On The Beginning Of The Early Modern Geopolitical Struggle For Korean Peninsula

This dissertation focuses on the question that why modern Korea could becomeone of the hotspot issues in international politics from “the Hermit Nation” dubbed bythe Westerners in such a short span of about thirty years’ time, and why it could fallinto the seizure of Meiji Japan--an emerging imperialist power--from a vassal stateof the ethnic-Manchu Qing Dynasty in the same period of time. After understandingand analyzing the modern history of Korea from its port-opening in1876to itscolonization in1910and the interest-related countries’ foreign policy to the KoreanPeninsula and the Far East during the same period of time, with the aid of “NationalInterest Theory”,“Power Theory”,“Balance of Power Theory”,“Geopolitics Theory”and other related theory, I came to the conclusion that because of the uniqueness andsignificance of the geographic location of the Korean Peninsula, modern Korea’shistorical fate was determined by the cooperation and conflict of the interest-relatedcountries in their struggle for power and fortune in this region, with “The Great Game”between Britain and Russia being the historical background and Meiji Japan’schallenge to the “Chinese-barbarian System” being the main line.