The Reign of Taewongun
On January 22, 1864, a twelve year old nephew of the late king became King KoJong with his father as regent. His father, Yi Ha-ung, was commonly known as the Taewon-gun. The period of his reign of the years 1864-1873 was known as the “Dark Age Period.” The economy was poor and Korea was also isolated from the rest of the world with the exception of China and Japan. Soon after the opening of Japan to the West in 1854 and the opening of northern ports of China, made it impossible for Korea to maintain her isolation. Korea was reluctant and unwilling to open the country to the West because they had negative views of China and Japan which had given way to Western pressure. After 1867, the Japan created a serious problem for the Korea. Japan made several requests for Korea to establish new
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Anti-Chinese riots took place in Seoul, and Chinese shops were looted and burned down. However, the more the Koreans tried to shake off Chinese control, the stronger Chinese efforts were to keep Korea as their protectorate. The Japanese government rejected the Chinese notion that Korea was a vassal to China and stated that Japan had never recognized Korea as a vassal state of China. The Chinese refused the Japanese proposal for join actions in Korea to bring about reforms, restore peace, and improve the internal relations of the Korean government. The Japanese threatened Korea to make her independence from China clear and when Korea opposed, on August 1, Japan and China declared war. The Japanese troops quickly demonstrated their superiority over Chinese troops and the Korean government became helplessly dominated by the Japanese. A peace treaty was concluded in which the Chinese recognized Korean independence, agreed to pay a large war indemnity, cede Taiwan, and lease the Liaotung Peninsula to Japan for twenty-five
Written by Margaret K. Pai, the Dreams of Two Yi-min narrates the story of her Korean American family with the main focus on the life journeys of her father and mother, Do In Kwon and Hee Kyung Lee. Much like the majority of the pre-World War II immigrants, the author’s family is marked and characterized by the common perception of the “typical” Asian immigrant status in the early 20th century: low class, lack of English speaking ability, lack of transferable education and skills, and lack of knowledge on the host society’s mainstream networks and institutions (Zhou and Gatewood 120, Zhou 224). Despite living in a foreign land with countless barriers and lack of capital, Kwon lead his wife and children to assimilate culturally, economically, and structurally through his growing entrepreneurship. Lee, on the other hand, devoted herself not only to her husband’s business but also to the Korean American society. By investing her time in the Korean Methodist Church and the efforts of its associated societies, such as the Methodist Ladies Aid Society and the Youngnam Puin Hoe, Lee made a worthy contribution to the emergence and existence of Hawaii’s Korean American community.
The Korean War , although successful in preventing the spread of communism, was one of the first tests of communism in Asia. North Korea was strictly communist while South Korea was democratic. As usual, the United States supported democratic South Korea and the Truman Doctrine was applied to the Korean situation. The North Korean forces crossed the dividing line (38th parallel) and invaded South Korea. Thus, they provoked a war over communism. With the possibility of democratic South Korea falling to the communistic North, the U.S. stepped in and supplied aid mostly through troops. The U.S. then urged the United Nations to support South Korea and fight against the communist North. Once the North Korean forces were defeated at Inchon, they eventually got pushed back to the 38th parallel. However, against President Truman’s word, American General MacArthur decided to keep pushing back the North Korean forces by crossing the dividing line. This caused more trouble because the People’s Republic of China (Communist China) now sent troops to aid the communists against the pro...
The Republic of Korea emerged from Japanese colonialism as a Third World Country. Per capita income was under one hundred dollars, the little infrastructure the Japanese built was located in the North, and income inequality was staggeringly high. The future of the Republic of Korea (hereafter simply “Korea”) looked very bleak, even with United States foreign aid. Yet several decades later Korea had become one of the world’s largest, most modern economies run by a democratic government. The “Miracle on the Han,” the term for Korea’s stunning economic growth in such a short period of time, coincided with the lifting of millions of Koreans out of poverty and the
The Art of War is a treatise written in Ancient China that discusses the most and least effective military strategies for successful warfare according to Sun Tzu, a military general whose existence is still debated to this day. While not every military commander in the history of warfare has read it, the strategies provided can be used as a way to assess said commanders and the effectiveness of their campaigns. In Sun Tzu 's own words, “The general that hearkens to my counsel and acts upon it, will conquer: let such a one be retained in command! The general that hearkens not to my counsel nor acts upon it, will suffer defeat:--let such a one be dismissed!”1 This paper will discuss various iconic battles throughout history and how closely the leading commanders of each army followed the advice of Sun Tzu. Despite the fact that Sun Tzu lived hundreds of years before many of these battles took place, the
Already earlier, Japan followed the example of Western nations and forced China into unequal economical and political treaties. Furthermore, Japan's influence over Manchuria had been steadily growing since the end of the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05. When the Chinese Nationalists began to seriously challenge Japan's position in Manchuria in 1931, the Kwantung Army (Japanese armed forces in Manchuria) occupied Manchuria. In the following year, "Manchukuo" was declared an independent state, controlled by the Kwantung Army through a puppet government. In the same year, the Japanese air force bombarded Shanghai in order to protect Japanese residents from anti Japanese movements.
They had overrun Manchuria and established it as a state, renaming it Manchukuo. Subsequently, they tried to expand their budding empire by conquering China. However, they encountered the Chinese resistance, governed by Chiang Kai-shek. The Japanese attempted to reduce China into submission which ended up causing crisis and being extremely unsuccessful. They struggled to adopt economic strangulation methods, seizing major coastal ports in 1939 forcing the Chinese capital to move from Nanjing to Hankow, furthermore in 1940 the French permitted the entry of Japan in Indochina. However, a treaty was made with Thailand on account of Japan was threatening China’s last supply line, Burma Road. Consequently, the US, Netherlands and Great Britain imposed economic restrictions cutting off 90% of their materials required for war production, obligating Japan to choose between abandoning their efforts or seizing areas rich with raw materials. For Japan, abandonment was unthinkable making the decision
Despite the fact that this was the age of Western imperialism and gunboat diplomacy, Korea failed to erect a large standing military and navy. Instead of uniting under the banner of protecting Korea’s sovereignty, some officials were more concerned with protecting their own privileges. Robinson wrote “The lack of consensus in domestic politics…inhibited any program to gather
Koreans were under Japanese rule for a long time. It was officially signed as a colony on August 22, 1910, but Japanese had been planning this annexation from 1876 the Japanese-Korea treaty of amity. Japanese plan of annexation started with this treaty. This treaty allowed Japanese to come to Korean harbors freely and this marked the end of Korea’s status as a protectorate of China. Also later on October 8th, 1895, Japanese minister Miura Goro plotted the assassination of Empress Myeongseong. With the assassination, Japanese were able to control the economy and military power and made the Koreans sig...
The Tang Dynasty (618 -907 A.D), also known as China’s glorious revelation, was a time of major change both politically and economically in the Chinese Empire. During this time period, trade became greater than ever. The military power strengthened. The population also increased during this time period from fifty million to eighty million in just two centuries with its large population base, the dynasty was able to raise professional and conscripted armies of hundreds of thousands of troops to contend with nomadic powers in dominating Inter Asia. The Tang also has a strong influence on its neighboring states such as Korea (which was at the time made if of three kingdoms) and Japan. During this time period the Silk Road expanded and trade
Japan was imperializing late nineteenth century to early twentieth century. Korea was a Japanese colony. After World War II, the Japanese had to get rid of the colony. North Korea became a Communist. South Korea wants to be democratic.
North Korea, with the Soviet Union’s support, attacked South Korea because they wanted South Korea to become communists. In June 1950, North Korea (who was supplied strongly by the Soviets) launched a massive attack on South Korea. The reason behind this attack was that North Korea wanted to unite the whole of Korea under communism. The United Nations responded to this attack by gathering a great army, which was led by General Douglas MacArthur of the United States to defend South Korea. China threatened that if the United Na...
While the Korean War tends to be “forgotten” in military history, the conflict was rife with battles that changed history and defined future battle strategies. One of these battles, later referred to as the loss of Suwon Airfield, contained some of the first aerial “dogfights” and became an example for future pilots for aerial battle strategy. But the battle was not only fought in the air—upon closer study, it becomes obvious that the ground troops’ behavior is the main reason for the loss of the airfield’s control.
The relations between and Korea and Japan has a long history. The first exchange of goods and information between the two goes back to the era of Three Countries and since then the relations between the two developed both in good and bad ways until now.
In 1127, after a prince of the Song Dynasty fled across the Yangtze River to Hangzhou, the Southern Song Dynasty was established. The Southern Song Dynasty achieved a period of economic success, prosperity, and artistic creativity, despite the fact that the military was not exactly strong. The Southern Song Dynasty’s downfall did not come from problems within, but was overthrown by Mongols in 1279, marking the end of the Song Dynasty.
Steinberg, David I., and Donald N. Clark. "Review of The Kwangju Uprising: Shadows over the Regime in South Korea." The Journal of Asian Studies 47.3 (1988): 662-63. Print.