Comrade | Guevara
Most of the kings of the fallen countries ended in tragic ends, either killed, or committed suicide, or were captured and humiliated to death, and few people could live the rest of their lives with dignity, as was the case in Imperial China, and the same was true in other countries. So, as far as South Korea, which is across the sea from China and has the same culture (Note: South Korea and Korea were originally one country, and the name of the country before the Sino-Japanese War was the Kingdom of Korea, which was renamed the Korean Empire in 1897), what was the outcome of its last emperor, Chunjong Lee Tsui?
01 Puppet Emperor, parents die
Born in 1874, Lee Was the only adult son of Emperor Gojong of Joseon and Empress Min of Myeongseong, and was crowned crown prince at the age of 1, promoted to crown prince at the age of 21, and after the Kingdom of Joseon was renamed the Korean Empire in 1897, Lee was crown prince. Nine months after Li Tao became crown prince, the "Yiwei Incident" of the Japanese ronin invading Gyeongbokgung Palace occurred, and Empress Myeongseong, who was regarded by Japan as a "thorn in the eye", was brutally killed on October 8, 1895. After Empress Mingcheng was killed, Li Tu's temperament changed drastically, and he changed from lively and cheerful to taciturn.
Empress Min of the Ming Dynasty
After the end of the Russo-Japanese War, Korea was in fact a japanese colony, and Gojong Lee Hee was not willing to be a slave to the country, so at the end of 1905 he sent a secret envoy to The Hague, the Netherlands, to participate in the Second Peace Conference of All Nations, calling on the great powers to put pressure on Japan and safeguard Korea's independence. Unfortunately, Li Xi's handwritten letter and letter of appointment were intercepted by Japan, and ito Hirobumi, the Japanese commander in Korea, instructed the traitors Lee Wan-yong, Song Bing-ho, and others to force Li Xi to "cede" the throne to the crown prince Li Kun in August 1907. After his abdication, Lee Hee was closely monitored by Japan and eventually poisoned to death in January 1919 at the age of 68.
As the fallen monarch of the Korean Empire, although Li Tao ascended to the throne, he did not have any power in his hands, and the important edicts and decrees promulgated during his reign were forged by the Japanese Governorate in Korea, and the officials in high positions were not the eagle dogs of the Japanese, but the latter was the leader. Not only that, but Japan also forced Li Ton to sign the Treaty of The Seventh Paragraph of Ding Wei (the Third Japan-South Korea Treaty), thereby depriving South Korea of its judicial power and disbanding its army. In this way, even the peddlers know that it is only a matter of time before Korea is completely annexed by Japan.
Emperor Gojong of the Korean Empire, Lee Hee
During Ito's tenure as governor, it was still possible to ostensibly maintain Korea's independence, but with his shooting by Ahn Jung-geun, a South Korean soldier, hardliners in Japan gained momentum, and the idea of immediate annexation of Korea became the mainstream consciousness of the government and the public. It was in this context that as soon as Terauchi Masatake was appointed as the governor, he forced Li Tou to appoint Lee as plenipotentiary and signed the Treaty of Annexation between Japan and Korea with the traitor on August 22, 1910. As a result, the Korean Empire, which had only been established for 13 years, collapsed, and the Korean Peninsula was completely reduced to a Japanese colony.
02 After abdicating, he was humiliated
After Li Tu abdicated, he was demoted by Japan to the title of "King Li of Changdeokgung Palace", although on the surface he still maintained the dignity of the emperor and a carefree life of food and clothing, but the scope of activities was limited to The Changdeokgung Palace, and without the consent of the Japanese, he could not take a step out of the palace, becoming a foreign prisoner on the land of the motherland. For this fallen monarch, the Japanese people's precautions and restrictions were extremely strict, not only forbidding Li Tu to participate in state affairs, but even not allowing him to intervene in such trivial matters as the furniture layout in the palace.
Li Tu
Since the murder of his mother, Li Tao began to become depressed, and the tragic death of his father once again brought a heavy blow to his soul, coupled with the humiliating life after the fall of the country, Li Tao washed his face with tears all day long, often hiding in the secret garden of the deep palace and silently reciting the words written by Li Yu, the lord of the Southern Tang Dynasty, after the fall of the country, and his mental condition was very bad. Fortunately, thanks to the careful care and patient enlightenment of his wife Yin Shi (Empress Chunzhenxiao), li kun survived a long and torturous time and miraculously lived for more than ten years. However, because Li Tu has no fertility, the couple has never had children, which is not a pity.
Although the Japanese people superficially respected Li Tu, behind their backs, they had been doing unseemly deeds, repeatedly deeply stimulating the fallen monarch. In 1917, in order to destroy the "dragon vein" Gyeongbokgung Palace in Korea in order to permanently rule the Korean Peninsula, the Japanese secretly set fire to Changdeokgung Palace, and then demolished Gyeongbokgung Palace on the grounds that changdeokgung Palace needed wood for repairing it, and demolished more than 4,000 rooms successively. In this regard, although Li Tu was well aware of Japan's sinister intentions, he was powerless to stop it, and only sighed.
Changdeokgung Palace, South Korea
Years of humiliation and repression made Li Tu become extremely superstitious, and he began to believe that people's souls are immortal after death, and often went to the palace where his father lived before his death and the Hongling Tomb where his parents were buried, to pour out his heart to his dead relatives. Later, Li Tu ordered someone to set up a special telephone line to Gaozong's former residence and mausoleum area, and whenever he was unwell and could not go, he ordered the attendant to answer the phone, and ordered the other receiver to turn the microphone to the place where the soul of the deceased father was considered to be the residence of the deceased father, and sat down on the microphone and whispered softly, causing all the people who saw it to cry.
03 Desolation died, triggering an uprising
Li Tao's weak health, coupled with the years after the fall of the country, endured a painful and depressed life, so his health deteriorated every year, and by March 1926, he had reached the point of dying. After hearing the news, Li Yan, the brother of the Crown Prince, rushed back to Seoul from Tokyo, Japan, to visit his condition, and instructed the relevant departments to allocate full-time nurses to take care of the imperial brother and to seek good medical treatment for him. However, under the obstruction of the Japanese, the relevant departments did not heed Li's orders, and Li Tao, whose condition was deteriorating, finally died on April 25 at the age of 53.
Li Tu's funeral
Before Li Tu's death, he secretly dictated the edict to his uncle Zhao Dingjiu, and on July 28 of the same year, he published it in the "New Hanmin Daily" published in the United States. In this testament, Li Tao explicitly refused to recognize the legality of the Japan-South Korea Annexation Treaty, claiming that this traitorous treaty was signed by the traitorOus minister Lee Wan-yong behind his back and had no legal effect. This testament is not only Lee's account of history, but also clearly expresses his inner sadness in the shadow of the subjugation of the country, so once it was published, it aroused the indignation of Korean patriots.
In order to buy people's hearts, the Japanese colonial authorities not only gave Li Tu a temple number and a nickname, but also held a grand state funeral for him, and hundreds of thousands of people came to the funeral. The funeral was held on June 10 of the same year, and the people who participated in the funeral, out of mourning for Li Tao and the grief of being a slave of the subjugated country, took out the secret Taiji flag on the way to the funeral and shouted the slogan "Long live independence". The Japanese military and police arrested people everywhere, further provoking popular resistance, and finally evolved into a nationwide "June 100,000-year-old movement."
Japanese Colonial Authorities Suppress the "June 100,000 Movement"
Although the "June 100,000-year-old Movement" was suppressed by the Japanese colonial authorities, it had a far-reaching impact on the history of the Korean independence movement. As stated in the "History of the Korean National Liberation Struggle": "Although the scale of the 'June 100,000-year-old Movement' is not large, the political significance of the movement is highly evaluated, because the '6.100,000-year-old Movement' not only waged an anti-Japanese struggle under the leadership of the Communist Party, but also announced before the toiling masses and the broad masses of patriots with a real heroic struggle against the political line of the anti-Japanese national united front." ”
bibliography
Li Juezhong: "The True Record of Chunzong", Xinminshe 1927 edition.
Jung Joo: Chronicles of the Great Korean Season, 1957 edition of the Korean National History Compilation Committee.
Lee Tae-jin: A Brief History of the Meiji Japanese Invasion of Korea, Chinese Min University Press, 2011.
Choe Chang-yeol: History of the Korean National Liberation Struggle, Oriental Book Club, 1951.