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Why Telegraphy?

When was the term "global village" first used in the history of mankind? Around the time Korea opened its ports, the Korean intellectual Yu Gil-jun believed the term had emerged from the appearance of the telegraph. In "Seoyu gyeonmun" (西遊見聞), a travelogue of the West Yu Gil-jun authored in 1895, he mentions that "as an overstatement, people in the West say "the telegraph has practically turned the whole world into a single household for humans," but it is in fact not an overstatement." Through this phrase Yu Gil-jun points out that as a member of a global village, Korea needs to gain access to a spiderweb-like global communication network. The reason for making such an argument was because he believed that communicating with the world could help Korea start breaking away from a world view that revolves around China and transform itself into an independent modern state.

Since Samuel Morse's telegraph system settled down by 1844, submarine cable with insulated coating was considered the most notable innovation for telegraphic technology. Once trans-Atlantic telegraph cables connecting Europe with North America became successfully laid in 1866, the whole world including Africa raved for the next two decades over telegraphy as a new communication technology. Telegraphy of the nineteenth century was the prototype for technologies that followed including telephones, facsimiles, and today's smartphones that were instrumental to the candlelight protests that occurred in Korea last year. Therefore, the building of a global telegraph network and the Korean peninsula's access to it are not only a part of Korea's history of communication as an IT power, but a part of modern Korea's history of reform to stand on its own feet as an independent state by joining the worldwide wave of communication innovation.

Nevertheless, close to no studies have been done on Korea’s access to the global telegraph network. Studies in the West tend focus on China and Japan to illustrate telegraphic networking in East Asia. In Korea, Korean history, oriental history, and western history are separate academic disciplines, so although the history of telegraphy in Korea is studied, there have been no studies about Korea’s access to and interaction with the global telegraph network. That is the sort of drawback that comes from limiting the scope of historical studies to a single country, especially when the property of telegraphy lies in networking. A widely accepted theory in China and Japan is that the telegraph was installed on the Korean peninsula so that the two countries would be able to more quickly dispatch their military units when political disorders like Gapsin jeongbyeon, or the Coup d’état of 1884, erupt in Korea. The theory is problematic for being based on the preconception that the Korean peninsula has been the source of crises in East Asia. That is why it is necessary to review the subject from the perspective of global history.

Creation of a Global Telegraph Network

Once a submarine cable became laid along the Strait of Dover between Britain and France in 1851, Britain took the lead in launching a project to build an international telegraph network. The man who became a pioneer in building a global telegraph network was John Pender, a wealthy merchant in textile fabrics in Manchester who invested in the trans-Atlantic submarine cable’s successful installation. Pender ended up creating a communications empire that controlled international telegraphy from owning nearly 70% of submarine cables laid worldwide, which even earned him the nickname “cable king.” The rise and fall of Pender’s empire eventually coincided with that of the British Empire because after reaching its peak during the First World War, the momentum in communications began to shift from wired to wireless.

Pender pioneered the southern lines in the East Asian telegraph network. After completing the installation of cables between Britain and India in 1869, he went on to lay lines connecting India to Singapore and Hong Kong via Saigon. These southern lines thereby technologically allowed telegraphs to be exchanged between London and Hong Kong via India in a matter of 53 minutes at the time.

Among the southern and northern East Asian telegraph lines connected to Europe, the northern lines were controlled by the Great Northern Telegraph Company, which had been established by a Danish industrialist named Carl Frederik Tietgen. This was because in 1869 Emperor Alexander II of Russia signed an agreement awarding exclusive rights to operate telegraph lines running out of Russia to the Great Northern Telegraph Company, a firm based in the Empress consort Maria Feodorovna’s homeland of Denmark. By 1872, the company managed to officially launch the operation of a submarine cable that linked Vladivostok, Nagasaki, and Shanghai. This completed the Siberian telegraph line’s connection to Europe and America and allowed Russia, with Britain and Denmark’s assistance, to gain control over the southern and northern telegraph lines of East Asia.

Meanwhile, telegraphy in Korea may have appeared to be a target of fierce competition for exclusive control between the Qing dynasty and Japan, but the ones that actually exercised power were global communications companies in British and Denmark that controlled cable lines coming out of the Qing dynasty and Japan. Since individual countries in East Asia lacked the technical skills and capital required to lay submarine cables on their own, global telegraph companies were able to secure their monopoly in the business. This particularly prevented Japan from advancing into mainland China until the expiration of contracts awarding exclusive rights to foreign telegraph companies. Japan only managed to become free in 1912 from the Danish telegraph company’s exclusive rights to operating submarine cables. This gave rise to a new form of conflict in East Asia that placed an individual state’s expansionist policy in check by a global company in control of a communications network.

How Korea Gained Access

The Korean peninsula had a natural advantage not only geopolitically, but as part of a telegraph network as well from being positioned in a strategic location where lines could be laid in multiple directions to China and Russia on land and to Japan and America under water. It therefore had the potential to become a telegraphic hub linking submarine cables with telegraph lines on land in Manchuria, China, and Eurasia. If modern Korea had been capable of taking the lead in carrying out a telegraph policy, it could have used its geographical advantage to transform itself into a key point in the global communications network.

A prospect like this was tied to the possibility of a reorganization in the existing East Asian communications market led by Britain and Russia. Korea was located on the periphery according to the existing telegraph network led by Europe, but that status could be overturned in an instant if America were to lay a submarine cable across the Pacific. With the Trans Canadian Railway's completion in mind, plans for the Pacific Cable had been in the making since the late 1870s and they grew more detailed as the American businessman Cyrus Field began taking an active interest in the project after having participated in the trans-Atlantic submarine cable's installation. The reason he visited Japan and the Qing dynasty in 1880 had much to do with the plan to lay a submarine cable between Asia and North America. For a country marginalized from the communications network centered around Europe to gain access to the trans-Pacific submarine cable meant that Korea could come by a golden opportunity to make up for the disadvantages it placed itself under from delaying the opening of its ports.

Telegraphy landed in Korea on February 1, 1884 when the submarine cable connecting Busan in Korea to Nagasaki in Japan launched its operation. Lacking the funds and technology to lay the cable, the Japanese government commissioned the project to the Great Northern Telegraph Company in exchange for exclusive rights to operate telegraph lines going out of Japan for twenty years. Regardless, Korea was able to use the submarine cable to gain access to the global telegraph network. Telegraph lines had not yet been installed on land in Korea at the time, but King Gojong's administration still expedited negotiations for installing the submarine cable between Korea and Japan in the hopes of gaining access to the global communications network as soon as possible.

If Korea could gain access to the global telegraph network, information and knowledge imported from the West through telegraph wires would have offered a boost for King Gojong's administration in carrying out modern policies of reform. Access to a global network via submarine cables meant Korea would be forming a connection with the international society, a process that would require Korea to come up with a political framework that would suit a state internationally recognized as independent. Tasks that surfaced in order to turn Korea into a western, sovereign state included discarding the Confucian world view of defending orthodoxy while rejecting heterodoxy, reorganizing systems, and nurturing talent to attract capital investment from the West and broaden the opening of its markets. The reason King Gojong ordered the "Monument Rejecting the West" to be demolished immediately after the Military Mutiny of 1882 was to make clear his desire for reform and openness, and thereby establish a foundation for policies of reform.

Turning to the American Postal System

Without enough capital or technology to build a modern, independent state, King Gojong's administration took note of how the submarine cable between Korea and Japan was laid by a Danish telegraph company. As a channel for adopting technology, the administration also considered the United States that had been planning to lay a trans-Pacific submarine cable. This was why the progressive intellectual Hong Yeong-sik (洪英植, 1855-1884), who had been assisting King Gojong with the execution of his reform policies, showed particular interest in the American postal system when he went to observe the United States.

On February 19, 1883, King Gojong appointed Hong Yeong-sik as Vice Minister of the Foreign Office to place him in charge of postal service in Korea, and with Hong Yeong-sik's assistance, King Gojong finalized the negotiations for laying the submarine cable between Korea and Japan. This contributed to building the foundation for Korea to become connected to Europe via the trans-Siberian telegraph line. Hong Yeong-sik later on joined as an envoy on the Korean diplomatic mission to the United States (Jul-Dec 1883). A New York Times coverage of the Korean diplomatic mission's activities published on November 8, 1883 stated that "as one of the results of their visit will recommend on their return home the establishing of a postal system modeled after the one in this country."

King Gojong responded to the recommendation by establishing the Korean Postal Bureau on April 22, 1884. Naturally, Hong Yeong-sik became appointed as the Post Master General of the bureau created by the king's order. Nevertheless, the Korean government's adoption of a postal system modeled after the United States was in for a struggle. Because the Qing dynasty had been strongly against the American trans-Pacific submarine cable from landing in China and had instead hired the Great Northern Telegraph Company of Denmark to install telegraph lines in China. The situation was all the more problematic because the Danish submarine cable connected to the trans-Siberian telegraph line to be linked to Korea, China, and Japan was competition to the American trans-Pacific submarine cable that sought to connect the United States with Asia.

Progressive intellectuals in Korea aspired to break away from the traditional Sinocentric order, so the government's success or failure to adopt the American postal system was likely to serve as an indication for the success or failure of the reform policies the government was carrying out in the hopes of transforming Korea into an independent state. Would King Gojong's administration actually be able to stand against the Qing dynasty claiming suzerainty over Korea and successfully adopt the American postal system?

From the Qing dynasty's point of view, railroads and telegraph lines were considered as means to conduct imperialist invasion, which is why it chose to modernize its communications infrastructure with technology from Denmark, a European country smaller than the United States. The opening ceremony for the Korean Postal Bureau was what Hong Yeong-sik and Kim Ok-gyun used as an occasion to launch the 1884 Coup d’état, but the Qing army managed to suppress the upheaval and Hong Yeong-sik was killed in the process. As a result, King Gojong's dream to build an independent state free from the Sinocentric order became distorted by the competition between the United States and China over the Korean peninsula's telegraph infrastructure.

The Qing army's suppression of the 1884 Coup d’état brought control over telegraphy in Korea under the influence of foreign powers. On April 7, 1885, the British Navy illegally occupied the Korean island Geomundo and this eventually led to the first installation of a telegraph line in Korea heading westward to link Jemulpo, Seoul, and Uiju to the Qing dynasty. King Gojong saw the installation of a telegraph line connecting the Korean peninsula to the international society as a way to force Britain to withdraw from Geomundo. It was a means to get foreign powers to become deeply involved in the Korean peninsula's issue, but prevent one of them from gaining full control because they would keep one another in check.

Asking the Qing government for financial support to install a telegraph line in Korea had therefore been a desperate measure King Gojong took to settle the Geomundo matter by raising it as an international issue. According to a report by the British Admiral William Dowell who oversaw the occupation of Geomundo, King Gojong's stance on the issue had been firm: "Korea requests for the withdrawal of the British consulate in Seoul should the British flag become raised on Geomundo." To defend its territory, King Gojong's administration had to resort to concluding an unfair treaty with the Qing dynasty. According to the Korea-China Cable Treaty concluded on July 17, 1885, the Qing dynasty was to be responsible for laying a telegraph line on the Korean peninsula, but Korea was to take out a loan from the Qing dynasty to fund the installation. So, the efforts King Gojong's administration made to gain telegraphic control ended up handing over that control to the Qing dynasty because of Britain's illegal territorial occupation.

As much as information is a source of power today, it was the same in the past. Once Pandora's box of power was opened, Britain's illegal occupation of Geomundo occurred and a telegraph line became laid in Korea by the Qing dynasty. And Japan saw that as an opportunity for itself to get involved in the Korean peninsula's telegraphic infrastructure. The life of Hong Yeong-sik, a pioneer of Korea's modern postal system, came to an end as an unfortunate revolutionary, and King Gojong, the one who hired him, lost telegraphic control to Japan in 1904 during the Russo-Japanese War and was poisoned to death by Japan in 1919. Yet, thanks to the sacrifices they made, the Republic of Korea was able to grow into a world-renowned power in the realm of communications.