Korea and Japan faced the same gunboats — why did only one rebuild its state in eight years?

In a timeline, 1853 and 1876 sit twenty-three years apart. The first is the year Perry’s squadron appeared off Uraga; the second is the year Korea signed the Treaty of Ganghwa after the Unyo incident. The form of the two events is nearly identical. Warships stand off a harbour, trade is demanded, an unequal treaty is signed. What differs is what each country did in between.

The same pressure reached Japan first

In 1853 an American squadron under Matthew Perry entered Edo Bay. The Convention of Kanagawa followed in 1854, and in 1858 the Treaty of Amity and Commerce, which included consular jurisdiction and conventional tariffs. Japan understood these as unequal treaties, and that understanding became the motive force of Japanese politics for decades. A "revere the emperor, expel the barbarians" movement attacked the shogunate for having opened the country, with Satsuma and Chōshū at its centre.

What proved decisive is that these domains actually fought Westerners and changed their conclusion. Satsuma was badly beaten by a British squadron in 1863, and Chōshū by a four-nation fleet at Shimonoseki in 1864. Having confirmed that expulsion was physically impossible, they turned: rather than drive the West out, become like it and renegotiate the treaties. The Satchō alliance of 1866, the restoration of imperial rule in 1867, and the Meiji Restoration of 1868 followed within three years.

The new government’s early measures show exactly what kind of turn it was. The return of domain registers in 1869 and the abolition of the domains in 1871 dismantled feudal regional power; the education ordinance of 1872 and the conscription law and land-tax reform of 1873 rebuilt the citizenry, the army and state finance. In 1871 the Iwakura mission was sent to America and Europe to probe treaty revision while observing institutions directly. The revision talks failed, but what the mission brought home was a list of what to copy.

The same pressure in Korea, a different conclusion

Korea met contact of the same kind. In 1866 a French squadron occupied part of Ganghwa Island and then withdrew; in 1871 an American squadron took the Gwangseong fort and also withdrew. By results alone, Korea had held out twice. The Daewongun’s stelae, erected across the country, were an interpretation of that experience: "When the Western barbarians invade, not to fight is to make peace, and to urge peace is to sell the country."

Here the paths divide. Satsuma and Chōshū changed their conclusion after losing; Korea hardened its existing conclusion after making the fleets leave. Those fleets had in fact withdrawn because neither had the intent or the force to occupy Korea — but at the time there was ample ground to read the outcome as successful defence. It was not a foolish lesson but a reasonable conclusion drawn from limited experience, which is precisely why it was hard to revise.

Structural conditions differed as well. Under the Tokugawa domain system, powerful domains like Satsuma and Chōshū could deal with Westerners, buy arms and send students abroad on their own account: there were several channels the centre could not control. Korea’s centralised bureaucracy managed information and foreign contact through a single channel. A structure that is an advantage in stable times worked here to reduce the number of experiments available under external shock.

1875, the Unyo, and the lesson applied

In 1875 the Japanese warship Unyo approached Ganghwa, drew Korean fire, and used it as grounds to attack Yeongjong Island. The Treaty of Ganghwa followed in 1876. Its text called Korea an "autonomous state," denying Qing suzerainty; it opened two ports beyond Busan, granted Japan the right to survey Korean coasts, and included consular jurisdiction. Conventional tariffs constrained customs autonomy as well.

The provenance of these clauses is not obscure: they are close to the core terms Japan had received from the United States in 1858. Perry’s method and Perry’s articles were transcribed. The route by which the victim of an unequal treaty becomes its author in twenty-two years is written plainly on the timeline. The East Asian treaty system of the later nineteenth century spread by being made once in the West and then imposed on neighbours by whichever country had received it first.

Korea moved quickly after opening. It established a new office of state affairs in 1880, sent an observation mission to Japan and a technical mission to Qing China in 1881, and formed a modern military unit. In 1882 it signed its first treaty with a Western power, the United States. But the 1882 soldiers’ mutiny and the 1884 Gapsin coup broke the reformist camp in succession, and both drew Qing and Japanese military intervention that narrowed the space in which Korea could decide anything at all. Japan, by contrast, had twenty years after 1868 to reform internally without foreign intervention.

Not eight years, but different conditions

Summarising the gap between 1868 and 1876 as "Korea was eight years late" misses the point. Japan’s restoration came fifteen years after its opening, and those fifteen years were filled with political struggle close to civil war and two battlefield defeats. Korea’s 1876 was a treaty arriving without the equivalent of those fifteen years. The order was different. Japan was struck, fought, changed, and then faced the West again; Korea held, hardened, and was struck anyway.

The more decisive difference was slack. In the 1850s, when Japan opened, the Western powers were absorbed by the Crimean War, the Indian rebellion, the American Civil War, and China after the Taiping. The 1870s and 1880s, when Korea opened, were when imperial competition became systematic: the Berlin Conference of 1884 took up the partition of Africa, and in East Asia the Qing, Japan and Russia began colliding directly. The same reforms would have had different amounts of time.

The conclusion of the comparison is therefore not which country was wiser. It is that the same pressure produced different outcomes according to what experience it was interpreted through, how many channels existed for experiment, and how much time remained. Set 1868 and 1876 side by side and what becomes visible is not the eight cells between them but the conditions stretching out on either side.

At a glance

Year	Korean history	World history
1853	—	Perry arrives off Japan
1866	The French expedition to Ganghwa	—
1868	—	The Meiji Restoration
1871	The American expedition; the stelae	The Iwakura mission departs
1875	The Unyo incident	—
1876	The Treaty of Ganghwa	—
1882	The soldiers’ mutiny; the treaty with the US	—
1884	The Gapsin coup	The Berlin Conference

Read next

• Era guide: the port opening and the modern era
• In 1894, the great powers began their scramble for Korea
• While Britain ran its steam engines, Joseon lay under in-law rule

References

• National Institute of Korean History, Woorihistory chronology, "The opening of the ports and modern reform" — on the 1866 and 1871 expeditions, the Treaty of Ganghwa and the reform policies
• South Korean high-school world history curriculum — the opening and modernisation of East Asia (the Meiji Restoration, the Self-Strengthening Movement) and the course of imperialism
• Text of the Treaty of Ganghwa (1876) — the "autonomous state" clause, the opened ports, coastal survey rights and consular jurisdiction

The facts follow the sources above; the comparisons and interpretation are our own.