The Conservative Character of the 1894 Tonghak Peasant Uprising: A Reappraisal with Emphasis on Chŏn Pong-jun's Background and Motivation

The Conservative Character of the 1894 Tonghak Peasant Uprising: A Reappraisal with Emphasis on Chön Pong-jun's Background and Motivation Young lek Lew INTRODUCTION 1 he Tonghak Peasant Uprising of 1894 remains a focal point of interest among students of modern Korean history—not so much as the catalyst ofthe historic Sino-Japanese War (1894-95) as die biggest popular uprising in Korean history that foreshadowed the Righteous Army movement (1905-12), the March First movement (1919) and the Kwangju Democratic movement (1980). Although it ended as an abortive, year-long affair, it is writ large in modern Korean historiography , proportionate in weight to the Taiping Revolution (185064 ) in Chinese historical writing, because of its putative influence on the evolution of modern Korea. The original draft of this paper, entitled "Conservative Dimensions in the Tonghak Rebellion, 1894," was presented to the Conference on Korea at the Turn of the Century held at the Center for Korean-American and Korean Studies, California State University, Los Angeles, in September 1984. The present paper is a revised and enlarged version of this draft. I would like to acknowledge intellectual debts that I owe to Profs. Key-Hiuk Kim of Pohang Institute of Science and Technology, and Martina Deuchler ofthe School of Oriental and African Studies, University ofLondon, for their thoughtful comments and suggestions on the revised manuscript. I would also like to express gratitude to the Ilsong Foundation in Seoul for its generous support in completing this paper. 149 150Journal ofKorean Studies Historians' evaluation of the uprising has changed over time. Traditional Yi dynasty annalists, Japanese colonial historians, and Western missionary writers labeled it as an insurrection of the "Tonghak bandits," while characterizing it as an anachronistic movement analogous to the xenophobic 1900 Boxer Uprising in China.1 Such a derogatory view of the uprising gave way to eulogistic ones after the liberation of Korea from Japanese colonial rule in 1945. It has become increasingly fashionable among the nationalistic and minjung ("people") -oriented historians today to refer to the uprising 1. The pejorative opinion of the Confucian-minded Yi Korean yangban elite on the "rebellion ofTonghak bands" is represented by the late nineteenth-century annalist , Hwang Hyön (1855-1910). Regarding Hwang's views on the 1894 event in his Maech'on yarok [An unofficial history of Hwang Hyön] and two recently discovered manuscripts relevant to the event, "Oha kimun" [Jottings ofthe news under Paulownia trees] and "Kabo p'yöngbi ch'aek" [Stratagems for suppressing the 1894 rebels], see Kim Yong-söp, "Hwang Hyön (1855-1910) üi nongmin chönjaeng susúpch'aek" [Hwang Hyön (1855-1910)'s proposals on how to deal with the [1894] peasant war), Ko Pyöng-ik sönsaeng hoegap kinyöm sahak nonch'ong: Yötea wa in'gan üi taeúng (Seoul: Han'ul, 1984), pp. 645-68, and Kim Ch'ang-sü, Han'guk kúndae úiminjok uüikyön'gu [Studies on modern Korean national consciousness] (Seoul: Tonghwa ch'ulp'an kongsa, 1987), pp. 59-106. The representative Japanese colonial historian who specialized in the late nineteenth-century Korean history, Tabohashi, labeled the 1894 incident as the "disturbance " (henran) ofthe Tonghak "bandits" (hito). See Tabohashi Kiyoshi, KindaiNüsen kanka no kenkyü [A study on modern Japanese-Korean relations] (Keijö: Chösen sôtokufu, 1940) 2:241-71. The American missionary view is perhaps best represented by Lady Underwood. See Lillias H. Underwood, Underwood of Korea (New York: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1918), p. 136. Conroy seems to have accepted this view when he characterized the event as "the Korean version of the Satsuma Rebellion of Japan, the Boxer Movement in China, the Wahabi in Arabia, and perhaps the Mau Mau in Kenya." See Hilary Conroy, The Japanese Seizure of Korea, 1868-1910 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1960), p. 229. Some Western observers of the Korean scene in the 1890s did not share such a view. For example, Lady Bishop characterized the 1894 event as an "armed reform movement" of the "reformers" rather than "rebels." See Isabella B. Bishop, Korea and Her Neighbours (London: John Murray, 1905; 1st ed., 1897) 1:208. Speer noted that the Tonghak...