The last decade or so of the 19^th century was not an auspicious one for Korea. Still fresh from the failed attempts at reform ("The Kapsin coup" of 1884), the 1890s opened with Korean policy adrift, with foreign powers the increasing and vociferous arbiters of its national will. Great Britain occupied Kômun-do from 1885 to 1887 to check what it viewed as menacing Russian advances on the peninsula. Japan, increasingly covetous of its influence over this neighboring country, did not mull over its failed support of the Kapsin plotters but continued to press aggressively for merchant rights in Korea and to plot the check of Chinese influence. Augustine Heard (1827-1905), the American Minister to Korea from 1890 to 1893, summed up the atmosphere on the peninsula shortly before his final departure, writing, “Discontent is rife, and there is an uneasy feeling that an outbreak of some sort cannot long be delayed.” That same year saw Japanese pressure on Korea increase as that country continued to press for large indemnities from anticipated losses incurred by Korea’s halting of bean exports in the autumn of 1889. As the Korean delegation was heading to the Chicago World’s Fair it had been confirmed that Japan would oversee the minting of new Korean coinage, an ominous sign of things to come. Setting aside the vaguer threat posed by Great Britain and other Western powers, Japanese ambitions on the peninsula were faced with two formidable roadblocks – China and Russia. Despite Korea’s nominal independence as stipulated in the 1876 Kanghwa Treaty, China maintained an anxious desire to preserve its historical influence in Korea, both politically and economically. From 1885 and arrival of Yuan Shikai (1859-1915) as Chinese representative to Korea, China had set out upon an unabashed course of establishing its hegemony, and to this end repeatedly and effectively interfered in the functioning of the Korean legation in Tokyo, established in 1887, in the United States, established in 1888, as well as in Europe. From 1885 Chinese trade also began to make formidable inroads into that of Japanese merchants. Whereas 1887 saw Japan’s exports to Korea almost three times that of China, by 1892 the two countries split the Korean trade almost equally. China’s determination to thwart Japanese influence in Korea would bring it to blows with that country in 1894-95. With the Chinese defeat, Korea would enjoy an Indian summer as Russia and Japan (and their respective systems of alliances) left Korea a relative freedom of action. This “long twilight of Korean independence”, as it has been called, would come to an end with the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 and the emergence of Japanese hegemony in Northeast Asia.

In this decade where political and diplomatic crises followed one another in rising crescendo, and where short-term political machinations hampered any unified vision of development, the actions of the Korean king seemed increasingly irrelevant. The popularly led Tonghak Revolt of 1894 may be seen as one reaction to this pitiable state of national affairs, a revolt that came to be as much about anti-foreignism and political reform as about religious toleration. The first sign of renewed Tonghak revolt came in fact as the Korean delegation to Chicago was en route, when Tonghak faithful petitioned in front of the royal palace in Seoul for the revocation of official persecution in March 1893.

The rising voice of nationalism was certainly constitute another reaction, as increasingly conscientious Korean intellectuals and writers began to opine publicly upon their nation’s downward spiral, and for whom Kim Ok-kyun (1851-1894), living in exile in Japan following the failed Kapsin revolt, constituted a figurehead and rallying point.

The Korean presence at the two world’s fairs, that of 1893 in Chicago and 1900 in Paris, I believe constitute two other such reactions, albeit official ones. In the midst of this prolonged crisis at century’s end, the opportunity to promote its own identity and to speak in its own voice in an international environment must have seemed a rare and welcome one to a Korea and its king increasingly hemmed in by the tide of national rivalries that was engulfing her. It was this that Chicago and Paris offered – the opportunity for Korea to present itself to an outside world that knew practically nothing of her, that still referred to her, almost twenty years after her opening to the outside world, by such epithets as the "Hermit Kingdom" or "Hermit Nation", and categorized her more in terms of a Korean "Question", or a Korean "problem" to be solved rather than as a national entity and advanced culture in her own right. What’s more, Korea’s participation in Chicago and Paris, despite its financially strapped situation, may be seen as attempts to augment its ties to Western nations in the face of increasing Japanese pressure.

A prominent Korean scholar recently posed the question, "Was Korea a Hermit Nation?"[Yi Tae-jin, 1999]. This term, he argues, which finds its real genesis in the history of Korea entitled Corea: the Hermit Nation by William Elliot Griffis, played well into subsequent Japanese attempts to color Korea as recalcitrant in its traditional ways, stubborn to reform or modernize, insular and unwilling to deal with the outside world – all of which justified Japan’s later annexation of the country, in the name of progress and the future well-being of the Korean people. Though this paper will in no way offer any definitive answer, if there be one, as to whether Korea constituted a "hermit kingdom", an examination of Korea’s heartfelt attempt to engage itself with the international community, an attempt which, as we shall see, included the eager involvement of the Korean monarchy, will hopefully shed some meager light on Korea’s hopes and ambitions at century’s end.

But Korea’s involvement in the fair at Chicago, as later in Paris, may also serve as a touchstones of Western perceptions of Korea, particularly American perceptions, as well as serve to further illuminate America’s larger hopes for the World’s Columbian Exposition itself.

History has no beginning nor end, the act of telling history must be a creative act, and entails the arbitrary selection of a starting point that is in actuality artificial. For this story an appropriate starting point would be with a man, Horace Newton Allen.

Not much has been written about Horace Newton Allen (1858-1932) - missionary, physician, businessman, diplomat, royal confidant – considering the tremendous influence he possessed with Korea’s King Kojong (after 1897 Emperor Kwangmu), and the influential hand he had in Korean affairs in the twenty years from 1884 to 1905. It would be Allen to whom King Kojong would habitually turn in moments of need and crisis vis à vis the outside world, and he would be decisive in Korea’s participation in the 1893 World’s Fair at Chicago. A brief glance of the man and his career in called for.

A Presbyterian from Ohio with a long and distinguished American pedigree stretching back to the founding American colonies, and including Ethan Allen, a young Dr. Allen first arrived in Korea in 1884 from China, where he had been serving as a medical missionary in Nanjing and Shanghai for the previous two years. For Allen and his young wife and newborn, the move was welcome. They had found China inhospitable and hostile to foreign missionaries. Allen, who has been described as temperamental and impatient, had higher hopes for his new posting. What he could not have foreseen was that he was arriving in Korea at a time of crisis and opportunity. With approval from the Korean king, always suspicious of the infiltration of more Christian missions, Allen was appointed physician to the legation of the United States, as well as of England, Japan, and China (primarily to conceal his missionary activity), while becoming at the same time the first Presbyterian missionary in Korea. Only few months after his arrival the perhaps ill-starred but certainly ill-conceived Kapsin revolt broke out in December 1884. Allen won the lifelong confidence of King Kojong when he saved the life of Queen Min’s cousin Min Yông-ik from life-threatening wounds inflicted by the would be coupists. The coup attempt quickly fell apart as Chinese and loyal Korean troops retook control from the coup leaders and their Japanese supporters. Allen became thereafter a sort of unofficial advisor to the king on foreign matters. He set a personal precedent by accompanying the first Korean diplomatic delegation to the United States in 1887 on the heels of the "Treaty of American-Korean Amity" of 1882. The American gunboat carrying Allen and the embassy left Chemulpo (Inchon) despite attempts by China to thwart its passage. Allen would remain at the Korean legation on Iowa Circle in Washington D.C. for almost two years, as sort of unofficial advisor, before being appointed by President Benjamin Harrison as secretary to the American legation in Seoul in 1890, at the request of the Korean king himself. Allen would go on to serve as secretary to legation and then as minister until his resignation and return to the United States in 1905 at the time of the Japanese protectorship. Even in retirement he would serve briefly as agent of Kojong in attempts to muster United States opposition to the protectorship. As sign of his years of service Allen was awarded by then Emperor Kwangmu (King Kojong) with the T’aiguk First Class, the highest order of merit that could be bestowed upon a minister.

In 1890, upon his return to Korea, it is safe to say that Kojong was glad to have him back. Informal meetings between the two were not infrequent, with Allen proffering his advice on such subjects as relations with Japan and the building of railways, while continuing to serve as court physician. In September 1892 Allen applied for leave of absence from his duties in Seoul for the following year in order to "visit the United States on the occasion of the World’s Columbian Exposition". A few days later, in an audience with King Kojong, Allen mentioned his plans for leave the following year and was surprised to hear the Korean king’s sudden enthusiasm for sending a Korean delegation to the planned fair in Chicago. Describing the audience in a dispatch to Washington soon afterward, it is apparent that the king’s decision was sudden and unexpected. He writes, "It seemed recently that it would be impossible – owing to many causes – to induce this government to prepare and send an exhibit to the Fair, but His Majesty on learning that I had applied to my government for leave of absence to visit the Fair began to show more interest in sending an exhibit and has now begun collecting articles which he asks me to receive, pack and ship."

Why the sudden change in King Kojong’s attitude towards the Chicago fair? Before that can be answered one must address the difficult but rather important point of if, and when, Korea was first invited to participate. If one could determine when Korea opted to send a delegation it might go far in answering why they decided to do so, and what they hoped to gain. But the task of piecing together Korea’s decision to go to Chicago is not such an easy one.

Allen had written in September 1892 that "it seemed recently that it would be impossible…to induce this government to prepare and send an exhibit". As Allen’s words indicate, Korea had previously been invited, or at least had heard of, the planned Chicago spectacle before Kojong’s sudden decision that month to participate.

We know that President Benjamin Harrison, on Christmas Eve 1890, issued official letters "inviting foreign nations to come to the Exposition…[and] accompanied by a letter of the Secretary of State, containing regulations for foreign exhibitors." We also know from diplomatic correspondence between the American legation in Seoul and the Korean Department of Foreign Affairs that in May 1891 a special commissioner from the planned World’s Columbian Exposition arrived in Seoul in the person of Gustavus Goward, one time secretary of the American legation in Japan. On behalf of the Director General of the Chicago exposition Horace Allen requested a domestic passport for the American commissioner to proceed to Suwon and P’yongyang and other points "in pursuit of his special mission". After this visit, however, we hear no more of Goward, and it is never clear, at least in official records to light, of what his "special mission" entailed, nor if he proffered an official invitation to the Korean king, though he certainly must have. At any rate, in February 1892 Horace Allen himself received credentials as an Honorary Commissioner of the World’s Fair from Walker Fearn, Commissioner of the Department of Foreign Affairs for the World’s Columbian Exposition. It seems certain that this would not have been done had not Korea indicated a desire to participate earlier, thus necessitating an acting, credentialed representative on the ground in Seoul. The American periodical, Manufacturer and Builder for March 1892, includes Korea in its listing of "Foreign Participation" at the World’s Fair. Unlike most of the other listed nations, however, Korea has no dollar amount fixed in the "appropriations" column of the same list, suggesting its involvement was still quite tenuous. China, which did not end up participating in any official capacity, is also listed, also with no dollar amount given. The most likely conclusion to all of this then is that Korea, like other nations, received the official invitation of 1890 but never provided a firm response one way or the other. Considering the small size of the exhibit that was eventually sent (and King Kojong’s concern with costs), it is easy to surmise that Korea may have initially shown interest in the World’s Fair, say in 1891, receded from its earlier position in the face of fiscal crises, only to suddenly decide once more to participate when Kojong heard that Allen would be physically attending the exposition.

Obviously then, the key factor to Korean participation seems to be the special personal relationship between Kojong and Allen, one based upon personal trust and service going back nearly six years, years spent in the service of Korean king and nation both in Korea and the United States. Realizing that Allen would be traveling himself to the fair, and knowing Allen’s experience leading a Korean team to the United States, helped convince Kojong to go ahead with a Korean exhibit. . Korea in 1892 had virtually no presence overseas. Korean emigration would not begin until 1903 and the Korean legation to the United States remained highly fettered by Chinese interference. Only the personal and hands-on help of someone like Allen could make Korean participation a reality. This scenario would be repeated in 1900, when the personal offices of the French minister in Korea, Collin de Plancy, would be instrumental in getting the Koreans to Paris.

Another likely factor, however, involves the political situation in Korea at the time. As mentioned earlier, 1889 saw a prolonged diplomatic crisis of sorts open up between Japan and Korea over the "bean issue". In that year the governor of Hamgyông province, Cho Pyông-sik, stopped the export of beans on the grounds that the combination of poor crop and over-buying by Japanese merchants threatened imminent shortage of this important Korean staple. Because the Korean governor had failed to give the one month warning period such actions required under Korean-Japanese trade agreements, and because the Japanese claimed charges of over-buying were false to begin with, the Japanese soon pressed claims for compensation of lost earnings. Despite the Korean government’s rescinding of the ban on exports they were effectively stopped until April 1890. The ensuing drama concerned indemnity demands by the Japanese, for pecuniary losses to Japanese merchants estimated to have accrued as a result of the ban, indemnities that amounted to almost 150,000 yen. Diplomatic negotiations ensued during the next two years without satisfactory result. In January 1892 the original negotiators for both sides were replaced, the Japanese minister-negotiator being succeeded by Oishi Masami, who lacked the tact and delicacy of a diplomat. With Oishi’s appointment Japanese pressure seemed to increase tremendously and negotiations soon took a decided turn for the worse, with negotiations at times reduced to personal insult. In March 1893 Oishi even recommended to his superiors that Japan occupy the ports of Inchon and Pusan, until the matter could be settled satisfactorily. A third party witness to these events as they unfolded, and deteriorated, in 1892-93 was the American Minister to Korea, Augustine Heard (1827-1905). In an article published about two years after these events, Heard openly questions Japanese intentions in Korea as being paternalistic, and argues the folly of the overly pro-Japanese opinion. Remembering the period of Oishi’s tenure beginning in January 1892, and his frustrated efforts ("with more energy than courtesy") to gain the sought for indemnities, Heard writes that "Mr. Oishi would be delighted to have a pretext to interfere by force in Korea". Heard even goes on to speculate that the hand of the Japanese may be in the Tonghak uprising. Despite Heard’s misplaced suspicions on that final point, his reflections do illustrate the period of diplomatic crisis that began to develop after January 1892. It is not too much to speculate then that this state of affairs may have served to drive home the reality of Japanese pressures to King Kojong, and made clear to him the necessity of shoring up friendships elsewhere. "Great America" was one obvious place to turn, and Korea’s participation at Chicago one such way to underscore their mutual friendship, as first made manifest in the Korean-American Friendship Treaty of 1882. Though American "good offices" would eventually be tried and found wanting in 1905 and after, in 1893 they still stood as a source of security. Kojong’s official message to President Cleveland would express the Korean king’s hopes "to strengthen and increase [the] friendship and commercial relations between our two countries."

Be this as it may, Kojong’s sudden change of heart also seems to lend further credence to the idea of that monarch’s heavy reliance upon foreign advisors to instill him with the confidence to act, at least on an international level. This is a pattern that would be repeated during the period of Russian influence in 1896-1897 after the failure of the Kabo Reforms. Foreign advisors in fact seem to play inordinately strong roles in Korea of the late Chosôn. It is also indicative of Kojong’s tendency to vacillate upon matters according to political winds. But not to be disregarded is the indication it also gives of the Korean monarch’s desire, albeit diffident and somewhat unsure, to join the international community at the World’s Fair, and not to maintain an entrenched conservative and isolationist attitude.

Korea had missed several boats when it came to joining proceedings at world’s fairs. Japan had been displaying its national culture and progress at such gatherings since Vienna in 1874, and China longer still. Indeed, for Japan they would become the showcases of its industrial and social developments that would help "sell" it to the Western powers as equal. Korea on the other hand was known in Western countries only as a name that occasionally cropped up in Western newspapers as the latest locale of intrigue or conflict in an area ripe with national rivalries. In this respect, the role of the world’s fair at the end of the 19^th century deserves closer scrutiny.

Since the middle of the 19^th century, and especially since the Paris exhibition of 1889, world’s fairs had become not only the global showcases for national achievement, but as the venue for non-Western nations to present themselves to their foreign audience, their coming out stage, as it were. But there should be no mistaking the fact that these fairs and exhibitions, which found their progenitor in London’s Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851, were Western in inspiration, organization, and orientation. That is, despite the active involvement of increasing numbers of non-Western nations (and colonial holdings), the fairs were more than anything a showcase of Western achievements in the arts, sciences, and industry, and the inclusion of non-Western nations and peoples evolved more as a showcase, at times blatantly entertaining in aspect, of the "other", as foil to Western norms and the superiority of Western mores and achievements. This aspect of the world’s fair has been examined with increasing interest in the last twenty years, in great part due to the academic success of Edward Said’s Orientalism, in reexamining the motivating factors behind Western constructs of the non-Western. In this contemporary reexamination of the fairs, and their representation of the foreigner, a few salient themes have presented themselves.

One is the "Victorian" penchant for the exotic, more specifically for equating culture with place. This was a phenomenon that evolved particularly after the Paris Exhibit of 1867, when foreign participants were first included on a large scale. These inclusions of non-Western representatives was predominantly entertaining in aspect and served to add to the fairs attraction (and revenues, for they were increasingly commercial in nature) by titillating their audience with views and tastes of the exotic. This tendency can be witnessed in Allen when he mentions the traditional white outfits he expects the appointment as Korean commissioner to go to a high civil officer, whose colorful native outfit would "add to the attraction"., or in his hopes of "entertaining an exhibit for that department [the Women’s Building] from this land of female seclusion". Further, to differentiate this entertaining aspect of the display of the foreign, the most exotic displays were set apart from the more "serious" aspects of the fair, that is the displays of Western arts and sciences. After 1867 specifically, the displays of under-developed, non-Western nations, were presented to the fairgoer as curiosities and oddities, to be gawked at, flirted with, and indulged for a short time. Along with this came the emphasis on their primitiveness, all in contrast to the more refined and rational aspects of Western culture. This is evident not only in the manner in which they were presented but in the physical layout of the fairs themselves. After the 1867 Paris exposition it was traditional that a certain portion of the fair grounds be set aside as an area of country-centered motifs, particularly underdeveloped and colonized areas of the world that lent the scene an air of exoticism and excitement. For the Chicago World’s Fair this would be the Midway Plaisance, a half-mile or so pedestrian stretch bordered by such distractions as a Chinese "joss house" or a Persian Theater, all of which contrasted sharply with the rational philosophy manifested in the rest of the fairgrounds, with its imposing neo-classical architecture and geometrical layout. Despite its contemporary aspersions to being the locale where one could "study humanity in all its aspects", the plaisance was foremost a place of diversion and entertainment, and one that would more than pull its weight in making the fair turn a profit. One contemporary seems to sum up the period attitude towards the Midway and its attractions:

Another aspect of the fairs was their sense of cosmopolitanism, though again this was done under the ultimate assumption of Western superiority. The expositions increasingly served as venues for international conferences on cultural and intellectual matters, bringing together scholars and officials from a wide range of backgrounds and intellectual training. World’s Fairs in the nineteenth century began increasingly to celebrate diversity to an extreme. Chicago was no exception and the fair would serve as the venue for, among many others, the International Congress on Anthropology and the Conference on World Religions, where Japanese Shinto priests and Catholic bishops exhibited the unique aspects of their respective faiths.

Finally, perhaps too much emphasis has been placed lately on the intellectual-cultural-imperial aspects of the fairs and not enough to the economic. It is not too much to say that one of the primary motivations behind holding a fair, at least by the late nineteenth centuries when the gatherings had grown to monumental size and scope, was commercial. It was a money-making endeavor that to succeed required not simply the bland displays of farm machinery and agricultural products but the amusement and distraction of games and the "exotic".

Allen immediately, if somewhat reluctantly, accepted King Kojong’s charge to lead the Korean team to Chicago. Displaying an initial enthusiasm, Kojong went about (as Allen mentioned) organizing an appropriate display and choosing representatives. To lead the Korean delegation to Chicago King Kojong chose Chông Kyông-wôn (1841-?), who despite his middle-age had only passed the Special Literary Examination (pyôlsi munkwa) in 1890, and was subsequently appointed to the Office of Special Advisers (hongmun’gwan ) before being named Vice-Minister of the Interior (icho ch’amp’an ).

By 1893, though still rather fresh to officialdom, he had risen through the official ranks with remarkable speed. His delegation to lead to the Chicago delegation may be interpreted as a sign of royal confidence in his abilities and loyalties (he was related to the king through one of Kojong's secondary wives). This would be confirmed later, soon upon his return to Korea in 1894, when he was sent south to deal with the Tonghak Uprising then rocking the Cholla Provinces. He clearly had some reformist tendencies, perhaps strengthened by his brief sojourn in Chicago and Washington, for during the 1894 Kabo Reforms he was named to the important post of member of the then established Deliberative Council (kunguk kimuch’on ) and then Minister of Justice (pôbmuhyôpp’an) in the moderate-progressive Kim Hong-jip cabinet. After the failure of the Kapo Reforms and the retrenchment of the Korean government, Chông is sent to be vice-governor of P’yongyang, from whence he disappears from the historical record. At any rate, in early March 1893 (Western calendar), in an audience with King Kojong, he was granted a commission as samu taesin and ch’ulp’umsa mudaewôn – as Royal Commissioner and chargé of the Korean exhibit going to Chicago. Along with Chông, King Kojong appointed two others as part of the Korean delegation, to which a third would be added later. Chông was also given on this date the official commission and greeting that would eventually be transmitted to President Grover Cleveland in May 1893. It read in part,

For his part, Allen was soon busy trying desperately on short notice to arrange Korean floor space. In a letter to Walker Fearn (1832-1899), the Commissioner of the Office of Foreign Relations for the Chicago fair, Allen suggests 400 square feet as an appropriately sized space, though he later retracts this fearing the small space might insult the Koreans. As it turned out, the Korean king was indeed curious as to the size of the Korean exhibit compared with that of other nations.

November 1892 saw a curious visitor to Seoul and the royal compound in the person of Amedée Baillol de Guerville (1869-?), or simply A.B. de Guerville as he was known to his American audience. At this time de Guerville, quite a young man considering his charge, had already made a name for himself as newspaper correspondent and itinerant lecturer, chiefly for Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly and Frank Leslie’s Weekly, and would become a war correspondent for the New York Tribune during the approaching Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895). Despite his present anonymity, his life, around which lingers a scent of chicanery, saw him acquainted with kings, emperors, presidents, and popes. A scandal involving unpaid debts and the abandonment of his young wife saw his return to Paris around 1900 where his pen soon falls silent and he vanishes. But 1892 saw him at the top of his game and, by means that remain unclear, dispatched as a Special Commissioner to the World’s Fair to Japan, Korea, and China to encourage participation at Chicago. As such he seems to be part of a second public relations offensive in Northeast Asia, the first one being that of Gustavus Goward in 1891. This was done mostly through audiences with important officials and through the enactment of an impressive magic lantern show (a young technology he also used regularly in his New York lectures), which besides "American cities and scenery" included images of past fairs, namely that of Paris in 1889. The magic lantern show he gave to an audience of Li Hung-chang and his family at Tientsin in the autumn of 1892 caused quite a sensation, as would be the one given to the Japanese Emperor and Empress. In mid November 1892 de Guerville arrived in Seoul to pitch his show to King Kojong and Queen Min. The American Minister Augustine Heard’s request for a royal audience for de Guerville was soon granted. De Guerville still recalled ten years later how the queen, upon seeing the magic lantern views of Chicago and Paris, and particularly of the Women’s Building, "became highly excited and quitting her hiding place [from behind a screen meant to conceal her and her ladies in waiting from view], approached the white curtain on which the views were being displayed. She touched it with her finger and asked for a thousand explanations. She gave the strong impression of a woman of great intelligence and will." Allen, though disappointed in de Guerville’s apparent lack of knowledge on the logistical details of the fair, was impressed himself with the lantern show and wrote to Walker Fearn of Queen Min’s strong interest in the Women’s Building. Queen Min was apparently impressed that Japan had agreed to put together a women’s exhibit to send to Chicago and Allen held out hopes (not to be realized) that Queen Min might in her turn contribute a Korean women’s exhibit. He writes, "Her Majesty was quite impressed with the Women’s Building and Mrs. Palmer’s [Potter Palmer, chief commissioner for the women’s exhibit] work, as well as the fact that the Empress of Japan was taking such an active interest in the women’s department, and I have hopes yet of entertaining an exhibit for that department from this land of female seclusion."

Logistical problems plagued the exhibition from the start. Allen encountered some difficulties in acquiring a decent amount of floor space in the Arts and Manufacturers Building, the hoped for inclusion of a women’s exhibit was not forthcoming, and most seriously, there were problems with funding. Though Kojong assured Allen in January 1893 that the Korean team would be given $6000 to cover expenses, with a further $2000 to be sent on later, this doesn’t seem to have been the case. The treasury coffers were said to be empty in November 1892. We know American workers in Korea were filing formal complaints with the American minister about unpaid wages. American Minister Heard was somewhat dismayed to hear in March 1893 that Kojong had decided, upon a reading an official description of the fair that had been translated into Chinese for his perusal, to augment the Korean delegation by one official delegate and a ten person band. Heard wrote home, "if I had known of the intention to send them earlier I should have been disposed, if not to discourage the project, [then] to point out the very considerable expense which would be caused by it – expense which this country is ill able to afford". Apparently there were no funds forthcoming for the imminent departure of the Koreans and their crates of displays. Minister Heard telegraphed on to the San Francisco Customs Office requesting a waive of customs duties for the Koreans as he himself had no authority to advance any funds, meanwhile the Korean delegation in Washington made the same sort of request. The American reporter John Cockerill also seemed to have some information regarding the pecuniary difficulties of the Korean delegation, namely that they arrived in America with a "minimum of ready cash" of which more shall be said later.

Allen departed for the United States in mid-January 1892. In a final pre-departure audience with Kojong the Korean king seems uneasy that Allen might not return. He requests that if Allen fails to get a good position in the American government to "go to his [the Korean] Legation as Secretary or come back here and take service in his [the Korean] government. That I must not give up Korea."

The Korea delegation eventually left Korea from Chemulpo in late March 1893 on the S.S. China bound for Yokohama and San Francisco. In Yokohama they apparently switched vessels to the larger steamship Belgic, where they were joined in their voyage by members of the Japanese delegation to Chicago. The more important members of the Korean delegation got cabin accommodations, the rest, including the ten-person band, were put in steerage. Their arrival in San Francisco about two weeks later was met by some curious publicity, but again we know only the American reaction while the Korean voices remain virtually silent.

According the San Francisco Chronicle reporter, the Koreans all arrived "arrayed in the curious silken gowns of the Coreans, and they wore the strange black hats, which look more like pieces of oddly shaped and perforated stovepipe than anything else. From the tops of some of the hats dangled square bits of black cloth about an inch in size, and looking something like the flag of a ship would far out to sea." Allen’s expressed hopes on the curiosity the native dress would elicit were not misplaced.

Once at their hotel the Koreans ate sparingly of the soups, vegetables and meats placed before them, while "Royal Commissioner Won [Chông Kyông-wôn] seemed somewhat at a loss how to proceed". No sooner settled into their rooms, and no doubt exhausted by their long journey and overcome with their foreign surroundings, a Chronicle reporter arrived for an interview. The Koreans, according to the American reporter, spoke in their "queer language" and their hotel desk was found strewn with "papers with strange hieroglyphics on them". In interviews with Commissioner Chông and the newly appointed Korean secretary to the Korean mission in the United States, Yi Siung Su ( ), initial Korean impressions of America are gauged. Secretary Yi is careful to steer any questions away from sensitive, i.e. political, topics, reacting to the reporter’s inquiry concerning "Russian intrigues" and current conditions in Korea, by indicating that "the Korean government was very strict about having its representatives talk, because so many misleading statements have been made". Commissioner Chông, whom the reporter describes as representing "the Hermit Kingdom at the World’s Fair", expressed his hope to "learn much in this country regarding great inventions and the advancement of the arts and sciences". It was perhaps the ten-man delegation of Korean musicians that elicited the most curiosity, and they are described as a "very jolly lot of orientals…laughing and dancing much of the time".

From San Francisco the delegation proceeded by train to Chicago. We do not, unfortunately, have the impressions of the Korean delegation to this portion of their journey, of the Rocky Mountains and the overwhelming emptiness of the Great Plains as they made their way to Chicago. It was a path Robert Louis Stevenson had taken a few years earlier and regarding which he has left us his sentiments in his travelogue Across the Plains. Not much would have changed as the Koreans traversed the emptiness of Nebraska:

It would also be interesting to know of any negative reactions the Koreans almost surely would have encountered among their fellow American passengers. This was, after all, the height of anti-Chinese sentiment, particularly out west. The great "Yellow Peril" had resulted in the "Geary Bill" of 1893, prohibiting further Chinese immigration to the United States. For his part, Robert Louis Stevenson despised the anti-Chinese sentiments he encountered in abundance during his train voyage. "Heaven knows", he wrote of his fellow Chinese passengers, "if we had one common thought or fancy all that way, or whether our eyes, which yet were formed upon the same design, beheld the same world out of the railway windows."

Six days after leaving San Francisco the Koreans arrived in Chicago, the long journey from Seoul to Chicago taking, at the end of the 19^th century, just under 26 days. As in San Francisco, the Koreans attracted the immediate curiosity of the local press, which, notified by wire, were waiting to report on their arrival. The Korean musicians were again a source of attention. They were compared with the "Javanese people on the plaisance"[Midway Plaisance] and performed "strangely on tom-toms, instruments that look like either a mandolin or a guitar, and big gongs". Commissioner Chông for his part makes it strictly known that the Korean musicians are not to play for revenue but to add to the dignity of the Korean commissioners. Throughout these interviews it is usually the Korean Secretary Yi who speaks on behalf of the entire delegation. He says of the overall Korean delegation to Chicago, "I have heard the no Corean [sic] people will come to the Fair. It is decided that the two Commissioners and the native band shall be the representation, and these, with our exhibit, will be sufficient to show the interest we have in the big Exposition."

Twenty-six cases of goods accompanied the Korean delegation to Chicago. Arriving in Chicago on April 29, they were in no way prepared, despite the relatively small size of the Korean display, by the opening day of May 1. Even by late May Allen writes to the State Department for an unpaid 60 day extension of his leave "..as the Exposition is not yet in good running order and the Korean officials are anxious for me to remain a little longer". These seems difficult to believe, judging from the limited size of the exhibit. More likely, based upon the audience that Commissioner Chông would have with Kojong upon his return, that the Koreans were a little overwhelmed by the crowds and the vast foreign metropolis, and felt a little better with Allen around. Most of the Korean team spoke not a world of English, Secretary Yi having already proceeded on to Washington D.C. and his official posting. They were to rely primarily on a Mr. Pak Yôn-kin, who was in the United States for naval training, for their translation work.

The Korean exhibit was set up in the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building. This edifice was an engineering marvel of its day, contributing perhaps more than any other structure to the architectural legacy that was "The White City" of the summer of 1893 (though it was to burn to the ground within a year). It was the largest open building ever constructed and commanded an anchoring presence for the fair grounds on the shores of Lake Michigan. One visitor described it as "greater than the whole exposition at Philadelphia [in 1876]. About the top of the dome of one building the walk is an even half mile... I was dazed at the magnitude of the building and at the marvelous variety of odd, instructive, and beautiful articles on exhibition." As the semi-official Book of the Fair, which appeared not long after the fair’s opening, described the Manufactures Building, it contained "…a comprehensive display of the choicest specimens culled from the manufactured products of all the nations, with the allotments of space among many thousands of participants reduced to a minimum, that justice might be done to the greatest number and room afforded for all the most worthy exhibits". The description goes on, "Here also may be noted the cruder products of countries whose manufacturing industries are yet in their infancy, such countries as Zanzibar and the Orange Free State, as Madagascar, Korea, and Siam". Korea, then, was clearly set aside (unlike Japan or even China) as a primitive and developing country – interestingly enough included among a group of nations many of whom were already colonized. Apparently enough was in place by May 1, when the official opening of the fair took place in a less than encouraging atmosphere of rain and yellow mud. Newly inaugurated President Grover Cleveland presided, and after the opening speeches and the march of nations. One reporter wrote how "The foreigners of all nationalities in their distinctive costumes attracted a great deal of attention; but none more than the Indians atop the Administrative Building…and the Koreans with their long flowing robes of bright colors and queer-looking headresses. The confusion of the popular mind with references to the distinction between Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans, etc., was amusing". The President and his entourage made a symbolic tour through the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building, where, upon passing the unfinished Korean exhibit, the Korean band received him with some native music.

Korea was allotted the barest of spaces in the building’s southwest corner, sandwiched between Colombia and Ecuador. The small size of its collective exhibit meant all its products were predominantly arranged in one place, rather than dispersed around the various exhibition halls. The structure itself was built somewhat to resemble a traditional Korean structure, complete with painting and ceramic tile roofing. Inside the open pavilion-like structure the most visible displays were perhaps of a gentleman’s dress, official military uniform, firearms, and Korean musical instruments. Mostly the items consisted of daily household curios such as combs, fans, dinnerware, and smoking pipes. The official directory to the fair actually describes it as "bric-a-brac and curios". Yun Ch’i-ho (1865-1945), at the time finishing a prolonged period of study in the United States, passed through Chicago on his return to Japan and Korea, and despite Secretary Yi’s earlier assertion that no Koreans would visit the fair, did stop by the Korean exhibit and left us his impressions: "Corea has a corner where are found the crude productions of the Corean skill or rather dullness. While I could not help blushing at the poverty of the Corean arts etc. the sight of the Corean flags had a strong attraction to me." In a later newspaper article, John Cockerill, who had connections to both Allen and de Guerville, confirmed this sense of the Korean display’s poverty (though he got the details wrong), "Our seductive agents for the Fair presented the Corean King with a request from our government for an exhibit, which impressed His immature Majesty with the idea of a command. He hastily knocked together a rather inexpensive collection of Corean junk and shipped it off to Chicago".

The Book of the Fair was somewhat more positive concerning the Korea’s exhibit (if not its king):

The Book of the Fair’s descriptive of Korea goes on,

It is interesting that Korea is yet described, almost twenty years after its opening, as a "hermit kingdom…secluding herself from the influences of western civilization".

Korea, not surprisingly, went relatively unnoticed at the fair. Japan and China both received relatively wide treatment in the Chicago papers, despite the fact that China did not send an official delegation. It should be noted, however, that the attention given China and Japan was decidedly different in tone. Both countries received special full- page treatment in the special Sunday section of the Chicago Tribune dedicated to the fair. While the Japanese display was praised, that of China (actually set up by private Chinese interests in the United States) was taken mostly as a convenient target for a barrage of anti-Chinese sentiments. Korea remained all but invisible, which of itself speaks much. It was, in the growing Western enthusiasm for Japan and its modernization, an invisibility that would be repeated at the Hague in 1907, or at Versailles in 1914. It is not too much to make such comparisons.

The Chicago fair ended in October 21, 1893. Before the turnstiles stopped, however, the Korean delegation would gain one more burst of publicity in a lavish dinner it threw for the World’s Fair Commissioners at the luxurious Auditorium Hotel on September 5, 1893, in honor of King Kojong’s birthday. To return one final time to John Cockerill, he writes that the fete was made possible by the sudden arrival of a monetary windfall sent from Korea that allowed the indulgence (which amounted to almost $1500). As a result,

The banquet guests included the Mayor Harrison of Chicago, a month before his assassination, and President Thomas Palmer of the Commission for the World’s Columbian Exposition, as well as Walker Fearn and the Japanese commissioner to the fair, Motoudaro. Importantly, the Korean minister to Washington had also ventured out for the event. Horace Allen by this time was back in Korea. The Korean officials were garbed in their full court dress. President Palmer offered a toast to the king of Korea with Commissioner Chông responding with his own tribute. It is one of the very few insights we have into the official Korean perception of its own exhibit. It went in part as follows:

As the Korean minister to America was present, and surely must have prescreened any toast, the word are telling. They reflect a Korean desire to introduce itself as an enlightened and open nation. These are no longer delegates from the "Hermit nation" but from the country "formerly known" as such. It reflects an expressed (whether or not real) desire to learn and to change, that is to join Japan in its endeavor to modernize along Western lines. But most interesting is the expressed hope for "judicial arbitration as the supreme law of international relations", a desire tied intimately I believe with developments in Korea, where it was soon becoming clear judicial arbitration might be necessary to save Korea.

This is an official expression regarding the Korean exhibit. We are left with practically no unofficial ones, save for the brief lines that appear in the papers and the paragraphs of The Book of the Fair, which itself had a clear intention to "sell" the fair’s success and attraction (as the book came out while the fair was still in full swing). One first hand observer whose reflections have been preserved, however, is Yun Ch’i-ho. Further, because Yun embodied so much of the reformist hopes, patriotic fervor, and national frustration of the young Korean reformers of his day, his hopes for Korea’s presence contrast vividly with those of the official commission. As such, they deserve closer examination.

The irony has been observed elsewhere that young reform-minded Koreans at the turn of the 19^th century turned mostly to Japan, their future colonizer, as the model of reform and progress. In this respect Yun Ch'i-ho was no different. The hopes placed by young Korean reformers is of course ironic, not only because Japan would eventual colonize Korea and deny it the very status of independent strength reformers hoped to achieve by emulating Japan, but also in that Japan used as primary justification for annexation Korea's inability or unwillingness to modernize itself. But in 1893, Japan, as fellow Asian nation, was viewed as the best model for the successful adaptation of traditional Asian values to modern industrial exigencies. It was a confidence that would find its tragic conclusion during the failed Kapsin revolt of December 1884, when plotters put their ultimate hopes for success in the support of the Japanese troops in Korea.

Yun had received an early Western-style education in Japan when he proceed there in 1881, at the age of sixteen, in the entourage of the "Gentlemen’s Tour Group" which King Kojong dispatched to Japan, in one of his periodic spells of progressivism, to observe and report on Japanese modernization. Yun opted to stay on in Japan to receive a more formal and Western education, returning to Korea in 1884 as interpreter for the first American minister to Korea, Lucius Foote. Though his English at this point was far from the polished Victorian prose it was to attain in his later journals, Foote felt confident enough in his young abilities to hire him. Yun was naturally suspicious of Chinese aspirations in Korea, suspicions he soon made clear to Minister Foote, and suspicions that seem based more in his aversion to what he saw as the anti-progressive, stultifying traditional ideas China seemed to espouse than in that country’s political machinations themselves. In 1884 the failed coup attempt by members of the "Progressive Party" (kaehwadang), with whom Yun had established links in Japan, rocked the Korean capital and monarchy, resulting in a conservative retrenchment. . Though any significant connection between Yun and the Kapsin coup attempt has never been shown, Yun’s father, who was appointed to an important government position in the short-lived Kapsin government, was in fact tarnished by association with the plotters. As a result, in 1884 Yun, seeing his immediate prospects tarnished by his father’s involvement, opted to again go abroad, this time to Shanghai. There Yun matriculated at the American Methodist run Anglo-Chinese College, and it was there that he converted to Christianity in 1887. Finishing his studies in Shanghai, Yun was able to procure a recommendation and the necessary funding to study at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, where he undertook a two-year course in theology. From 1891 to 1893 Yun studied at Emory University in Georgia, where his studies took a more humanist bent. Nevertheless, upon completion of his period of study at Emory Yun was determined to return to Korea and establish a Christian and "manly" church in Korea to awaken a slumbering nation. On his journey homeward he made a point of visiting the Chicago fair.

Two basic sentiments animate Yun in the summer of 1893, one is a patriotic fervor, made perhaps more intense by homesickness and a love augmented by nostalgia and distance. The other was a strong Protestantism that manifested itself in an emphasis on self-reliance, masculinity, hard work, austerity, and the belief in progress. Yun, on his train voyage to Vancouver following his visit to the fair, feels some sympathy for the destitute native Americans he sees along the track, yet at the same time blames them for their lack of initiative and enterprising spirit, which in the end must be the chief cause of their lot. In Washington, during a visit to the Korean legation building on Iowa Circle, he feels a patriotic swelling of the heart "the lovely precincts over which my national colors waved", while he loathes the photograph of the Korean delegation, seeing in their faces "looks of supreme stupidity and beastly sensuality". In these early writings Yun very much equates all that is traditional about Korea with all that is backward, regressive, repressive, and even sinful. The ideals of progress and of Christian virtue have become very much melded in his young mind, sentiments and values remarkably akin those of the American middle-class of ther period.

Yun was not well received by the Korean delegation at the fair, a fact that only added to his mostly negative critique of it. Commissioner Chông refused to greet Yun when he arrived in Chicago in late September and visited the apartments the Koreans had secured for themselves on Forty-second Street. Yun relates, "the Corean Commissioner..did not see me on the ground that as a representative of the government he didn’t think it right to see a man whose father is a political exile and who has been out of the country so long without any good cause(!). From what I hear from Mr. Pack [Pak Yôn-kin] and Arn [An], the two underofficers of the Commissioner, Korea is exactly where I left her. How

long--!".

Despite is disappointment with the Korean exhibit, which he calls paltry and full of the crude and dull productions of Korean skill, Yun is continually drawn back to its place in the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building, where he spends several days in the course of his brief visit to Chicago. Perhaps his attraction is explained in one notation where he says that "While I could not help blushing at the poverty of the Corean arts etc. the sight of the Corean flags had a strong attraction to me." On one visit he feels humiliated "not to find a Corean flag in any of the buildings from whose roofs fly the colors of almost every nation", adding, "Ah! Yet I shall not know the depth and breadth of the degradation and shame of Corea till I get into her capital." Though he dismisses the Chinese exhibit he is highly impressed by the national pavilion of the Japanese, adding, "Well may a Japanese be proud". Yun also does not hold very high opinions of the Korean members of the delegation, except for the American-schooled Mr. Pak. He writes, "Mr. An, one of the Coreans having charge of the exhibit, is a fair specimen of the degraded humanity of Corea. He is dirty, lazy, dull, filthy in mouth and in morals. Mr. Chung [Chông], the chief commissioner, is said to be stingy and bigotted [sic]. Mr. Pak is the best of the whole lot. He knows that Corea is in a pitiful condition." In a long conversation with Mr. Pak later, the two discuss "the corruption of the Corean government, the Chinese encroachment and kindred topics formed the principle burden of our conversation. He advised me not to call on any Coreans as that will remind them of the "rebellion" and of the part which I was and is supposed to have taken in it thus endangering rather than helping my future welfare".

Rather than see the fair as an attempt to join the world, Yun sees in it only a reminder of Korea’s miserable plight. In one extended entry, spurned on by his visit to the exposition, he writes of Korea:

In Yun we may witness the continually crushed national hopes of a younger progressive generation, in stark contrast to the official stance, which was one of more conservative and gradual change, that emphasized peaceful coexistence rather than radical change. Both were obviously concerned with Korea’s independence, and took a just pride in Korea as a nation. What separated them was what separates most – varying visions of the future and Korea’s place in it.

Commissioner Chông’s journey back to Korea would apparently be a story in itself, if it resembled in any way the depiction John Cockerill later gave of it. However he made it home, in an audience Kojong subsequently held with Commissioner Chông after the latter’s safe return to Korea, the king’s curiosity about the fair is exhibited. The conversation displays the relative naïveté of Korea and its king to the outside world and is worth quoting in full:

Kojong: In what ways were the American products remarkable?

Here King Kojong seems more concerned with how Korea intermingled with the foreign observers and the with the small details of the exhibition, rather than with any larger lessons to be taken from it, notably in the realms of modernization.

Korea’s participation at Chicago must also be viewed in the wider context of its ongoing attempt to liberate itself from Chinese hegemony and assume among the other developed nations the proper and independent place to which it was entitled. As naïve as this may seem today, and as paltry as Korean participation may have been, it is important to keep in mind that Korea made an attempt to stand on its own feet at Chicago. In this sense it was part and parcel of the period’s developing sense of Korean nationalism that can be seen weaning itself from its Chinese, and sadae, historical heritage. Korea went to Chicago and Paris as Korea, not as China’s younger brother. It is worth remembering that China did not go at all.

As for Western impressions of Korea, overall, one gets the distinct impression of the strangeness in which the Koreans were perceived. This is in one sense understandable. This was Korea’s first participation in such an event. Yet Korea’s isolation and status as "hermit kingdom" were almost deliberately exaggerated, as if to augment the attraction of their being there at all. It had been almost twenty years since Korea had opened up its doors, or had them opened. Ten years since its first diplomatic mission to the United States. With their "queer hats", "hieroglyphic writing", "unusual instruments", and the comparisons between elements of the Korean delegation and displays and things found "on the plaisance", the Koreans seem almost to have been relegated to the plaisance of the mind. That is to say, they remained throughout an enigma, neither deserving the vilification reserved for the Chinese (at least not officially, again the voice of John Q. Public American remains silent), nor meriting the praise heaped upon the Japanese for their progress towards the goals of "civilized nations".

Korea would be represented on its own terms only once more at a World’s Fair – the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900, which was in many ways so much more successful. It would bow out of the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition to be held at St. Louis due to the unfortunate condition of Korean finances. Japanese protectorship came the following year. At the Anglo-Japanese Exposition held in London in 1910 to celebrate their recently conceived alliance, Korea would make its way again to an international fair – its display entitled "Residency General of Japan in Korea", and bordering the display dedicated to the South Manchurian Railway.