The Korea Times reports on the tough times that have befallen Korea’s former imperial family.
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The Korea Times reports on the tough times that have befallen Korea’s former imperial family.
Korea News via Google
12 Comments
Afterwards, many of the family members had to swallow the disgrace of working for a living.
and
Many of the family members did not know how to earn money.
I’m assuming that there are more to these comments than meets the eye. Is it that they really didn’t know how to pick up a shovel, stock a grocery shelf, or answer phone calls, or is it that they couldn’t find cushy jobs?
My ancestors were Scotish noblemen before they came to the US over two hundred years ago and I find myself having a very hard time adjusting to working for a living too-what a pile of BS! I have no sympathy for these people. It is a tragedy that their family has drifted apart and people have died lonely but I think they continue to fail to learn. The article clearly states what I had been told; that Julia and Yi Ku were forced against their wills to divorce just because she didn’t have any children. My question is-did Yi Ku have children with someone else as a result? Idiots! and now they whine that the family is poor and scattered-I have no pitty for them. They brought this on themselves.
And here is the other thing about this; the way the article was written it almost seems like the author is ashamed that the Korean government didn’t take care of the royal family and continue to let them live at Kyoungbok palace. Once the family looses power, the title means NOTHING. Get over it and get to work and quit looking for the handout-the title was inherited but not the handouts.
Thanks for the links, I had no idea that there was a former Korean imperial family from the pre-Japanese colonization period.
It’s interesting that they were seen as a political threat in the post WWII period by Syngman Rhee. Years ago (1980s?) I remember reading a newspaper article about the current “heir” to the Habsburg imperial Austrian throne, who was living a quiet life with his wife and children in Vienna.
As I recall he was working in some profession for a living, so he had made the “transition” (the one that you so brutally condemn the Korean royal family for not making, James). He was totally apolitical and had renounced all aspirations, yet what sticks in my mind about the article is the fact that the Austrian police had continued until fairly recently to maintain a surveillance on him!
In the earlier post on the Korean royals, someone mentioned that he couldn’t think of any country with a symbolic constitutional monarch that had a movement to do away with it. Indeed, post-Franco Spain presents an example of a symbolic constitutional monarchy being restored as a symbol of national unity.
However, for Korea I suppose the royals just provide an interesting historical footnote. But it’s interesting how the political tradition of “royalty” can live on — Stalin became a greater “Tsar” than any of the Romanovs, and the absolute authority of Kim Il-Sung provided a continuation of “royalty” up North.
Notice the Lee “royal” family pall-bearer (sp??) wearing those masks?
With the Spanish monarchy, its reintroduction was more to help mend the wounds that Franco caused and seemingly refused to let heal. That has been good for the royal family there and I think they are respected-the Spanish princess that was married a few years ago in the cathedral in Barcelona married a professional soccer player, not another royal from some other European country and not a politician. She worked in a bank doing some low key job and is reknown for being very down to earth. With any talk of the Korean royals, I don’t get that image. Instead, I get an image of pain, of distrust and of being cheated. I get the feeling they would like very much to be reinstated, all the better if it is without any sort of power and therefore no responsibility.
As for Australia’s connection to the British (who are of German (Hanovarian) descent), I think the reason the Ausies maintain their ties is to keep the legal holiday of the Queens birthday.
I seem to remember reading that the last Romanov had a humble job in the US and no aspirations to go back, even if he had been asked after the fall of the Soviet Union. The Korean royals should get over it. If they want let them keep the titles-they don’t mean much except to little girls who dream of marrying a prince.
I may be alone in feeling at least a little sympathy for them.
I don’t think they deserve to regain all the holdings that they held prior to Japanese annexation, but they deserve at least to be given a place to live.
Let’s imagine they were a “regular” family that had gained wealth through other means prior to the Japanese occupation. Many of us would be outraged to hear that they had been stripped of all their property when the Rhee government came to power (almost smacks of communism). Maybe they don’t deserve to occupy Ky??ngbokkung or T??ksugung Palace or Piwon, but what is wrong with setting up a small part of Piwon (as was done until the 1970s or 1980s) in a comfortable but somewhat humble way to acknowledge them? This would be granting them just a tiny fraction of what their family owned. Setting up a trust — using a small portion of the money that was essentially taken from the imperial family — could provide a basic standard of living for them.
The imperials, to some extent, can’t be just regular people. Even if you are willing to get a normal job, other people will be preventing you from doing such work. Either they won’t want to hire you for such a low-level position or the inevitable discussion of you behind your back, by co-workers or clients, may make it seem at least that your status as an imperial interferes with your ability to do regular work. People would be constantly up in your bid’ness about this.
Do you think Prince Harry could get all the pizzas in his truck delivered in thirty minutes or less if every time he got to the door people kept exclaiming, “Holy sh–! You’re Prince Charlie’s kid!” followed by a rundown of the same old questions, before they hand over the cash and the tip? Would it be Prince Harry’s fault, then, for not being willing to work hard if he got fired by the manager of the local Domino’s or Pizza Hut over a failure to perform his duties?
No, not necisarrily but no one is asking them to deliver pizzas. As for both the British Princes, they appear to have every intention of entering Sandhurst to begin careers as officers in the British Army. Yes I realize at least part of what they do will be ceremonial more than anything else but I am not convinced that it will be purely a pony show either. The Duke of York had a commision in the Royal Navy and was deployed with the fleet for months at a time. In fact, it has been sited as one contributing factor in the demise of his marraige to Fergy. I do not see how ancestry should entitle them to any sort of benefit. The descendents of Thomas Jefferson have no more access to Monticello than any other tourist. I know the decendants of Thomas Cromwell recieve nothing. The point is there is no precident for decendants of a royal family that lost its authority to rule (and hence were reduced to just being commoners again) nor would it serve any purpose other than to burden the tax payers by having to take care of and give preferential treatment to people that were for what ever reason unable to make the most of what opportunities they were presented with in life. What about all the other people? Go to Youngdeungp’o station early in the morning and there is a small troop of homeless people sleeping where they can or begging. Why should decendents of the previous King (Emporer) recieve anything that the other financially challenged people of Korea shouldn’t? I bet if we looked, we could probably find decendants of Yi Sun Shin that are destitute-what about them? Does the nation now have a mandate to take care of them in perpetuity? Their ancestor SAVED the country-not lost it. What about the Yang family of Jeju? The Kyoungju Kim family? The Kimhae Kim family? Should they also be taken care of as Royalty? Nonesense! What was ‘taken’ from the decendents of the royal family actually belonged to the country-not the family. As rulers of Korea, they lived in the palaces and enjoyed the priveledged life and use of those facilities but the point remains that they were bought and maintained with taxes collected from the people.
Those properties were no more the property of the royal family than the main castles are the property of the British royals-do you think the Queen would be allowed to sell Windsor castle or Balmorral? No because they have been maintaied by the taxpayers for so long and they have such a historical significance that it would not be allowed. Certainly the royal family does have privately held property that they are free to buy and sell but that is separate. There were endless numbers of people that lost all they had as a result of both the Japanese occupation as well as the Korean war-should they ALL be compensated by the state? That would be an endless line and is just not feasable.
The British royal family receives a sizable amount of income from their estates (Prince Charles, for example, is Duke of Cornwall and gains significant income - in the millions of pounds - from the Duchy), which enabled the young princes to have an excellent education. This allows them to live up the expectation that they will go to Sandhurst. The descendants of Thomas Jefferson cannot stroll around Monticello because their ancestors sold it in 1831.
While I agree with you that the Korean royal family should not live in opulence just because of their ancestors like the British royal family does today, the distinction between the British residences that the public owns and those that are the property of the royal family does not seem very clear.
My people don’t want mixed breeds to be our titled Prince/Princess. They should be full blooded Korean. Maybe this is why Koreans rather accept Prince Lee Seok as our Crown Prince, instead of the others who entered the japanese imperial household.
hwarang-dasol wrote:
My people don?€™t want mixed breeds to be our titled Prince/Princess. They should be full blooded Korean. Maybe this is why Koreans rather accept Prince Lee Seok as our Crown Prince, instead of the others who entered the japanese imperial household.
Then “your people” are fools. Xenophobic fools, the most loathsome sort.
Do not presume to speak for all 5000×10,000 of the free Korean people.
Read your history books: The Korean royal family has long been mixed, especially with Mongol blood, and only lately with Japanese blood.
Then again, how is this so different from many other Koreans?
The Admiral has spoken.
My people don?€™t want mixed breeds to be our titled Prince/Princess. They should be full blooded Korean.
It doesn’t matter whtether they are mixed or pure. They failed completely; that’s the main reason that Koreans don’t want the monarchy back. The words like “full blooded Korean” are one of the elements to create a lot of problems and contradictions in today’s Korea. Who’s full blooded and who’s not? Humans are not dogs.
South Korea is no longer a monarchy, but North Korea has replaced the Yi dynasty with the Kim dynasty.