Korean origins of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance (1902-1922): Tonghak Peasant Revolt and Sino-Japanese War (1894–5) from an American Perspective (Part 2)

The 1894 Korean Tonghak Peasant Revolt sparking the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–5) was used to showcase the 500-year-old Joseon Kingdom internationally as an underdeveloped and unstable state requiring reforms – a position supported by western powers justifying Japanese actions while simultaneously undermining Korean sovereignty and independence. The remedy espoused by states supportive of military intervention in the region at the expense of rivals such as the Chinese and Russians, was the perpetual occupation of Korea. British support for the Japanese in this regard influenced American perceptions of the isolationist kingdom – with the result being that U.S. officials eventually supported the Anglo-Japanese position and balance-of-power outlook in East Asia. The endgame in that geostrategic relationship was the formal establishment of the twenty-year Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1902, and Japanese hegemony over Korea following the conclusion of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905.(1)

Right: Artist rendition of the Donghak Peasant Revolution. In the Public Domain.

Sino-Japanese War and Reporting on Tonghaks

Much of the reporting on the Tonghak Revolt in the U.S. in 1894 and 1895 came from Anglo-Japanese sources. Prior to that, there were intermittent reports in U.S. newspapers of rebellious activity in Korea in 1893, but nothing comparable to the press coverage that occurred after Chinese and Japanese forces engaged each other in battle on the peninsula in the summer and fall of 1894. Sino-Japanese War historian Sarah C.M. Paine notes that after the hostilities started, “the Western press in Europe and the United States scrambled to learn something about the enigmatic East, but lacked correspondents in Asia. The British papers in China and Japan were the logical starting point.” Paine’s assertion is almost an understatement when it comes to the information average Americans consumed. At the time, only well-endowed newspapers representing large U.S. cities could provide the kind of coverage the British were distributing to the western world. “Only the British press and especially the British press in Asia followed domestic Chinese and Japanese events in any detail.” Coverage of Korea was exceptionally opaque given that there was little interest in understanding that country prior to the war.(2)What this meant was that the British were given almost a free hand to determine the narrative of events concerning the Tonghaks and the larger war. Most of that reporting painted the Tonghaks as a symptom of a larger anarchy existing in Korea and a justification for Japanese military intervention to initiate “reforms.” Throughout the war, Japan reiterated its desire to ensure Korean independence, but events after the war demonstrated that the Tonghak Revolt was used as a pretext to further their more comprehensive long-term goal of total economic, administrative, and diplomatic control over the affairs of that nation.(3)

Events transpired quickly once foreign troops landed on the peninsula. On June 3, 1894, the Korean emperor requested aid from Chinese general Yuan Shikai in putting down the Tonghak Revolt. This prompted Japan to send soldiers under the claim that their rights had been violated per the Convention of Tientsin – which forbade sending troops to Korea without informing the other treaty signatory. After a couple of weeks several thousand Japanese soldiers who had recently landed at Chemulpo (Incheon) seized the Korean royal palace of Gyeongbokgung in Seoul. Homer B. Hulbert, an American missionary in Korea and friend of King Gojong later wrote that “one of Japan’s most pointed arguments” for intervention “was that the practical anarchy existing in Korea was a menace to the interests of Japan.” The Tonghak situation and the call for Qing Chinese troops was the ideal guise from which it could “cloak an ulterior design… in a thorough cleansing of Korean politics.” In other words, like Augustine Heard believed, the Tonghaks were playing into Japanese hands.(4)

Realizing that a wider war was likely to escalate, the Tonghaks agreed to a cease fire two days before Gojong requested Chinese aid, but it was too late. Soon after, the Korean government was replaced with pro-Japanese officials. On July 23, all Sino-Japanese treaties were nullified. Two days later the new pro-Japanese government in Seoul commissioned Major-General Oshima Yoshimasa to send 4,000 soldiers from Seoul to Asan Bay to face Chinese troops garrisoned at Seonghwan Station – east of Asan and Kongju – where they were initially stationed to confront the revolting Tonghak peasants and prevent an offensive on Seoul. In response, Chinese troops stationed at Pyongyang moved south to encircle the Japanese soldiers in Seoul while the Japanese prevented further Chinese reinforcements from arriving at Seongwha Station by sea. On July 25 naval forces sunk four Qing Chinese ships (carrying over a thousand soldiers) attempting to reinforce the garrison at Seongwha Station located within Asan Bay. The Battle of Pungdo, as it was later called by the Japanese, launched the First Sino-Japanese War. On July 29, the Japanese took Asan and broke the Chinese encirclement of the capital. On August 1 Japan and China officially declared war against each other.

Right: The capture of Jeon Bong-jun. He is in the center, seated in a carriage because his legs were broken in the escape attempt. Source: Wikimedia.

The second major battle of the Sino-Japanese War took place on September 15 at Pyongyang. At that northern city, the modernized Japanese army completely routed the entrenched and ill-equipped Chinese forces. Once the Qing Chinese army were pushed back beyond the Yalu River inside China, the remaining Japanese forces in Korea were dispatched to deal with the Tonghaks. For that reason, the Anglo-Japanese dispatches on the Tonghak Revolt sent to American newspapers began almost immediately in late September of 1894.

News of the revolt was filtered through British and Japanese officials. One of the earliest and most widespread reports on the Tonghaks was sent from Yokohama on September 27 to press affiliates in London, where it was then transmitted by cable to countless U.S. newspapers. Most of the U.S. newspapers reprinted the story using “Yokohama” as the original source. “The Tong-Haks constitute one of the most powerful revolutionary elements in Korea. They ascribe the precarious condition of Korean trade and commerce to the presence of foreigners. …and threatened the Japanese as well as people of other nationalities.” The Indianapolis Journal, like a myriad of other publications looking to sell sensational news, embellished the reprinted content with the title, “Japanese in Danger Attacked by Fanatical Tong Haks, a Strong Faction of Coreans.”(5)

In the absence of a trans-Pacific cable, the Pacific route for dispatches during the revolt against the Japanese generally came through British Columbia after a ten-day trip aboard the steamship RMS (Royal Mail Ship) Empress of Japan. Built in 1891, the “Queen of the Pacific” was one of three modern ocean liners subsidized by the British government to carry mail from Hong Kong to Great Britain through Canada. The trans-Pacific journey normally took a little over ten days with a stopover in Japan, but once it arrived on the west coast of Canada, news was immediately transmitted to American newspapers. On October 25, the Los Angeles Times, and other U.S. newspapers, reported that the Tonghaks and Chinese forces were acting in concert somewhere “in the two southern provinces” of the country, and that a French missionary by the name of Pere Joseau and his attendant were “murdered after being captured by Gen. Yeh [Zhichao] while on his way to Seoul.” After being tortured the two were apparently beheaded. As commander of the Qing forces in Korea, General Ye Zhichao tried to defend Pyongyang mid-September and retreated directly to China after being defeated, so it is impossible that the Chinese general could have been assisting Tonghaks in southern Korea in early October. Nevertheless, the conflation of the Chinese and Tonghaks assisted the Japanese intervention: “Gen. Yeh and staff complacently regarded the whole transaction, and when the dreadful business was over went away without a word, leaving the two headless bodies bleeding on the bank of the river. So great is the terror of the Tong-Haks that it was two days before the native Christians ventured to bury the bodies.”(6)

Did the Tonghak rebels target all foreigners or specifically Japanese? A good indication of Tonghak sentiment regarding westerners comes from the American Reverend William M. Junkin’s article “Seven Months Among the Tong Haks,” published in the June 1895 issue of the Korean Repository. Junkin was a presbyterian missionary who later worked in the Gimje area of North Jeolla Province, but his account of the Tonghaks beginning in the fall of 1894 took place in the northern province of Hwanghae – located in present-day southern North Korea. When Junkin returned to the region after a few months’ absence (he had been there before), he was quickly “shunned” by former acquaintances. He wrote, “No person wished to be identified with the foreigner.” The missionary also wrote that a number of friends had warned him because “the Tong Haks were getting very numerous and were already threatening to kill the ‘Westerner’ and all the ‘Western doctrine’ folks (Christians).” Despite the warnings, Junkin wrote that he did not feel “any concern” or a desire “to show that [he] even heard the report.”(7)

Although Junkin was initially fearful for his safety, according to his account what concerned the Tonghaks most were the Japanese. One indication of that concern was the presence of Japanese warships stationed off the west coast – prompting local villagers to be ready “at a moment’s notice either night or day to make for the mountains.” Despite the sense of emergency following the formal outbreak of war, the Tonghaks were still willing to kill more than a dozen Japanese merchants whose small ships ran into headwinds on their way to Pyongyang. Taken with the eyewitness account by Junkin that there were Korean Christians who lived uneasily among the Tonghaks, it is reasonable to assume that they were quite suspicious of westerners but openly antagonistic towards the Japanese. After spending more time in the region, Junkin noted that he “became on friendly terms” with some of the Tonghak leaders in the area.(8)

Right: Artist rendering of Ye Zhichao. Ye Zhichao (1838-1901) was a Qing Chinese general who fought in the First Sino-Japanese War. He fought in the Nian Rebellion, and he joined the nationalist Jindandao secret society and took part in the massacre of between 150,000 and 500,000 Mongols, justifying the atrocity by falsely claiming that the Mongolian banner army had killed Chinese civilians. He then served as commander of the provincial troops in Zhili before being promoted to command the Qing army in Korea during the First Sino-Japanese War. He was defeated at the Battle of Pyongyang in 1894, and he was nearly executed for his failures, although his connections rescued him. Nevertheless, he fell into opium addiction, and he died in 1901.

By the autumn of 1894 much of the military threat posed by the Tonghaks to the Japanese was eliminated. Fighting around Gongju in October and November resulted in major defeats for the ill-equipped and poorly trained peasant soldiers. The Battle of Ugeumchi, which ended November 10, marked the retreat of the Tonghaks. By early December much of the Tonghak leadership on the peninsula had either been captured, killed, or had fled. The Philadelphia Inquirer even equated the Tonghak defeat to Republican party losses in the U.S. mid-term elections. “The Tong-Haks, Korean revolutionists of marked ferocity, were routed with great loss yesterday. As the American elections have already shown, it is a hard year on hawks of all kinds.”(9)

However, the military defeat of the Tonghaks only preceded their usefulness in furthering the Japanese agenda of complete control over the peninsula. The pivoting of the pro-Japanese narrative within the Anglo-Japanese press dispatches was centered upon the belief that Japanese troops needed to stay in that country to prevent a resurgence of Tonghak violence while initiating much needed reforms. Again, the Tonghaks were the catalyst for action. On January 20, the New York Times reported that the Tonghaks were still operating against the pro-Japanese government in Seoul. “The reforms urged upon the Coreans by the Japanese have certainly… inspired confidence, not among the Coreans, but among the outsiders who are interested in the country’s welfare. The native… has proved an obstinate and ungrateful pupil.” Furthermore, continued resistance in the south by the “criminal and the lawless” would ultimately force the Japanese to keep soldiers there indefinitely: “A war on a native revolutionary party is about the last thing the Japanese want to be forced into, especially if the revolt has any justification and enlists the people to any extent. But the native Government is without a force sufficient to put the revolt down, and the tactics of the Tonghaks are compelling the Japanese to introduce military force among the people.”(10)

Yet, a war on a native revolutionary party was what took place. The Times of London report from their Kobe, Japan, correspondent was completely aligned with a growing consensus for prolonged military occupation – and complemented a novel ‘K’ spelling for a country that thereinto had generally been spelled in English with a ‘C’. “At present it seems as if Japan will be compelled eventually to take matters into her own hands, and become the avowed… ruler of Korea,” the article read. The long editorial even compared the situation to British rule of India and argued that Korea should be “controlled by Japanese officials, exactly as though she were dealing with conquered territory.”(11)

For the period extending into the spring of 1895, when the Tonghak Revolt ended, reports continued to paint the rebels as uncivilized and barbaric thieves and murderers perpetuating a Chinese-inspired status quo of chaos and backwardness on the peninsula. For a time, the threat of the return of the Tonghaks and related conspiracies surrounding the militant “Eastern Learning” group were reported in dispatches from either British or Japanese sources – sources which had no interest in looking at the situation in Korea from the Tonghak perspective. Americans, located on the western side of the Atlantic and eastern edge of the Pacific, were content to follow events from either the British or Japanese points of view – or even British correspondents pontificating from Japan.(12)

Right: Painting of the conference at Shimonoseki, by Nagatochi Hideta (永地秀太), 1929. Source: Wikimedia.

The rebellion, revolt, or revolution, as it has been called, ended roughly around the same time the Treaty of Shimonoseki was signed ending the First Sino-Japanese War. The American who facilitated that agreement, Colonel John W. Foster, had been the U.S. Secretary of State when he tacitly approved the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893. In the Treaty of Shimonoseki, signed April 17, 1895, Japan was ceded the Liaodong Peninsula and Taiwan from China. In addition, the agreement required Japan to ostensibly recognize Korean independence – after having ousted the Chinese military from a state it had long considered its vassal. The reality was that Japan was given a free hand to rule Korea as it deemed fit, and would do so to the frustration of advocates of Korean independence like Seo Jae-pil, who supported the Gapsin Coup and returned to Korea after the war hoping that reforms would be implemented to make Korea strong and independent, which was the general goal of the Tonghak movement: “It was necessary to fight the westerners and Japanese people and call for government officials to reform... They had to be humiliated and …were entangled in the crimes of everyone who suffered from ethical corruption”. (13)

An Alliance Ensures a new Status Quo

The Tonghak Rebellion leading to the First Sino-Japanese War offered imperial Japan the prefect pretext to fulfill its strategic goal of permanently ousting the Chinese from Korea and making inroads into Manchuria – a strategy that predictably ran headlong into Russian interests resulting in the Russo-Japanese War. The British, whose East Asian commercial interests included maintaining open Chinese ports and keeping Russia from usurping their position as the dominant merchants of East Asia, found in Japan a good partner with which to further their aims. Because of this proactive stance towards ensuring Japanese primacy in Korea, the Japanese reciprocated by supporting the British. Charles Nelson Spinks, a longtime U.S. Foreign Service officer and historian of East Asia noted in 1939 (at the onset of World War Two) that “the disturbed condition in the Far East in the wake of the Sino-Japanese War soon revealed a positive identity in the policies of Great Britain and Japan, since both Powers sought to resist Russia’s glacial pressure on the northern frontiers of Manchuria and to preserve their interest, actual or potential, in China and Korea.”(14)

Spinks’s assessment was mostly correct, but he could have elaborated that common Anglo-Japanese interests were apparent to many statesmen and diplomats long before Japanese troops landed in Korea in the spring of 1894. American policy followed British policy for a period without the added benefit of an alliance, but when the Anglo-Japanese partnership ended in 1922 following U.S. pressure on the British, the Japanese were free to jettison any pretense of equal commercial opportunity in Korea (or Manchuria). For a time, however, the British afforded a certain level of international respectability to an aggressive Japanese foreign policy vis-à-vis Korea, and perhaps articulated their position on the international stage better than the Japanese could.

Right: 18 May 1907: Image of an original copy of the 1904–1910 newspaper The Korea Daily News. It had a counterpart Korean edition called Daehan Maeil Sinbo. Source: Wikimedia.

The situation from the Korean perspective, however, remained somewhat naïve as to the effect the budding Anglo-Japanese alliance had on Korean affairs. Just prior to the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, the Daehan Maeil Shinbo (대한매일신보), or Korea Daily News – an anti-Japanese publication created by British citizen Ernest Thomas Bethell and Korean nationalist Yang Gi-tak, believed that “Koreans are overcoming the Japanese oppression” and the occupation would eventually flail. In other words, even with the insight of a British journalist opposed to Japanese abuses of Koreans the looming outcome was unclear: “Looking at the relationship, Japan is not very upset about this war. They have to go to each power to ask for an alliance. Because Japan has misunderstood the nature of the Anglo-Japanese alliance, it is only for the sake of Japan if other countries help her… the British won’t be able to go out of their way to fight this war if they violate the rules.”(15)

Ultimately, it was Korea and its advocates who misunderstood the nature of the Anglo-Japanese alliance. The power of that alliance was not in its military potential, but in its collective ability to persuade the Americans and an international audience that knew or cared very little about Korea. Bethell became an iconic victim of the new Anglo-Japanese geopolitical relationship, as he used his extraterritorial rights in Korea as a British citizen to criticize the occupation until 1907, when he was prosecuted in Seoul by the British Consular Court at the behest of the Japanese for breaching the peace. Eventually he was deported to China by Anglo-Japanese authorities – an overtly political sign as to how far the British were willing to go to please their new ally and protect their commercial position at the expense of Korean sovereignty. Outgunned and outmatched diplomatically from the onset of the First Sino-Japanese War, Korea was left with less concrete assurances by Japan that it would keep its promises and sustain Korean independence. The depiction of anarchy in Korea in American newspapers in 1894 and early 1895 did little to help its image – as it became another colony in an imperial era that reduced independence or sovereignty to “questions” the larger powers had the exclusive authority to determine. Nor would the Americans come to the rescue as the U.S. position regarding Korea began to mimic the British position. When the U.S. officially entered the imperial power game in 1898 during the Spanish-American War – annexing Hawaii and the Philippines – its ability to criticize Japanese actions was further tempered. The Tonghaks and their detractors within the Korean government – in view of their infighting and inability to resolve their disputes – unknowingly undermined their own cause. That is not to say the Japanese would not have found another pretext to carry out their long-term designs, but only to state that the Tonghaks were the match that unwillingly lit the fire of their own undoing. 

Notes

1 Cho Jae-gon, “The Connection of the Sino-Japanese War and the Peasant War of 1894,” Korea Journal 34, no. 4 (Winter 1994): 45-58; Carl F. Young, Eastern Learning and the Heavenly Way: The Tonghak and Chondogyo Movements and the Twilight of Korean Independence (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2014); Sarah C.M. Paine, The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895: Perceptions, Power, and Primacy (Cambridge University Press, 2003); Peter Duus, The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895–1910 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). Peter Duus and Ramon H. Myers, (ed.), The Japanese Informal Empire in China, 1895-1937 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989). For traditional Korean diplomacy, see: Takemichi Hara, “Korea, China, and Western Barbarians: Diplomacy in Early Nineteenth-Century Korea,” Modern Asian Studies 32, no. 2 (1998): 389-430.

2 Sarah C.M. Paine, The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, 109-111. Paine notes that the British run Japan Weekly Mail published in Tokyo and Yokohama was particularly noteworthy for its coverage.

3 Sarah C.M. Paine, The Japanese Empire: Grand Strategy from the Meiji Restoration to the Pacific War (Cambridge University Press, 2017); Andre Schmid, Korea Between Empires, 1885-1919 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). Henry B. Hulbert, “Korean Reforms,” The Korean Repository 2 (Jan. 1895): 2. See also: Hulbert, Homer B. Hulbert, The Passing of Korea (New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1906).

4 Paine, The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, 113.

5 The Indianapolis Journal, September 28, 1894; The San Francisco Call, September 28, 1894. “Tong Haks Rise in Force to Drive Out the Japs”; The Philadelphia Inquirer, September 28, 1894. “Rebels Attack Japs”; Richmond Dispatch, September 28, 1894. Oakland Tribune, September 27, 1894. “Fanatic. Tong Haks Attack the Japs.”; Los Angeles Times, September 28, 1894. “Fighting with Tong Haks”; Leavenworth Times, September 28, 1894. “Corean Fanatics in Arms”; The Salt Lake Herald, September 28, 1894. “Attacked by the Tong Haks”; Detroit Free Press, September 28, 1894.

6 Los Angeles Times, October 25, 1894. “The Anti-Foreigner Excitement”; The Indianapolis Journal, October 25, 1894; The San Francisco Call, October 25, 1894; The Honolulu Advertiser, November 24, 1894, “Brutal Murder of a Priest”. A fuller account is given in the Honolulu Advertiser, which claims the original story comes from the China Gazette in Hong Kong late July, and that the murders took place near Kongju (“Kong-tjyou”). Since Hawaii was receiving news from Hong Kong, it is interesting to note how the story was changed for Canadian and U.S. consumption between Hong Kong and British Columbia.

7 William M. Junkin, “Seven Months Among the Ton Haks,” The Korean Repository 2 (June 1895): 201.

8 Ibid. 201-204.

9 The Philadelphia Inquirer, November 17, 1894; New-York Tribune, November 17, 1894. “Corean Rebels Routed” (London Central News dispatch from Tokyo, Dec. 16); The Los Angeles Times, December 29, 1894. “The Tong-Haks They are Dispersed by the Japs After Hard Fighting”, (Times, London Dec. 27, via Shanghai);

10 New York Times, January 20, 1895. “Revolt in Corea Grows: Tonghak Rebels Burn Villages and Slaughter Men and Women”

11 The Times, London, January 19, 1895. “Japan in Korea”

12 Pittsburgh Daily Post, March 8, 1895” Japanese Artillery Fire” (D.C. via telegram from Tokyo); The Times, London, May 4, 1895. “Japan and Korea” (via Tokyo); The San Francisco Call, May 23, 1895. “Tong Haks Put to Death” (via Vancouver, May 22); Los Angeles Times, May 23, 1895. “Rebels Executed”; The Times, London, August 20, 1895. “The Korean Problem” (via Tokyo, July 2).

13 “고등 재판쇼 션고셔", 독립신문 [獨立新聞(서재필)], 1896/10/15. (NLK: KNA) [Tongnip Sinmun (The Independent), “High Court Show Verdicts”, October 15, 1896.] Seo Jae-pil (서재필) founded the Tongnip Sinmun in 1895 after returning from exile in the United States. Following the war, the Tongnip Sinmun cooperated with the government but remained somewhat sympathized with the Tonghaks – many of whom were punished. For a look at post-war Japanese control over the Korean press, see: Mark E. Caprio, “Marketing Assimilation: The Press and the Formation of the Japanese-Korean Colonial Relationship,” The Journal of Korean Studies 16, no. 1 (2011): 1–25.

14 Charles Nelson Spinks, “The Background of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance,” Pacific Historical Review 8, no. 3 (Sept. 1939), 317.

15 “젼쟁의 형편”, 대한매일신보[大韓每日申報], 1905/01/26. (NLK: KNA) [Daehan Maeil Shinbo (The Korean Daily News), “The War Situation”, January 1, 1905.] See: Chin-sok Chong, The Korean Problem in Anglo-Japanese relations, 1904-1910: Ernest Thomas Bethell and his Newspapers (Seoul: Nanam Publications, 1987).