Talk:Assassination of Empress Myeongseong

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✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 07:20, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

"Turning foreign and popular opinion"

I wrote this in an edit comment but I'll put it here just in case.

I put a CN on this claim: The assassination was designed to strengthen Japan's position in Korea vis-à-vis the other powers, although it had the effect of turning foreign and popular opinion strongly against Japan. Afaik I don't think this is true; see Anti-Korean sentiment#During Japanese colonization (Disclaimer; I wrote this section). To my understanding, Theodore Roosevelt was vocally anti-Korea and pro-Japanese colonization even after the assassination. The international diplomatic community largely felt the same way, if they talked about Korea at all (generally a niche topic for most people). Certainly the general public around the world outside of Japan and China did not care about Korea at all, if they were even aware of it. Korea was a topic only for politicians, missionaries, and a few journalists around that time.

To my knowledge, diplomatic sentiment only started to shift against Japan after 1910, and made a larger shift after the persecution of the March 1st Movement in 1919. But even then the primary feeling was apathy. toobigtokale (talk) 10:40, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Nvm, found a source for it, potentially the one where it originally came from. See edit history I wrote explanation in comments there toobigtokale (talk) 07:25, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Background section

Page is currently missing context for why the assassination occurred. That context used to be on the Empress Myeongseong page before the split, and it now needs to be added here. toobigtokale (talk) 23:30, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Done, rewrote the article toobigtokale (talk) 00:44, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Accuracy

Is the Korean version of this article accurate? Koreanidentity10000 (talk) 12:50, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

I wouldn't trust the kowiki with much in general. The consistent lack of sourcing and the overt nationalism is concerning. For most topics I try to rely mostly on non-Korean sources where possible, and fill in the gaps with Korean sources when needed. I try to only refer to the kowiki for ideas and to borrow some sources that seem reliable enough. toobigtokale (talk) 16:06, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Military Casualties

How many casualties on both sides? Koreanidentity10000 (talk) 18:09, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Korean units involved

I know the Capital Guards were vital to protecting Queen Min, but who were the other royal guards protecting the palace? Koreanidentity10000 (talk) 18:10, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Editing Background

Hi! I plan on adding more information to the background section. Here is one source I will be using:

"A concise history of modern Korea: from the late nineteenth century to the present". Choice Reviews Online. 47 (10): 47. 2010. ISSN 0009-4978. Sabdarg (talk) 23:57, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Please go ahead, good source toobigtokale (talk) 05:05, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Large unreferenced section

The section under subheading "Surrounding the palace" boasts several large paragraphs without reference.

It's quite well written but with zero backups for that one particular part of the article, one is left wondering whether to trust it.

Jondvdsn1 (talk) 08:17, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Agreed, good chunks of this article still need to be referenced. toobigtokale (talk) 08:07, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Redoing

Redoing most of this article with higher-quality sources. I deleted much of the previous article, which had some good tidbits but mixed-quality sourcing. Unfortunate losses in there, but it'll heal. May take a few days, but I think this'll make the article more robust. toobigtokale (talk) 21:15, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

This topic wasn't on my immediate radar but I ran into the story on accident while working on articles about newspapers. The article is getting pretty long; please feel free to revise. toobigtokale (talk) 22:15, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Historiography

I'm struggling with the historiography rn. It's such a pain that it's hard to access Korean-language sources; may need to buy books in Korea. I have a suspicion that the Japan-leaning historians that I've relied on are somewhat more reliable than the excessively anti-Japanese Korean historians that seem to be mainstream on this topic in the Korean language. In the kowiki version of this article, the book "한국통사" is cited several times for controversial facts. That's a book written using explicitly nationalist historiography. It'd be nice if a modern scholar scrapped all prior academic work and just assembled all the existing primary sources in one place and wrote from those. So hard to trust anything. toobigtokale (talk) 06:46, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

I am on guard about source language bias from all the scholars; I sometimes get a feeling that some scholars have not seen the entire body of evidence, especially texts in languages they do not speak. Sometimes I'm on guard about national bias overall; Keene has nice details in his work, but in several instances I felt Keene's tone edge condescending towards the queen and even Korea in general. toobigtokale (talk) 20:08, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Jager's source is interesting but does not delve into cautious historiographical analysis. I cited it because it has some details others didn't have. toobigtokale (talk) 20:10, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

I really liked Uchida's text, but unfortunately it doesn't cover the assassination in detail.

The primary sources from contemporary people in Korea, namely Bird and Underwood's, are very good but are unfortunately primary sources (not Wikipedia's preferred secondary sources WP:PSTS) and led by limited perspectives and rumors at the time. However, the fact that they're so close to the eyewitnesses makes them fascinating and still useful for grounding the article. toobigtokale (talk) 20:15, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

My current impression is that the event is somewhere in between the Korean and Japanese narratives, leaning closer to Orbach's narrative. Japan had a genuine and systemic problem with insubordination from meatheads that eventually caused the extreme atrocities and pointless escalation of the East Asian theatre of WWII. Even if some parts of the Japanese government may have wanted the assassination, certainly significant parts of it would not have (often both for equally cynical, cruel, and controlling reasons). The Daewongun strikes me as a greedy opportunist, and probably participated in the plot at least partially willingly; after all, he leaned into the results.

This narrative blames the Japanese government slightly less, but it's still extremely damning. They appointed a violent and arrogant simpleton to a complicated and important position, scrambled to sloppily hide the simpleton's obvious and poorly-executed murder of the de facto head of government of another soverign country, and lied about it. No compensation, no apology. toobigtokale (talk) 20:36, 1 February 2024 (UTC)