1999 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

The Fall of the Chinese Tributary System (冊封体制)and Korea's modernization in the Post Sino-Japanese War

Research Project

Project/Area Number	09610368
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Section	一般
Research Field	Asian history
Research Institution	Hiroshima Prefectural Women's University
Principal Investigator	HARADA Tamaki Hiroshima Women's University, Faculty of Intercultural Communication, prof., 国際文化学部, 教授 (40228648)
Project Period (FY)	1997 – 1999
Keywords	Modern Korea / the Chinese Tributy System / Modern East Asia / Sino-Japanese War / the Empire of Korea / System of Korea / Ko-jong / Treaty of Commerce between Korea and China
Research Abstract	As a result of the Sino-Japanese War, Korea became a country independent from China. This independence had two aspects for Korea: political as well as cultural. As for political independence, Korea adopted its own era names (1896), declared its name the Korean Empire, started to call its king emperor (1897), established the System of Korea (大韓国国制) (1899), and so on. As for cultural independence, Korea abolished the civil service examination system(科挙) and it adopted hangul (Korean alphabet Letters) as its official writing system. In order to be a truly independent nation, Korea needed to establish a national identity and, therefore, it needed to develop national culture. The fact that Korea needed to establish national culture was a unique aspect in the Korea's modernization process that Japan did not have to face.