Joseon's defeat and Kim Ok-gyun from the perspective of Chinese intellectuals

This study attempted to critically examine how the political situation in the late Joseon Dynasty and Kim Ok-gyun's actions were transformed and refracted through distorted perspectives from the perspective of Chinese intellectuals through Yang Jin-in's 『Joseon was ruined like this 1, 2』. The author attributes the fall of Joseon to the incompetent and weak King Gojong and officials interested only in personal gain, and behind the scenes, he warns that if current China were like Joseon, it would inevitably fall. As an alternative to this, he argues that modernization should be achieved by accepting new civilizations like Ito Hirobumi, and at the same time, heroes like An Jung-geun should emerge to embody national identity and patriotic spirit. However, what I would like to note in this creative process is the fact that the degree of distortion of historical figures and events is very serious when criticizing the causes of Joseon's fall. Of course, since the work is a novel, fiction can be understood to some extent, but in the case of Kim Ok-gyun and Park Young-hyo, the fact that they disparage beyond distortion clearly shows the author's intention. This intentionality is probably due to the general Chinese perception that Joseon was a vassal of the Qing dynasty, and the Gapsin Coup led by Kim Ok-gyun and Park Yeong-hyo, which opposed this, and insisted on independence and modernization from the Qing dynasty. Moreover, the anger and sense of loss resulting from the denial of the dependency relationship between Joseon and Qing due to the defeat in the Sino-Japanese War was expressed in various places in the work even in 1920 through the use of fictional devices such as historical distortion.