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280 Kim Myong-jun, once an Ilchinhoe member, said at one of Taehan Hyophoe’s assemblies that “the civilization of our generation is not other than that the rights of the people are consolidated, their freedoms are articulated in law, and they live life in comfort. The people in Korea do not have the freedom—even if they wish—to engage in civilized conduct in this civilized era. . . . Without freedom and the rights of the people, we cannot call it a ‘normal state’ [konjon kukka].” Kim argued that the rights of the government are given only to such a “normal” or “healthy” state, which guarantees the “naturally endowed and heaven-granted” rights of the people, including freedom of the press, conduct, residence, and property.1 In March 1909, on the eve of the annexation, the Korea Daily News penned “A Call for Popular Rights” suggesting the idea of social contract and demanding the “recovery” of the “people’s state, government, and law.”2 In this ideological transition of Korea toward popular sovereignty, the Ilchinhoe members played an indispensable role, even if they made only a populist burst without elegantly articulating the ideas of democracy and their practice. An eminent political theorist of democracy once wrote, “Like fire, or painting or writing, democracy seems to have been invented more than once, and in more than one place. After all, if the conditions were favorable for the invention of democracy at one time and place, might not similar favorable conditions have 1. IG, April 18, 1908, p. 1. 2. KD, March 17, 1909, p. 1. CONCLUSION CONCLUSION 281 existed elsewhere?”3 Nineteenth-century Korea has not been imagined as a time and place in which some people desired democracy or attempted to put it into practice. Thus the well-recognized democratic orientation in the March First Movement of 1919 has often appeared abrupt or alien in the history of modern Korea.4 This book discloses the astonishing fact that the Ilchinhoe group— which has historically been seen as a traitorous pro-Japanese organization, pure and simple—left statements filled with ideas of freedom and acted on the claim of redefining the monarchy’s power in favor of a popular sovereignty. The words and actions of the Ilchinhoe members were crude, yet it is undeniable that they testified to an ideological shift of the Korean populace away from the old regime and toward greater political participation. This means that the Ilchinhoe movement marked an unfortunate yet significant chapter in the introduction, if not invention, of democracy to ordinary Koreans. The Ilchinhoe mobilized the people to voice their “real” problems, such as taxes and the protection of property and life from government interference or violence. The Ilchinhoe movement questioned traditional relationships between government officials and the people and challenged the established local elite structure. The aristocrat Ku Wan-hui grumbled that the Ilchinhoe made the people “feel free to behave as they pleased” (jayu haengdong). In contrast, Ilchinhoe member Chong Chi-hong and other tenants celebrated the arrival of the “reformist era” and declared that if their freedom and property and naturally endowed rights (chayu chaesan kwa ch’onbu kwolli) were violated, they were no different from the dead, even though they were living. These words of the Ilchinhoe members at the moment of their actions correspond to the circulation of democratic ideas that had preceded, and advanced with, the group’s uprisings. They also unveil the fact that the Ilchinhoe movement had deep indigenous roots. Some popular movements in the northwestern provinces between 1896 and 1904 had demonstrated the anti-monarch or transnational orientations found in the subsequent Ilchinhoe movement. This book has also argued that the Ilchinhoe had strong ideological, political, and organizational connections with the Independence Club Movement and publicly claimed to be its “legitimate heir.” Contemporaneous Koreans acknowledged this continuity in the Ilchinhoe ’s popular assemblies and its pro-Japanese inclinations.5 The Ilchinhoe’s earlier public announcements reveal this ideological influence of the Independence Club. The group’s 1904 manifesto repeated the logic 3. Robert A. Dahl, On Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 9. 4. Dae-yol Ku, Korean under Colonialism: The March First Movement and Anglo-Japanese Relations (Seoul: Published for the Royal Asiatic Society Korea Branch by Seoul Computer Press, 1985). 5. Cho Chae-gon, “Taehan Cheguk Malgi Pobusang Tanch’e ui Tonghyang,” Pukak Saron 5 (August 1998): 117–156. [3.137.218.215] Project MUSE (2024-04...

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