. A social result was a gradual blurring over the years of class distinctions, with an impoverished aristocracy merging with a small but increasing middle class.

Culture in the late Yi period This is not thought of as a period of high culture. If the history of painting in Korea cannot be traced back far beyond the 17th century, this is probably because so much from earlier times has been lost. Architecture was restricted by laws intended to prevent the growth of a pluralistic, multi-organizational society. Some extremely good poetry in Korean was produced in the 18th century, mainly in the form of lyrics for the songs with which gentlemen entertained themselves in intimate parties. Writing in Chinese showed one new development, an increasing recognition of economic and social reality in the philosophy of government. This produced a new style of prose fiction. Eventually such writings were recognized as being of a new school of Neo-Confucianism, Sirhak, or ‘Practical Learning’. This school of thought owed much to new currents of thought in China, which had been in part stimulated by contact with the West. Several of the 19th-century Sirhak philosophers belonged to families that had become Christian. The earliest records of Christian practices by Koreans in Korea go back to the 1780s, when some Koreans who had been baptised by Jesuits in Beijing returned home. Christianity was proscribed in 1786 as being subversive of Confucianism and was frequently persecuted in the 19th century, with major massacres of Christians in 1801, 1839, 1846, and 1866.

Nationalist creeds and peasant revolts In the 18th century the long reigns of Yongjo (1724–76) and Chongja (1776–1800) secured some respite from factional strife, but during the 19th century, while families such as the Kim of Andong, the Min of Yohung, and the Cho of P'ungyang grew to great wealth and power, the problem of the landless peasant loomed larger. There were frequent revolts, famines, and epidemics. These conditions led to a ready acceptance of the teachings of Ch'oe Che-u (1824–1864), an illegitimate son of a scholar in the southeast, who began preaching Ch'ondogyo, ‘The religion of the Way of Heaven’, in 1859–60. This teaching took elements from Korean superstitions and folk religions, from Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism, and from Christianity. He explained that it was not Sohak, ‘Western Learning’, but Tonghak, ‘Eastern Learning’ (Tong, or ‘East’, in the context of eastern Asia, referred specifically to Korea as opposed to China). Certainly as it developed, with belief in talismans, ritual purity, and magic, Ch'ondogyo, or Tonghak, became a militantly anti-foreign creed, directly primarily against Korean government policies that seemed to compromise Korean nationalism. However, it was also always the creed of local peasant revolt, and it was this that brought about Ch'oe's execution in 1864.

Pressures from outside It was from about this time that the government was faced with demands from the outside world that Korea open its doors. The USA, Britain, and Germany were anxious for trade, and France was also concerned over the fate of French priests who had perished in the massacre of 1839. In the end, however, it was from Japan, which had opened its own doors to the West in 1868, that the strongest pressure came. This led quickly to confrontations first between Japan and China, and then between Japan and Russia, in Korea. Russia had by now expanded to the Pacific coast of Siberia, and was actively interested in gaining access to ice-free ports further south. The Korean court was swayed by various forces. The great families were for conservatism, for maintaining the traditional relationship with China, but the trends of the times were against them. The king Kojong (reigned 1864–1907) ascended the throne as a minor and his father, the Taewongun (Great Prince of the Court) (1820–98), as regent, undertook an energetic programme of reform aimed at restoring the monarchy and eradicating corruption, nepotism, and inefficiency. An alliance of the great families blocked most of his reforms and brought him down in 1873. However he had released some progressive forces, mainly of the Sirhak school, who in the next ten years were able to open relations first with Japan and then with the Western powers.

Japanese intervention A palace coup in 1884 restored the conservatives, led now by the Min family, to which Kojong's queen belonged. Some of the young progressives fled to Japan, like Kim Ok-kyun (1851–1894), or to the USA, like So Chae-p'il (1866–1951), from where they were able to support the progressive forces in Korea. This last successful period of exclusivism ended with the most serious Tonghak revolt, in 1894. Almost all the southern half of the country was lost to the rebels, and the government called for military aid from China. Japan, invoking a treaty of 1884 that precluded the sending of troops into Korea, sent in its own army and utterly defeated China, not only in Korea, but also in Manchuria. In Korea the ‘1894 Reforms’ swept away the civil-service examinations and top knots (in which men traditionally wore their hair), and every aspect, practical and symbolic, of the traditional social and political system. A government was organized along modern lines, and newspapers were given a new freedom. During the 1890s in general there emerged a popular literature in Korean, which had begun to develop from around 1850. Stories were printed or circulated in manuscript copies by lending libraries. Popular anthologies of traditional poetry appeared, and the first modern poetry appeared, inspired by folk songs and influenced by Christian hymns. However, in 1895 the murder of Queen Min at the instigation of the Japanese brought the political process of liberalization to an abrupt halt. In revulsion the court, now with popular support, rejected Japan and progress. The only power it could turn to was Russia. Russia developed its diplomatic and commercial interests in Korea, but it was not in fact in a strong position there, just beyond the extreme edge of its over-stretched empire. Japan picked its quarrel with Russia in 1904, soundly defeated it on land and sea (see Russo-Japanese War), and in 1906 established a residency general in Korea to oversee the Korean government. Kojong was deposed in favour of his mentally retarded son Sunjong in 1907, and in 1910 Sunjong was in turn deposed and a Japanese governor general was appointed to be ruler of Korea as a province of the new-style Japanese Empire.

Japan as the colonial power in Korea The Japanese Government General was not popular in Korea. Probably no government ever had been, and a government by foreigners when nationalism was the spirit of the age, above all a government by the descendants of the medieval pirates and Imjin invaders, could not hope to be. The Japanese never seemed to realize this. During the preceding generation they had learned a great deal from Europe, and their colonial policy in Korea was framed in terms that meant nothing to Koreans, and which were seen by them as sheer hypocrisy. The improvement of communications, industrialization, the creation of a modern educational and public-health system, and the strict enforcement of legal procedures were all seen by Koreans as benefiting Japan, not Korea. The Japanese occupied land to which Koreans had no legal title under Japanese law, controlled prosperous industries that stole the markets for traditional crafts, and generally rode in trains, wrote each other letters, and behaved in a way that few Koreans could comprehend. The Japanese also studied Korea with a methodology that was foreign to Korea, and so portrayed Koreans as historically, even naturally, inferior to Japanese. The Japanese language replaced Korean as the official language, and by 1941 the use of Korean was banned. Nevertheless, although this view of the Government General prevails in Korea, and recent Korean history cannot be understood without it, it does require some qualification. In the first place there was little active resistance to the Japanese. The guerrilla bands, formed from 1906 onwards, have a heroic record, but they were small, operated in remote areas, and were only a minor nuisance to the Japanese, who dismissed them as ‘brigands’.

The March 1st Independence Movement The only occasion when Korean opposition to Japan came anywhere near toppling the Government General was in 1919, when a nationwide campaign of civil protest was organized. Since the opening of the campaign was a presentation to the governor general of a declaration of independence on 1 March, the movement is usually known as the March 1st (in Korean Samil, or ‘3–1’) Independence Movement. The most striking aspect of the campaign is that the Japanese seem to have had no inkling of it until the very day it was launched. The organization was provided mainly by the Ch'ondogyo, which by this time had congregations in every town and village, but the Buddhist hierarchy was also heavily involved. The Protestant Christian laity was also active, though officially the churches remained aloof. They were mainly represented by American missionaries, who were more easily kept under Japanese surveillance. Nevertheless, the teachings of these missionaries, stressing a personal relationship with God and the associated ideas of political liberty, had been very fruitful in Korea. The demonstrations of 1919 were massive, and peaceful in intent, but were met with brutal severity. Over 2 million people took part. There were 7,500 deaths, over 15,000 people were injured, and nearly 47,000 were taken to court. Over 900 buildings were destroyed, most of them private houses and churches. The world appeared to take no notice at all. Japan promised some reforms and talked of doing its duty as a colonial power, and was left in charge. Some cosmetic normalizations were introduced – schoolteachers ceased to wear swords, the number of military police diminished (although the number of police overall increased), and Korean-language newspapers were permitted (although under censorship).

The Korean independence movement from the 1920s It must be recognized that there were always Koreans who looked to Japan as the model or mentor for the modernization of Korea. The progressives of the late 19th century had learned a lot from Japan. In the first years of the 20th century the ‘Advance Together’ party, advocating cooperation with Japan, had been dominant in the Ch'ondogyo, and after 1910 there were Koreans who saw the advantages of the social policies of the Government General. As the years passed, Japanese rule inevitably became accepted. But from 1919 there emerged a loosely knit independence movement. Communism was barely understood, and Korea's few communists were well known to the Japanese secret police and rendered ineffective. The independence movement was dominated almost entirely by members of the old elite group, extremely conservative by nature, but without any conscious political philosophy beyond an unshakeable conviction of Korea's right to independence and a rather woolly notion that independent Korea would be a republic. Personality clashes between these leaders were frequent and bitter, usually resolving into the question of who had misused what money. The first Korean Communist Party in fact tore itself apart with just such quarrels, but otherwise at the centre of almost every storm was Syngman Rhee (Yi Sungman in Korean) (1875–1965), who had been an active progressive in the late 1890s and spent most of the period of the Government General in the USA. The Japanization of Korea was intensified during World War II. Koreans were obliged to take Japanese names, participate in Shinto ceremonies, and join ‘patriotic associations’. Korean youths were conscripted into the Japanese army and over 1 million Koreans were drafted to work in Japan, mostly in the coalmines.

Liberation and partition Liberation came to Korea on 15 August 1945 with the surrender of Japan at the end of World War II, but it was not after all to fulfil the hopes that Koreans had placed in it. The Cairo Declaration of November 1943, that Korea was to have full independence ‘in due course’, actually implied what the US president Franklin D Roosevelt called ‘a period of tutelage’ for small ex-colonial nations. This was later formulated in the United Nations (UN) as a proposal for Korea to come under a UN trusteeship. It was later secretly agreed by the World War II Allies at the Yalta Conference in February 1945 that US and Soviet troops should enter Korea to accept the surrender of the Japanese forces, with US forces occupying Korea to the south of the 38th parallel of latitude, and the Soviets to the north of that. The Soviets may well have seen this as a continuation of the deal done with Japan in a secret clause of the Yamagata–Lobanov Protocol of Moscow of 1896. At any event, the 38th parallel was to become the point at which the Cold War became hot. The forces of the USSR set up a Soviet-style administration in the north, using to head it an ex-guerrilla fighter, Kim Il Sung, who had become a major in the Soviet army. In the south, Syngman Rhee was the most popular leader, and the USA gave their support to his organization. After the failure of all discussions in Korea, in Moscow, and at the UN, two separate states were set up, in the south the Republic of Korea on 15 August 1948, and in the north the Democratic People's Republic of Korea on 9 September.

The beginning of the Korean War In South Korea every left-wing or progressive force was persecuted and decimated. Similarly in North Korea every non-communist group was rendered impotent. The bulk of the US and Soviet forces were withdrawn, and for nearly two years there were skirmishes between North and South Korea, often involving whole divisions of troops along the 38th parallel. The situation in the North is not clearly known, but in the South large numbers of troops were also committed to dealing with rebellious areas. On 25 June 1950 a large-scale North Korean attack on the South was massively successful. In a matter of weeks North Korean troops had occupied all but the extreme southeastern corner of Korea, the ‘Pusan Perimeter’. In the UN, the USSR boycotted the Security Council – there is a theory that North Korea deliberately launched its attack some weeks earlier than Moscow expected to demonstrate that the USSR could not just use it as it wished. The Security Council passed a resolution on 27 June calling on UN members to support South Korea against North Korean aggression. The USA responded swiftly, and in all 16 nations contributed to the UN forces, which were led by the US general Douglas MacArthur. The Pusan Perimeter was held by UN forces against a North Korean attack beginning on 1 September, and on 15 September the brilliantly executed landings at Inch'on took the North Korean army in the rear. The UN forces decided against halting at the 38th parallel, and by late October they had occupied almost the whole of Korea.

Chinese intervention China had already given clear warning that it would retaliate against any foreign troops on its borders, and, although it never officially declared war, on 2 November some hundreds of thousands of ‘Chinese People's Volunteers’ were thrown into an attack on the UN forces. Taken by surprise at the strength of this attack, and ill-equipped for defensive fighting in mountainous terrain in the bitter winter, the UN forces retreated as rapidly as they had previously advanced. In January 1951 the Chinese and North Korean forces again occupied Seoul, and held it for a month. During the spring of 1951 the line was stabilized more or less along the 38th parallel. After strong attacks by both sides had been held, truce talks were opened on 10 July. The haggling continued for over two years, in spite of a daily toll of life and a fantastically expensive mutual bombardment along the front line.

Truce talks and the end of the war Most of the argument in the truce talks seems to have been over matters of ‘face’, though there was always one serious issue: the repatriation of prisoners of war. The UN-South Korean side was astonished at how few prisoners the Chinese-North Korean side claimed to have, and the communist side refused to accept that prisoners held in the South should be given free choice of residence upon release. The UN side reported that more than half the 130,000 prisoners of war in the South were refusing to return to China and North Korea. In South Korea, Syngman Rhee, pressing for rejection of any settlement short of complete North Korean surrender, almost wrecked the talks at the last minute by releasing 27,000 prisoners on his own initiative on 1 June 1953. Gen Dwight Eisenhower's election to the US presidency in November 1952 was, in part, a sign of US dissatisfaction over the US president Harry Truman's handling of the Korean War. In March 1953 the hardline Soviet leader Stalin died. On 27 July a truce agreement was signed between the UN and North Korea, confirming the border at the 38th parallel; South Korea did not participate. The truce agreement is still in force, and the North and South Korean armies are separated by a 4-km/2.5-mi-wide Demilitarized Zone. A conference held in Geneva in April 1964 settled nothing, and it would seem from the record that neither side went there in order to reach any compromise. The Military Armistice Commission meets once or twice each month at Panmunjom to hear allegations of violations of the truce, and a Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission (military experts from the Czech and Slovak Republics, Poland, Sweden, and Switzerland) meets once a week in the same place to report its supervision of the truce.

The aftermath of the Korean War The war ruined Korea, both North and South, and it is estimated that well over 1 million people died in it: 226,000 South Korean troops, 57,000 UN, 294,000 North Korean, and 184,000 Chinese, plus nearly 400,000 civilians. The turmoil of the war left another legacy: millions of families were divided and found themselves with members on either side of the Demilitarized Zone, living under diametrically opposed regimes – this remains a live issue today. The war was interpreted by the Western powers as an overt expression of communist designs for world conquest, and it led to the rearming of Japan and the implementation of NATO in Europe. It was a factor in the USA's support for the Chinese nationalists on Taiwan, and probably later also in its joining in the war against North Vietnam. In Korea the war left seemingly incurable wounds. Each side accuses the other of the first aggression and of unforgivable atrocities during the fighting. Both have found it difficult to retreat from their positions as the crack troops of the Cold War, even following the dissolution of the Soviet bloc and the ending of the Cold War elsewhere in the world. For the history of the two Koreas after 1945, see Korea, North and Korea, South.