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37. Causes of the Sino-Japanese War The Taewŏn’gun at this time was out of power and in retirement . He had no opportunity to take part in political affairs and was discontented in his heart, according to popular rumor. All the in-laws of the royal family held the power and they were extremely extortionist and avaricious. The common people were preyed upon and became alienated . They had reached a point where they could not sustain themselves. In their dark mood, they complained: In the days before the advent of the foreigners, the nation was in peace and the people were affluent. After the foreigners’ arrival, nobody can make a living. They thought that they could not sustain their life as long as contacts with the foreigners were left open, and a billowing anxiety among them rose daily. It so happened about this time that Kim Ok-kyun was lured into leaving Japan to go to Shanghai, where he was murdered. His body was then decapitated and his head was exhibited around the country. The people sensed that the rebels in the enlightenment party were disliked by their government and the Taewŏn’gun, not to mention China, which could not tolerate them. China was the biggest nation while Japan was only a small nation, waeguk,59 which had been their [Korea’s] enemy that they could not forget for three hundred years. Now was a welcome opportunity, the people thought, to settle the old score. Such was the state of mind that developed naturally among the unenlightened people throughout the country. There had not been a single book that had been distributed to them, nor were there any informative words spoken to them. How then could they awaken by themselves? Tyranny at its nadir undergoes changes and such changes have been inevitable in the past as they are at present. Thus the Tonghak (lit. “East178 ern Learning”) arose; they claimed that, by chanting incantations and by carrying amulets, they could summon wind and make rain or that they could stop the Western cannons and warships by simply reciting holy words. Throughout the land, only a few remained unconvinced. Its leader, Ch’oe Si-yŏng [sic; Ch’oe Si-hyŏng?]60 rose up at Kobu, Chŏlla Province, and issued and circulated a call to arms that contained the following four items: “One: No person shall be killed and no property shall be damaged; two: We shall uphold both loyalty to the king and ethical principles and shall save the nation and help the people; three: We shall drive out the Japanese and the westerners and reaffirm the way of the sages; four: We shall lead an army into the walled cities and exterminate the powerful aristocracy, reestablish the principle of law, and clarify moral obligations.” The Tonghaks had white towels tied around their heads and carried yellow flags in their hands, supposedly in conformity with a certain [canonical ] rule. A group would rise up in the east, to be followed by another group rising up in the west; a call from the south would be responded to in the north. They were all over the place, murdering local officials, looting the commoners, and causing chaos throughout the nation. The government ordered [Colonel] Hong Kye-hun61 to lead eight hundred soldiers to Ch’ungch’ŏng Province and attack the rebels. Yüan Shih-k’ai dispatched his deputy Hsiu Fang-chieh to accompany [Hong] as an observer. The troops from Seoul had several encounters with the Tonghak group, but they were defeated, thus putting the security of Seoul in jeopardy. Yüan sent an urgent report to Tientsin and Li Hungchang sent three thousand crack troops to Korea to pacify the Tonghaks. But [Li] had not notified Japan; he overlooked the provision in the agreement with Japan stipulating that each side should notify the other side in the event of its dispatch of troops to Korea, and he acted as he wished. This signified, first, disrespect of Korea’s independence; secondly , disrespect of Japan by violating the agreement; and third, a slight to various foreign powers because they treated Korea as their equal, and China’s unreasonable treatment of Korea thus went beyond being hurtful to Korea. China had for long behaved like this, a fact of which foreign powers had been painfully aware. Since Japan had known this for a long while, it had built up its troops for...

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