A Yankee in the Land of the Morning Calm: The Northern Frontier

Book excerpt: In the closing years of the nineteenth century, East Asia saw traditional institutions erode under the weight of modernization, westernization, and imperialism. Unlike Japan, which by the late 1860s boldly embraced western thought and technology, Korea's orthodox Neo-Confucian elites resisted change. Trade agreements signed in the 1880s led to some reforms and the "opening" of Korea to the West. Soon China, Japan, Russia, France, Germany, and Great Britain vied for economic opportunity. Significantly, American missionaries and traders formed a core cadre among the foreigners who ventured to what the West called the Hermit Kingdom. Meanwhile, open conflict erupted on the peninsula between rival Japanese and Chinese forces. The outcome was substantial socio-economic transformation. By 1895, the Korean monarch King Kojong looked to align with the West to thwart ever-growing Japanese imperialism. King Kojong pursued a strategy of granting trade concessions to westerners in hopes that the investors would pressure their governments to support the monarchy and contain Japanese imperialism.The most successful of these concessions were granted to several Americans. By the early 1900s, the American-run Northern Frontier mines were among the richest in Asia. It is here, in what is today North Korea, that Connecticut-born Josh Gillet ventures and Book Three of A Yankee in the Land of the Morning Calm saga continues....