Ascending to the Imperial Throne: Kojong’s Elevation from King to Emperor and British Responses, 1895-1898

Abstract

On October 12, 1897, King Kojong (r. 1864-1907) officially proclaimed that he would assume the title of emperor and change the name of the state from Chosŏn to the Empire of Taehan. The establishment of the Empire of Taehan was significant not only because it was the last Korean monarchy that existed before the Japanese annexation of Korea on August 29, 1910, but also it was the first Korean monarchy to openly claim to be an empire, something that was the exclusive right of the Chinese ruler in the pre-modern Sinocentric world order. Therefore, Kojong’s accession to emperor in 1897 was a remarkable event underpinning Korean independence, which had been severely challenged by the Japanese assassination of Queen Min of 1895 and Kojong’s asylum at the Russian Legation from 1896 to 1897. From the mid-1970s, there have been major debates on whether the Taehan Empire and the Korean imperial family were modern and pro-