The Murder of the Last Korean Queen

Queen Min was the de facto power behind the throne in Korea, and so she had plenty of enemies. Eventually, a coup would come to the palace. Support Noble Blood: —Bonus episodes, stickers, and scripts on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/noblebloodtales — Noble Blood merch https://store.dftba.com/collections/noble-blood — Order Dana's book, 'Anatomy: A Love Story' https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250840578/anatomyalovestory/and its sequel 'Immortality: A Love Story' https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250861016/immortalityalovestory/ See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• 0:00Dana Schwartz?

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

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• 1:12Dana Schwartz?

  Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey. Listener discretion advised. On a normal day, the grounds of the Korean Royal Palace would be quiet at 5:00 a.m. Servants would be just rising to begin their day, birds would be chirping, leaves rustling in the wind. But at 5:00 a.m. on October 8, 1895, Queen Min, nowhere near her usual wake-up time, was awoken by one of her ladies in waiting. She was told the Vice Minister of Agriculture had an urgent message for her. The queen hurriedly rose and got dressed.

• 1:56Dana Schwartz?

  A bit frustrated, but also a bit nervous, Queen Min stepped outside her quarters to see the minister. "It seems that the Japanese are attempting another coup," he whispered. "They're here, trying to enter the palace grounds." Queen Min had been through this before. Just a year earlier, the Japanese had unsuccessfully tried to lead a coup against her. But something about this morning felt different. Before she could express her fear, her minister looked her in the eye and stated, “No harm will come to you. There is no need to hide or even flee. You will be safe.” The queen took a moment to process and reflect. She bowed to her minister and retreated

• 2:41Dana Schwartz?

  back into her quarters. She had survived attempts to oust her before, and she would do it again. All she had to do was wait for this all to pass. Even so, probably rightly, her nerves wouldn’t allow her to fall back asleep, so queen Min sat amongst her ladies in waiting and attempted to quiet her mind. Across the palace grounds, Japanese shushi were scaling the palace walls with foldable ladders. Once over the walls, they thrust open the palace gates and ushered their comrades inside. No one was there to keep them from rushing in. All of the palace guards normally stationed

• 3:22Dana Schwartz?

  at the gates had been relieved of their duties earlier by allies on the inside. So the mob, made up of Japanese expats, Japanese army officials, Korean civilians, Japanese-trained Korean soldiers, and consular policemen, streamed through the gates and surged into the palace grounds. Not even trying to hide their presence any longer, they whooped and hollered as they dispersed and began their hunt for queen Min. There was no stopping this mob. Not only had almost every remaining royal guard abandoned his post, but the men who stormed the castle were too bloodthirsty and crazed to be contained.

• 4:07Dana Schwartz?

  One major obstacle, however, stood in their way. None of the would-be assassins knew what the queen looked like. Very few people had directly interacted with her, and almost all who had done so had done so through a screen which prevented them from laying eyes on her. Rumor was that she had a bald spot above her temple, but that was about all the information about her appearance that the interlopers had to go on. This major unknown element, however, hadn’t deterred the men. In fact, they had made a game out of their murderous hunt, and each man was competing for the honor of finding and killing queen Min.

• 4:51Dana Schwartz?

  The mob headed for the inner quarters of the palace and targeted any woman whom they came across. According to eyewitness reports from foreign envoys staying in the palace, the Japanese men burst into each and every room. They beat women, dragged them by their hair, and threw them off of verandas, all while demanding to know where the queen was. They even came upon two different women that they thought were queen men. Each woman was stabbed to death. As these screams and jeers got closer and closer, Queen Min's fear skyrocketed, but so too did her survival instincts.

• 5:35Dana Schwartz?

  “Put me in your robes, quickly,” she ordered. Her ladies rushed to take off the queen's garments and dress her in a clean set of their clothing. Now, all 25 women in the room were dressed exactly alike. She ordered the women to hide wherever they could, and she tried to cover herself in a pile of bedding in a corner. Queen Min could hear the minister of the royal household shouting at the men outside her door, trying to prevent them from entering. She heard the sound of metal slicing through flesh, and his shouts turned to screams, and then gradually to groans.

• 6:15Dana Schwartz?

  She steeled herself and took a deep breath as the screen door slammed open. Queen Min focused on keeping still despite the chaos around her as the intruders trashed the room, brutalizing her ladies. Suddenly, the bedding which covered her was ripped off. Queen Min turned her head to make eye contact with the young Japanese man now standing above her. Her eyes burned with fear and determination. She refused to cower or beg. Unfortunately, her composure betrayed her regal stature and gave her identity away. “I found her,” was the last full sentence Queen Min ever heard.

• 7:00Dana Schwartz?

  I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood.

• 7:07Dana Schwartz?

  According to the 60-year cyclical calendar traditionally used in Korea, 1895 was the year Yulmi. If you're from Korea, one particularly event probably comes to mind when you hear that word: The Yulmi Incident. This is, in my opinion, a rather undescriptive name for a really brutal event. So I hope this episode's introduction enticed you more than that very simple name might. The Yulmi Incident, as it's known, was the assassination of the Korean queen Min as part of an attempted coup by her father-in-law and by Japanese envoys to the Korean Kingdom in 1895.

• 7:51Dana Schwartz?

  Before we finish the tragic story, we started... Let me set the scene. Korea in the late 1800s faced an entirely different reality than they had been facing earlier in the century. Korea, also known then as Choson, had been officially ruled by China for centuries. But the various Chinese dynasties had left Korea pretty much alone, allowing the king of Choson to rule an absolute monarchy and run the country on a day-to-day level pretty autonomously. And besides the country's relationship with China, Korea was entirely insular. That all changed in 1876,

• 8:34Dana Schwartz?

  when Japan forced Korea to open itself up to the rest of the world. All of a sudden, Korea was inundated with emissaries from China, Japan, Russia, and the United States, all looking to bring the Korean peninsula under their influence. This massive change in international policy had occurred under King Gojong. King Gojong was not a particularly strong ruler, although technically an absolute monarch, he was easily persuaded by whoever last whispered in his ear. Perhaps this is because of his early experiences on the throne. He had risen to power in eighteen sixty-three at the age of only twelve.

• 9:19Dana Schwartz?

  And so his father, known as the Daewongun, stepped up as regent, a role that he stayed in past Go-jung's coming of age. As such, Go-jung became accustomed early on to being the supreme leader only in name. And so he deferred to those who supposedly knew better. Because of Go-jung's personality, Korea of the late eighteen hundreds was full of factions, all vying to control the king and control access to him. These factions only multiplied when the country was forcibly opened, and international powers joined the domestic powers in Jaegung for favor.

• 10:02Dana Schwartz?

  But by far, the most powerful party, the one most successful at getting the king's ear, was the party of Queen Min. Queen Min had been selected to marry King Go-jung in eighteen sixty-six, when she was only sixteen years old and he was only fifteen. The Daewongun had signed off on the arrangement because he believed that Queen Min would be a dutiful wife, and, more importantly, that she wouldn't pose a threat to his power as regent. How wrong he was. Queen Min didn't adhere to the role traditionally played by the wife of the king.

• 10:43Dana Schwartz?

  Not only did she shirk the social responsibilities typically held by queens, instead investing time in her education, she also slowly extricated herself from the traditionally secluded queen's apartments and crept onto the political scene. By eighteen seventy-three, when King Go-jung was twenty-two and well past the age to rule independently, his father still acted as regent, which was posing a problem for Queen Min. She hoped to gain real political influence. She needed to rid the palace of her father-in-law, who didn't like her and her untraditional behavior. Queen Min secretly started organizing a powerful political faction

• 11:28Dana Schwartz?

  to oust the Daewongun as regent, and in eighteen seventy-three, successfully forced her father-in-law into retirement.

• 11:37Dana Schwartz?

  He already didn't like Queen Min for her "radical" ways, but that coup solidified his hatred of her. With her plans to oust the Daewongun successful, Queen Min moved into the power vacuum left behind and became the de facto regent of Korea alongside her husband, the king, who was essentially a figurehead. With Queen Min in the highest position of power in the country, her clan, the Min clan, became the dominant political faction. Queen Min was clearly a force to be reckoned with. Unfortunately for her, it was her power and the threat her power posed to both Japan's influence on Korea

• 12:22Dana Schwartz?

  and to one man's masculinity that would eventually lead to her death. That one man was Myura Goro. Myura first arrived in Korea in 1895 as Japan's new envoy to the country. He was appointed to the position during a period of great turmoil. 1894 and 1895 had seen two attempted coups against King Gojong and Queen Min, both of which had involved the king's father and Japanese and pro-Japanese actors. Japanese politicians back in Japan blamed those two unsuccessful coups on their then envoy,

• 13:06Dana Schwartz?

  who had tried to work diplomatically with the queen. So the Japanese government hoped to try a different approach, and they sent over Myura Goro as their new envoy.

• 13:20Dana Schwartz?

  Myura was incredibly unqualified for the job. He had little diplomatic experience, no knowledge of broader world politics, and a penchant for being loyal to, as historian Danny Ohrbach put it, "heaven and the emperor, but not the government." Myura's background was as a commander in the Japanese army, and he was known for his crude and direct style. Not typically personality traits one would imagine to be helpful in a diplomat. Regardless of his lack of qualifications, Myura was in a tough spot as the new Japanese envoy. Queen Min, and therefore King Gojong,

• 14:05Dana Schwartz?

  had started leaning away from Japanese influence towards an alliance with Russia in 1895. His job was to fix that. One of Myura's first meetings in Korea was his introductory interview with King Gojong. At that meeting, Myura noticed that Queen Min directed the king almost as if she were a disembodied omniscient force. She advised him in real time from a room behind the king's throne, where she could remain out of sight and unapproachable. Myura walked away from the meeting feeling that the queen looked down on him. In his mind, she viewed him as a dumb soldier

• 14:49Dana Schwartz?

  whose weakness could be taken advantage of in order to dismantle the Holyunde, the pro-Japanese regiment of the Korean army. The Holyunde was one of the biggest bases of support for the Japanese on the Korean peninsula, and so if Queen Min disbanded that regiment, there would be little stopping her from bringing Russian forces in and pushing Japan out entirely. Given the situation, Myura had a couple of options. He could employ a woman to interface with Queen Min directly, since the queen followed the Korean tradition of remaining secluded from men. Or Myura could have turned to his envoy predecessor

• 15:33Dana Schwartz?

  for advice and guidance, because despite the fact that he was a man, he had been able to meet with Queen Min face to face. But Myura wouldn't allow himself to stoop to either of those paths. He wouldn't employ a woman. And he wouldn't ask for advice. He felt clueless and helpless, but he was too haughty to accept help. And so he chose a different option, where instead of fixing his problem, he would just remove it. In his own memoir, Murak confessed that he decided, quote, "in the space of three puffs on a cigarette", that he would assassinate the queen.

• 16:15Dana Schwartz?

  Even though Muragura wouldn't accept help to negotiate with Queen Min, he knew he needed help assassinating her. He turned to someone he knew would be more than up to the task, Adachi Kenzo. Adachi was a Japanese reporter in Seoul, who ran a newspaper, which was essentially a propaganda paper run by Soshi, or Japanese expats who advocated for hawkish Japanese foreign policy achieved through violence. They held some pretty misogynistic beliefs, and so they were quite antagonistic towards Queen Min. Some of their reporters, including Adachi, described her as, quote, "wickedness at the king's side",

• 16:59Dana Schwartz?

  and "that bewitching beauty who cunningly, ubiquitously, and treacherously manipulated virtuous men for over a generation", and "the root of all evil in Korea". Within Soshi's circles, men were openly calling on their comrades to kill the queen. So Murak wasted no time in turning to that paper and their owner, Adachi, for help. On September 19th, 1895, Murak met with Adachi and asked if he knew of any young men up for a fox hunt. Adachi later admitted that his heart leapt with joy when Murak asked him this question. He knew that there was no actual fox hunt,

• 17:42Dana Schwartz?

  but that Murak was actually talking about killing Queen Min. The writers at his paper frequently utilized a common metaphor of foxes as evil and as cunning women while discussing Queen Min. So Adachi heard Murak's dog whistle loud and clear. Adachi was thrilled to finally have a powerful partner, giving him and his staff the go-ahead to act on their hateful desires. Under order to maintain the utmost secrecy, Adachi set out recruiting members of his newspaper staff for the mission. The sochi at the newspaper all enthusiastically volunteered.

• 18:24Dana Schwartz?

  They couldn't wait to undertake this exciting, manly adventure. Muura, looking for additional support, also recruited the Hulyeunde, the pro-Japanese Army regiment that he feared Queen Min would disband. They would be additional muscle for the operation. Now he had a critical mass to execute his mission and the queen. But Muura couldn't dispose of Queen Min without someone to replace her as de facto ruler of Korea. Quite reluctantly, Muura and his advisors turned to the Deuwongun, King Gojong's father and former regent. Like I mentioned briefly, just a year prior, before Muura was the envoy,

• 19:09Dana Schwartz?

  the Japanese had already tried to work with the Deuwongun to overthrow Queen Min, but the plot had failed. The Deuwongun had gone behind the Japanese's backs and collaborated with the Chinese, so the Japanese were understandably incredibly hesitant to work with him. But the Deuwongun was now in dire financial straits, and so Muura believed that he could more easily be manipulated and pressured into doing what he was told. Ultimately, though, the truth is Muura had no better option. It took some time to iron out the details, but finally, on October 3rd, 1895, the Deuwongun and the Japanese came to an agreement.

• 19:54Dana Schwartz?

  With that, the plan was set. Now they just needed to wait for the perfect moment to strike.

• 20:02Dana Schwartz?

  Unfortunately for Muira and his alliance, the necessary time to act came before the perfect moment, and it came quite fast. On October 7th, less than a week after the alliance had finalized arrangements with Queen Min's father-in-law, Muira received reports that Queen Min was about to disband the Hulyeondae, ally with Russia, and order the assassination of multiple pro-Japanese politicians. Muira needed to act fast before his base of support was swept out from beneath him. And so he decided that the very next morning, they would kill the queen.

• 20:42Dana Schwartz?

  As I described in this episode's introduction, on the morning of October 8th, a mob descended on the royal palace in search of Queen Min. The mob was made up of Hulyeondae, Sochi's staff members from the newspaper, Japanese soldiers, Korean policemen, and other soldiers in plainclothes, and some random Korean civilians. With help from palace insiders, the mob breached the inner rooms of the royal palace, where they found the queen amongst her ladies-in-waiting. I won't go into too much detail, but once the mob found Queen Min, they assassinated her very brutally. To say that they engaged in overkill would be an understatement.

• 21:27Dana Schwartz?

  Suffice it to say, all that remained of her after the coup was a singed fingerbone. Historian Danny Orbach posits that the mob so brutally murdered Queen Min for a couple of reasons, including their misogynistic attitudes towards the queen and the competitive nature of the search for her. Regardless of the reasons, they were so complete in their decimation of her, that until her remains were recovered in a forest much later, it was sometimes thought that she had just disappeared. Importantly, there was no clear evidence as to who the exact person was who had killed Queen Min.

• 22:08Dana Schwartz?

  And so to this day, it's still unknown which member of the mob murdered the monarch.

• 22:16Dana Schwartz?

  Waiting for the Queen’s assassination to take place, the Daewongun arrived at the royal palace at 6:00 a.m., ready to swoop in to claim power back from the woman who had taken it years ago. Mura later described the Daewongun as “beaming with delight” as he entered through the palace gates. “He was pleased with himself to have toppled the woman who had pushed him out previously, never mind that he was now a pawn of the Japanese.” The Daewongun was ready to resume power. With the assassination executed, Mura and the Daewongun met with the Daewongun’s son, King Gojong, who was shell-shocked and upset.

• 22:58Dana Schwartz?

  The Daewongun presented the king with a variety of documents to sign, including a proclamation denouncing Queen Min and relegating her to the rank of commoner. In a rare moment of courage, Gojong refused to sign anything and told his father, “You can cut my fingers off, but I will not sign your proclamation.” The Daewongun went ahead and published the edicts without his son’s official seal, but that was enough to indicate to the general public that there was some sort of foul play going on. Everyone denounced the edict as fraudulent, and the Daewongun had to retract it.

• 23:40Dana Schwartz?

  He attempted again to undercut Queen Min’s public image a couple of days later. King Gojong was being kept confined to the royal palace, despite the horrific murder that had taken place there just days earlier. Perhaps the king could stomach this because he didn’t yet know that his wife was dead. He actually believed at this point that she had escaped the mob, as she had during multiple previous other attempted coups. And like I previously mentioned, there was no trace of her remaining. So capitalizing on his son’s ignorance and seclusion, the Daewongun issued another

• 24:20Dana Schwartz?

  edict under his son’s name, stating that the king was divorcing Queen Min for desertion and that he would remarry. When King Gojong heard of this, he was infuriated. He turned around and issued his own edict, in which he raised the queen’s status to “bin,” the title for the first rank of women of the internal court.

• 24:45Dana Schwartz?

  It took some time for everyone to accept what they soon all knew. Queen Min had been murdered. A month and a half after the royal palace had been stormed, King Go-jung's cabinet finally made an official announcement that Queen Min was dead, but that the events of October 8th would be investigated. Even though it took over a month for this investigation to be announced, the public knew from day one who really was the power behind the murder.

• 25:21Dana Schwartz?

  From the moment news of the coup and Queen Min's assassination became public, it was clear to everyone that the Japanese were involved. Even as the coup was happening, witnesses could see the men dressed in Japanese clothing and wielding Japanese swords, tearing through the palace. When reporters for the English-language newspaper arrived at the royal palace, they found that the main gates were being guarded by Japanese soldiers. Murua's personal involvement wasn't too difficult to deduce either. Korean royal emissaries reported that, after having been dispatched to alert Murua to the coup, they arrived at his offices to find him and the emissary's secretary,

• 26:06Dana Schwartz?

  dressed and waiting by the door with their sedan chairs ready to carry them to the palace. They clearly knew what had happened and were just waiting to be summoned. Once officials started investigating, there was ample evidence that pointed to Murua's role in leading the conspiracy. But that didn't stop Murua from attempting to hide his complicity. He tried telling other foreign emissaries that some Koreans must have dressed up in Japanese clothing to frame the Japanese. Murua also tried to peddle this lie to his own superiors in the Japanese government, and even pretended that Queen Min might still be alive when he already knew she had been killed.

• 26:49Dana Schwartz?

  You might be wondering how much the Japanese government back in mainland Japan knew about the assassination scheme beforehand? Historians widely believe that Tokyo had no idea of Murua’s plan before it happened, and their actions after the fact definitely do indicate that. There’s pretty ample evidence that Murua spent much of his days after October 8th working to convince his superiors, like the acting Foreign Secretary, that he had no idea of the plot and was working to investigate it. But like a guilty child who thinks they’re smarter than their parents, Murua just couldn’t help himself and kept dropping hints that pointed to the truth, inadvertently or not.

• 27:34Dana Schwartz?

  He eventually admitted to the Foreign Minister that Japanese actors might have been involved, and that he did believe something had needed to be done about the Queen anyways. When Murua’s complicity became clear to government officials, Tokyo summoned Murua and his co-conspirators back to Japan. Expecting a hero’s welcome upon their return, the foreign envoys were instead met at the docks in Hiroshima and arrested. Murua and his co-conspirators had been charged with murder and conspiracy to commit murder. The subsequent trial riveted the Japanese public, as multiple Soshi who had participated

• 28:15Dana Schwartz?

  in the coup admitted under oath to participating in the killing that day. And historians admit that the trial was shockingly honest and forthright with the evidence regarding the conspiracy up until the day of the assassination. However, the court ended up acquitting all of the defendants of charges. The judge in his ruling stated that while everyone charged had clearly been involved in a conspiracy to kill Queen Min, “There is no sufficient evidence to prove that any of the accused actually committed the crime originally mediated by them.” In other words, because no one could prove who had killed Queen Min, they all got off.

• 29:02Dana Schwartz?

  No one knows exactly why the court made such a ruling. The case had been surprisingly transparent regarding the complicity and responsibility of men like Mu Ha, and yet they were still acquitted. Perhaps the government stepped in, but perhaps the judge in this case made the ruling entirely of his own accord. There's no evidence pointing towards government interference, but that's not to say it didn't happen. A lack of evidence isn't proof that nothing happened. You might also be wondering why Korea didn't try the various co-conspirators.

• 29:40Dana Schwartz?

  Because of a clause about extraterritoriality in a treaty that Korea and Japan had signed in 1876, Korea was powerless to try Japanese nationals for their crimes. In the end, Japan had wrapped up the matter by January 20th, 1896, less than four months after Queen Min's assassination. King Go-jung's process of mourning and commemorating his wife, on the other hand, took him over two years. Perhaps because it took him almost two years and support from the Russian delegation to wrest back control of his throne from his father.

• 30:21Dana Schwartz?

  But once he was secure back in power in 1897, King Go-jung wasted no time honoring his late wife. He first issued her a new posthumous name, Myung-sung. When Go-jung proclaimed himself as emperor a few months later, he also changed Myung-sung's title from queen to empress. Her final and current posthumous title is Myung-sung the Great Empress. Go-jung also planned an extravagant funeral procession for his late wife. The procession through Seoul featured 5,000 soldiers, 650 policemen, 4,000 lanterns,

• 31:04Dana Schwartz?

  hundreds of scrolls honoring her, and giant wooden horses intended for her use in the afterlife. She was laid to rest in the Joseon Royal Tomb Complex, where Emperor Go-jung would later be buried alongside her. Empress Myung Sung could not have known it, but she would be the last queen of Korea. And even though she was technically the second to last Empress of Korea, she is commonly known today as the Last Empress. Her reign and assassination have been dramatized as a television series, a movie, and the first Korean musical to grace a Broadway stage. Despite enduring a brutal death,

• 31:49Dana Schwartz?

  Empress Myung Sung continues to have an impact on Korea and lives on in the Korean consciousness over a century after her passing.

• 32:00Dana Schwartz?

  That's the story of Queen Min and her assassination. But keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear how recently discovered documents shed light on the details of what happened October 8th, 1895.

• 32:21Speaker 02

  Hey, it's Nile Rodgers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by Miguel.

• 32:39Speaker 03

  Man, I'm a Black and Mexican kid from San Pedro, and I grew up in Inglewood as well. I never liked to be boxed in. Both of my parents colored outside of the lines. I mean, even them being together at the time in L.A. was just not typical. And so I think that has always been a part of my DNA. There's a defiant something in me that feels like what we get to do with what we're given that's greater than us is to maybe connect people to ideas that they wouldn't naturally connect to. That's really me. I'm just kind of defiant with love, though.

• 33:15Speaker 02

  Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 33:25Speaker 02

  Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by breakout singer-songwriter Alex Warren.

• 33:46Speaker 04

  I'm like a kid when I play music and I make music and I'm constantly asking questions. You know, whether it's an instrument I haven't played, or it's a melody that seems foreign. You know, there's every night you play a show and it's the same set, but it's not the same show. At a certain point, your brain kind of goes on autopilot. When I'm in the studio, or if I'm making music, that's where that curiosity kind of comes back, you know? I haven't lost it yet, but I'm also on my sophomore album, so, and you, you obviously are an expert here.

• 34:12Speaker 02

  Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 34:21Dana Schwartz?

  Perhaps because of the chaos and confusion of the attempted coup and assassination of Queen Min, there were very few written accounts that captured the events of that morning on October 8th, 1895. Luckily for us, however, there have been two separate recent discoveries of just that. It's not surprising that the first recently discovered eyewitness account only came to light over 100 years after Queen Min's murder, given where it was found. In the 1990s and early 2000s, researchers uncovered an eyewitness account of the coup

• 35:00Dana Schwartz?

  deep in the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire, in the fourth appendix of a report sent to the Russian government by the Russian minister to Korea. The writer was a Russian civilian under the employ of King Gojung in 1895. He had been hired as an architect by the king to design Western-inspired buildings, and just so happened to be living at the palace the morning the mob breached the walls. He described the frenetic energy of the Japanese men- They dashed around, searching for the queen. When a palace staff member who was participating in the raid

• 35:41Dana Schwartz?

  recognized the Russian man and told some of the Japanese soshi that he too was an employee at the palace, they grabbed him and tried to force him to locate Queen Min. The Russian wrote, quote, "Both of the Japanese and a new one, who had just joined them, ran up to me again, grabbed me by my gown and dragged me off to the queen's chambers, demanding that I show them where she was hiding. Moreover, one of the Japanese repeatedly asked me in English, 'Where is the queen? Point the queen out to us.' I tried to convince them to leave me alone because I did not know and would not know where the queen was, but they did not listen to me and just kept repeating, 'Where is the queen? Point the queen out to us.'

• 36:25Dana Schwartz?

  The Russian then supposedly escaped the palace without witnessing the queen's actual murder, to deliver his report to the Russian minister. Some scholars believe that he did, in fact, witness the murder, but to save himself from becoming a target, never admitted it. Ultimately, his account only confirmed what most already knew to be true: the Japanese were involved in the assassination. A more recent discovery revealed just how involved Japanese officials really were. In 2021, a Japanese man purchased a collection of letters at a flea market, and upon having them deciphered by a Korean-Japanese scholar,

• 37:09Dana Schwartz?

  he learned they were written by a consular assistant in Korea in the 1890s. In a letter sent to a friend one day after the attempted coup and murder, the man didn't mince words. "We killed the queen," he wrote. "My job was securing the entrance. We crossed the wall and barely got into the building where we killed the queen." Upon reflecting on the Queen's death, he stated, "I was shocked to realize how easy it was." While the man never stated exactly who struck the murderous blow, that he so freely and proudly admitted his role in this brutal illegal act while serving

• 37:49Dana Schwartz?

  as a minister is astonishing. You never know what you might find at a flea market. These two discoveries just underscore to me, and hopefully you listeners, just how important archival research is. So next time someone is trying to defund libraries and archives, just ask yourself, what might they be trying to cover up?

• 38:18Dana Schwartz?

  Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manke. Noble Blood is hosted by me, Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and research by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Courtney Sender, Amy Height, and Giulia Malani. The show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk, with supervising producer, Reema Ilkayali, and executive producers Aaron Manke, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 39:00Speaker 05

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• 39:30Dana Schwartz?

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.