In 2002, the University of Hawai‘i Press published Michael Finch's full-length political and intellectual biography of Min Yŏnghwan, one of modern Korea's iconic patriots. A highly placed official of the Korean monarchy, Min committed suicide in 1905 in protest against Japan's imposition of a protectorate, a semicolonial status, on his country. He left behind a series of emotionally charged letters bewailing the lot of his nation and trying to spark resistance both among his compatriots and foreign envoys in Seoul against the ambitious and aggressive designs of Japanese expansionism in Korea.
This new work by Finch is an annotated translation of Min's significant writings, particularly his travel journals from the time he served as an envoy to Russia, the United Kingdom, and several countries in continental Europe; his reform proposals; several of his appointment letters from the court; some papers related to matters of diplomatic protocol; and the letters of lamentation found after his suicide. Finch's earlier book drew significantly on these and other sources, and he and his publishers clearly decided that there was much merit in making their full texts available in English to the scholarly community. Finch has also included a long scholarly introduction to the translation in which he summarizes the key themes and events covered by the documents and puts them in the context of the larger Korean, East Asian and global developments that were under way during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Min laid out his views on Korea's domestic politics and administration, and on the reforms in his country that the national, regional, and international environments and trends called for. He also extensively recorded—in a mixture of superficialities, meticulous detail, and occasional insights—his observations of the countries and cities he visited while on duty abroad. He included facts and impressions on their geography, urban planning, history, human and material resources, educational systems, agricultural patterns, factories, shipyards, museums, scientific and technological achievements, industrial institutions and practices, armed forces, political systems, leadership patterns and individual leaders, social and cultural practices, and numerous ancillary topics, both trivial and important. His focus was particularly intense on Russia and the United Kingdom, although passing references are also made to other European lands and to Japan, Canada, and America. Even though he spent a year in the United States after his Russian and European postings, the book notes that phase of his career only in a brief reference.
Min rose rapidly to the heights of his government, in part because he was the scion of a powerful clan close to the court that had tentacles all over the bureaucracy, and in part because of his trustworthy character. He held a dizzying array of cabinet-level positions in a revolving-door pattern that was common to the last decades of the Chosŏn dynasty, when reshuffling took place weekly, sometimes even daily. And he was chosen to represent Korea at the coronation of Russian emperor Nikolai II in 1896 and subsequently served as minister plenipotentiary and envoy extraordinary in Russia and elsewhere. The scenes and events that he witnessed or took part in, and his meetings with world figures, such as the Russian monarch and Queen Victoria, prime ministers, and other high officials of state, added up to an extraordinary richness of experiences for Min.
How did all this exposure shape his mind? The total picture that one gets is that of a person dutifully and diligently engaged with all the important tasks assigned to him and taking many notes as he moved around, but seldom with any sharp tools of intellectual analysis to reflect deeply and see the forests amid the passing panorama of trees. The reader rarely comes away with any penetrating lessons that Min could have drawn about how his experiences might be translated into some refreshing blueprint for transforming his country toward a truly independent, powerful, and prosperous nation, a concern that was frequently on his mind. For example, although he initially declined King (Emperor after October 1897) Kojong's conferment of ministerial positions in the hoary Confucian tradition of professing his unworthiness, he ultimately accepted numerous high-level positions in rapid succession without protesting that no one could perform a credible job of running any department with these maddeningly fast turnovers; such turnovers had reduced numerous upper-level positions to sinecures or otherwise vacuous titles.
Min's 1894 reform proposal also reads like a typical traditional Confucian plea for rooting out corruption and incompetence, providing relief and care to the people, recruiting and promoting meritorious officials, practicing frugality in financial management, fostering filial piety and loyalty, and so on. Any borrowed Western educational, technological, and defense practices were to be grafted within the “saintly virtues and teachings of the Classics” (p. 60). This hackneyed theme had been in circulation in Korea, Japan, and China among some “reformist” minds for decades. More nuanced and more systematic approaches had won the day in Japan, and more radical ideas were on their way in China. Some of those were also being discussed in Korea, but by others.
Nor did Min, despite his patriotic sentiment on a personal level, show any qualms in 1896 about dutifully transmitting Kojong's request to St. Petersburg for what would amount to a de facto Russian military and financial control of Korea. This despite the fact that he had earlier noted Russian imperialist ambitions with the same anxiety as the Japanese ones. When later this Russian role in fact began to unfold, there was a massive public protest led by the Independence Club, and the Russians had to beat a retreat. A deeper and more systematic engagement with Korea's diplomatic options, as well as with issues of reform during that critical period, came from men such as Yu Kilchun, Yun Ch'iho, Philip Jaisohn (Sŏ Chaep'il), and other progressives. There were not in Min the deeply reflective and analytical makings of an Itō Hirobumi, Fukuzawa Yukichi, Nakae Chōmin, Ōkuma Shigenobu, Kido Kōin, Kang Youwei, Tán Sìtóng, or Liang Qichao. While Min was definitely a disciplined note-taker and scribbler of random musings, unlike them, he does not show evidence of having done any laborious study of the political, social, and economic philosophies and systems of the Western world, much of whose progress he otherwise observed with a mixture of appreciation and admiration. So, in Min's writings, one finds few bold new ideas for retooling his country for the challenges of modern times.
A shallow racial mind also occasionally raises its ugly head in Min's journals. When traveling through Singapore and Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Min contemptuously notes the dark or black complexion of the local people and, by some leap of logic, tars them all as “stupid,” “vulgar,” and “ignorant like sheep and pigs” (pp. 203, 207). Nice going, Mr. Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary, one wants to say! About the only truly positive thing one can glean from this book is Min's role in the founding of a private modern school. There is precious little evidence of his constructive reshaping of any organ of the state itself.
As a window into the life and career of a senior official in the twilight years of the Chosŏn dynasty, Finch's able translation and introduction are very helpful. On the broader value of Min's contributions to his nation while he was alive, one finds slim pickings in this work. This does not in the least detract, of course, from the nobility of his motives in the ultimate sacrifice he made for his country.
