Attacking the Hermit Kingdom: The American Expedition to Korea in 1871

   

Already, at just past 4 in the morning, the sun is beginning to peek over the horizon.  It silhouettes the high conical hills of the Korean island of Ganghwa against a pink pre-dawn background.

Outside of a row of white tents a United States Marine Corps drummer stands and beats reveille.  A brigade of 500+ American sailors and soldiers rubs the sleep from their eyes and starts to leave their tents to stand at attention.

It is Sunday, June 11, 1871 and this bedraggled, blue-coated, mud-spattered group of marines and sailors is the first ever American force to be deployed to the Asian mainland to engage a foreign enemy in order to implement the will of the government of the United States of America by force.

Yesterday June 10, led by the modern and formidable ironclad gunboats Palos and Monocacy the American’s had landed on this muddy forlorn island, part of the land Korean’s then called Joseon, after the family dynasty which has ruled their peninsula for nearly 500 years since 1392.  Initially, the American Expeditionary Force was unopposed.

The American brigade wearing the iconic blue uniform made famous by the Union Army during the Civil War, with a battery of artillery in tow, expected at any moment to face a withering and deadly fire from the stone forts located on the hills and ridgelines above the beaches on Ganghwa Island.  But not a shot was fired that day.

Instead, as they moved inland off the beach and approached the hills, the fiercest enemy that the American’s faced were the mudflats.  Soldiers sank up to their belts in the slimy quagmire and many abandoned their shoes and socks in an effort to break free from the slime as they approached the hostile Joseon positions.

After halting for the night to allow their gunboats to approach closer, as dawn breaks on June 11, 1871 the United States Marines and sailors are apprehensive, strangers in a strange land with their backs to the sea, many are barefoot, all are caked in mud from the previous day’s march, but led by battle hardened veterans of the War Between the States, each one to a man is ready and determined to engage and defeat the exotic and mysterious Korean enemy that they have heard so much about.

The Gunboat Monocacy

The Battle of Ganghwa Island off the coast of Korea that took place on June 11, 1871, the first ever American military expedition launched in Asia, was the culmination of over five years of escalating tensions between the United States and the place that westerner’s referred to as The Hermit Kingdom.

Simply put, during the 1860’s and 1870’s the United States along with France and Britain wanted to open up the Hermit Kingdom of Korea, then called Joseon, to trade and foreign relations, but the Korean people themselves preferred to remain hermits.

Korea, like most Asian nation’s during the early 19th century, was almost completely closed off to outsiders.  However, seeking new trade opportunities, and wishing to gain access to natural resources, western powers most notably Great Britain, Germany, France and the United States embarked on a policy of gunboat type diplomacy in which the western nation’s in a belligerent show of force, simply sailed their most heavily armed ships into Asian ports and demanded that the ruling elite sign dubious one-sided trade agreements with them.

This method of trade by intimidation had been successfully employed by the United States in 1853 when naval Commodore Mathew C. Perry had scored a major foreign policy coup for our burgeoning republic by opening up Japan to exclusive trade rights with the United States.  Perry had just happened to sail his heavily armed naval fleet into Tokyo Bay where he “requested” an audience with the emperor.  With the guns of his heavily armed frigates trained right on Tokyo’s city center Perry was able to get the emperor to sign a binding trade agreement that granted U.S. merchant ships almost unfettered access to all Japanese harbors.

Commodore Perry enters Tokyo Bay 1853

It stood to reason, to most western observers, that by using similar means of persuasion Korea too would be opened up to foreign trade and influence, but then in 1866, thanks in large part to cultural misunderstanding and hubris on the part of an American merchant ship named the SS General Sherman things took a turn for the worse.

The SS General Sherman  was an armed United States merchant vessel which left port in China loaded with trade goods in August of 1866 and sailed to Korea with the intent to either trade or sell its valuable cargo to the Hermit Kingdom of Joseon.

On August 16, 1866 the General Sherman arrived off the coast of Korea.  Local officials from the city of Pyongyang met with Captain Page of the General Sherman and it was mutually understood that the American ship wished to trade.  The Korean’s refused to do any trading with the American’s and explicitly forbade either the American ship or any members of the American crew from entering the city of Pyongyang.

However, the Governor of Pyongyang did agree to provide the crew of the General Sherman with food and provisions as long as the American ship stayed docked outside the gates of the city and did not sail any further down the Taedong River and into Pyongyang.

The American’s, for reasons not exactly known, perhaps maliciously driven by greed or perhaps simply because the Taedong River was then at high tide and the crew of the General Sherman was physically unable to stay anchored safely at the place the Governor had requested, sailed through the Keupsa Gate and into Pyongyang proper.

Governor Park Gyu-Su sent his adjutant with two deputies to go provide food and provisions to the American crew, but seeing that the Sherman had sailed downriver to a place the governor had expressly forbade them from going, the adjutant  admonished and threatened the crew of the General Sherman with death for their rash actions.  Captain Page, commander of the General Sherman was ordered once again to sail downstream outside the city and wait for the local Pyongyang government to decide how to proceed.  But Captain Page, fearing that were he to wait any longer he might fall into a trap and become a prisoner (or worse) of the Koreans, instead decided to hold the adjutant and his two deputies hostage.

He then sailed the General Sherman upriver and fired his guns into the city after another representative of governor Park Gyu-Su threatened to storm the ship by force if the hostages were not released.  It is known that the two deputies were killed in fighting between the crew of the General Sherman and a rescue party that was dispatched to free the adjutant and his deputies.

Fighting between the crew of the SS General Sherman and local Korean forces continued for four whole days after the ship ran aground somewhere on the banks of the Yellow River in an effort to flee and sail to freedom on the open seas.

Eventually, Korean forces were able to light the ship ablaze and all surviving crew members aboard the SS General Sherman either drowned after jumping overboard or were beaten to death after being captured as is recorded in the Gojong Silok, the yearly annals of the Joseon Dynasty.

In the spring of 1868 the USS Shenandoah, a US Navy battleship sent to investigate the fate of the SS General Sherman reached the mouth of the Taedong River and received official acknowledgement from representatives of the Joseon Dynasty that all hands aboard the SS General Sherman had been killed.

North Korean Postage Stamp Depicting the SS General Sherman

Now, three years later, seeking revenge for the death’s of the crew members of the SS General Sherman, and still wishing to force open the Hermit Kingdom to trade, a heavily armed American Expeditionary Force comprised of over 500 marines and sailors, supported by artillery and gunboats, is ready to storm the largest fort on Ganghwa Island, a formidable circular stone and masonry structure, christened the Citadel by American commanders.

As the marines approach the fort, the lead elements of the column catch sight of white robed Korean soldiers up ahead.  More armed Koreans, all wearing white robes, could also be seen atop the ridgelines on the flanks of the American column.

The American guns, and gunboats off shore, open fire on the massed Korean infantry as a long column of sailors and marines march up a steep hillside to assault the citadel.

Above the fort flies a huge yellow banner inscribed with Korean characters proclaiming the presence of “O Chae Yon” the Governor of Kwangha-do Province within the walls of the citadel.  Once the American column gets to within about 150 yards of the walls of the citadel the soldiers of the Joseon Dynasty open fire and greet the American’s with a fusillade of red hot iron from flintlock muskets and smoothbore cannons.

For forty minutes the marines are pinned down by the constant but inaccurate fire beneath the stone walls of the citadel.  One marine is killed and small arms fire is exchanged with the fort’s defenders.  American’s reported hearing the Koreans, “wailing and singing melancholy songs,” as they readied for the assault.

After the howitzers and the heavy 9 inch naval guns are brought to bear, and the walls of the citadel begin to crumble, the order is given to charge.  As the American troops rush uphill and attempt to scale the walls, the Korean soldiers wearing all white and appearing from behind the walls like ghostly apparitions, hurl rocks and dump boiling hot cauldrons of water on the marines in attempt to stop the assault.

But soon, with U.S. heavy naval guns ceaselessly bombarding the ancient masonry walls of the citadel into dust, and the rapid fire American carbines picking them off one by one, the defenders retreat further into the citadel.

Within moments the American troops are inside the fort and the hand to hand fighting is fierce.  Using spears and swords the Korean defenders of the citadel fight ferociously, seeming to especially target American officers as victims for their most suicidal attacks, but the coordinated discipline of the skillfully led American’s, in addition to their overwhelming firepower, is too much for the fervent Korean forces to bear.  The fighting on June 11, 1871 was over within a matter of hours.

Aftermath of the Assault on the Citadel

Three American’s, two marines and one sailor, are killed in the assault and 11 are wounded.  Over 250 dead bodies will be pulled out of the ruins of the citadel and only 20 of the fort’s defenders surrender to American forces.  The marine’s capture hundreds of Korean battle flags, including the large yellow banner that flew above the citadel (as pictured at the top of this article) and replace them with the stars and stripes.

The Battle for Ganghwa Island is a resounding American military victory.  Several days later a delegation comprised of representatives of the Joseon Dynasty, comes aboard the battleship USS Colorado in Inchon Harbor near Seoul and is forced to sign articles of capitulation, ceding control of Ganghwa Island to the United States Navy.

Representatives of the Joseon Dynasty aboard USS Colorado

It will take another decade of negotiation and threats on the part of the United States, aided this time by pressure on the Joseon Dynasty from Japan, before Korea officially signs what is known as a Treaty of Peace, Amity, Commerce and Navigation with the United States in 1882.

Thanks in large part to the show of force by the United States on Ganghwa Island in 1871 the United States of America will be the first foregin nation to ever sign any kind of agreement with Korea and will enjoy almost exclusive trading rights with the Joseon Dynasty. in return for a pledge of mutual assistance in case of attack by another foreign power, until the Joseon Dynasty is toppled and Korea is annexed (with the prearranged tacit approval of the United States) by Japan in 1910.