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124 CHAPTER 5 Another Tonghak Revolution, 1904–1907 At the end of 1905, Son Pyŏnghŭi announced the inception of Ch’ŏndogyo, or Religion of the Heavenly Way, named after a line extracted from Ch’oe Cheu’s Spreading Virtue (P’odŏngmun), in the Korean daily papers Taehan maeil sinbo and the Cheguk sinmun: “Our teaching has its origin in the way of heaven and it is called Ch’ŏndogyo. Founded forty-six years ago [in 1860], the believers were numerous and widely spread out. The church was carefully built up, but unfortunately it was not allowed to practice openly. Today’s scholars elucidate how the natural beliefs of each religion make up all the countries in the world. The natural construction of these churches serves as precedents. The great building of our church is a standard of proper heavenly obedience.”1 In conceptualizing an institutionalized religion based on Tonghak, Son transformed and codified the diffused nature of the earlier texts and practices. His audience consisted of the largely informal networks developed under assembly leaders who had successfully avoided repression and spread Tonghak throughout the southern countryside during the 1880s and early 1890s. Despite Tonghak ’s official classification as subversive, Son’s new configurations protected the community from conflict with central government orthodoxy, though occasional arrests were made until 1903. Son was one of a handful of Tonghak believers who stepped forward to fill the power vacuum created by the uprising and the splintering of the community. To ensure the survival of Ch’oe Cheu’s teaching and his own role in the community, Son envisioned Tonghak’s rebirth as a geographically and hierarchically centralized institution. By late 1905, the sociopolitical dynamic of Korea had dramatically changed, as had the mission of Tonghak leaders. Yet because Tonghak continued to be associated with the 1894 uprising in official and popular consciousness, Son’s public proclamation carefully avoided mentioning Tonghak’s involvement in these events in the hope of eluding censors. Under Japanese rule, censorship was incorporated into the state apparatus Another Tonghak Revolution 125 to control the population and police dissent. Due to political tensions after the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, any criticism of the central government in these publications could have been misconstrued as supporting the Japanese. With the signing of the Protectorate Treaty, the police began monitoring newspapers, and in 1909 censorship laws were passed to further control the press.2 In this context, Son adopted a moderate tone of discourse, reconceptualized rituals such as the talisman, and minimized the sword dance.3 Slogans such as innaech’ŏn, “people are heaven,” became major tenets supporting social equality, while frequent references to “civilization” and “enlightenment” had poignant political resonance in the face of colonialism and imperialism. This discourse struck a chord with elites in the capital who struggled to define a new national identity in the face of Japanese power. Son framed the religion around ideas of nation and citizenship to offer guidance in the chaotic domestic and international environment. The revamped religion, its numerous publications, and its successful education campaigns not only provided avenues for members to participate openly for the first time in mainstream political and social debates without the threat of government persecution, it also molded popular memory of Ch’oe Cheu and Tonghak. Within a decade after annexation , the “Tonghak Revolution” was inspiring nationalists at home and abroad, while Son’s reconceived Tonghak church became a leading element of the religious nationalist movement and a major thread of Korea ’s nationalist project during the colonial era. Modernization and the Tonghak Divide The outcome of the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) had an immeasurable impact on the course of modern Korean politics and society. Japan’s victory assured the removal of Chinese personnel from government and the waning of China’s traditional influence over Korea’s cultural and political identity. Beginning in the summer of 1894, Japanese advisors to the new reform council implemented a number of sweeping laws to break elite hold over power by transforming the government along Japanese models. Instigated and supervised by Japanese advisers, the process of passing roughly eight hundred new laws centering on social matters, infrastructure , and government organization required the participation of many Koreans. Government ministries were restructured to separate the royal household from the management of the country, a move that instituted a constitutional monarchy and reduced the sovereign power of the king. Other laws reorganized the tax system and reformed the civil [3.133...

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