A Queen Was Murdered Inside Her Own Palace — The Brutal End of Empress Myeongseong

One detail about the final years of Joseon has always been difficult for me to get past.

In 1895, the queen of Korea was killed inside Gyeongbokgung Palace.

Not on a battlefield.
Not during a popular uprising.

Inside her own palace.

Empress Myeongseong remains a deeply debated figure in Korean history, and I don't think she needs to be turned into a flawless heroine to make her story extraordinary.

What interests me more is the position she found herself in.

Joseon was a weak kingdom surrounded by powers that were rapidly expanding their influence in East Asia. Japan was rising after the Meiji Restoration. Qing China was still deeply involved in Korean affairs. Russia was moving into the region. Western powers were forcing open ports across Asia.

And Korea had very little room to maneuver.

Myeongseong seems to have understood that isolation alone was no longer going to protect the country.

She supported contacts with foreign powers, took an interest in modernization, and increasingly looked toward Russia as a counterweight to growing Japanese influence.

That last part became particularly dangerous.

By the 1890s, Korea wasn't simply deciding whether it wanted to "modernize." It was struggling to remain a sovereign country while stronger states competed over it.

And Myeongseong was right in the middle of that struggle.

Her politics were complicated. She had enemies at court, was involved in factional power struggles, and historians still argue over many aspects of her rule.

But whatever judgment we make about her politics, the way she died is astonishing.

In the early morning of October 8, 1895, armed men entered Gyeongbokgung Palace during what became known as the Eulmi Incident.

Myeongseong was attacked and killed. Her body was then burned.

A sovereign queen had been murdered in her own royal residence.

To me, that is one of the clearest images of just how powerless Joseon had become.

There is also something especially tragic about the timing.

Myeongseong had grown up in a society where political power was overwhelmingly male, yet she became one of the most politically influential women of late Joseon. She was trying to navigate Russia, Japan, Qing China and the Western powers at exactly the moment Korea was running out of time.

Had she lived in a different century, perhaps her intelligence and political instinct would have been remembered very differently.

Instead, her life ended violently at the center of the geopolitical struggle she had been trying to survive.

That may be why I find her story more haunting than simply calling her a "tragic queen."

Her death was not only a personal tragedy.

It was a warning of what was happening to Korea itself.

I wrote a longer piece looking at her life, the conflict between isolation and opening, and the political choices facing Joseon in its final decades:

I found it difficult to fit everything I wanted to say about Myeongseong—and the political situation surrounding her—into a single Reddit post, so I wrote a longer version with more of the historical background and sources.

*Read the full story and historical background here:
https://seungjeongwonhistory.com/en/empress-myeongseong-of-joseon/