Japan’s Assassination of Korean Sovereign

The Japanese imperialists, who had reduced the Korean people to their colonial slaves and enforced the harshest ever fascist rule in the past century, did not hesitate to poison the Korean emperor.

The Japanese who had long waited for a chance to invade Korea buckled down to establishing their colonial domination over Korea in 1905 after the Russo-Japanese war.

In order to seize the sovereign rights of Korea, they forced Emperor Kojong and government ministers of the feudal Joson dynasty to accept the “Ulsa five-point treaty” they had cooked up beforehand.

But the Korean emperor vehemently rejected their demand, saying that the approval of the treaty meant national ruin and that he would rather die to be buried in the ancestral temple of the royal family than approving it.

As they were confronted with opposition by the emperor and many Korean officials despite their threat, blackmail and appeasement, the Japanese cooked up the “Ulsa five-point treaty” by way of coercion and trickery.

After the treaty was fabricated, the emperor conducted secret diplomatic activities to invalidate it.

In January 1906, he sent autograph letters through a foreign journalist to heads of several countries in which he made a stand against the treaty. In June the following year, he dispatched emissaries including Ri Jun to the Second International Peace Conference held in The Hague in the Netherlands to declare it invalid under the eyes of the world.

The Japanese judged that they should get rid of the emperor in order to realize their colonial rule over Korea. They openly forced him to abdicate after the emissary incident in The Hague and finally dethroned him.

Afterwards, they kept persecuting him before poisoning him.

After the First World War, imperialist powers got together for the peace conference over the postwar share in Paris in January 1919.

For fear that Kojong might cause such incident as the dispatch of emissaries to The Hague again on the occasion of the conference, the Japanese got their stooge to offer poisoned meal to him on January 22.

After his death, his body was covered with red dots and ulcers and the post-mortem revealed that he was poisoned.

Japan’s assassination of the Korean emperor is a heinous crime which can never be covered up no matter how much time may elapse.

The Korean people still remember the despicable crimes Japan committed against them in the past and will surely settle scores with it.

2021-01-22