By Kim Ki-tae
Staff Reporter

The lonesome passing of Yi Ku, the only surviving son of Choson’s last crown prince, last Saturday has awakened the public to the long forgotten tribulation of the disgraced royal family.



Bereaved family members carry the coffin of the late Yi Ku, the only surviving son of Choson’s last crown prince Yongchin, from Incheon International Airport in Inchon, Kyonggi Province, Wednesday. Yi’s body was brought back from Tokyo, where he died Saturday. /Korea Times

During the Japanese occupation (1910-1945), the royal family endured constant intimidation by Japanese imperialists including the murder of Queen Myongsong, their mother or grandmother, by Japanese hooligans. After Korea’s liberation in 1945, President Syngman Rhee suppressed the royal family to prevent the restoration of the monarchy. Rhee seized and nationalized most of the family’s properties.
The family also had to shoulder the psychological and historical burden of their ancestors’ responsibility for the ``collapse of the nation.’’

Stripped of most of wealth and authority, many members of the family secluded themselves from the ``merciless’’ world, even from other family members. Some flew to the U.S. in desperate effort to disown their ancestors.

In his lifetime, Yi Ku was known to often say, ``I am only an individual called `Yi Ku.’ I do not want to see this type of life again.’’

At the beginning of the royal tragedy, King Kojong, the grandfather of Yi Ku, had nine princes and four princesses, but only three princes survived childhood: the second son ``Chok,’’ the sixth son ``Kang’’ and the seventh son ‘`Un.’’

The second son became King Sunjong, the last monarch of the kingdom. As Sunjong left no children, the seventh son Prince Yongchin became the crown prince. His elder brother Prince Uichin should have taken the position but was passed over because Yongchin’s mother Lady Om had a higher status in the court than Uichin’s mother Lady Chang.



After King Sunjong died in 1926, Prince Yongchin was called ``King Yi,’’ a nominal title because Choson had already lost its sovereignty to Japan.

Prince Yongchin married Masako Nashimoto, a member of Japan’s imperial family. She, once one of three candidates for then Japan’s next empress, was instead designated as Yi’s wife, as a medical test indicated she could be barren. Some media claimed that the arranged marriage was Japan’s imperialist conspiracy to terminate the Choson’s royal lineage.

However, Yi’s wife Nashimoto, who later adopted a Korean name Lady Yi Pang-ja, gave birth to Yi Ku in 1931.

After liberation, the royal family could not come back to Korea, as South Korea’s first President, Rhee, feared that the royal family’s comeback would challenge his emerging authority as the new republic’s founding father.



This file photo, assumed to be taken in 1915 at Changdok Palace, shows the following royal family members, from left: Prince Uichin, the sixth son of Kojong; King Sunjong, the second son and the last monarch of Choson; Prince Yongchin, the seventh son; then former King Kojong; Queen Yundaebi, wife of Sunjong; Tokindang Kimbi, wife of Uichin; and Yi Kon, the eldest son of Uichin. The seated child in the front row is Princess Tokhye, the only daughter of Kojong.
/ Korea Times

It was only 1963 that a new president Park Chung-hee, allowed the royal family their long-sought return to Korea. However, they could only stay at a small residence called ``Naksonjae,’’ in a corner of Changdok Palace. Prince Yongchin died seven years later in disgrace after long suffering diseases.
Yi Ku was also forced by other family members to divorce his American wife Julia Mullock against their will in 1982 due to her sterility. A series of business failures left him without support and so he died alone at a hotel in Tokyo last Saturday. The site of the hotel was his birthplace 74 years ago.

King Kojong’s sixth son, Prince Uichin, gave birth to 13 sons and nine daughters from 14 women. With an extremely wide range of historical evaluations over him - womanizer and behind-the-scene leader of the independent movement - the Japanese authorities tied the hands of the prince throughout the occupation.

Unlike Prince Yongchin, who spent most of his life in Japan and the United States, President Rhee’s seizure of the royal properties deprived Prince Uichin of most of his wealth.

Afterwards, many of the family members had to swallow the disgrace of working for a living. According to the prince’s 11th son, Seok, his mother Hong Chong-sun had to sell noodles as a street vendor.

However, despite their suffering, most family members have not been able to adapt themselves to the new fast-changing capitalistic Korea. To make matters worse, many people swindled them. One family member admitted in a recent interview with a daily newspaper that her sons could not find honest work since many con men approached them and promised a ``windfall’’ by bringing back the lost wealth of the royal family through legal procedures or other means.

``Many of the family members did not know how to earn money. They were just innocent and credulous, which some people just exploited,’’ said Hye-won, son of Yi Hae-jong, ninth son of Prince Uichin.

News articles occasionally have drawn public attention to the remaining members since then. In 1998, it was reported that Ui-chin’s eight son Kyong-gil died alone in a social center in eastern Seoul, and last year, the eleventh son Seok was found homeless. (He recently got a job as a lecturer at a university in Chonju.)

Among Uichin’s surviving four sons and seven daughters, four have lost touch with the family after they left for the United States. The other family members hold an ancestral ritual two times a year for Prince Uichin, but usually only two or three of the 11 surviving siblings attend the ceremonies, according to Hye-won.

kkt@koreatimes.co.kr