Joseon Dynasty

The Joseon Dynasty (alternatively, Choson or Chosun) is usually preceded with the title "Great". The House of the Junju Yi-Shi, The Royal Family of the Joseon Dynasty, or Ishi Wangjo, was the final ruling Imperial dynasty of Korea, lasting from 1392 until 1910. It was founded by the Korean Yi clan on the Korean peninsula, and was preceded by the Goryeo dynasty.

It was officially founded by Yi Seonggye, the General who led the overthrow or coup d'etat of the last king of the Goryeo Dynasty. The name Joseon comes from the ancient founding dynasty of Korea, "Gojoseon", which was founded circa 4800 BC. The 600-year-old dynasty came to an end with Japanese invasion and internal betrayal and treason. A living descendant of the Joseon Dynasty, the Crown Prince Yi Seok, remains, despite Japan's efforts to end the pure Korean royal dynasty during its occupation of Korea. Prince Yi Gu is a closer descendant of the dynasty, but is considered not a valid heir, having married a Japanese woman.

History

Beginnings

Old maps indicate that Seoul (or Han Yang, later, and Hang Sung) during this period was crossed by many tributaries of the Han river. The Mongols annexed Korea during a brief period in the 1370s. Yi Seonggye returned to start a rebellion against King U, who was the last Goryeo King, and establish the Yi dynasty.

As had occurred numerous times in China, the capital city under King Yi was moved to Hanyang-gun, Seoul, on the mighty Han river. Under the political situation of that time, Extensive trade with China began, including the ginseng trade, as well as exchanges in medicine, technology and science. A class of Koreans educated along Confucian lines developed rapidly.

Early Japanese invasions

In 1592 and 1597, Japanese warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi led the invasion of Korea by daimyo and their troops. This war is generally referred to as the Imjin War (임진왜란 壬臣倭亂). Factional infighting in the Joseon court, the inability to assess Japanese military capability and failed attempts at diplomacy led to poor preparation on the Joseons' part. Disastrous military fiascoes left most of the southern peninsula occupied within months, with both Pyongyang and Seoul captured.

Local guerilla resistance, however, slowed down the Japanese advance and decisive naval victories by Admiral Yi Sunsin left control over sea routes in Korean hands, severely hampering Japanese supply lines. Eventually, with the help of some Chinese force from the Ming, these invasions were eventually repelled. During the war, Koreans developed powerful firearms and high-quality gunpowder, and the first cannon-bearing ironclad warships in world history.

Following these events the kingdom became increasingly isolationist, as its rulers sought to limit contact with foreign countries during the Mongol invasion and vanquishing of the Ming Emperors, as well as the Manchu invasion of China, leading to the establishment of the Qing Dynasty. The Koreans decided to build tighter borders, exert more controls over inter-border traffic, and wait out the initial turbulence of the Manchu overthrow of the Ming.

Despite these limits, Korea had extensive exchange with both China and Japan, up to 50 trade missions a year going to Japan, and extensive trade through Mongolia and northwards. However, at times this was limited to missions appointed by the king in order to prevent piracy and conduct orderly trade.

Middle Joseon

After the Ming dynasty collapsed, the Qing rulers adopted a foreign policy to avoid the creation of foreign trading enclaves on Chinese soil. This kept the traditional entrepot for the foreign hongs in Macau, which handled the significant trade in silks to Japan, bringing silver in return.

This relegated foreign trade to the southern provinces of China, leaving the more unstable northern region under careful regulation, and limiting the influence of foreigners. This decision affected Korea. The foreign policy of Korea was somewhat regulated by China, and so was its foreign trade.

Foreign trade restrictions helped strengthen Korea, as without Chinese naval forces, the wealth of Korean natural resources, relatively sophisticated technology, ceramics innovations and the key medicinal trade in ginseng would have been lost to Japanese hands much earlier than it eventually was. At this time a relatively sophisticated economy developed and the first western visitor, Hendrick Hamel, a Dutchman, arrived.

Parts of this article are self-contradictory. Please fix it if you can.

More than a century later, in the 17th century, the Manchus defeated the Ming dynasty, and the Korean rulers agreed to pay tribute to the new Qing dynasty emperors. Tribute at this time involved two way trade missions with China.

The Manchus themselves shared much with Koreans. The Korean language has been linked to the Turkic and Mongolian languages, and the language of educated classes in Korea was classic Chinese until late in the 20th century. China had a strong relationship with Korea at many levels: a joint foreign policy, joint trade policy, exchange of technologies. Shared religious traditions included Confucianism, Daoism, [[Buddhism] and even folk animism (both Korea and China have historically believed in the world of the "spirits"). Additionally, trade remained strong, including extensive ceramic, ginseng, horse and weapon trade--infantry weapons of broadswords and iron fittings were provided by Korean iron mines.

Decline and collapse

In the 19th century tensions mounted between Qing China and Japan and culminated in the The First Sino-Japanese War (갑오전쟁 甲午戰爭, 1894–1895), much of it fought on the Korean peninsula. Japan, after the Meiji Restoration (明治維新), had forced Joseon to sign the Kanghwa Treaty in 1876. It encroached upon Korean territory in search of fish, iron ore, natural resources, and establised a strong economic presence in the peninsula, heralding the beginning of Japanese imperial expansion in East Asia.

The Chinese defeat in the 1894 war led to the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which officially guaranteed Korea's "independence from China," effectively granted Japan direct influence over Korean politics. The Joseon court in 1894, pressured by encroachment from larger powers, felt the need to reinforce national integrity and declared the "The Great Han Empire" (대한제국 大韓帝國). King Kojong assumed the title of Emperor (황제 皇帝), ostensibly to put himself on the same level as the Chinese and Japanese Emperor to assert Korea's independence. Technically, 1894 marks the end of the Joseon period, as the official name of the state was changed. However, the Yi Dynasty would still reign, albeit perturbed by Japanese intervention, until the Japanese annexation of the Korean peninsula in 1910.

The growing Japanese influence in Northeast Asia threatened Russia's hegemony in Manchuria and led to the Russo-Japanese War in 1904. Russia's inability to defend its naval ports, and the collapse of Russia's navy in the historic battle of Port Arthur (in which Russia's imperial navy was destroyed in a decisive surprise attack), led to a great weakening of Korea's umbrella of protection.

England and Europe as a whole, including Germany, had a vested interest in Russia being reigned in; To these powers, Japan presented a rich trade market to be penetrated under a series of forced trade agreements. China's coastal defenses were severely weakened by corruption leading to the theft of money intended for naval construction.

Japan saw this as an opportunity to strike hard on the edges of the north Chinese empire as England struck repeatedly to force the reopening of the opium trade in the south (through the HK "hongs", trading houses such as the Jardines, Sassoons, and the like; and in cooperation with the American traders in their fast Yankee Clippers). Indeed there were vast fortunes made importing opium. The trade weakened officials and strengthened merchants with foreign ties in south China, and moved huge sums of the silver reserves China had accumulated after three centuries in the silk trade.

The combined effect of the opium wars to the south — England forcing trade in Indian and Afghani opium against the Emperor's edicts — and Japanese naval strikes in the north led Korea to be increasingly seen as a strategic foothold into north China, just as Macau and Hong Kong were Portuguese and English trade enclaves into south China.

Reasons

If China could be broken into two by a matched set of attacks with the collapse of the Shanghai bankers and financiers — who were in the middle — China could be opened to foreign trade once and for all, and permanent trade zones established and dominated by the west and Japan. South China would be hived off to the coastal European powers; central China to the European inland powers; and north China (what eventually became occupied Manchuria) to the Japanese, being taken away from a long history of Russian influence.

That is what did happen towards the end of the 19th century: south China to Hainan Island (and eventually what became Vietnam) became under the military control of Europe; and north China above Shanghai became to be under the military control of Japan. Russia was vanquished to the north; Portugal and Spain were vanquished to the south; and a joint English and American control of south Chinese trade took off to immensely profitable levels. This becoming the era of the famous "clippers" or sailing ships from Boston financiers that led to great fortunes being made in the tea and opium trade, and the importation of huge numbers of Chinese and Korean ceramics into western Europe and America.

In a complicated series of manoeuvres and counter-manoeuvres, Japan smashed the Russian fleet at the Battle of Port Arthur in 1905. Both the fleets of China and Russia had given Korea sufficient protection to prevent a direct invasion, but this ambuscade of the Russian fleet gave Japan free reign over north China and Korea was left at the mercy of the greatest Pacific naval power of the time in that area: Japan. This was done in a series of wars that had the implicit and continuing help of both Germany and England in designing Japanese warships, assistance in naval strategy, and also in participating in clearing Russian influence on the north Pacific coast, and isolating the Russian navy into Vladivostok.

A naval defeat that became a central factor in the collapse of the Russian navy and culminated in the anarchist movements within the navy that launched the Russian revolution, and the collapse as well of the Russian Imperial monarchy, thus further entrenching after 1917 Japanese power in the region – forcing thirty years later a Russian hegemony to establish control and a buffer zone protecting an exposed flank in the region along similarly with China.

Korea thus became a colony, although designated as a protectorate. By forcing Emperor Gojong of Korea to abdicate his throne and assassinating his wife, Queen Min of Joseon in 1895, Japan annexed the country entirely as a colony in 1910.

The event is recalled both in books and at the historical site itself, (Cheong'duk Palace in Seoul), with a monument. Queen Min's brutal murder — she was stabbed repeatedly, cut into pieces, and her body desecrated and thrown into a fish pond — didn't shock the world powers as it should: with the sack and looting of Seoul occurring at the same time and the suppression of journalists and news staff, the events were not known widely for decades.

Science and culture

During the Joseon Dynasty, a centralized administrative system was installed based on Confucian yangban scholars who acted as the counsellors to the king, and made up most of the officer class of the imperial army. The expansion of scholarship on the Confucian classics was attended by a new moral system, as Buddhism's medieval cloistering of scholars gave way to an urban sophistication based on wider travel and knowledge.

The Joseon Dynasty also presided over two periods of great cultural growth, during which Joseon culture created the first Korean Tea Ceremony, Korean Gardens and extensive encyclopaedias. Hangul script was developed under the reign of the fourth emperor, King Sejong. The Royal dynasty also built several fortresses, trading harbors and palaces.

Many Korean inventions are from this period, such as the first Asian sundial and the world's first water-powered clock. During the Joseon period, the metal printing press, invented during the Goryeo dynasty, supplanted the wood-block printing press in Japan and China.

The family today

Some elements of the Korean royal family, including the Crown Princes, moved to the United States to raise their families as expatriates within the very dangerous and insecure political climate of the 1950s. At the same time, there had earlier been forced marriages with the Japanese nobility which now created a controversial issue.

Some relatives of the Joseon Dynasty were encouraged to disperse for the sake of their own preservation, and are now American citizens today, living and working in the United States in the private sectors as ordinary citizens in the Pacific west coast. Others are living in other countries abroad again as ordinary citizens with no privileges. At the same time, providing their names are within the official family registries, they are able to reinstitute Korean citizenship at will.

Imperial Korean history, art, and architecture are currently represented in a series of museums and architectural sites throughout Korea. There have been no major travelling world shows of Imperial Korean antiquities or works of art as few now remain in Korean hands. It's a matter of fact that one may see more Korean works of art, and pieces from the Imperial collections in the museums of Japan, than exist in either state or private hands in Korea. However, cultural exchanges are in the works.

Gyeongbok Palace is a world heritage site in Seoul, who is the traditional residence among many of the Korean Royal Family. The Gyeonbok Palace and its land and articles are owned entirely by the government of the Republic of Korea, as all other Imperial lands and sites.

About references

The Joseon Dynasty recorded its history as Annals of Joseon Dynasty.

There is presently no official historian of the Korean royal family, and the Imperial records have ceased to be recorded since the Japanese invasions. Occasional references to the Korean Royal Family and its present charities and activities in the arts or in cultural preservation are found on websites on world royalty.

Standard references used for this site include:

• A Cultural History of Modern Korea, Wannae Joe, ed. with intro. by Hongkyu A. Choe, Elizabeth NY, and Seoul Korea: Hollym, 2000.
• An Introduction to Korean Culture, ed. Koo & Nahm, Elizabeth NJ, and Seoul Korea: Hollym, 1998. 2nd edition.

Current Joseon history

Current articles on HIH the Crown Prince Yi Seok in English include:

• Wall Street Journal, "Last Korean Prince" (qv. WSJ, subscription required; Google search:"South Korea's last living prince".)
• Korean Royal News (website), at the wwww.Royalty.nu homepage. [1]
• Korea Times, "Korean Prince Living Vagabond's Life Campaigns for Royal Respect", again a sensational article. [2]
• Korea Times, "Last Chosun Prince to settle in Chonju", an article which represents current matters more accurately. 08–26–2004 [3]
• Yonhap News, "Last Prince of Joseon Dynasty Settles in Jeonju", an extremely accurate article on royal tourism initiatives in Korea. [4]
• Washington Times, "Korean royalty seeks to restore ancestral pride", a sensational, overly dramatic and romanticized article. [5]

There are several hundreds of other citations in Korean that will be appended in a subsequent hyperlinked entry.

See also

• List of Korea-related topics

External links

• Korean royal family website – currently available only in Korean.
• Choson dynasty
• "Japanese Document Sheds New Light on Korean Queen's Murder" – Ohmynews.com's uncovered document about murder of Queen Mini