In October 1895 the Japanese imperialists assaulted the royal palace of the feudal Joson dynasty and murdered Empress Myongsong. The event is called the Ulmi incident as it happened in the year of Ulmi.

Several days before the incident, the Japanese imperialists planned a plot to murder the Empress at a secret room of their legation in Korea.

Those days the Empress, wielding the real power over state affairs, posed a big obstacle in realizing their domination over Korea.

In the early morning of October 8, the Japanese soldiers, policemen, hooligans and cadets of the Training Force, a pro-Japanese force, raided the Kyongbok Palace.

They killed the regiment commander of the royal guards and broke into the Emperor’s residence to detain him and the Crown Prince. Then they recklessly stabbed the court ladies to death as they thought that the Empress must be among them.

In a moment, the palace turned into a sea of blood. After confirming that a dying woman among those killed was the Empress, they rolled her up in a quilt, put her on a pyre that had already been prepared in a pine forest near Konnyong Hall and burned her to death. In a bid to remove the traces of their crime, they threw her ashes into a nearby pond.

The Empress was murdered in this way.

After committing such a heinous crime of violating the sovereignty and dignity of the Korean nation, the Japanese imperialists tried to shift the responsibility for it to the Regent Prince Taewon, father of the Emperor, and the Training Force. However, their moves met opposition at home and abroad and the event developed into an international issue.

Driven into a tight corner, the Japanese imperialists temporarily put those involved in the crime in prison in Hiroshima but soon released them under the pretext of “ambiguous evidence.”

That they mercilessly murdered the empress of a foreign country in a bit to realize their aggressive ambition was a heinous crime unprecedented in history.

After the incident, they grew more undisguised in their attempt to colonize Korea and finally occupied it by force of arms.

During their colonial rule of Korea over 40 years, they inflicted tremendous human, material and spiritual losses upon the Korean nation.

Much water has flown under the bridge, but the wound of the Korean people still remains unhealed.

But Japan, far from apologizing for its crimes, does not feel guilty or responsible for them.

They do not admit, apologize nor compensate for their heinous crimes, making absurd sophism that their colonial rule over Korea was “legally valid.”

The Korean people will never forgive the crime of violating their national sovereignty which the Japanese imperialists committed during their colonial rule, but settle accounts without fail and in a thoroughgoing way.

Pak Jin Hyang