Ascendancy of Daewongun In January 1864,
King Cheoljong died without an heir, and
Gojong ascended the throne at the age of 12. However, King Gojong was too young, and the new king's father, Yi Ha-ŭng, became the Daewongun or lord of the great court and ruled Korea in his son's name. Originally, the term Daewongun referred to any person who was not actually the king but whose son took the throne. The Daewongun initiated reforms to strengthen the monarchy at the expense of the
yangban (aristocrat) class. Even before the 19th century, the Koreans had maintained diplomatic relations only with its
suzerain, China, and with neighboring Japan. Foreign trade was mainly limited to China and was conducted at designated locations along the
China–Korea border, and with Japan through the
waegwan in Pusan. By the mid-19th century, Westerners had come to refer to Korea as the
Hermit Kingdom. The Daewongun was determined to continue Korea's traditional isolationist policy and to purge the kingdom of any foreign ideas that had infiltrated the nation. The disastrous events occurring in China, including the
First (1839–1842) and
Second Opium Wars (1856–1860), reinforced his determination to isolate Korea from the rest of the world.
Western encroachment From the early 19th century onwards, Western vessels began to make frequent appearances in Korean waters, surveying sea routes and seeking trade. The Korean government was extremely wary of such vessels, which they referred to as the "strange-looking ships". In June 1832,
Lord Amherst, an
East Indiaman of the
East India Company, arrived off the coast of
Hwanghae Province seeking trade but was turned away. 13 years later, the 26-gun corvette
HMS Samarang surveyed the coast of
Jeju Island and
Jeolla Province in June 1845. In the following month, the Korean government filed a protest with British authorities in Guangzhou through the Chinese government. In June 1846, three French warships dropped anchor off the coast of
Chungcheong Province and conveyed a letter protesting the persecution of Catholics in Korea. Two armed Russian vessels sailed along the eastern coast of
Hamgyong Province in April 1854, killing or injuring several Koreans they encountered. The incident prompted the Korean government to issue a ban forbidding the province's inhabitants from having any contact with foreign vessels. In January and July 1866, ships owned by the German businessman
Ernst Oppert appeared off the coast of Chungcheong Province seeking trade but were rebuffed. In August 1866, the American merchantmen
General Sherman appeared off the coast of
Pyongan Province, steaming along the
Taedong River to the provincial capital of Pyongyang, and asked permission to trade. Local officials refused to enter into trade talks and demanded the ship's departure. A Korean official was then taken hostage aboard
General Sherman, whose crew fired at Korean officials and civilians onshore, killing seven; the crew then landed ashore and plundered the town. The provincial governor,
Pak Kyusu, then ordered his forces to destroy the ship; during the Korean attack,
General Sherman ran aground on a sandbar and Pak's forces burned the ship and killed her entire crew. In 1866, after the execution of several of French missionaries and Korean Catholics, the French launched an
unsuccessful punitive expedition against Korea. In 1871, the Americans launched a victorious
expedition to Korea. Despite these incidents, the Korean government continued to adhere to isolationism and refused to open up the country.
Japanese attempts to establish relations with Korea During the
Edo period, Japan's relations and trade with Korea were conducted through intermediaries with the
Sō family in
Tsushima. A Japanese outpost called the
waegwan was allowed to be maintained in Tongnae near Pusan. The traders were confined to the outpost and no Japanese were allowed to travel to the Korean capital at Seoul. During the aftermath of the Meiji restoration in late 1868, a member of the Sō daimyō informed the Korean authorities that a new government had been established and that an envoy would be sent from Japan. In 1869, the envoy from the Meiji government arrived in Korea and carried a letter requesting the establishment of a goodwill mission between the two countries. It contained the seal of the Meiji government rather than the seals that had been authorized for use by the Korean Court for the Sō family. It also used the character
ko (皇) rather than
taikun (大君) to refer to the Japanese emperor. The Koreans used that character to refer only to the Chinese emperor, and for them, it implied the Japanese ruler's ceremonial superiority to the Korean monarch which would make the Korean monarch a vassal or subject of the Japanese ruler. The Japanese were, however, just reacting to their domestic political situation in which the shogun had been replaced by the emperor. The Koreans remained in the Sinocentric world in which China was at the center of interstate relations and as a result refused to receive the envoy. The bureau of foreign affairs wanted to change those arrangements to one based on modern state-to-state relations. ==Ganghwa incident==