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Tonghak Rebellion (Korea) [1,990 words (including bibliography and related article links)]

The Tonghak Rebellion of 1894 was a nearly successful, religious-inspired

peasant revolution against both the aristocratic order and a powerless king, repressed only by dual foreign invasions, one invited and the other uninvited. Only in retrospect, this rebellion can be seen to have long-term destabilizing cultural ramifications for Korean nationalism since Tonghak as Korea’s first nationalist movement was additionally a class-revolutionary peasant rebellion and a millenarian religion instead of an exclusively secular, cross-class, cross-religious, unifying political movement. However, Tonghak was the only major social form to emerge under domestic and international repression to provide public nationalist leadership in the late 1800s against the Korean/Joseon dynasty’s Confucian, hereditary, and caste-based cultural settlement and against the government’s cooperation with foreign occupation.

The Tonghak rebellion was catalyzed by five intersecting influences reaching a crescendo in the late 1800s in Korea: indigenous Korean religious and cultural concepts defensively coming to the fore; the concept of a novel radical equality of believers in imported and proselytized Christianity; a peasant class position increasingly rejecting aristocratic/royal precedence (in increasing frequency of peasant revolts in 1811, 1862, 1871 (connected to Tonghak) and 1892-4 (the penultimate rebellion connected to Tonghak)); the stirrings of nationalism inspired against all foreign influences; and an internally divided Korean elite with different factions supporting either Chinese, Japanese, or Russian sponsorship versus a dawning independent popular culture that despite being nationalistic tended to look to foreign cultures more for models (particularly the Japanese) and was divided internally on policy direction as well. Thus Tonghak was different by being exclusively, proudly nationalistic in an era where most Koreans were unsure of what could be retained in their own culture and unsure which culture to model.

During the late 1800s, Japanese power was growing. The Joseon dynasty in Korea (1394-1910) lost its centuries old de jure status as a Chinese protectorate to only become a Japanese protectorate in a series of treaties between Korea, Japan, and China from 1876 to 1905, until full annexation by Japan in 1910. Since this long-term culturally insulated status as a Chinese protectorate was in most times a de facto Korean independence, Korea has been successful in keeping closed borders immune to foreign trade or ideas. This was similar to Japan before its own forced opening in 1858 by the Americans and similar to China before the British-Chinese Opium Wars forced China to open itself in the 1840s. Similarly to Japan and China, Korean isolation and autonomy were challenged via foreign (Western or Japanese) religions or military invasions or threats from them. Novel, unstable cultural mixtures were created from religious and/or military incursions from French, American, British, Russian, and Japanese influences versus traditional Chinese influences themselves becoming more militarized and despised.

This background of Tongak is important to relate. In this context, Tonghak was simultaneously a native revivalist political movement, a new religion, and an anti-upper class, democratic political movement. It means “Eastern Learning,” a name chosen long before the rebellion to distinguish its believers’ tenets from the newly introduced “Suhak”

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(“Western Learning,” a.k.a. Christianity) coming to Korea in the mid-1800s via French Roman Catholic missionaries soon martyred. Tonghak is known more formally by the name Chondogyo (“Doctrine of Heavenly Way”) and was formulated by its own martyred founder Choi Je-u (1824 – 1864). Motherless from infancy, fatherless from age sixteen, and impoverished after becoming a failed Confucian state bureaucracy candidate, Choi looked at mounting Korean problems and came to reject the Confucianism of his father (a scholar of some repute under whom he studied) and to reject Korean Buddhism as both deficient though reasonable. In 1855, he related, he had an unexpected religious vision associated with a religio-medical cure of eating a piece of paper with his sacred 21-character prayer on it. He proselytized this religio-medical cure for four years, from 1860 until his martyr’s death in 1864, with a theme of lecturing about political corruption while proselytizing of Tonghak’s humanism, democratic ethos, and classless society of equals that was coming against the injustices and inequalities of his day. He eclectically took what he thought best from Confucianism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Korean shamanism in his teachings combined with a millenarianism that argued the forces of history were innately moving to a beneficial settlement that would put heaven on earth. It is said that there were 3,000 converts to Tonghak by 1863, with 14 independent communities being established on democratic grounds with a material-sharing ethos.

While proselytizing, despite distinguishing his doctrine from Christianity, he ironically was arrested as a Christian and treated accordingly by the Joseon Dynasty: he was tried and then executed. After Choi’s martyrdom, Tonghak was proscribed. However, it continued to spread in very hierarchical though democratic secret society religious meetings among the peasantry. The Founder’s deputy in the northern provinces and his younger relative Choi Sigyong became second head of Tonghak, directing it for the next thirty years. From 1882, a secret book was circulated called the Tong Kyung Tai Chun. It had writings by the Founder who ordered its printing. However, persecution delayed the original publication, and it was lost. Choi Sigyong, with associates of the founder, reconstructed it.

Like Christianity, Tonghak is somewhat monotheistic though the god is Haneullim, the “Lord of Heaven”—only one of many gods in Korean shamanism. So unlike Christianity, Tonghak is additionally pantheistic (god is the natural world and there are multiple acceptable gods) and panentheistic (god is a force spread throughout and beyond the material world and is in all believers, who are god themselves). Instead of a god, Tonghak believes in a “heavenly energy” like ch’i in the Chinese sense. Heaven and earth interpenetrate like animal and human/divine natures in us interpenetrate, Choi argued. He felt we are always fighting against this in ourselves and in the world, and this heavenly energy can give humans the strength to bring about heaven on earth or to create the godhead in each of us. The fundamental prayer employed is the Twenty-One Character Formula, translated: “Infinite energy being now within me, I yearn that it may pour into all living beings and created things. Since this energy abides in me, I am identified with God and of one nature with all existence. Should I ever forget these things, all existing things will know of it.”

There were three salvations. There was a collective salvation via political action to improve one’s social and material context. All believers’ salvation depended upon action for improvement of material conditions and removal of political impediments, to make the heavenly paradise on earth. Second, there was an individual salvation to

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improve one’s ‘animal’ consciousness into a divine moral being, similar to a Buddhist bodhisattva motivated by compassion to work for removing suffering in the world after self-enlightenment toward the enlightenment of all beings instead of withdrawing from suffering. Since all humans have the same god-energy infused in them, all humans are equal. “All men are equal” was the secret password to get into Tonghak meetings after they were proscribed. The leadership though hierarchical was elected democratically from material contributors to the meeting. Tonghak became an individualistic, humanistic, democratic, collective, and socialistic religious movement. Third, in the context of foreign invasions and occupation, it developed a third level of salvation: the national salvation requires removing alien domination, worldwide. In this ecumenical and pantheistic way, Tonghak accepts that different nations have different nationalist salvations. Tonghak, Choi argued, was the Korean way.

As a proscribed sect from 1864 when its leader was martyred, underground Tonghak instigated multi-regional uprisings in 1871. However, its leaders became convinced that revolution, or at least brinkmanship with the government with this threat, was a path to social and economic change. Later in other places in 1892-3, the Tonhak sect organized large non-violent demonstrations. Simultaneously, Tonghak boldly sent a delegation to the court at Seoul in 1893. They told King Gojong’s government (r. 1863-1907) that they wanted their founder declared innocent of the original charges against him (preaching Christianity), wanted Koreans to have freedom of worship, sought an end to corruption, and sought removal of foreign influences. They said they would kill all foreigners if their requests were ignored.

The Korean court extemporized with Tonghak rebels while inviting a Qing Chinese invasion army of 1,500 troops to crush them, led originally by Yuan Shikai. When this was learned, the faction supporting the peaceful route of change was discredited, and Tonghak led an open rebellion in 1894. The rebellion marched from the southeast Gyeongsang Province toward the capital of Seoul, under the slogans, “Down with tyranny!” and “Down with the Westerners and Japanese!” The rebellion grew as it traversed Korea heading for the capital of Seoul. Many of the king’s own troops sent to fight against it joined the religious rebellion. Geopolitically, when the king invited a foreign invasion from Qing China to crush his own people’s rebellion this catalyzed a second invasion by Japan. This led to the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) during which a weakened China and a strengthening Japan fought for control of the Korean Peninsula during the Tonghak rebellion. The Japanese first won against the Qing Chinese army (China sued for peace in 1895 after six months of losing to the Japanese--shocking the world) then the Japanese finished by crushing the Tonghak Rebellion. Tonghak leaders interviewed in the 1960s claimed 400,000 believers were killed in this rebellion, with both militant and peaceful factions captured and executed by the Chinese or Japanese. Despite staggering losses, Tonghak continued with its leadership taking refuge in Japan under the third head of faith Son Pyonghui. The Japanese Empire stayed in Korea and eventually repressed the whole dynasty by 1910 when Japan annexed Korea and ended the Korean monarchy in that year, occupying Korea until 1945.

Even though Japan lost its empire more by default via losing World War II instead of by any internal pressure of Korean nationalist movements, Tonghak after the failure of 1894 continued to be a major religio-political force into the 20th century. This was despite many members leaving the movement for more autonomous revolutionary

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armies against foreign occupiers or leaving Tonghak for Christianity. The remaining Chondogyo followers stayed at the forefront of Korean nationalist movements, particularly building schools or starting political parties. Fully fifteen of 33 people signing the Korean Declaration of Independence in 1919 were followers of Chondogyo, including the first person signing. Chondogyo was the largest stated religious affiliation among thousands of Koreans arrested by the Japanese during the Samil Movement (starting March 1, 1919)—a revolt against the Japanese in which many millions took part. Only after 1919, Chondogyo lost its theocratic-nationalist edge and worked in alliance with secular nationalists and Korean Christians against the Japanese. It was even important after World War II in Soviet-occupied North Korea where it started its own political party, received 7% of the delegates in an election, and later led an uprising against the totalitarian communist regime after the Korean War armistice in 1953. It is rumored that Chondogyo is still a large percentage of underground North Korean religious beliefs in the early 21st century, though its numbers declined in South Korea from the 1960s. SEE ALSO: Nationalism 3, Joseon Dynasty (Korea 1392-1910), Joseon (Chosen) Government, Japanese Invasions, Qing Dynasty 1644-1911, Treaty of Shimonoseki, Westernization Further reading: Beaver, R. Pierce. “Chondogyo and Korea.” Journal of Bible and Religion (v.30/2, 1962) Lee/Yi, Ki-Baik. A New History of Korea. Translation of Han-guksa sillon by Edward W. Wagner with Edward J. Schultz. Seoul, Korea: Ilchokak. 1984. Lee/Yi, Sang-Taek. Religion and Social Formation in Korea: Minjung and Millenarianism. (Religion and Society Series, v.37) The Hague, Netherlands: Walter de Gruyter, 1996 Rhee, Hong Beom. Asian Millenarianism: An Interdisciplinary Study of the Taiping and Tonghak Rebellions in a Global Context. Cambia Press, 2007 Pye, Michael. “Won Buddhism as a Korean New Religion.” Numen (v.49/2, 2002) Whitaker, Mark D. Ecological Revolution: The Political Origins of Environmental Degradation and the Environmental Origins of Axial Religions: China, Japan, Europe. Cologne, Germany: Lambert Academic Publishing, 2008.

Mark D. Whitaker, Ph.D. Kookmin University, Seoul, Korea