A History of Korea (67 page)

What is also lost in the narrative of imperialistic encroachment in Korea at the time is the blossoming of native enterprise and the training of thousands of Koreans in the labor and expertise needed for an increasingly diversifying economy. From the workers who laid the tracks, mined the mines, and toiled in the nascent textile sector, to the operators of the streetcars and telegraph lines,
Koreans began to forge a modern commercial realm. They were joined by those who established the first Korean banks, with some even succeeding sufficiently in this difficult venture to survive for decades to come. And many Koreans, like these early bankers, formed the first group of modern entrepreneurs by learning how to integrate their ventures into the regional and global trading system. These businessmen had an indelible impact, whether as transporters or handicraft manufacturers peddling their goods in the ports, or as traders taking advantage of their connections to the heartland, or even as officials using their political connections to gain access to capital and materials. Dozens of companies, including joint-stock companies, were founded during the Korean Empire.

One of the best known representatives of this early Korean business class was Yi S
nghun. Yi hailed from the county of Ch
ngju, north of Pyongyang and famed for its late-Chos
n commercial prowess as well as for producing many prominent cultural figures in the early twentieth century. Yi traversed a variegated life course, but he was first and foremost a manufacturer-merchant. He got his start as an apprentice in a local enterprise that produced brass wares, and by the late 1880s he had borrowed enough money to establish his own brass factory. During the Korean Empire period Yi expanded his business activities through his trading company based in Pyongyang. This company eventually gained a prominent position in the rapidly developing commercial sector, especially along the trading networks on the west coast between Pyongyang, Inch’
n, and Seoul. In addition to brass and other handicraft goods, his company traded in petroleum, medicinal products, and paper items. He also accumulated a small fortune as a renowned investor in new enterprises. He was a founder in 1908, for example, of one of the earliest joint stock companies in Korea, the Pyongyang Porcelain Company. He was, in some ways, the first modern Korean tycoon.

THE SPIRIT OF ENLIGHTENMENT

For all of his success as a leading figure in the first wave of modern Korean entrepreneurs, Yi S
nghun is better known for his
activities, made possible by his wealth, in the realms of education and publishing. He stood at the forefront of the cresting enlightenment movement through his sponsorship of educational ventures in his home region. The schools that he and other activists founded around the country would educate the first generation of Korean school children in the “new learning,” the popular term for Western knowledge and enlightenment in general. Yi established and ran, most notably, the Osan School in Ch
ngju, founded in 1907, which would go on to produce some of the best-known literary and intellectual figures of modern Korea. Yi’s passion for spreading new knowledge and raising national consciousness also resulted in his sponsoring the activities of acclaimed nationalists, including An Ch’angho. Yi’s most celebrated accomplishment, in fact, came in 1919, when he served as one of thirty three signers of the March First Declaration of Independence from Japanese colonial rule.

Yi S
nghun also became active in newspaper publishing, a realm that began to wield social influence during the Korean Empire through the activities of the Independence Club, a civic group founded in 1896 by S
Chaep’il. S
(anglicized to “Philip Jaisohn”) was a plotter of the Kapsin Coup of 1884 who had fled to the US and lived there for a decade before returning, with an American education and an American wife, to his homeland in 1895. The Club’s ideas and ideals, which centered on “independence” from old ways as well as from China, appeared in
The Independent
newspaper, the first modern newspaper in Korea. In its inaugural issue in April 1896,
The Independent
served immediate notice of its radical program by its choice of the written language: the Korean vernacular, with even a page in English. When S
opted to head back to the US in early 1898, another enlightenment activist schooled in America, Yun Ch’iho, stepped in as the next leader of the Independence Club. Under Yun’s guidance the Club and
The Independent
maintained the spirit of the Kabo Reforms, constantly prodding the Korean government and monarch toward autonomy, reform, and self-strengthening. The Club sponsored the erection of the Independence Gate, still extant, at the site of the old gate where the Korean monarch used to greet ritually the Chinese envoy, and it organized a series of
mass, open-air debates that promoted the participation of people regardless of social status.