hankyoreh

Screen captures from the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun

In a newly discovered cache of letters written 126 years ago, a Japanese diplomat tells a friend that he’d taken part in killing Empress Myeongseong of Korea, also known as Queen Min. These rare documents show that Japanese diplomats in Korea were directly involved in the queen’s death.

Kumaichi Horiguchi (1865–1945), a consular assistant in Korea, provided a detailed description of the circumstances around Myeongseong’s assassination in a letter he sent to a friend in Japan the next day, on Oct. 9, 1895, Japanese newspaper the Asahi Shimbun reported on Tuesday.

“We killed the queen,” Horiguchi wrote in the letter.

“My job was securing entrance [to the palace]. We crossed the wall [. . .] and barely got into the building where we killed the queen,” he said.

Horiguchi also recorded his feelings about the assassination. “I was shocked to realize how easy it was.” He was among the group of diplomats, police and civilians who killed the queen.

The cache consists of eight letters that Horiguchi wrote between Nov. 17, 1894, and Oct. 18, 1895, soon after Myeongseong’s assassination. The letters were purchased at a flea market by a man named Steve Hasegawa, who lives in Nagoya. The letters’ flowing brushstrokes were deciphered by Kim Mun-ja, a Korean Japanese scholar and author of the book “Japanese and the Killing of the Korean Queen.”

“The [letters’] description of family and the details of the incident leaves no doubt that they were written by [Horiguchi] himself. It was quite shocking to read this diplomat write about being personally involved in killing a queen while serving in his post,” Kim told the Asahi Shimbun.

This undated photo shows part of Gyeongbok Palace. It was at this palace where Queen Min was assassinated on Oct. 8, 1895 by a group of Japanese forces, diplomats, and police. (Hankyoreh archive photo)

Myeongseong was assassinated on Oct. 8, 1895, during a raid on Gyeongbok Palace by Japanese police, soldiers, and other figures working to further Japanese expansion in East Asia, along with a few Koreans, including Woo Beom-seon (1857–1903), commander of the First Battalion of the Hullyeondae regiment — a regiment of soldiers trained under the Japanese. The assassination was carried out on the orders of Miura Goro (1847–1926), a veteran of the Japanese army and Japan’s minister to Korea. After killing the queen, they poured oil over her body and burned it.

A detailed account of the assassination was provided in a report by Kencho Suematsu (1855–1920), then director-general of the Cabinet Legislation Bureau, who noted that it was “truly unbearable” to put the events on paper.

In the past, it was thought that Japanese ronin (leaderless samurai) had played a leading role in killing Myeongseong, but more recent revelations have shown that Japanese in more official positions — including acting diplomats such as Horiguchi — also played an important role in carrying out the deed.

But even these records don’t state exactly who struck the killing blow. Sadatsuchi Uchida, who was then the first consul at the Japanese mission to Korea, said in a report to Vice Foreign Minister Takashi Hara that the queen had been stabbed by “a certain lieutenant in the army,” but several other figures have also been named.

Because of a clause about extraterritoriality in the unequal treaty that Korea and Japan signed in 1876, the Korean government was unable to try the Japanese who had taken part in assassinating the queen.

The assassins were taken to Japan for trial after the incident but ultimately faced no punishment. Eight officers in the Japanese army were acquitted in a military tribunal in Hiroshima the next January, while 48 others, including Horiguchi, were released after a Hiroshima district court dismissed the charges against them on the grounds of insufficient evidence. The unequal treaty remained in effect until Korea was forcibly annexed by Japan.

By Cho Ki-weon, Tokyo correspondent

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