The Qing Government Policy Toward North Korea (1866-1876)

Judging from the long history of Sino-Korea, the center of Sino-Korea relation is the tributary relation. The tributary relation between Qing Dynasty and Li Dynasty started from 1637 and ended in the Sino-Japan war of 1894-1895. Considering regional politics, all previous rulers in Qing Dynasty paid all attention to the tributary relation between the two countries. After the transient exchanging period between Qing Dynasty and Li Dynasty, the relationship between the two countries has gone on very well until now and nearly no accidents have happened. Korea paying tribute four times a year to Qing Dynasty showed that the emperors paid much attention to the Sino-Korea relation at that time. However, in the mid-19th century the European expansion arrived at the far-east, which makes traditional confusion world change totally. China and Japan were forced to open their doors and accepted missionary merchants consul and arms from western countries. The central role of China in East Asia was lessened and the tributary relation between China and Korea was challenged. We can notice that after 1860s, western countries tried to interfere with the matters of Korea and they always made use of the tributary system to hinder China and Korea. Afterwards Japan joined in, too. All these can be found in the war of 1876 between France and Korea and the war of 1871 between America and Korea and the treaty between Korea and Japan in 1876. The series of challenge from outside made Qing Dynasty work out some principles to deal with the matters of Korea. The thesis writer considers that China made some principles to deal with Korea matters in order to keep Korea as it's a vassal state. In addition, these principles have profound influence on foreign affairs of China and the situation of Korea. But here something must be pointed out, which is that these principles were formed gradually. To investigate from 1866 to 1876, Qing Dynasty implemented passive and selfish principles to Korea, but Qing Dynasty changed its principles and began to interfere with the matters of Korea in the time ofJapan forcing Korea opening its door.This thesis is apt to base on the historical events happened from 1866 to 1876 including the war of France and Korea, the war of America and Korea and the treaty of JiangHua etc. and regard the responses of Qing Dynasty in dealing with the Korean matters as the main line. Through the discussion of the process of foreign affairs between Korea and America, France and Japan, the thesis writer tries to find out policy of Qing Dynasty to Korea affairs and discuss deeply about the principles of foreign affairs.