Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Korea's brief but significant period as an empire as it moved from the 500-year-old dynastic Joseon monarchy towards modernity. It was in October 1897 that King Gojong declared himself Emperor, seizing his chance when the once-dominant China lost to Japan in the First Sino-Japanese War. The king wanted to have the same status as the neighbouring Russian, Chinese and Japanese Emperors, to shore up a bid for Korean independence and sovereignty when the world’s major powers either wanted to open Korea up to trade or to colonise it. The Korean Empire lasted only thirteen years, yet it was a time of great transformation for this state and the whole region with lasting consequences in the next century…

With

Nuri Kim

Holly Stephens

And

Derek Kramer

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Isabella Bird Bishop, Korea and her Neighbors: A Narrative of Travel, With an Account of the Recent Vicissitudes and Present Position of the Country (first published 1898; Forgotten Books, 2019)

Vipan Chandra, Imperialism, Resistance and Reform in Late Nineteenth-Century Korea: Enlightenment and the Independence Club (University of California, Institute of East Asian Studies, 1988)

Peter Duus, The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1859-1910 (University of California Press, 1995)

Carter J. Eckert, Offspring of Empire: The Koch'ang Kims and the Colonial Origins of Korean Capitalism, 1876–1910 (University of Washington Press, 1991)

George L. Kallander, Salvation through Dissent: Tonghak Heterodoxy and Early Modern Korea (University of Hawaii Press, 2013)

Kim Dong-no, John B. Duncan and Kim Do-hyung (eds.), Reform and Modernity in the Taehan Empire (Jimoondang, 2006)

Kirk W. Larsen, Tradition, Treaties, and Trade: Qing Imperialism and Chosŏn Korea, 1850-1910 (Harvard University Asia Center, 2008)

Yumi Moon, Populist Collaborators: The Ilchinhoe and the Japanese Colonization of Korea, 1896-1910 (Cornell University Press, 2013)

Sung-Deuk Oak, The Making of Korean Christianity: Protestant Encounters with Korean Religions, 1876-1915 (Baylor University Press, 2013)

Eugene T. Park, A Family of No Prominence: The Descendants of Pak Tŏkhwa and the Birth of Modern Korea (Stanford University Press, 2020)

Michael E. Robinson, Korea’s Twentieth-Century Odyssey: A Short History (University of Hawaii Press, 2007)

Andre Schmid, Korea Between Empires, 1895-1919 (Columbia University Press, 2002)

Vladimir Tikhonov, Social Darwinism and Nationalism in Korea: The Beginnings, 1880s-1910s (Brill, 2010)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production