A Study On The Trade Conducted By Chinese Merchants In Choson Korea,1885-1894

From the suppression of the Kapsin Coup in late1884to the outbreak of Tonghak Rebellion in early1894, this nearly ten-year period was called by some Korean scholars as the time of "peaceful ten years" in Korea’s modern history. Because of the stabilization of Korea’s domestic political situation and the abolition of the ban on maritime trade between Qing and Choson Korea, Chinese merchants began to enter Korea and engaged in the trade business in a large scale. This nearly ten-year period was the first commercial boom for the Chinese merchants in Korea, as well as the foundation time of the Chinese merchants’commercial power. The prosperous Sino-Korean trade during the10years made the Chinese merchants able to occupy their own position in the competition among various commercial powers in the Korean peninsula. In the following years, although heavily pounded by the first Sino-Japanese War, the Chinese merchants’ power was soon recovered from the war, reaching its second boom around1900and maintaining the boom until Korea became Japan’s colony. However, potential risks were behind the prosperous Sino-Korean trade. The trade conducted by the Chinese merchants was out-dated in quality, although large in quantity. Finally, the Japanese merchants beat their Chinese counterparts in the commercial war. Unlike what it successfully did in the field of politics, Japan could not evict China’s influence out of Korea completely in the field of trade. But the Japanese merchants always dominated the Korea’s foreign trade. The failure of Chinese merchants was rooted in the "peaceful ten years". With the intension of the commercial competition, the drawbacks within the Sino-Korean trade became more and more evident, discouraging the growth of private capital of both China and Korea to some degree.