일본의 유구병합과 동아시아 질서의 변동 -한반도와의 정치적 관계를 중심으로-

Abstract

The Kingdom of Ryukyu, which held its unique identity as an “unarmed island”, continued to exist in Okinawa until the end of the 19th century while it undertook an active role in the Chinese world order. However, the Ryukyu Kingdom was annexed to Japan coercively during the 19th century crisis. A considerable amount of research on the Ryukyu annexation has been conducted. Nevertheless, the research on the Ryukyu annexation that centers on the correlation with the political situation of the Korean Peninsula is rarely encountered. The purpose of the present study is to examine how the collapse of the Ryukyu Kingdom is correlated with the ‘internal and external’political changes of the Korean Peninsula within the context of the transformation in the East Asia order. The changes in the Chinese world order originated from the external shock called the Opium War. However, the concrete changes in the relations between the three East Asian countries became evident since the Meiji reform, a focal turning point of Japanese domestic politics. The new Meiji government of Japan sought for the reformation of the East Asia order amidst the massive transition period by starting with the annexation of the Ryukyu Kingdom, which was the weakest link to the Chinese world order. The dissolution of Ryukyu Kingdom was carefully carried out through several stages, and the possible grounds for conflict and resistance were pre blocked. The annexation strategy adopted by the Meiji government was to treat and transform the emerging issues of conflict ambiguously into the issues of other non conflicting matters. For instance, the Meiji government ingeniously transformed the Ryukyu issue, a definite ‘international’dispute, as the issues of ‘domestic’political reformation or ‘local’system reformation. Japan’s annexation of the Ryukyu was a momentous event amidst the massive transition period of the 19th century that took place within the novel embodiment process of political power relations among the East Asian countries. It was an event of international politics that stimulated fundamental changes in the Chinese world order and concurrently implied a greater degree of future changes. The merging process executed by Japan exacerbated the political awareness of crisis within China. Such an increase in crisis awareness provoked greater intervention and oppression on the domestic affairs of Korea by the Chinese government. In other words, the symptoms of change in the conventional bilateral relations between Korea and China were developing. The written advices from Chinese political leaders and the internal documents produced after the Ryukyu annexation express China’s serious concern towards the conventional Chinese world order, which seemed to be shaking from its very basis. Furthermore, the documents record the prospect that Korea will become the crucial factor which can determine the new political order within the East Asian countries. In addition, the sources contain serious discussions on the new oppression approaches that China should take towards Korea. Subsequently, the axis of conflict in East Asia moves to ‘Korea issue’. From Korean standpoint, Korea was placed under the triple pressure from the powers of the West, China, and Japan since the merge of Ryukyu in the era of imperialism. At the same time, the crisis awareness of Korean policy makers got augmented, and triggered consecutive occurrence of political pursuits and conflicts in regards with the breakthrough for the crisis. This indicates that Japan’s annexation of the Ryukyu in 1870s, the reformation of Korea government in 1880s and the emergence of ‘Korea issue’in the context of international politics were all closely connected as a single domino.