A Century of Crisis: Korea and Vietnam Before the Colonial Wave

The nineteenth century opened with both the Joseon dynasty in Korea and the Nguyễn dynasty in Vietnam still operating within the traditional tributary framework centered on a declining Qing China. By the century’s end, both states had been thrust into a violent encounter with industrializing imperial powers. Korea found itself caught between an assertive Japan, a tsarist Russia, and an encroaching Western presence, while Vietnam became the core of a new French colonial project in Southeast Asia. Anti-colonial nationalism, far from being a twentieth-century invention, germinated in the upheavals of this era, as scholars, peasants, and disaffected officials crafted ideologies of resistance that would echo for generations.

Historical Context: The Collapse of Traditional Order

Korea’s Joseon dynasty had weathered internal factionalism and devastating peasant uprisings like the Hong Gyeong-nae Rebellion of 1811–1812, but the real shock came in the form of gunboat diplomacy. The General Sherman incident of 1866, in which an armed American merchant vessel demanded trade and was destroyed, set a precedent of violent rejection of outsiders that would not hold. In 1876, the Treaty of Ganghwa, imposed by Meiji Japan, forcibly opened Korean ports, emulating the unequal treaties that had been applied to China. Over the following decades, Korea signed similar treaties with the United States, Britain, Germany, and Russia, eroding sovereignty and exposing the dynasty’s military frailty. Internally, the old Confucian state structure proved unable to manage the costs of modernization, while conservative elites and reform-minded officials clashed over the direction of the country.

Vietnam’s Nguyễn dynasty faced an even more direct assault. After decades of missionary activity and growing French commercial interest, a joint Franco-Spanish expedition attacked Đà Nẵng in 1858 and then seized Saigon in 1859. The Treaty of Saigon (1862) ceded three southern provinces—known to the French as Cochinchina—and guaranteed free navigation and missionary rights. Additional treaties in 1874 and 1884 extended French control over the rest of the country, imposing protectorate status over Annam (central Vietnam) and Tonkin (northern Vietnam). Chinese intervention in the Sino-French War (1884–1885) failed to reverse the tide, and the Nguyễn court at Huế became a hollow symbol of indigenous monarchy. The loss of sovereignty galvanized a generation of Confucian literati and village leaders to conceive of resisting not just foreign soldiers, but the entire project of colonial domination.

The Character of Early Colonial Encroachment

In both Korea and Vietnam, the initial wave of colonial pressure did not immediately lead to full-scale annexation, allowing rhetorical and organizational space for domestic resistance. Colonial agents—Japanese merchants and military advisers in Korea, French administrators and Catholic missionaries in Vietnam—disrupted local economic patterns, undermined traditional elites, and sparked cultural anxieties. The uneven pace of colonization meant that nationalist ideas ripened in overlapping cycles of reform, rebellion, and repression. Understanding this context is vital, because the resistance movements of the later nineteenth century were not merely reactive: they were programmatic attempts to define what a modern, independent nation could look like.

Korea’s Armed Resistance and Reform Movements

The Donghak Peasant Revolution (1894)

The single largest explosion of anti-colonial and anti-feudal anger in Korea during the nineteenth century was the Donghak (Eastern Learning) Peasant Revolution. Donghak, a syncretic religious movement founded by Choe Je-u in the 1860s, combined elements of Confucianism, Buddhism, and indigenous shamanism with a strong egalitarian ethic. After Choe’s execution in 1864, the movement went underground but resurfaced dramatically in 1894 when followers and disaffected peasants, led by Jeon Bong-jun, rose in the southwestern provinces. They demanded the expulsion of Japanese and Western influence, punishment of corrupt officials, and land redistribution. Initially successful, the peasant army defeated government forces and occupied Jeonju. However, the Joseon court called for Chinese and Japanese military assistance, unwittingly triggering the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) and plunging the peninsula into a larger geopolitical struggle. Japanese troops, after defeating Chinese forces, turned on the peasant army, crushing the rebellion in a series of massacres by early 1895. The Donghak Revolution’s legacy endured in the collective memory of Korea’s rural population and injected a powerful anti-foreign, nationalist streak into future movements.

The Righteous Army (Uibyeong) Movements

If Donghak represented peasant nationalism, the uibyeong (lit. “armies of righteousness”) represented the armed response of the Confucian scholar-official class to the collapse of sovereignty. The catalyst was a single shocking event: the assassination of Empress Myeongseong in 1895 by Japanese agents and their Korean collaborators. Across the provinces, local yangban (aristocratic) leaders rallied volunteers to fight the Japanese and punish collaborationists. Leaders like Yi So-ung in Gangwon and Yi Jeong-gyu in Gyeongsang issued manifestos combining calls to preserve Confucian values with explicit anti-Japanese nationalism. Although Japan briefly retreated and supported the brief restoration of a pro-Russian government, the Righteous Army phenomenon did not disappear. It would erupt again with even greater force after Japan made Korea a protectorate in 1905, but its nineteenth-century roots are essential for understanding the continuity of armed resistance. The Righteous Army tradition transformed local grievances into a national cause, foreshadowing the guerrilla tactics of the later independence movement.

The Enlightenment Faction and the Independence Club

Not all resistance wore military boots. The failed Gapsin Coup of 1884, led by reformers like Kim Ok-gyun who had studied Meiji Japan, tried to leapfrog Korea into an autonomous modern state. Though crushed within days, the coup revealed the presence of an elite that saw institutional modernization as the only path to stave off colonization. In 1896, Seo Jae-pil (Philip Jaisohn), a former participant in the Gapsin Coup who had returned as an American citizen, founded the Independence Club (Dongnip hyeophoe) and launched Korea’s first modern newspaper, Tongnip Sinmun (The Independent). The club built the iconic Independence Gate and organized mass rallies calling for a constitutional monarchy, anti-corruption measures, and resistance to foreign interference. Thousands of ordinary citizens participated in these gatherings, articulating a new, urban-centered nationalism that fused enlightenment ideals with anti-colonial sentiment. Though the club was disbanded in 1898 under conservative pressure, it had already educated a generation of activists who would go on to spearhead the March 1st Movement.

Vietnam’s Anti-French Resistance: From Can Vuong to Modern Nationalism

The Can Vuong Movement (Aid the King)

When the young Emperor Hàm Nghi was captured and deposed by the French in 1885, his regent Tôn Thất Thuyết issued the Cần Vương (Aid the King) edict, calling all loyal subjects to rise and expel the invaders. What followed was a prolonged guerrilla war that lasted from 1885 to 1896, led predominantly by mandarin-scholars who had absorbed the Neo-Confucian ethic of loyalty and righteousness. Phan Đình Phùng, a high-ranking Censorate official, orchestrated a relentless campaign from his mountain base in Hà Tĩnh, forging a network of local partisans that harassed French troops and attacked mission stations. Other leaders like Nguyễn Thiện Thuật in the Red River Delta and Hoàng Hoa Thám (Đề Thám) in Yên Thế kept the struggle alive for decades. Though the French ultimately pacified the movement through scorched-earth tactics and the construction of blockhouses, the Cần Vương uprising cemented the principle that loyalty to the nation—not simply to the monarch—was paramount. It also demonstrated the limits of a purely traditionalist resistance: without modern weaponry and organizational reforms, scholar-gentry armies could not defeat a colonial power.

The Dong Du (Go East) Movement and Phan Bội Châu

As the nineteenth century waned, a new generation of Vietnamese intellectuals concluded that the East must learn from the successes of Japan to shake off Western dominance. Phan Bội Châu, the foremost anti-colonial activist of this period, founded the Duy Tân Hội (Reformation Society) in 1904 and launched the Đông Du (Go East) movement, which sent hundreds of Vietnamese students to study in Japan. Châu’s writings, including Việt Nam Vong Quốc Sử (History of the Loss of Vietnam), framed colonization as a national humiliation and called for the violent overthrow of French rule. He sought Japanese military aid, a gamble that ultimately failed when Japan cooperated with France to expel Vietnamese students in 1909. Phan Châu Trinh, a prominent contemporary, offered a contrasting vision: he rejected violence and monarchy, advocating instead for democratic reforms, civil rights, and a progressive dissolution of feudal institutions before demanding national independence. The intellectual ferment stirred by figures like Phan Bội Châu and Phan Châu Trinh marked a shift from a purely royalist resistance to a modern nationalist consciousness that would later inspire Ho Chi Minh.

Peasant Resilience and the Yên Thế Uprising

It would be a mistake to imagine that resistance was confined to the elite. The Yên Thế uprising (1884–1913), led by Hoàng Hoa Thám (the “Tiger of Yên Thế”), represented a stubborn, locally-rooted peasant defiance that maintained a virtual autonomous zone in the mountains northeast of Hanoi. Thám adapted guerrilla tactics, built alliances with bandits and minority communities, and negotiated temporary ceasefires with French authorities while never truly surrendering. His ability to command loyalty for nearly thirty years demonstrated that anti-colonial sentiment permeated all levels of Vietnamese society. The Yên Thế legacy fed directly into the rural mobilization strategies that the Viet Minh would later perfect.

Nationalist Ideology and Cultural Revival

Both Korea and Vietnam experienced a remarkable cultural renaissance as part of their anti-colonial struggles. In Korea, the late nineteenth century saw the creation of the han-geul newspaper and the proliferation of novels and poems that celebrated the uniqueness of the Korean minjok (ethnic nation). The Independence Club’s rallies explicitly linked national survival to linguistic purity and the rejection of foreign—especially Japanese—cultural encroachment. In Vietnam, the Romanized script quốc ngữ, once a tool of missionaries, was deliberately adopted by nationalists like Phan Châu Trinh as a weapon for mass literacy and dissemination of anti-French ideas. The rewriting of national histories—such as the fourteenth-century Nam Quốc Sơn Hà (Mountains and Rivers of the Southern Country) being reemphasized as a declaration of timeless sovereignty—became a crucial part of the psychological arsenal. This cultural work demonstrated that anti-colonial nationalism was never only about guns or diplomatic cables; it was equally a battle over memory, identity, and the definition of the nation itself.

Common Threads in the Anti-Colonial Tapestry

Despite the differences in colonial powers and local traditions, Korea and Vietnam’s nineteenth-century resistance reveals striking parallels.

  • Confucian leadership transformed: In both countries, the scholar-official class—steeped in Neo-Confucian ideals of loyalty and righteousness—provided the initial leadership. Figures like Phan Đình Phùng and the leaders of Korea’s Righteous Armies reframed loyalty to the monarch as loyalty to the nation, paving the way for modern patriotism.
  • Peasant base: Major revolts such as Donghak and Yên Thế demonstrated that peasants were not passive victims but active agents when grievances over taxes, land, and foreign intrusion coalesced with nationalist slogans.
  • Modernist versus traditionalist tensions: Each country witnessed a schism between those who sought to combine indigenous cultural norms with selective Western/Japanese learning (the Korean Independence Club, Vietnamese Đông Du) and those who insisted on a purified, traditionalist path. This creative friction generated a dynamic nationalist discourse.
  • Strategic alliances and miscalculations: Both movements attempted to leverage international rivalries—Korea’s reformers looked to Japan or Russia, Vietnam’s Phan Bội Châu to Japan—only to discover that imperial powers had their own agendas.
  • Enduring symbolism: The martyrs of these struggles (Jeon Bong-jun, Emperor Hàm Nghi, Phan Đình Phùng) became symbols of national sacrifice, inscribed into textbooks and commemorations that reinforced a narrative of continuous resistance.

Legacy: Bridging the Nineteenth Century to Independence

The nineteenth-century resistance movements in Korea and Vietnam did not achieve immediate independence; in fact, both nations fell under harsher colonial rule in the early twentieth century. Korea became a Japanese protectorate in 1905 and was fully annexed in 1910. Vietnam, after the pacification campaigns, was integrated into the French Indochinese Union and subjected to a ruthless administration. Yet the culture of defiance forged in the prior decades ensured that colonialism never enjoyed uncontested legitimacy.

In Korea, the 1919 March 1st Movement erupted with millions of people taking to the streets in a non-violent call for independence that had been rehearsed in the Independence Club’s earlier assemblies and inspired by the martyrdom of Donghak revolutionaries. The Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, formed in exile later that year, listed among its forebears the Righteous Army leaders who had fought in 1895 and 1905. The thread of organized, nationalist resistance never snapped, resurfacing in the student and labor movements of the 1920s and 1930s. In Vietnam, the spadework of Phan Bội Châu and Phan Châu Trinh produced a generation of educated, politically-conscious activists. Nguyen Ai Quoc—later known as Ho Chi Minh—absorbed this patriotic legacy before traveling abroad and infusing it with Marxist-Leninist doctrine. The Viet Minh’s August Revolution of 1945, which declared independence after Japan’s wartime collapse, was inconceivable without the decades of grassroots organizing and symbolic nation-building that began in the late 1800s.

Even today, both Koreas commemorate the Donghak Revolution and the March 1st Movement as foundational national moments; statues of Jeon Bong-jun stand in public squares, and the Independence Gate remains a popular pilgrimage site. In Vietnam, the Cần Vương leaders are celebrated as national heroes, and the Yên Thế region is preserved as a historical relic. The twenty-first-century tourist visiting the Independence Club’s former headquarters in Seoul or the Hue Imperial City in Vietnam walks through landscapes deepened by the memory of nineteenth-century sacrifice.

The Korean and Vietnamese struggles remind us that anti-colonial nationalism was not a monolithic, top-down project but a mosaic of local revolts, intellectual awakenings, and cultural revival. The 19th century was a crucible in which traditional societies recast themselves as modern nations—imperfectly, violently, but with a stubborn hope that would outlast decades of foreign rule. Their histories offer enduring lessons about the interplay between agency, ideology, and resilience in the face of overwhelming external force.