The Theater of Death in Chosun Korea

Public executions served as grim entertainment in late 19th century Seoul, where crowds gathered at Chongno Street’s execution ground much like Romans at the Colosseum. For Yuan Shikai – China’s ambitious commissioner stationed in Korea – these spectacles offered more than diversion; they became a stage to demonstrate authority. Contemporary accounts describe how the young official would push through rope barriers to personally wield the executioner’s blade, his martial arts training allowing him to decapitate prisoners with theatrical flourish. This macabre hobby shocked his American-educated colleague Tang Shaoyi, revealing the cultural chasm between East Asian traditions of punitive justice and emerging Western humanitarian ideals.

The frequency of these executions reflected Korea’s political turmoil during the 1880s, as the crumbling Joseon dynasty faced peasant uprisings and factional violence. Yuan’s enthusiastic participation wasn’t merely bloodlust – it performed China’s suzerain power at a time when Japan increasingly challenged Qing dominance. Each swing of his sword asserted imperial prerogative in a land where, as Tang warned him, the condemned were often sympathetic figures – fathers punished for sons’ rebellion rather than hardened criminals.

The Making of a Strongman

Yuan Shikai’s Korean sojourn (1882-1894) forged the authoritarian instincts that would later define his presidency of China. Unlike traditional Confucian bureaucrats who reached power through civil examinations, the 23-year-old Yuan arrived in Seoul as a military adjutant, his limited classical education compensated by martial prowess and political cunning. His fascination with executions mirrored contemporary strongmen like Japan’s Yamagata Aritomo, who similarly believed visible brutality ensured order.

The 1886 incident where Yuan commandeered an executioner’s sword coincided with his unofficial role as “supervisor of Korean state affairs” – a position analogous to Japan’s later Resident-General. While Tang advocated diplomatic decorum, Yuan cultivated a public persona blending intimidation and accessibility, riding through Seoul’s markets surrounded by crowds. This calculated populism foreshadowed 20th century authoritarian playbooks, using public spectacles to simultaneously demonstrate power and connection with commoners.

Geopolitical Chessboard

Yuan’s Korean tenure unfolded against East Asia’s Great Game, where China and Japan vied for control of the Hermit Kingdom. The 1885 Tianjin Convention had temporarily stabilized tensions after the failed 1884 Gapsin Coup – a Japanese-backed revolt that Yuan helped suppress. His 1886 visit to Japan, ostensibly to improve relations with Prime Minister Ito Hirobumi, revealed the deepening rivalry.

Japanese leaders presented twelve demands including respecting Korea’s “autonomy” – a euphemism for reducing Chinese influence. Ironically, as Yuan witnessed in Tokyo, Japan itself was forcibly relocating Korean reformer Kim Ok-gyun to the remote Ogasawara Islands, demonstrating its own imperial ambitions. The competing visions for Korea crystallized in military buildups: while China acquired German battleships like the Dingyuan, Japan pursued systemic modernization beyond hardware. As Ito correctly assessed, Qing naval expansion masked institutional stagnation – officials still earned promotions through poetry exams while Japan adopted Prussian general staff systems.

Cultures of Violence

The execution ground encounters between Yuan and Tang reflected broader civilizational debates. Traditional East Asian penal practices, with their performative cruelty, collided with imported Western norms of discreet, reformative justice. America’s own lynching epidemic – which Yuan knowingly referenced – showed these weren’t clear-cut East/West dichotomies but global struggles over state violence’s proper boundaries.

Korea’s predicament intensified these tensions. As the last Confucian kingdom, its legal traditions emphasized exemplary punishment, yet international pressure forced modernization attempts. The 1894 Kabo Reforms would abolish mutilation punishments under Japanese influence, but Yuan’s era still saw severed heads displayed on pikes – a practice continuing in China until 1905. These shifts mirrored global trends where public executions retreated from town squares to prison yards, as described by Foucault, though colonial contexts often maintained dual standards.

The Road to Empire

Yuan’s Korean experiences shaped his later career and East Asia’s tragic trajectory. His heavy-handed tactics alienated Korean reformers while failing to prevent Japan’s 1894 invasion. The Sino-Japanese War’s aftermath saw Korea slip from Qing suzerainty to Japanese colonization, with Yuan applying similar authoritarian methods as China’s president (1912-1916).

The execution ground episode encapsulates imperial decline’s paradoxes: Yuan’s martial vigor couldn’t compensate for institutional rot, just as Qing battleships couldn’t overcome systemic weakness. His personal intervention in executions mirrored China’s reactive foreign policy – forceful in tactics but strategically incoherent. Meanwhile, Japan’s patient modernization under Ito ultimately proved more effective than Qing spasms of reform.

Legacy of the Sword

Today, the Chongno execution ground is a bustling Seoul thoroughfare, its violent past buried under department stores. Yet the questions raised by Yuan’s bloody performances persist: the relationship between spectacle and power, the ethics of public violence, and whether strongmen stabilize or undermine states. As East Asia navigates new great power tensions, the 19th century struggles over Korea remind us that empires rise not just through weapons, but the ideologies that justify their use – whether framed as civilizing missions, regional stability, or national destiny.

The contrast between Yuan’s sword and Ito’s constitution-writing pen ultimately defined their nations’ fates – a lesson in the different varieties of power that continue shaping our world.