history

The case of poisoning of Emperor Kojong is recorded as one of the violations of the sovereignty of Korea committed by the Japanese imperialists in the last century.

The Japanese imperialists poisoned the emperor because he opposed their occupation of Korea and took a firm anti-Japanese stand.

When the Japanese imperialists tried to force him to conclude the “Ulsa five-point treaty” in an attempt to seize the sovereignty of Korea in November 1905, the emperor persistently refused, saying that he could not give his royal sanction to the conclusion of the treaty even if he died for the country because it would just mean the ruin of the country.

After the Japanese imperialists eventually fabricated the treaty with oppression and tricks, Emperor Kojong made every effort to inform the international community that it was null and void. In his letters sent to heads of state of different countries through a British journalist in January 1906, he said that he neither recognized the treaty from the outset nor gave the seal of the state. In June the following year he dispatched three emissaries to the Second International Peace Conference held in The Hague, the Netherlands, to disclose the invalidity of the treaty.

When the Japanese imperialists tried to force him to conclude another treaty in 1907 to deprive the country of the right of home administration, he refused to give the prior approval, signature and seal of the state.

Unable to realize their colonial domination over Korea with the emperor left intact, the Japanese imperialists poisoned him on January 21 1919 and even killed two ladies-in-waiting who witnessed his death.

But the historical truth cannot be covered up.

Afterwards, data on the Japanese imperialists’ poisoning of Emperor Kojong was continuously made public.

The “second declaration of independence” made and issued by the Korean provisional government in Shanghai, China, in 1921 and an article written by his son disclosed that the Japanese imperialists poisoned the emperor and tried to conceal it.

A professor of the University of Hawaii said that he thought Japan was very afraid of Emperor Kojong inciting the Koreans to the independence movement and that the circumstances show the possibility that Japan poisoned the emperor.

In 2010 the diary of the head of the audit department of the agency of imperial household of Japan in 1919 was put on view at an international academic conference, in which he wrote that he heard Terauchi, the first governor-general of Korea, give an order to Hasegawa, commander of the Japanese forces stationed in Korea, to poison the emperor as he did not recognize the “Ulsa five-point treaty”.

The atrocity of the Japanese imperialists, who did not hesitate to do anything to realize their wild ambition for colonial domination, can never be covered up even with the passage of time.

Japan, which inflicted untold misfortunes and pains on the Korean people in the last century, is still hell-bent on realizing the wild ambition for reinvasion, far from making apology and reparations for its past crimes. The reckless behaviour of Japan should be surely settled accounts with.