America's Other Korean War

[thedrifter]

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.

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Pak-Kyu-su, the magistrate of Pyongyang, informed Preston that he had no authority to allow foreign trade, nor even to negotiate with foreigners. Preston and his tough crew were not easily put off, however, and made their own dealings with the citizens they encountered. Stealing food and water and, by some accounts, kidnapping women, the crew alienated the Koreans. What patience and forbearance the Koreans had was exhausted after the captain allowed Robert T. Thomas, a Scottish Protestant missionary who was on board General Sherman, to go ashore to preach and distribute religious tracts. And if that was not bad enough, the crew kidnapped a local official.

On September 2, a mob attacked the ship and burned it. Those members of the crew who survived the assault were interrogated briefly by the Koreans, then beheaded. The ship's anchor chains were hung on the gates of Pyongyang as a trophy.

The Taewongun rejoiced in what he saw as twin victories against foreign aggressors. The damage that the French had inflicted on the fortifications of Kangwha Island was repaired, and the works were strengthened and well garrisoned. The Taewongun issued a proclamation and had the terms carved on stone tablets that were erected throughout the Hermit Kingdom: "Not to fight back when invaded by the Western barbarians is to invite further attacks." Early in 1871, the Taewongun proclaimed an official policy of isolation.

The U.S. government was unimpressed by Korea's isolationist stance. When the French first brought the news of what happened to General Sherman, the American minister to China requested that the French government make inquiries of the Koreans. The Koreans first denied that the incident had occurred, then said that it was a British ship, anyway, then belligerently added that they were prepared to repel any attack mounted by Westerners. Having sent the warships Wachusett and Shenandoah to Korea in successive years without learning anything further regarding the fate of General Sherman, the U.S. government was virtually certain that the crew had been killed and the ship destroyed.

Low's Mission

In April 1870, the State Department instructed Frederick F. Low, the recently appointed minister to China, to go to Korea to negotiate a "shipwreck" convention to ensure the safety of American seamen, to obtain a commercial treaty with the Koreans and to clear up the matter of General Sherman. The Department of the Navy directed that Admiral Rodgers, commanding the Asiatic Squadron, cooperate with Low in that expedition.

Born in Maine while his naval counterpart was serving on board Constellation, Low had a wide knowledge of the Orient, acquired during his apprenticeship and service with the Boston firm of Russell, Sturgis and Company, which traded extensively there. Low had left the firm to join the California Gold Rush and subsequently established himself as a successful merchant, steamship line operator and banker before being elected to Congress. Later, as governor of California, he championed the cause of immigrant Chinese laborers and was tapped by President Ulysses S. Grant for the post of U.S. minister in Peking.

Low was not sanguine about the mission's prospects of success, but he dutifully enlisted the aid of the Chinese government in laying the groundwork for the mission. While Low went about that task, Admiral Rodgers assembled his fleet. As commander of the Asiatic Squadron, Rodgers flew his flag over USS Colorado, a steam screw frigate of preÐCivil War vintage that had seen service in the Union blockade off Mobile, and off the coast of North Carolina. Ambassador Low would also be quartered on Colorado. Alaska and Benicia, near sisters at 2,400 tons and 250 feet in length, were the most modern ships of the fleet. Commissioned in December 1869, each boasted a powerful 60-pounder rifled gun. In addition, Benicia mounted two 20-pounder breech-loading rifles. Palos, built as an iron-hulled, screw-driven tug and later converted to a gunboat, had been assigned to the Asiatic Squadron the previous year, and on her journey to the Far East she had been the first U.S. warship to steam through the newly completed Suez Canal. The side-wheel gunboat Monocacy, mounting six guns, rounded out the small fleet that sailed for Korea in April 1871.

The fleet arrived off the fortress island of Kangwha, guarding the approaches to Seoul, on May 21. Visits were exchanged between ship and shore, but the Americans made no progress with respect to either General Sherman's fate or the matter of trade and treaties. They did, however, obtain permission from the Koreans to have launches make surveys and soundings of the waters beyond the main fleet anchorage. At least, according to their official reports, they thought they had such permission.

Permission Denied

On June 1, a survey party had passed up Kangwha Strait to a point beyond the Korean fortifications when they were fired upon from both the shore and the forts. Particularly galling fire came from the highest and most developed of the forts, perched above the channel. This was the citadel of the Koreans, manned by 1,000 elite troops known as the Tiger Hunters and under the command of an able leader, O-Chae-yon.

As the survey launches withdrew toward the main fleet, passing under the guns of the Korean fortifications on Kangwha Island, Palos and Monocacy steamed up and delivered covering fire. Two of the seamen in the survey party were wounded in the incident, and an explanation was clearly called for. Ambassador Low and Admiral Rodgers drafted a joint demand to the Koreans for both an explanation and reparations, specifying that an answer was due no later than June 10. While awaiting a reply, Rodgers and his staff laid plans for an assault on the Korean positions on Kangwha Island, on the presumption that such an assault would be necessary. The Marine guards assigned to the fleet, a body of 105 men and five officers, were chosen to lead the assault under the command of Marine Captain McLean Tilton. In addition to the Marines, Rodgers committed every available Navy bluejacket to the landing party, so that it totaled 651 men. Rodgers also ordered that seven pieces of field artillery be landed to aid in the assault. All riflemen assigned to the landing force were issued 100 rounds of ammunition, and the entire assault force was allotted two days' rations.

The general plan of attack devised by Rodgers was for Monocacy and Palos to advance up the river toward the forts accompanied by steam launches from the ships of the fleet. The launches would tow ship's boats carrying the landing parties. Upon reaching the south end of the island, the boats would swing toward shore to make their landing while the ships continued on, directing covering fire at the fortifications.

Americans Land

On the morning of June 10, with no response received from the Koreans, the plan was put into effect. Seaman John Andrews found himself under heavy fire as he took soundings, guiding the landing parties toward the mud flats at the south end of the island. Before his launch grounded, heavy fire from the American ships upstream had silenced the fire from shore. Captain Tilton and his Marines landed on a very gently sloping beach about 200 yards below the high-water mark and immediately sank up to their knees in mud. Struggling toward firmer ground, they would have been easy targets for a defender, but the landing site had been well chosen -- it was undefended.

Having gained the scrubby land beyond the beach, the Marines threw out a line of skirmishers toward a tongue of land that jutted into the river. It was covered in scrub and was strengthened by a small redoubt on the right. Shots crackled from the brush before them with no effect on the Marine advance. Figures could occasionally be seen running through the brush, pausing to fire and then running again. When the Marines reached the redoubt, they found it had been abandoned. They scoured the grounds around the small fort for Koreans and, finding none, settled into the bastion to await the main landing party.

When that group arrived, it set about dismantling the works and spiking its guns while the Marines moved on. The Marines went forward with the river on their right, and they spread out as far as possible to the left. Three-quarters of a mile farther on, they came to a wooded knoll covered with the hemispherical mounds that characterize a Korean cemetery. As it was now late in the afternoon, a general order was issued for the entire force to make camp for the night -- the first time a foreign military force had bivouacked overnight on Korean soil since the Japanese invasion of 1592.

After breakfast the following day, the small army advanced on the second, more formidable line of fortifications. One-third of the Marines were ordered forward and two-thirds were held in reserve. The assault was bloodless, as the Korean defenders had withdrawn from their position under fire from the U.S. gunboats.

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On To The Citadel

The landing party made short work of the fortification. The battlements were dismantled, 50 or 60 small cannons spiked and heaved over a cliff into the waters below, and the ramparts demolished. Resting for a moment, the party surveyed its ultimate objective, the grand stronghold at the north end of the island, the Koreans' citadel.

Shaped like a horseshoe, the citadel occupied the apex of a conical hill about 150 feet high. The hillside was very steep, and the walls of the fortress joined it with scarcely a break to distinguish where the hill ended and the fort began. Shells from Monocacy and from the batteries that had been brought to shore were scarring the face of the citadel as the landing party advanced, with the Marines in the van. The advance was obscured from the defenders by the brush until the leading Marines reached the exposed crest of a hill about 150 yards from the Korean position. Before them, parallel to the ridge they now occupied, was another ridge about 30 yards closer to the citadel. To their right was a path that appeared to wind to the very top of the conical hill on which the fortress sat; the path was lined with banners on poles, a few feet apart.

Captain Tilton detailed four men to remove the banners, and they succeeded in securing about 15 before concentrated fire from the fort forced them to take cover. When the Koreans opened fire, the main body of troops rushed the next ridge, firing as they charged. One Marine, Private Dennis Hemahan, died in the assault.

Sheltering momentarily on the ridge, the American troops commenced volley fire on the apex of the hill. Above the rattle of small arms they could hear the voices of the Koreans raised in a melancholy chant as they fought.

Marines Charge

Rising from the ridge, the Marines and bluejackets charged the hill, scrambling up, over and through the shell holes from the artillery and naval guns.

The first to reach the parapet was Navy Lieutenant H.W. McKee, who engaged the Tiger Hunters in hand-to-hand combat. At his side were Quartermaster Samuel Rogers, Boatswain's Mate Alexander McKenzie and Ordinary Seaman William Troy. In that initial clash McKee fell, in the words of Admiral Rodgers' report, "as his father fell in Mexico, at the head of his men, first inside the enemy's stormed works." Each of the men with McKee was severely wounded by the swords of the Koreans in the wild melee. McKenzie's life was saved by the bold courage of Marine Private John Coleman, a 24-year-old native of Ireland who had joined the Corps in California, and who received the Medal of Honor for his efforts on this day.

The color-bearer of the battalion, Navy Carpenter Cyrus Hayden, planted the flag he carried on the ramparts during the battle and drove off the Koreans who tried several times to seize it, while Marine Private Hugh Purvis and Corporal Charles Brown tore down the Korean standard at the center of the fort.

Fierce Defense

The defenders fought with great bravery to the very end, even hurling stones at their attackers when there was nothing more with which to fight. By the time the battle ended on that Sunday afternoon, 243 Koreans were dead inside the citadel, including the commander O-Chae-yon. Twenty Koreans were so badly wounded that they could offer no further resistance and were transported back to the fleet when the landing party re-embarked on the following day.

So fierce had been the defense of the fort that Ambassador Low reported to the secretary of state that "the Koreans fought with desperation rarely equaled and never excelled by any people." A naval officer who had participated in the battle wrote in his memoirs, years later, that the Korean troops "died at their posts of duty, heroically and without fear. The men of no nation could have done more for home and country."

The victory elated Rodgers, but any elation that was shared by Ambassador Low soured almost immediately. The negotiations that he was attempting were not speeded by the hard-fought military action; they were, in fact, mired even further by the obduracy of the Koreans.

Determined to break the deadlock, Low attempted another maneuver to bring the Koreans to negotiations. The prisoners who had been taken at the citadel, now named Fort McKee by the Americans, had been well cared for, and their wounds had been treated. If the Korean government would guarantee that those captives would do no more fighting, Low indicated, they would be released. The Koreans responded that the prisoners had dishonored themselves by allowing themselves to be captured. If released they would be dealt with harshly by their own countrymen.
Americans Leave

After three weeks of attempted negotiations, the American fleet sailed away from the shores of Korea as had the French fleet before it. The Korean War of 1871 had accomplished no American objectives. Three members of the expedition were dead, 10 more had been wounded and 15 would later be awarded the Medal of Honor for their valorous actions during the fighting.

The official Korean account lionized the defenders of Kangwha Island, who were credited with inflicting heavy casualties on the Americans. However exaggerated the Korean appraisal of the tactical situation may have been, the ultimate outcome of the expedition was a failure by the Americans to achieve their primary goal -- Korea remained closed to the outside world.

Although the Taewongun was jubilant at his apparent victory and came to believe more fervently than ever in his policy of resistance to foreign influences, his joy was to be short-lived. Korea was ultimately forced open to foreign trade, though it would not be by the Americans, French, British or Russians. Rather, it was the modernizing Japanese government that forced a treaty on Korea in 1876. That treaty extracted more from Korea than Perry had extracted from the Japanese 20 years earlier. By 1910, Japan had formally annexed the Hermit Kingdom into the Japanese Empire, and it would remain a province of that empire until the end of World War II in 1945.

Sempers,

Roger

[Lock-n-Load]

Thx for all of the above....Having served 2 tours of duty in Korea [23Jul51 to 15Aug52 and 23Sept53 to Nov54]...I believe our insight [USMC] to that Red Communist North Korean Army was justified then [25Jun50 to 27Jul53]..."A Good Gook is a Dead Gook".... :chinese: LtG