| Seen is a statue of Jeon Bong-jun, leader of the Donghak Peasant Revolution, located at the intersection of Jongno and Ujeonggukno in downtown Seoul. Courtesy of Richard Pennington |
By Richard Pennington
I do not think it is unfair to compare him to Spartacus, who led a major slave uprising against the Roman Republic in the first century BC. Unlike Jeon, however, Spartacus died on the battlefield.
Slavery existed here for more than 2,000 years ― even before the Three Kingdoms period. The Silla Kingdom's “bone-rank” system, while extremely rigid, did allow some social movement but only downward; nobody could move up, especially those toward the bottom.
Early in the Goryeo and Joseon Kingdoms, proclamations of freedom for slaves were made and yet soon things were back as before with royals and yangban lording it over the cheonmin (vulgar commoners), the baekjeong (untouchables), the ssangnom (those of low caste without genealogy) and nobi (actual slaves). These pitiful groups could be bought, sold, given away and, of course, mistreated at the whim of their “superiors” in Korea's feudalistic society.
But when the Mongols invaded in the 13th century, when Toyotomi Hideyoshi brought his soldiers over from Japan in 1592 and when the Manchus came a-calling in 1636, Korea's rulers asked these people for help. They fought and died to defend their country.
The slaves (or “serfs” as some Korean historians prefer to call them) occasionally rebelled. It happened at least twice in the turbulent 19th century, with the Gwanseo Peasant War of 1811-12 and the Imsul Peasant Revolt of 1862. In both cases, low-caste Koreans took up arms ― actually just spears and clubs ― and demanded a degree of justice. These uprisings were localized and short-lived, and never was the dynastic system seriously challenged.
Oppressed Koreans may not have been literate, but they undoubtedly employed oral history. Stories of what their ancestors had done in a vain effort to bring about social change were told and sometimes embellished. Jeon Bong-jun, the subject of this article, was born in what is now Jeong-eup in South Jeolla Province in 1854. It should be pointed out that Jeon himself earned a living as a teacher, teaching Chinese characters to local children.
The Donghak Peasant Revolution started in January 1894 when the magistrate of Gobu instituted some new taxes and forced local peasants to build a reservoir. Although there is no way of knowing for certain, I surmise that Jeon, Kim Gae-nam, Son Hwa-jung, Choi Gyeong-seon and others said something to the effect of “here we go again.”
The centuries of mistreatment, abuse and suffering weighed on these men. Adherents of the Donghak religion/philosophy created in 1860 by Choe Je-u (born, interestingly enough, into an aristocratic family), they rebelled.
The Joseon military could not put it down, and soon the Chinese and Japanese were fighting in a confusing three-way war. Jeon rose to the top of the rag-tag army, winning some rather impressive victories at Hwangto Pass, the Hwangryong River and Jeonju. Inevitably, however, they fell to the bigger numbers and better weaponry of government forces.
One of Jeon's underlings betrayed him, leading to his capture by Japanese soldiers. Beaten with heavy sticks and with both of his legs broken, he was put on a wooden pallet and carried all the way to Seoul. A famous photo shows him, topknot on his head, glaring defiantly at the camera.
Jeon, the “Mung Bean general,” knew what awaited him in the capital. At 2 a.m. on April 24, 1895, he was hanged at the very spot where his statue now stands. The Donghak Peasant Revolution was by no means a failure, as some of its demands were met in the Gabo Reforms.
But it had frightened the pants off a lot of Korea's upper-echelon citizens. They surely knew ― much as White Southerners in the United States during the Jim Crow era knew ― that change had to come. One of Donghak's most basic tenets was the equality of all persons. Jeon raged against the two-millennia-old division of rulers and ruled, wherein any attempt to alter the status quo was “a sin against heaven” and a civil crime.
The Gabo Reforms supposedly put all Koreans on an equal basis, but writing something on paper is not the same as changing attitudes and behavior. Some of this country's social observers say equality was not achieved until around 1930, during the Japanese colonial era. Others hold that only the advent of the Korean War 20 years later brought it about. And a few insist that traces of the old ways still linger. When I see pyeji jumneun saram (“trash pickup men”) on the streets of Seoul, I wonder about their ancestors.
Richard Pennington (raput76@gmail.com), a native of Texas in the U.S., works as an editor at a law firm in southern Seoul. He has written 22 nonfiction books, including "Travels of an American-Korean, 2008-2013." He is the director of an NGO, the Committee to Bring Jikji Back to Korea.