Donghak Peasant Revolution
Korean peasants rose in 1894 under a religious movement called Donghak, and the suppression brought China and Japan to war. Donghak — Eastern Learning — was founded in 1860 by Choe Je-u as a deliberate answer to Western Learning, meaning Catholicism. It combined Confucian, Buddhist and shamanic elements with a doctrine that every person carries the divine within, which in a rigidly stratified society was a political statement. Choe was executed in 1864. The rising began in Jeolla province in the south-west, the richest rice country in Korea and the most heavily squeezed, over the exactions of a county magistrate. The grievances were the ordinary ones — corrupt local officials, arbitrary levies, grain tribute — plus the visible presence of Japanese merchants who were buying rice for export while Koreans went short. The rebels beat the government forces sent against them and took the provincial capital at Jeonju in May. The court then asked China for troops, and Japan sent its own under a treaty allowing it to match any Chinese deployment. The rebels made peace with the government in June precisely to remove the pretext, and neither foreign army left. Japan seized the palace in July and the First Sino-Japanese War followed. A second Donghak rising that autumn, aimed at the Japanese, was destroyed at Ugeumchi by modern rifles. Jeon Bong-jun was hanged in 1895. Perhaps 300,000 died in the suppression. Korea became a Japanese protectorate in 1905 and a colony in 1910, and both Korean states now treat the revolt as a founding episode of their own histories.
- Year: 1894 CE
- Category: Military
