Empress Myeongseong

Killed on 8 October 1895 at Gyeongbokgung palace in Seoul by Japanese agents and Korean collaborators; the queen death deepened the crisis of the Korean empire.

Overview

Empress Myeongseong, called Queen Min, was the dominant political figure at the Korean court, steering policy toward Russia to check Japanese influence after the First Sino-Japanese War. In the dawn raid, Japanese legation guards and Korean collaborators under diplomat Miura Goro entered the palace, killed the queen, and burned her body in a pine forest. The king survived under de facto watch. Japanese public opinion was scandalized, and the Miura mission was recalled and tried before a Japanese court that acquitted on technical grounds. The murder provoked international revulsion, a king refuge in the Russian legation, and the counter-reform of 1896. It remains a foundational grievance in Korean memory of the pre-colonial period, the subject of scholarship and controversy to this day.