thedrifter
02-24-03, 11:44 AM
In 1871, U.S. forces invaded Korea. Fifteen participants earned Medals of Honor, but the expedition did not achieve its primary objective.
By Michael D. Haydock
Ordinary Seaman John Andrews stood unflinching on the gunwale of the launch from USS Benicia, lashed to the ridge rope and coolly calling out the soundings he was taking with his lead-weighted line while the waters of Kangwha Strait were whipped to a fury by gunfire from the Korean fortifications on shore. The accurate readings taken by the 50-year-old Pennsylvanian were vitally needed to guide the landing force of 651 men to the shore. For that act of cold courage he would later receive the Medal of Honor. Eight other sailors and six Marines would also receive that highest of U.S. military decorations during America's first Korean War, fought in 1871.
Ten days earlier, Korean batteries in the fort on the island that John Andrews' boat was approaching had opened fire on other small boats of the fleet while they were engaged in a peaceful survey of the river. An explanation and an apology had been demanded. When neither had been forthcoming, the bluff and forthright Rear Adm. John Rodgers, commanding the American force, had determined that the time for talk had passed.
Rodgers Takes Action
The son of the ranking U.S. naval officer in the War of 1812, Rodgers had seen his first sea duty in 1826 as a midshipman aboard the sailing frigate Constellation in the Mediterranean. Later, he had participated in coordinated actions with the U.S. Army on the coasts of Florida during the Seminole War.
President Abraham Lincoln had recommended to Congress that Rodgers be thanked for his "zeal, bravery, and general good conduct" in the Civil War. He had reached his current rank of rear admiral in December 1869 when he was chosen to lead the Asiatic Squadron.
Rodgers now decided that it was time for action -- action that would be the culmination of a series of events that stretched back for years.
The Hermit Kingdom
The "Hermit Kingdom" of Korea had long been the focus of the envious eyes of Western traders. As early as 1845, a resolution had been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives calling for a mission to open trade with Japan and Korea -- even though neither nation invited nor welcomed such overtures.
By 1854, Commander Matthew Calbraith Perry, having overawed the Japanese with the steam warships Susquehanna and Mississippi, had obtained the Treaty of Kanagawa, which opened two Japanese ports to American ships, guaranteed safe treatment to shipwrecked sailors and granted the United States most-favored-nation trading status with Japan.
The Koreans, happy in their isolation and deeply wary of the influence of people they regarded as barbarians, remained aloof -- or tried to. Charts of the waters surrounding the peninsula had been produced by the British Embassy. But aside from that information, at the middle of the 19th century Korea was nearly as much of a terra incognita to Westerners as the interior of Africa.
Europeans Arrive
The first recorded visit by Europeans to the Hermit Kingdom was in 1628, when a Dutch ship was wrecked off the coast of Cheju Island. The three survivors were well treated by the Koreans, but they were forbidden to leave. They were made to help the Korean army improve its weapons, and two were killed near the Yalu River during a campaign against the Manchurians. The third, Jan Janse Weltevree, took the Korean name Pak Yon and lived out his days in Seoul.
Another Dutch ship was wrecked on the coast in 1653, and again the survivors were forbidden to leave. After 15 years, a small group managed to escape to Japan and eventually made its way back to Holland. There, one of the group, Hendrick Hamel, published an account of his adventures that provided the outside world with a glimpse of life in Korea.
The foreign contacts that the Koreans had, and valued, were with other countries of the Orient -- Japan and most particularly China, whose Confucian traditions they shared, and to whose court in the great imperial city of Peking they sent an annual tribute. The monarchs of the Yi-Chosen dynasty, which had ruled Korea since 1392, watched with growing apprehension the spread of Western ideas and influences in China. The spectacle of the ignominious flight of the imperial court from Peking after the Sino-British War of 1856, and the occupation of that capital by foreign troops, hardened Korean resolve to resist Western inroads. It was, however, a battle destined to be lost.
Desire For Trade
Pressure to open Korea to Western trade was intense. The British made representations and persisted in charting the waters around Korea. From the north, the Russians scoured the coasts in search of ports where they could trade, and they surreptitiously shipped goods over the border from Manchuria. Freebooters of several nations also made unofficial, uninvited and very unwelcome efforts to initiate trade.
Among the concessions that Western nations obtained from China was freedom for missionaries to work within the country. Korea also had brushes with Western Christianity. As early as 1783, a minor official named Yi-Sung-hun, who had become a convert during a visit abroad, returned to Korea with several religious texts. In 1785 the king of Korea banned Catholicism from the country, and Catholics were persecuted by the government in succeeding years. In 1836 and 1837 three French priests succeeded in entering Korea in disguise, but they were uncovered in 1839 and put to death, leading to a strong protest by the French government.
The Taewongun
The persecutions of Christians slackened under the reign of King Ch'olechong, who ascended to the throne in 1849, and several more priests entered the country. When Ch'olechong died in 1864, leaving no male heir, the government of Korea came into the hands of one of the most powerful personalities in the long history of the Yi dynasty. Given the honorific title Taewongun (literally, "Prince of the Great Court," a title bestowed on any living father of a king), he would become known as "the Taewongun," as if there had never been another. His actual name was Yi Ha-ung, and he was named regent on the succession of his 12-year-old son, Kojong, to the throne.
The Taewongun combined the skills of an able administrator with cunning and a mastery of intrigue. He was convinced that Korea had to be protected from the alien intrusions and unequal treaties that he saw threatening the old order in China and Japan. The best shield against these evils, he believed, was to encourage a rapid return to the traditions of Confucianism.
Naturally, there were diplomatic collisions. A well-meaning but misguided member of the Korean court, Nam Chong-sam, who was secretly a Christian, suggested to the Taewongun that French aid could help ward off increasingly strident Russian demands for entry into Korean markets. Nam had hoped that a friendly intervention by the French would lead to the legalization of Catholicism in Korea. But the Taewongun responded to Nam's suggestion with a pogrom that left nine of the 12 French priests in Korea and more than 8,000 Korean Christians dead.
Father Felix Ridel, who escaped to China, informed the French minister there of the deaths, and the minister proposed to the American consul in Peking that a joint military expedition be sent to Korea.
French Response
The United States, whose citizens had not yet been directly affected by events in Korea, rejected the suggestion, so the French took measures of their own. Although the French Far Eastern Fleet was fully occupied at the time in support of the effort to colonize Indochina, Admiral Pierre Gustav Roze detached three ships for a Korean foray. One was badly damaged before the fortress island of Kangwha, which guarded the river approaches to the capital of Seoul. The two remaining ships could do little more than reconnoiter before returning and reporting to the admiral on their less-than-impressive expedition. Under pressure from Paris, Roze assembled a fleet of seven ships and an expeditionary force of 600 men for an assault on Korea.
Arriving at the mouth of the Han River in late September, 1866, Admiral Roze's fleet engaged the Korean forces on Kangwha Island and succeeded in driving off the defenders. During that and subsequent battles through the month of October, however, the French troops suffered a casualty rate of nearly 14 percent; 80 of the French troops had been wounded by the time they withdrew to Indochina.
On March 2 of the following year, when Secretary of State William Seward suggested that a joint military expedition be sent to Korea to secure satisfaction for the loss of French and American lives, he was the one rebuffed. Badly bloodied, the French wanted no further part of military action in Korea.
The General Sherman
Seward's suggestion was prompted by an incident involving the heavily armed U.S. flag merchant ship General Sherman, which had been chartered to the British firm of Meadom and Company. General Sherman was crewed by 25 seamen recruited from the bars of Tientsin, who boasted of their intent to loot Korean tombs for gold should they be refused the right to trade. The ship sailed for Inchon in the summer of 1866, carrying her American owner, W.B. Preston, but was forced north by winds and tides. She then ran aground on a sandbar in the River Taedong, near Pyongyang.
continued
By Michael D. Haydock
Ordinary Seaman John Andrews stood unflinching on the gunwale of the launch from USS Benicia, lashed to the ridge rope and coolly calling out the soundings he was taking with his lead-weighted line while the waters of Kangwha Strait were whipped to a fury by gunfire from the Korean fortifications on shore. The accurate readings taken by the 50-year-old Pennsylvanian were vitally needed to guide the landing force of 651 men to the shore. For that act of cold courage he would later receive the Medal of Honor. Eight other sailors and six Marines would also receive that highest of U.S. military decorations during America's first Korean War, fought in 1871.
Ten days earlier, Korean batteries in the fort on the island that John Andrews' boat was approaching had opened fire on other small boats of the fleet while they were engaged in a peaceful survey of the river. An explanation and an apology had been demanded. When neither had been forthcoming, the bluff and forthright Rear Adm. John Rodgers, commanding the American force, had determined that the time for talk had passed.
Rodgers Takes Action
The son of the ranking U.S. naval officer in the War of 1812, Rodgers had seen his first sea duty in 1826 as a midshipman aboard the sailing frigate Constellation in the Mediterranean. Later, he had participated in coordinated actions with the U.S. Army on the coasts of Florida during the Seminole War.
President Abraham Lincoln had recommended to Congress that Rodgers be thanked for his "zeal, bravery, and general good conduct" in the Civil War. He had reached his current rank of rear admiral in December 1869 when he was chosen to lead the Asiatic Squadron.
Rodgers now decided that it was time for action -- action that would be the culmination of a series of events that stretched back for years.
The Hermit Kingdom
The "Hermit Kingdom" of Korea had long been the focus of the envious eyes of Western traders. As early as 1845, a resolution had been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives calling for a mission to open trade with Japan and Korea -- even though neither nation invited nor welcomed such overtures.
By 1854, Commander Matthew Calbraith Perry, having overawed the Japanese with the steam warships Susquehanna and Mississippi, had obtained the Treaty of Kanagawa, which opened two Japanese ports to American ships, guaranteed safe treatment to shipwrecked sailors and granted the United States most-favored-nation trading status with Japan.
The Koreans, happy in their isolation and deeply wary of the influence of people they regarded as barbarians, remained aloof -- or tried to. Charts of the waters surrounding the peninsula had been produced by the British Embassy. But aside from that information, at the middle of the 19th century Korea was nearly as much of a terra incognita to Westerners as the interior of Africa.
Europeans Arrive
The first recorded visit by Europeans to the Hermit Kingdom was in 1628, when a Dutch ship was wrecked off the coast of Cheju Island. The three survivors were well treated by the Koreans, but they were forbidden to leave. They were made to help the Korean army improve its weapons, and two were killed near the Yalu River during a campaign against the Manchurians. The third, Jan Janse Weltevree, took the Korean name Pak Yon and lived out his days in Seoul.
Another Dutch ship was wrecked on the coast in 1653, and again the survivors were forbidden to leave. After 15 years, a small group managed to escape to Japan and eventually made its way back to Holland. There, one of the group, Hendrick Hamel, published an account of his adventures that provided the outside world with a glimpse of life in Korea.
The foreign contacts that the Koreans had, and valued, were with other countries of the Orient -- Japan and most particularly China, whose Confucian traditions they shared, and to whose court in the great imperial city of Peking they sent an annual tribute. The monarchs of the Yi-Chosen dynasty, which had ruled Korea since 1392, watched with growing apprehension the spread of Western ideas and influences in China. The spectacle of the ignominious flight of the imperial court from Peking after the Sino-British War of 1856, and the occupation of that capital by foreign troops, hardened Korean resolve to resist Western inroads. It was, however, a battle destined to be lost.
Desire For Trade
Pressure to open Korea to Western trade was intense. The British made representations and persisted in charting the waters around Korea. From the north, the Russians scoured the coasts in search of ports where they could trade, and they surreptitiously shipped goods over the border from Manchuria. Freebooters of several nations also made unofficial, uninvited and very unwelcome efforts to initiate trade.
Among the concessions that Western nations obtained from China was freedom for missionaries to work within the country. Korea also had brushes with Western Christianity. As early as 1783, a minor official named Yi-Sung-hun, who had become a convert during a visit abroad, returned to Korea with several religious texts. In 1785 the king of Korea banned Catholicism from the country, and Catholics were persecuted by the government in succeeding years. In 1836 and 1837 three French priests succeeded in entering Korea in disguise, but they were uncovered in 1839 and put to death, leading to a strong protest by the French government.
The Taewongun
The persecutions of Christians slackened under the reign of King Ch'olechong, who ascended to the throne in 1849, and several more priests entered the country. When Ch'olechong died in 1864, leaving no male heir, the government of Korea came into the hands of one of the most powerful personalities in the long history of the Yi dynasty. Given the honorific title Taewongun (literally, "Prince of the Great Court," a title bestowed on any living father of a king), he would become known as "the Taewongun," as if there had never been another. His actual name was Yi Ha-ung, and he was named regent on the succession of his 12-year-old son, Kojong, to the throne.
The Taewongun combined the skills of an able administrator with cunning and a mastery of intrigue. He was convinced that Korea had to be protected from the alien intrusions and unequal treaties that he saw threatening the old order in China and Japan. The best shield against these evils, he believed, was to encourage a rapid return to the traditions of Confucianism.
Naturally, there were diplomatic collisions. A well-meaning but misguided member of the Korean court, Nam Chong-sam, who was secretly a Christian, suggested to the Taewongun that French aid could help ward off increasingly strident Russian demands for entry into Korean markets. Nam had hoped that a friendly intervention by the French would lead to the legalization of Catholicism in Korea. But the Taewongun responded to Nam's suggestion with a pogrom that left nine of the 12 French priests in Korea and more than 8,000 Korean Christians dead.
Father Felix Ridel, who escaped to China, informed the French minister there of the deaths, and the minister proposed to the American consul in Peking that a joint military expedition be sent to Korea.
French Response
The United States, whose citizens had not yet been directly affected by events in Korea, rejected the suggestion, so the French took measures of their own. Although the French Far Eastern Fleet was fully occupied at the time in support of the effort to colonize Indochina, Admiral Pierre Gustav Roze detached three ships for a Korean foray. One was badly damaged before the fortress island of Kangwha, which guarded the river approaches to the capital of Seoul. The two remaining ships could do little more than reconnoiter before returning and reporting to the admiral on their less-than-impressive expedition. Under pressure from Paris, Roze assembled a fleet of seven ships and an expeditionary force of 600 men for an assault on Korea.
Arriving at the mouth of the Han River in late September, 1866, Admiral Roze's fleet engaged the Korean forces on Kangwha Island and succeeded in driving off the defenders. During that and subsequent battles through the month of October, however, the French troops suffered a casualty rate of nearly 14 percent; 80 of the French troops had been wounded by the time they withdrew to Indochina.
On March 2 of the following year, when Secretary of State William Seward suggested that a joint military expedition be sent to Korea to secure satisfaction for the loss of French and American lives, he was the one rebuffed. Badly bloodied, the French wanted no further part of military action in Korea.
The General Sherman
Seward's suggestion was prompted by an incident involving the heavily armed U.S. flag merchant ship General Sherman, which had been chartered to the British firm of Meadom and Company. General Sherman was crewed by 25 seamen recruited from the bars of Tientsin, who boasted of their intent to loot Korean tombs for gold should they be refused the right to trade. The ship sailed for Inchon in the summer of 1866, carrying her American owner, W.B. Preston, but was forced north by winds and tides. She then ran aground on a sandbar in the River Taedong, near Pyongyang.
continued