By Robert Neff

During the Joseon era, foreigners and their ideas were often viewed with suspicion. These suspicions, frequently exaggerated, escalated into violence; such was the case of the baby riots in 1888.

According to one early visitor in the 1880s, it was fairly common for Korean children to be exported to China.

"Good, fat, well-disposed babies bring from $5 to $20 apiece, and a father has a perfect right to sell his children. Babies are sometimes bought for adoption, and as to the girls, they are sold for purposes of which the less said the better."

It takes no great deal of imagination to surmise what those purposes were. But in the summer of 1888 the streets of Seoul were filled with dark rumors that incited the population to the point of lynching. Foreigners were allegedly buying or kidnapping Korean children to eat! It was even said that the American minister to Korea, Hugh Dinsmore, "had roast baby on his table."

A water-carrier servicing the homes of Westerners claimed that he had stealthily made his way into one of the kitchens and discovered in a pot "the body of a little child whose eyeballs were cooked white!"

Foreigners were viewed with suspicion ― if not outright hatred ― by much of Seoul's population and even their employees were harassed. One female missionary reported that, "angry crowds hung around the hospital. My chair coolies were threatened with death if they took me to the hospital again."

Prompted by the foreign legations in Seoul to do something about the baseless rumors, the Korean government urged the citizens to follow suspected dealers selling babies to foreigners and report their locations. The government would then arrest, try, and execute them. But many enraged citizens decided to take the matter into their own hands.

Several suspected dealers were lynched in the streets including "one man who was innocently carrying his own baby home." Rumors circulated of an impending attack on all the foreigners in the Jeong-dong area compelling Dinsmore to summon a detachment of well-armed American marines. The French and Russian representatives followed suit.

The Korean government, alarmed at the large number of foreign soldiers in the city, protested the Western ministers' precautionary acts and pledged to put an end to the unrest.

Proclamations denouncing the rumors of foreigners eating babies were posted in various places prohibiting large assemblies and warning that anyone discovered spreading these rumors would be executed. Undercover police and agents were circulated throughout the city and numerous arrests were made. The unrest soon died down.

Why did these rumors start? There are a couple of theories ― both claim that the purpose was to ferment xenophobic hatred and fear but they differ as to whom orchestrated the "baby riots". Heungseon Daewongun, the father of King Gojong, and described by the secretary of the American legation as "an old conspirator and heartless, cruel old man", was one prime suspect. It was no secret that he bore ill-will to his daughter-in-law, the queen, and had been accused of plotting against her in the past. A missionary wrote, "[T]he whole trouble was deliberately worked up by the enemies of the Queen, to encompass her ruin. The Queen favored progress and foreigners ― those riots were aimed against foreigners."

Others, however, point the finger at Yuan Shih-kai, the resident Chinese minister to Korea. Yuan had no great love for Gojong and resented his efforts to modernize Korea through Western assistance. Some thought he was trying to destabilize the Korean government "through malicious rumors" so that he could appoint his own monarch to the Korean throne.

Even now, after some 120 years, rumors involving foreigners eating Koreans continue to circulate ― this time with modern technology. A band of Chinese cannibals are allegedly killing and eating people in Gyeonggi Province. The police have found no evidence to support these wild claims. Once again, history appears to be repeating itself.