The Empire of Great Han
at the 1900 Paris
[This article first appeared in Sungkyun
Journal of East Asian Studies, vol. 4, no. 2 (Aug. 2004):41-66]
Daniel Kane
Introduction
Alluding to the decade separating the
Tonghak Uprising and Sino-Japanese War from the Japanese imposed protectorship
of 1905, one historian has written that, “During these years
Having said
this, although Korea enjoyed relative autonomy during this decade the term
“maneuverability” might serve better. As
one foreign observer ironically noted, “Korea is in fact a microcosm of the
great world of the East. One progressive
Power could take her and govern her, and make a country of her in a few
years. But no Power can act independently
in the East without arousing the jealousy and hatred of several others. So four or five Powers are pecking greedily
at Korea, squabbling over each mouthful, and confirming her in her independence
and consequent ruin.”[2] It is within this context of international
rivalry and independent initiative that the following story must be told.
At the halfway mark between the Chinese
and Russian defeats Korea participated in a great “universal exposition” held
in Paris as a paean to modernism in all realms as well as a showcase to
national richesse. This was not Korea’s first such participation
in a world’s fair, for it had sent a small delegation to the World’s Columbian
Exposition of 1893 in Chicago. Going
further back, there was actually a Korean “table” (but not through any direct
Korean involvement) at the 1889 Paris Universal Exposition, organized through
the efforts of Emile Guimet (1836-1918), the French amateur art collector and
“orientalist”.[3] In contrast to the Paris Exposition of 1900,
Korea’s presence at the Chicago World’s Fair came during a period whose
turbulence can be little debated. The
Korean kingdom had then been wracked with fiscal crisis, popular discontent,
encroaching Japanese pressure and intensifying Chinese-Japanese rivalry. The Tonghak storm began to break even as the
Chicago delegation was departing, and within a year of the fair Korea had
descended into rebellion and war. It is
highly likely that if not for the aid and intercession of Horace Allen,
American chargé at Seoul during these years, Korean participation at Chicago
would never have materialized at all. As
it was, it seems the Korean commissioner only made it back to Seoul by his
wits.[4]
Upon cursory observation, Korean
participation at Paris seems to exhibit a dramatic contrast. Here was no meager kitsch stand housing the
“crude productions of the Corean skill or rather dullness”, and relegated to an
insignificant corner of an engulfing warehouse.
[5] At Paris Korea boasted a grand pavilion
worthy of a rich and proud nation, built just off the Champs de Mars, that
great grassy expanse that first gave birth to notion of an international fair,
and since 1889 dominated by the Eiffel Tower. Rather than “a bunch of junk”, as
the Korean display at Chicago was once dubbed[6],
were displayed masterpieces of Koryŏ silk painting and noteworthy examples
of early Korean printing, including a 16th century edition of the Samguk sagi, not to mention the oldest
moveable metal-type printed book known to man – the 14th century Chikjisimgyŏng.[7] But initial appearances can be deceiving. Though Korean organization and commitment to
the Paris fair seems at first to rival the interest being expressed by Japan,
which had been using the forum of the fairs to their utmost advantage for the
past quarter century, this was not quite the case. Despite the relative paltriness of the Korean
participation at Chicago, one could at least fairly call it a heartfelt
“Korean” effort to engage itself with the international community. Korea, “richer in goodwill than in money”, as
a French consul would put it, had given its humble best at Chicago. Korea’s participation at the Paris Universal
Exposition, however, was more than anything the result of French efforts and
French money. There are several reasons
for this. But to better understand
Korean participation at the 1900 Universal Exposition we should first step back
to examine the international rivalries at play in Korea at the end of the 19th
century.
Rivalries at Work
Whatever the hopes of her political and military strategists, Japan’s decisive defeat of China in the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) did not pave the way for unrivaled Japanese dominance on the peninsula. The alarm with which China’s defeat was met among Western nations assured this (for regardless of its weakness vis à vis the West, China was still regarded by those nations as an entity of great power – great in the way that only massive states can be). Japan’s ample defeat of China, as chronicled so thoroughly in a fascinated Western press, came then as a shock. It is from this time, in fact, that Japanese intentions began to be truly questioned, and Japan taken as a rival to be respected and reckoned with. But Japan, still new to the game of imperial aggrandizement, did not reap the benefits it might have from its war with China. Its misstep (to risk an understatement) in the murder of Queen Min in December 1895 was one blow. It resulted not only in King Kojong’s alarmed flight to the Russian legation (and for a year thereafter into Russian influence), but had the domino effect of arousing the interests of other Western nations concerning Korea (who, stewed in European history, feared Russia more than Japan). Japan’s retrocession of the Liaodong Peninsula following the “Triple Intervention” of Russia, France, and Germany was another blow to the ostensible Japanese victory. And in a final ironic twist, its very indemnity levied against China worked against Japan, for it would be a Franco-Russian loan that would float it, and with it raise Russian and French influence in China at the expense of Japan.
There was another way in which the
Japanese victory over China only worked to encumber its influence on the
peninsula. China’s defeat was heavy in
symbolism. The Sino-Japanese War of
1894-1895 may be seen as the last stand of the China-centered geopolitics of
traditional East Asia. China’s defeat
meant for Korea a new, if short-lived, era of recognized independence
unencumbered by Chinese aspersions or meddling.[8] The impetus this gave to domestic reform and
modernizing initiatives was great. Korea
became in the years after 1895 a potentially lucrative market for Western
industries seeking to build railways, telegraphs, and electric plants, to
supply steamships and develop a Korean postal system, to modernize industry or
to establish schools, to manufacture arms or train a modern army, to dig mines
and set up foundries, and the list goes on.
Here the political and commercial interests of rival nations crossed –
in the late 19th century one as important as the other. As demonstration of this new marriage of
means, more than one foreign representative was dismissed for his lack of skill
in procuring national concessions. Such
was the fate of the British Minister to China, Sir Nicholas O’Connor, who was
recalled in 1895 following the Sino-French Convention, in which the French
gained the right to build railroads from Indochina into Yunnan in southwest
China. In turn, the French minister
Lemaire in Peking was dismissed for his maladroit maneuvers on behalf of the
French company Five-Lilles in settling a Chinese contract for Yellow River
dredges.[9] The American Minister Horace Allen by
contrast was quite adept at procuring concessions, obtaining for James R. Morse
contracts for mines, railways, and even the assembling of a 60,000-watt
electric fence around the Korean royal compound.[10] A period Western advisor and diplomat in
Korea described this intense atmosphere of concession seeking,
To begin with, it was an official thing, for the legation was behind the concession from start to finish except in rare cases. A concession was in effect a business favor granted by the conceding nation to the government of the diplomat who asked for it. An immediate result of granting to one foreign nation a business favour carrying with it substantial profit to the concessionaire is to excite competition and jealousy among all other national representatives in that place. Each must succeed in wresting a similar profitable privilege from the government to which he is accredited or the prestige of his own nation is diminished. Incidentally, his own rating as an active official may suffer at home, for failing to be as alert and skilful as his lucky or more efficient colleague.[11]
No wonder it was said that a stranger could
not arrive in Seoul without ruffling all the ministerial dove-cots.[12]
But the purpose of this paper is not to
thoroughly examine international rivalries in Korea, but rather those dynamics
behind Korean participation at the 1900 Exposition. Having set the general stage of the period,
we should now look at French involvement on the Korean peninsula during the
decade of the 1890s, the years leading up to the Exposition of 1900.
French Interests in Korea
Following the dismally conceived 1866 French
attack on Korea, and the severe check it administered to French prestige in the
region, France maintained a relatively aloof attitude towards affairs on the
Korean peninsula. The dreary fortunes of
France in the years that immediately followed – their humiliating defeat in the
Franco-Prussian War and the fall of the Second Empire, further isolated the
country from events in the Far East. It
wasn’t until 1887 that France of the Third Republic got around to establishing
diplomatic relations with Korea, even then sending only a junior consul named
Victor Collin de Plancy from his post in Shanghai to Seoul to sign the
necessary paperwork and exchange formalities.
For the week he was in Seoul he set up shop in the Russian legation, the
French having no representative there of any sort.[13] It would be nearly another year before Collin
de Plancy would return, now officially named the first French consul to
Korea. Except for a posting to Japan
from 1892-96 and a short aberration in Algeria, Collin de Plancy would serve as
chief French diplomat in Korea until 1904.
French commercial interests lagged even
further behind. French industry had
never had a particularly strong showing abroad, in Korea or elsewhere. One scholar has pointed to a major reason for
this lack of commercial success: French industry tended to focus on the
production of high-value items of superior quality and price, more often made
by craftsmen in small workshops than in large factories by cheap, unskilled
labor.[14] In short, French industry could not compete
in large overseas markets where the cheap textiles of Britain excelled. French interests in Asia, as elsewhere in the
world, had been for long years chiefly religious in nature, protecting (albeit
reluctantly at times) the rights of Catholic clergy and laity to proselytize
and worship unmolested. But even here
they were checked by their failed 1866 attack on Korea (motivated out of a
desire to retaliate against the execution of ten French priests), and the
Tianjin Massacre of 1870 (again directly triggered by French missionaries and
diplomats). Further, French involvement
in Indochina, and its little war with China in 1883-1885, was more than enough
to occupy its attentions. The 1889
failure of the French bank Comptoir d’Escompte, which had a branch in Tianjin
(in which Li Hungchang had unfortunately placed his funds), seemed to bring
French fortunes in the Far East to their nadir.
So lacking was French commercial representation in Korea in 1889 that an
inquiry sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from a French producer of
mechanical looms regarding potential markets in Korea was forwarded to
Monsignor Jean Blanc, the vicar apostolic for Korea![15] But in the mid-1890s the dismal state of
affairs for French industry in Asia was improving, and the reverberations would
be felt in Korea.
In 1895 the Sino-French Accord was
signed, bringing to a conclusion a decade of back and forth negotiations
regarding French rights in Indochina and southern China.[16] By the terms of this agreement France was
given the right to build railroads between its colony in Indochina and Yunnan
in southwest China, in what it hoped would result in a boom for French commerce
in the area (France had recently taken control of the Tonkin Gulf, the planned
sea outlet for the railway). That same
year saw the conclusion of the Sino-Japanese War, in the aftermath of which
China, itself taking up a reform and modernizing line, was on the market for a
large loan to pay off a huge Japanese indemnity and finance internal
reforms. It was a French-Russian
consortium that ended up floating the loan – through the newly established
Russo-Chinese Bank in Shanghai – and with it raised French influence in China
up a notch.[17]
The fact of a French-Russian financial partnership in China was a direct result of the Russo-French Alliance, cemented in 1892. The alliance was more than anything else a military one for France (who had her eyes continually set on regaining Alsace from Germany and salvaging the honor it lost along with its territory in 1870). For Russia it turned out to be chiefly financial in character, with France being the lender and itself the creditor. It was French loans that would largely finance Sergei de Witte’s grand plans for Russian industrialization, including the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railroad in the years 1891-1901. In peacetime Europe France soon discovered, however, that its new partnership with Russia might be used to its own financial advantage in Asia. In Korea, during the period of dominant Russian influence in 1896-1897, the French company Five-Lilles (the same that had been granted a concession to build railways in Yunnan the year before) won a concession to build a Korean railway from Seoul to the Chinese border at Ŭiju, it was said through the influence of the Russian minister.
1896 then marks the real onset of French commercial interest (though modest to be sure) in Korea. This date also coincides with the reappearance of a familiar figure in Seoul, Victor Collin de Plancy, arriving from Tokyo to serve again as French consul to Korea. Collin de Plancy would dedicate himself to promoting a budding French influence, commercial and cultural, in Korea. Ultimately his involvement would prove key to Korean participation at the 1900 Universal Exposition in Paris.
The French Consul
As the name suggests, Victor Emile Marie
Joseph Collin de Plancy (1853-1924) was born in Plancy, a small town near
Troyes in the Champagne region of eastern France, the son of a Jesuit priest
and prolific writer on the occult whose name is still much more familiar in
France than that of his son. Despite the
name, Collin de Plancy was not of noble pedigree. Against the strict laws of lineage Victor’s
father, Jacques Collin de Plancy, had illicitly added the ‘de Plancy’ to his
family name of Collin in a move that would later bring accusations against the
son.[18]
Whatever the case, Victor Collin de Plancy
gained entrance to the prestigious Ecole des Langues Orientales Vivantes in
Paris, where he trained in Chinese, graduating in 1876, about a decade before
his alumnus Maurice Courant. Though he
had ambitions for entering the diplomatic corps, for which he definitely seems
more aptly formed than for interpreter work, he was posted instead to Peking as
a junior interpreter, often a preliminary step to seeking consular duties. Prevented by his stationing in Peking from
taking the requisite exam for consular assignment (administered only at Paris),
it was 1883 before he finally received his coveted consular position, when he
was named consul second class at Peking.
In 1884 he was promoted to acting French consul at Shanghai, where he
served during the Sino-French War, distinguishing himself by services rendered
to a cholera-stricken French fleet harbored in Shanghai during the
conflict. As mentioned earlier, Collin
de Plancy served briefly as first French consul to Korea, after relations were
opened with that country in 1887, before moving on to a post in Japan and a
brief aberration in Tangiers. Upon his
return to Korea in 1896 he would never request reassignment, seeming to prefer
the post to any other in the Far East, or the world. Except for extended sick leaves in 1899-1900
and 1905-1906, Collin de Plancy would spend the years from 1896 to 1906 in
Seoul, where he would eventually be promoted full minister. He would serve only briefly as French
minister to Bangkok in 1906 before requesting full retirement 1907.
The young Collin de Plancy is described
alternately as laborious (“doing the work of two”), impartial, and instructed,
while being lauded as well for his more social qualities – charm, elegance of
manners, impeccable taste, and perhaps most importantly, amiability.[19] It was this social adeptness and perspicacity
that he seemed to refine as the years passed.
The introduction to his collected papers in the French Foreign Ministry
notes the qualities for which Collin de Plancy seemed best known, “his tact,
courtesy, and refined manners” and as one who excelled in “issues of etiquette…but
who rarely ventured into the realm of general ideas”.[20] His gruff figure as it appears in
photographs, with full beard and stern glance, seems hardly to hint at such
refinement. Yet in Seoul he became known
for his charming garden parties. Particularly well received were his
“chrysanthemum festivals” held every autumn in the gardens of the French
legation, during which guest strolled the peaceful grounds in the midst of the
budding capital, admiring the park with its greenhouses of flowers.[21] In 1896 he had constructed an elegant
European style compound for the French legation, filling it with antiques from
the Chateau de Chenonceaux. He was
himself a collector; his respectable assortment of Asian art and ceramics
eventually donated to the Musée Guimet in Paris where it forms a core part of
the Korean collection. Victor Collin de
Plancy never married.
It was Collin de Plancy’s diplomatic
acumen and his attention to detail that would prove the biggest assets for
French interests in Korea during this period, more valuable even than the
Russo-French Alliance. He became
occupied in procuring the concession for of the Seoul-Ŭiju line for
Five-Lilles, personally negotiating with the Korean foreign minister Yi
Oan-yong.[22] Along with the above railway concession he
also successfully petitioned for mining rights on behalf of French companies
along the proposed railroad.[23] However, other efforts spearheaded by Collin
de Plancy to gain railway concessions to Mokp’o and Wŏnsan were not so
successful.
In dispatches back home through the late
1890s he is keen to observe the commercial climate of Korea. This is in fact something he was accustomed
to. From his time in Shanghai as a
consul he had been delegated to draw up reports, based upon publications by the
Chinese Custom’s Bureau, of trade figures for Korea. These annual assessments display a meticulous
attention to detail.
Despite the apparently lucrative
concession won on behalf of Five-Lilles for mining and railway rights form Seoul
to Ŭiju, Collin de Plancy had to sit back and watch his efforts go to
seed, as Five-Lilles delayed in sending out engineers and assessors, and then
failed to raise the necessary capital in the required time. This meant the French concession soon ran out
with hardly anything begun, despite Collin de Plancy’s efforts to have it
extended. The French consul’s
disappointment is palpable in his letter of July 1898: “The dismissal of the
Five-Lilles Company,” he writes, “will serve…to show the utter disadvantage of
ever granting any concession to the French in the future, for after a delay of
three years they [Five-Lilles] haven’t done a bit of work…I can only remind
Your Excellency of the extreme damage this is liable to cause French
influence.”[24] To his credit, Collin de Plancy managed to
salvage something, by working out an agreement whereby French equipment would
be utilized when the Koreans built the line.
In one late 1898 dispatch Collin de
Plancy describes the present state of electricity in Seoul, going on to lament
the lack of any French commercial agent that might exploit a potentially
lucrative situation. He writes that
“…there is nobody who might be able to competently represent our [French]
companies here. If it is the desire of
our companies to carve a niche here in the Far East it is imperative that they
establish a competent agent here under common expense” who would then make
initiatives on behalf of French industries.[25]
Collin de Plancy was successful in raising
the French visibility and prestige in other realms more successfully than in
railroads and mining. As chief French
diplomat in Korea, and enjoying a wide range of contacts (and information
sources), Collin de Plancy was the natural hinge for the expansion of French
influence. Collin de Plancy helped a
certain Mr. Saltarel establish official contacts in Seoul upon his arrival
there as representative of several French companies in early 1898. Saltarel would later be appointed to
accompany Min Yong-chan to Paris in early 1900, when that prince was named the
official Korean representative to the Paris fair. Upon Saltarel’s return from France he would
gain a mining concession in Korea. In
late 1899 a French military attaché in China, Commander Polyeucte Vidal, was
also brought in through Collin de Plancy’s efforts to assess the state of the
Korean arsenal and make recommendations as to its improvement and the
establishment of a Korean arms industry.
Eventually the French, represented by Vidal, would join with the
Russians in a mutual campaign to reorganize the Korean arsenal. Collin de Plancy also brought in an expert
from the Sevrès Ceramic Works to recommend ways of modernizing and expanding
the Korean porcelain industry. But
France’s most visible representative, behind Collin de Plancy himself, was
undoubtedly E. Clemencet, who had been brought to Korea in 1898, shortly after
Korea’s entrance into the International Postal Union, to organize a modern
Korean postal service. Upon the bureau’s
opening in January 1900 Clemencet sent the first international letter to Collin
de Plancy (then on leave in France), as the “only fitting homage” to the man
who had contributed so much to making the service a reality.[26]
Korean participation in the Paris
Universal Exposition would also owe much to Collin de Plancy, though the story
of Korea’s journey there is much more faceted than that.
Missteps
Plans for the Universal Exposition of 1900
went back nearly a decade before 1900.
It was in May 1893, in fact while Korea was engaged in the fair at
Chicago, that the French consul to Korea answered certain preliminary “feelers”
from Paris regarding Korean willingness to participate in a fair still seven
years off. Then French consul Frandin
responded that King Kojong had personally assured him that his country would
participate in the exposition, that he would send a fine exhibit of art and
artifacts, and even dispatch a member of the royal family as commissioner. He added that the Korean display in Paris
would certainly surpass that of Chicago, which was “arranged in some haste and
in disorder and didn’t represent a serious effort”. Finally, Frandin warns that Korea is a poor
country, “richer in good will than in money”, and that any Korean effort will
have to be financially supported, if not led, by the French, much as was done
with Chicago.[27]
But things at this point were still in
the planning stages in France. It was
not for another three years, in January 1896, that official invitations finally
appeared for the 1900 Exposition. In a
letter of January 7, 1896 then French consul Georges Lefèvre (soon to be
replaced by Collin de Plancy) invited Korea’s participation, and on January 27
Korea sent word that it would attend.
Despite such a timely response, following
the initial acceptance not much was forthcoming from Korean officials. Meanwhile, Collin de Plancy had taken over
from Lefèvre, and for the next year, in both official dispatches and personal
meetings, the new French consul urged a deferring Korean Foreign Ministry to
name a Korean commissioner to Paris as soon as possible. An exasperated Collin de Plancy at one point
even made bold to suggest the Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs allow Alfred
Picard, the president of the Universal Exposition, to delegate someone to
represent Korean interests, and then suggested the person of Dr. Edouard Mène,
a noted Parisian doctor and connoisseur of Japanese
art, as a possible candidate. The
Korean Foreign Minister deferred on both these proposals. Collin de Plancy then warned that he could
not reserve any place for a Korean pavilion if there were no Korean
commissioner named.[28] Partly in response to such pressure, in
January 1897 Min Yong-hwan was finally named Minister Plenipotentiary to Six
European Nations, filling a post that had for too long remained vacant.[29] Along with him was soon named the list of
commissioners for Korea to the world’s fair.
Among the eight named members, three were Westerners – Charles Roulina,
the aforementioned Edouard Mène, and Maurice Courant.[30] Charles Roulina must remain an obscure and
mysterious figure. In June 1897 the
Korean king appointed him Consul General of Korea in Paris, with the Korean
“consulate” then to be located at Roulina’s place of business – 44, rue
Lafayette. When not conducting his
consular duties Roulina was better known as a diamond cutter. For several years he served as mediator
between the Korean and French governments, until a permanent Korean
representative finally arrived in the summer of 1900. How he came to acquire the position is still
not clear. Edouard Mène has been
mentioned earlier – a medical doctor in Paris who interested himself in Asian
topics, but best known among certain circles as a collector and connoisseur of
Japanese art. At the time of his death
in 1913 he was vice president of the Société
Franco-Japonais de Paris. Maurice
Courant needs little introduction. Like
Collin de Plancy he had graduated from the Ecole des Langues Orientales
Vivantes with a degree in Chinese language.
Unlike Collin de Plancy, Courant graduated at the top of his class in
1888. He went on to serve as an
interpreter in Peking, Tianjin, Tokyo, and Seoul (1890-1892). Not really cut out for consular duties, he
was however a natural linguist and diligent scholar. Though he continued ostensibly in the service
of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, after 1897 he embarked on an academic
career, first at the Collège de France in Paris and after 1900 in Lyon. The publication of the first volumes of his Bibliographie Coréenne in 1896 made
quite an impression on Korean officials, who applied pressure thereafter to the
French legation in Seoul to allow Courant to serve in the pay of the Korean
government, where he might “give the best advice for the reform of the
educational system on the peninsula and translate books which could be used my
young officials”.[31] Apparently, however, it was a position
Courant never took. Whatever the case,
it certainly indicates why the Korean government selected him to serve on the
official commission. Among five Korean
members the best known was Ko Yŏng-hui, a progressive minded politician
forced temporarily into retirement after the failed Kapsin revolt but who had
gone on to serve as Korean minister to Japan in 1895.
On April 1, 1897 Min Yong-hwan finally
departed for his much-anticipated diplomatic and working trip to Europe. En route Minister Min was to attend the
coronation of Tsar Nicolas II and participate in Victoria’s Jubilee in London,
before making his way to Paris to deal with arranging Korea’s participation at
the Universal Exposition. Unfortunately,
he would never make it to France.
Embracing France
As discussed earlier, the defeat of China
in the Sino-Japanese conflict proved both advantageous and disadvantageous to Japanese
interests in Korea. Though it dealt a
decisive blow to Chinese influence, in so doing it also removed a formidable
obstacle to Russian designs on Korea (and Manchuria). This in turn brought in the more acute
interest of third parties. It was as if
a great balance had been removed, and with the removal of such ballast the fate
of Korea began to drift among many powers, enjoying the precarious freedom
spoken of earlier. If one issue seems to
dominate discussions of Korea in the period of the late 1890s – be they in
diplomatic correspondence, travelogue, newspaper article, or royal audience –
it is the issue of Japanese versus Russian influence, and which would
ultimately prevail.
Kojong*,
as is well established, fell easy prey to his own fears. In April 1897, having emerged just months
earlier from the Russian legation, where he had sought refuge following Queen
Min’s murder, Kojong was wracked by not unfounded fears of Russian and Japanese
designs to divide the peninsula. In May
1896 had been signed the so-called “Yamagata Convention”, in which the two
recognized their mutual spheres of influence.
In laying out details regarding ownership of telegraph lines and the
mutual supply of military advisors, it seemed that partition could not be far
behind. To help avert this, Kojong, in a
naïve confidence in yet more armed foreigners, was eager to have the foreign
legations manned by their own armed nationals, in particular such third party
states as the United States, Great Britain, and France. Later Kojong would change gears, pushing to
have Korea recognized as a neutral country.
In the spring of 1897, just as Min
Yong-hwan was preparing to depart as Minister Plenipotentiary to Europe, Kojong
was seized by new rumors of partition.
Indeed, it no doubt played strongly in his decision to finally send a
Korean ambassador to Europe, more so than the need to prepare the Korean
exhibit at the World’s Fair. In the days
and weeks following Min’s departure Kojong took the time to hold several personal
seances with Collin de Plancy, during which he urged the commitment of French
troops to Korea, and nearly for a Korean-French alliance to ensure Korean
independence. Concerning one such
hour-long royal audience on April 2, 1897 (the day after Min’s departure),
Collin de Plancy writes that Kojong, appreciating France’s love of equity and
justice, hopes he might “count on the aid and protection of France as he does
already the United States and England”.[32] The French consul refused to commit to any
such thing, but diplomatically and adroitly argued that what Korea really
required was internal development, something best accomplished through mining
and railway concessions. In his remarks
to the French Foreign Minister on the royal audience Collin de Plancy
concluded, “The king is unfortunately incapable of grasping the advantages such
new policies might have, but instead fixates on secondary details.”[33]
Perhaps anticipating Collin de Plancy’s
non-committal, Kojong had composed a letter to the French president Felix
Faure, and entrusted it with Min Yong-hwan on his expedition to Europe (though
Min was apparently unfamiliar with its contents). In tone the letter was similar to the one
carried by the Korean minister to Washington in the train of the Chicago
World’s Fair delegation of 1893.[34] Only the letter sent to the French president
was more urgent in tone. It read:
Several years have now passed since our two countries signed a treaty of amity; a reaffirmation of the ties that bind us is now called for. I know of France’s renown, and of the value she places on the ties of friendship between us. From the bottom of my heart I wish her to realize my hope that she support me with all her force, and, if necessity so demands, to come to my aid. It is my fondest hope that there be perpetual friendship between our two nations…[35]
The Russian-inspired fears that drove
Kojong to seek succor from France in the summer of 1897 dissipated with
remarkable speed in the coming year.
Russian designs on the peninsula seemed to crest with the failed
attempts to establish a Russo-Korean Bank in Seoul in the winter of 1897-1898
(really just a branch of the Russo-Chinese Bank) and to replace the
commissioner of Korean finances McLeavy Brown with the Russian Alexsiev. It was from these checks (and concomitant
gains in China) that Russia seems to have turned its attentions away from
Korea, deciding instead to focus on Manchuria and the Liaodong Peninsula with
an intensity that would lead to the Russo-Japanese War in 1904.[36] But in the summer of 1897 Min Yong-hwan went
to Europe carrying what seemed ostensibly a desire on the part of Korea to
forge a defensive alliance with France.
Min Yong-hwan arrived in England in July
1897. Like Hamlet, Min apparently opened
the letter entrusted to him by his king while en route to London, and like
Hamlet read perfidy. For once in England
Minister Min telegraphed Kojong on July 23, informing him that he was done with
his mission, having discovered the Korean king’s misguided intention to open
Korea to French troops. To believe
Collin de Plancy, Min’s telegraph stated his preference “to lose his head”
rather than carry out such a reckless diplomatic mission.[37] Min was as good as his word. Rather than returning to Korea, where he
risked quite literally losing his head, he went to the United States, where he
lived in dire straits until Kojong, letting bygones be bygones, appointed him
the new Korean minister to Washington in 1900.[38]
After Min Yong-hwan abandoned his mission in London the Korean government was
fairly quick to name another plenipotentiary.
On September 1, 1897, they named Min Yong-ik, another scion of the Min
clan, who had had some experience with foreign intercourse, living for periods
in Japan, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, as the new minister to Europe. But this too hit a snag when the French, even
as Min was on the verge of leaving Korea for Europe, refused to recognize him
for his role in stealing several thousand pounds from the Hong Kong branch of
the Comptoir d’Escompte in 1884, money which had still not been recovered by
1897. In the course of the next two
years Kojong made two more appointments, both resigning before departing
Korea. Thus Min’s sudden resignation,
and a series of foiled nominations to replace him, left Korea’s participation
at the Paris Exposition up in the air, and stranded Collin de Plancy nearly at
square one. Though he had an ostensible
list of Korean and French “commissioners” there was no overall man in charge
and no coordination between them. By
late 1898 Korea still had no designated plot on the filling fairgrounds and had
allotted no funding. Consul Frandin’s
words seemed truer than ever.
The Universal Exposition
Meanwhile things were finally making some headway
in Paris. Upon hearing of the failure of
the Min mission, Consul Roulina was not long in finding a compatriot who would
take on the organization and expense of the Korean exhibit. This was the Count Delort de Gléon. The name was not unknown in Paris, he had
gained a modicum of fame for his organization of the Egyptian section at the
fair of 1889, in which he had designed an entire “Cairo Street”, complete with
donkeys and their boy handlers and authentic Cairo merchants. The depiction of one scholar of this earlier
Egyptian project of Delort de Gléon is worth keeping in mind:
The Egyptian exhibit had also been made carefully chaotic. In contrast to the geometric lines of the rest of the exhibition, the imitation street was laid out in a haphazard manner of the bazaar. The way was crowded with shops and stalls, where Frenchmen dressed as Orientals sold perfumes, pastries, and tarbushes. To complete the effect of the bazaar, the French organizers had imported from Cairo fifty Egyptian donkeys, together with their drivers and the requisite number of grooms, farriers, and saddle-makers. The donkeys gave rides for the price of one franc up and down the street, resulting in a clamour and confusion so life-like, the director of the exhibition was obliged to issue an order restricting the donkeys to a certain number at each hour of the day.[39]
Hearing of the rather hapless Korean
exhibit, floundering from a lack of funds and leadership, Delort de Gléon
offered to take on the entire organization using his personal fortune.
It should be noted that by 1900 the
world’s fairs had grown beyond the modest dimensions and goals of their mid-19th
century predecessors. They were now
money-making propositions. Delort de
Gléon’s decision to take up organization of the Korean pavilion was certainly
not one inspired by altruism, but a desire for profit and prestige. No doubt reminiscing on past glories, Delort
de Gléon soon wrote to Mr. Delaunay-Belleville, the Director General of the
Paris Exposition, about his plans for the Korean section:
Allow me, Monsieur Director General, to inform you briefly of the format I would like the Korean Section to take. This section will be comprised of two parts: one official, the other a picturesque attraction. The official portion will be taken up by a grand pavilion (in the style of the summer palace of Li-Hi), which will enclose the government collections, modern and traditional arts, the products of mining, agriculture, industry, commerce, etc. …For this section we can count on the very active participation of our Minister at Seoul, Monsieur Collin de Plancy…The second portion will recreate an animated corner of Korea – a street in Tchemulpo with its houses and buildings occupied by numerous authentic families selling (and in some cases even making) their wares, altogether a most animated street with a teahouse, open air performers and acrobats, etc…etc…with the inhabitants being in type, and dressed in manner, most diverse and unusual.[40]
Such plans echo strongly what Delort de
Gléon had done with the Cairo Street eleven years previous, which had proved
tremendously popular and profitable. It
is reasonable to assume he had equal hopes for “Tchemulpo”.
Faced with the new reality of Min Yong-hwan’s
resignation and the French rejection of Min Yong-ik, and with time to reserve a
spot at the exposition fast running out, the Korean government consented to
their consul Roulina’s nomination of Delort de Gléon, and in July 1899 the
official contract was signed between the Universal Exposition Committee,
whereby Delort de Gléon acquired several exposition lots for Korea, the largest
being an extended plot on the eastern border of the Champs de mars. The expenses of the new Korean Commissioner
for the Universal Exposition would be great.
The planned 320 square foot national pavilion would cost an estimated
87,000 period French francs to build and decorate, while the planned Tchemulpo
Street, to be built in a concession granted along the Seine near the themed
pavilions of other nations, would be a further 54,000 francs.[41]
Delort de Gléon set about collecting the
necessary Korean objects for display, and the more difficult task of recruiting
“authentic types” to fill his Tchemulpo Street.
For this task Delort de Gléon sent a certain Alphonse Trémoulet, a
fifty-four year old whose checkered past included combat (and POW status) in
the Franco-Prussian War, a stint as a small town mayor in Normandy, and time as
a petty official in Indochina. How he
came to know Delort de Gléon is another facet of the story that must remain
unknown for now. According to Collin de
Plancy, Trémoulet arrived in Seoul in the spring of 1899, charged by Baron
Delort de Gléon with “purchasing different products destined for use in the
Korean section [of the fair], and to gather material to be used in the
construction of the official Korean pavilion, as well as to recruit natives to
practice their trades under the eyes of the public…”.[42] Trémoulet spent two months in Korea,
returning to Paris in the late summer of 1899, only to embark again for Korean
in November 1899 to continue his procurement activities. For reasons soon to be revealed, Trémoulet
stayed on in Korea, eventually winning appointment as the director of a Korean
mining and engineering school.
In response to this new state of affairs,
on June 17, 1899 the Korean government issued an updated list of the Korean
fair commissioners. The commissioners
are divided into Korean and European groups, each headed by their respective
presidents. Appointed as president of
the Korean delegation is Min Pyŏng-sik, member of the Council of State,
with the vice presidency being held by Min Yong-chan, a nephew of Kojong and
currently Vice Minister of Justice. To
the list of Europeans was added Polyeucte Vidal, the military attaché Collin de
Plancy brought over to Korea the year before, as well as Trémoulet and of
course the Baron Delort de Gléon as Commissioner General.[43] In Paris in late summer 1899 construction was
begun on the Baron-Commissioner General’s grand plans for the Korean
display. Surviving blueprints detail the
grand scale of the Baron’s vision for Korea.
These included an extensive, twin-winged palace (that bore little
resemblance to traditional Korean architecture) ornamented in what resembles
European chinoiserie. But just as things began finally to get under
way mortality struck.
Fortunately or unfortunately, depending
upon one’s viewpoint, the Baron Delort de Gléon dropped dead in Paris on
November 9, 1899, his plans for the Korean section only partially complete.
[44] Though the Korean authorities,
notified of this, wished to continue with their planned participation, matters
in Paris were not that simple. The
Baron’s only heirs, his sister Madame Riche and his widow the Baroness, shared
none of the late Baron’s extravagant visions of exotic pavilions and Tchemulpo
streets full of open air acrobats, and they soon informed the exposition’s
directors of this fact, asking to be released from the Baron’s contract of that
July. In light of the circumstances they
were granted their request, on the condition that the monies spent by the Baron
thus far for rental of the properties would not be refunded and that all
grounds now occupied by Korea be returned to their original state, something
completed by early March.[45] Meanwhile, however, the fate of the Korea
exhibit was once more up in the air.
But the resourceful Consul Roulina on
Lafayette Street soon came to the rescue, in the light of a new wealthy patron
ready to foot the bill. This was the
Count August Mimerel IV (1867-1928), the son of a northern industrialist
ennobled by Napoleon III. This new
discovery came in January, just as the Delort de Gléon heirs were clearing
out. In consideration of the time
deficit things moved quickly. Roulina’s
recommendation of Mimerel was communicated to the Korean government, which on
February 17, 1900 approved the selection.[46]
Mimerel was a lawyer and the son of a
powerful industrialist who served as a key advisor to Napoleon III. He found a lucrative living in colonial
dealings as well, winning concessions in the French Congo and serving as
president of the Conseil d’Administration of the Compagnie N’Goko in the
Central Congo.[47] The motivating factors behind his involvement
in the Korean section were apparently not so artistic and creative as those of
Delort de Gléon, who, for all his rather shallow showmanship, and quest for a
showman’s profit, seemed to exhibit a certain flair for production. Mimerel slashed the Baron’s grandiose plans,
including the projected street in Tchemulpo, and focused instead on the
construction of a relatively simple pavilion, based upon a portion of the
larger planned structure of the Baron.
To build it he commissioned the architect Eugène Ferret, who had built
the Saigon Theater in French Indochina.
At the same time he released Trémoulet from service, having no need to
recruit natives to man craft stations.
In the end Korea would have to satisfy itself with a simple pavilion at
the corner of the Champs de mars designed after the Royal Audience Hall of Kyŏngbok
Palace. A letter from the French
legation in Seoul to the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs, even as the
Exposition was in session, sheds some light upon Count Mimerel’s motivations:
To follow up on a dispatch I sent you on May 11, regarding a mining concession for a group of French capitalists, I have the honor of informing you that a letter I have just received notifies me that one of the principal interested parties is Count Mimerel, commissioner general of the Korean section at the Exposition. As Your Excellency knows, Count Mimerel has dispensed with a large sum of money to have the Korean pavilion at the Exposition constructed. In light of the concession currently under consideration, the Korean government should remember the services rendered by Count Mimerel on this occasion.[48]
Count Mimerel relied heavily upon Collin
de Plancy to fill the display cases of the Korean pavilion, though no doubt the
items brought back from Trémoulet after his first trip to Korea also came in
useful. Dr. Mène also contributed some
of his personal collection, and some of the books seized from Kanghwa Island in
1866, and then stored in the Bibliothèque Nationale, also found a place.
And what of a Korean commissioner? Following the failure of the Min Yong-hwan
mission in 1896, as well as the checks on the subsequent trio of nominees, it
was summer of 1899 before Min Yong-chan (the man designated in July 1899 as
vice president of the Korean commission to the Exposition) was selected to head
to France to represent Korea at the fair.
Min Yong-chan was then serving concurrently as Vice Minister of Justice
and held the rank of colonel in the Korean War Ministry (though this last
commission was perhaps granted so as to allow his arrival in France in full
military uniform). Min Yong-chan,
however, was not to wear that other hat of Minister Plenipotentiary to Europe. That same summer Yi Pŏm-jin, then Korean
minister to the United States, was named as Korean minister to three European
countries (France, Great Britain, and Russia), while Min Yong-hwan, then living
in self-imposed exile in the United States, was slated to replace Yi as
minister in Washington. Min Yong-chan
then would proceed to France simply as chief Korean representative at the
Universal Exposition, and in this capacity he finally departed by sea route in
February 1900. Accompanying Min were two
Korean artisans and the Frenchman Saltarel, who would serve as his personal
secretary in France during the Exposition.[49]
Impressions
The Korean
pavilion did not enjoy a prime locale. Situated
on the Avenue Suffren, a by-street off the Champs de mars – the open expanse of
lawn beneath the
Done entirely in wood, painted in a vivid display of colors, and covered by a large roof with the upturned eaves characteristic of Far Eastern architecture, the structure captures the attention of the passerby. The design of the unique inner chamber finds its inspiration in the audience hall of the old royal palace. The walls are covered in silk drapes, the oldest dating from the 7th century; and two panels facing one another as you enter are covered with grimacing masks and other theatrical items. The showcase displays include precious collections sent by the emperor himself, items belonging to several Frenchmen who have spent some time in Korea, as well as a sampling of national produce…all of which give a strong conception of the resources of Korean industry.[50]
Surviving impressions of the Korean exhibit at Paris, like that at Chicago earlier, are few. China inadvertently, and as likely unwillingly, stole the headlines during the fair with the eruption of the Boxer Rebellion in May. By July news of the barricaded European community in Peking awaiting the arrival of an armed coalition of Western troops challenged the exposition for the day’s headlines.
One
prominent personality who did visit the Korean pavilion in Paris, and left us
his impressions, was Maurice Courant (1865-1935), who had himself been named
one of the Korean commissioners to the fair by Kojong. In a small piece titled “Le pavillon coréen
au Champs de mars” [The Korean pavilion on the Champs de mars], Courant equates
the Korean pavilion’s obscure location with the “hermit” reputation that
stubbornly clung to the country itself.
Korea was still widely viewed in the West as a “hermit nation”, despite
the long historical ties it shared with China and Japan and the more recent
strides it had taken in internal development and contact with Western
nations. One may argue that this
sobriquet was insisted upon as a way of justifying, perhaps even
subconsciously, foreign incursions upon Korean sovereignty in order to open and
“modernize” it. In Chicago Korea had
continually been referred to as the Hermit Nation and a 1900 National Geographic Magazine article on
Korea still chose as its title, “Korea –
The Hermit Nation”.[51]
Courant
certainly followed this trend when he wrote of the Korean pavilion, “The crowds
remain unaware of the Korean pavilion: it seems that out of timidity or modesty
Korea wishes to confirm, in this far corner, the image of isolation with which
she has so long been associated. If this
indeed be the case, she has succeeded, perhaps beyond her wishes, for only
those familiar with the Far East, and friends of this young peninsular empire
will have ventured to discover this gracious structure”.[52] Courant’s assessment was accurate. Korea remained a highly unknown entity to
Europeans in 1900, as it had been to Americans in 1893. A colorful front page illustration on one of
Paris’ many weeklies, depicts the Korean pavilion in rather fantastic and
inaccurate terms, illustrating literally the unknown nature of Korea and
Koreans in the European mind. The result
is a melange of Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Manchu, and entirely fanciful
motifs. The small written account of
Korea and its pavilion in the same issue also sheds some light on lingering
Western attitudes towards Korea:
One of most closed countries of the Far East, and certainly the one most coveted by its neighbors, must be Korea. Everything there is hidden, its customs unique, and the fondest wish of its inhabitants is to not enter into relations with any foreigners. Thus its participation in the exposition comes as a pleasant surprise. The Korean government has had a curious looking pavilion constructed, its design inspired by the former imperial hall of justice, and has had installed there charming examples of its productions and manufactures, inspiring the hope that relations might be established with this mysterious region.[53]
The author
(as perhaps the average reader) would have been surprised to learn France had
established diplomatic relations with “this mysterious region” thirteen years
previous!
Sandwiched
physically between China and Japan, in the European mind Korea seems to have
been psychologically suspended between those two as well, notably in such an
eventful summer for Asian affairs as that of 1900. Was the so-called “Hermit Kingdom” a
recalcitrant and conservative one teetering on its own Boxer revolt, or was it
a burgeoning Japan, a reforming and modernizing candidate for the community of
the civilized?[54] After all, Korea itself had seemed on the
verge of a bloody anti-foreign backlash a few years before, in 1894, when the
Tonghak revolt bared a strong undercurrent of anti-foreign, anti-modernizing
sentiment. Most French accounts seem to
give Korea the benefit of the doubt, especially considering that country’s
gracious acceptance of the French invite, and lean optimistically towards the
idea of a modernizing Korea. As one period French guidebook to the Paris fair,
describing the Korean exhibit, put it,
Since the Sino-Japanese War everything has changed in Korea, and they now follow more or less the route taken by modern Japan. The army and finances are being reorganized, mining concessions granted, electric trolley cars and railways constructed, and foreigners are to be found everywhere as advisors, teachers, engineers...[55]
In contrast
to the more or less warm reception the display received in Paris, in Korea one
response to accounts of the Korean national exhibit that filtered back was not
so positive. The young Seoul newspaper Hwangsŏng sinmun [Capital gazette]
commented on the relative paltriness of the exhibited Korean wares.[56] This was the exact same critique that had
been expressed by the young reformer Yun Ch’i-ho when he visited the Korean
exhibit in Chicago seven years earlier.
The opinion of the Hwangsŏng
sinmun, run by men of reformist tendencies, like those of Yun Ch’i-ho
earlier, is indicative of an undercurrent of dissatisfaction, not only with the
efforts at reform in Korea but at the concomitant representation of Korea as
backward to a foreign audience. The
excuse of modernizing and reforming Korea would indeed become a central theme in
Japanese justifications for annexation a decade later.
Conclusion
How is one to understand the Korean
exhibit at the Paris Universal Exposition?
One should view it on several levels.
As an attempt by Korea to represent itself – rather than have itself
represented – it falls far short of Korean efforts at the Chicago World’s Fair
of 1893. The larger scale of the Korean
exhibit at Paris compared to Chicago is unfortunately not indicative of a
greater commitment by Korea, nor I believe a finer appreciation of the
opportunity the forum of the World’s Fairs presented. Kojong’s misguided attempts to secure French
arms is evidence of a growing foreign – predominantly Japanese – influence over
the peninsula, Kojong’s predilection for seeking foreign succor at the least
sign of trouble notwithstanding. It is
unfortunate then that Kojong saw the fair as an opportunity only insofar as the
Korean commissioner sent to Paris might seek French military assistance in the
course of his other duties. Kojong never
seems to have recognized the occasion the Exposition itself offered for presenting Korea to the outside world as
something other than a quaint and “hermit” kingdom. Granted, there was little by way of
industrial advancements that could have been showcased inside the Korean
pavilion, but it might at least have cast an eye towards the future. As it were, the Korean display contained
traditional craft items, ceramics, old books, even a traditional execution
device, interesting and even laudable in their way but not enough to inspire
confidence in Korea’s potential for the new century. The only impetus towards
industrialization (certainly a key ingredient to modernity as it was understood
at the time) displayed was a few black and white photographs of Seoul, showing
new street cars (built by foreign concessionaries) juxtaposed with the
traditional Korean structures of the capital.
“A most odd confusion of past and present”.[57] It is just this shortcoming in the Korean
exhibit that is mentioned in the Korean press. Even where progress is hinted at
it – in the exposition guidebook cited earlier, for instance – it is the work
of foreigners in Korea that is emphasized
– laboring as “advisors, teachers, engineers” in the effort to modernize
Korea.
But this becomes understandable once one realizes that Korea in fact had little to do with its own exposition. It had not paid for it, planned it, built it, nor really stocked it. It reaped none of its profits – material or otherwise. The untimely death of Delort de Gléon, as he was organizing an extravagant Korean “spectacle”, seems hardly fortunate as far as Korea is concerned when Delort de Gléon’s replacement is considered. The Count Mimerel, who soon showed his true stripes by requesting mining concessions in Korea after the exhibit had barely opened, clearly had his own agenda in taking on the expenses of the Korean pavilion. Further, in all this he could be assured the active support of the French minister in Korea, Collin de Plancy – the man who had in fact supplied much of the pavilion’s display from his own collection. But debating the ultimate merits of Mimerel versus Delort de Gléon is not the point. The point is that Korea was not represented on its own terms. It was a French part-time diamond cutter living in Paris who served as representative of Korea during the crucial period of the fair’s planning. The results are not surprising.
Yet despite all this one must recognize
that the image of a large Korean pavilion on the most famous grassy expanse in
Paris during the summer of 1900 did not, could not, go unnoticed. Though relatively hidden away the Korean
pavilion was evident enough to garnish a full-page color illustration in a leading
French weekly. This very illustration
and the description that accompanied it, however, may serve to represent
Western confusion – even in 1900 – over just who the Koreans were. That they should be represented as an
amalgamation of Chinese, Manchu, Japanese, and Korean did not augur well. Korea seemed a sideshow in the affairs of
northeast Asia, or more accurately perhaps a strategic footnote in the more
momentous maneuverings of Russia, China, and Japan. It would be helpful to have more accounts by
the Western public on the Korean exhibit and Korea in general to more fully
determine the effect the unarguably impressive Korean pavilion had upon current
attitudes.
Despite its
rather isolated location the Korean pavilion is said to have received upwards
of 50,000 visitors, and received a grand prize, three gold medals, ten silver,
five bronze and three honorable mentions.[58] With the completion of the Exposition Min
Yong-chan returned to Korea, Korean representation in France the responsibility
of Yi Pŏm-jin.
The Korean
emperor was grateful enough to his French benefactors to award them all variant
ranks of the p’al-kwae medal, a
national decoration instituted in 1901.[59] For his efforts in getting Korea to France a grateful
host of fellow Frenchmen petitioned the French Minister of Commerce, Industry,
Post and Telegraphs to name Collin de Plancy an Officer of the Legion of Honor,
an honor he duly received.[60] As for Mimerel’s mining concession in Korea,
it never panned out.