In April, 1894 the Korean government asks for Russian assistance.

Neirdak

Banned
I created this short timeline in a Challenge thread with the advises of Dom Pedro III and democracy101. I wish to thank them for that. It would be good to deeply examine in order to improve this raw timeline, reason why I opened this new thread.

Now you are free to comment. Let's loose the dogs of criticism ;)

In OTL :


The outbreak of the Donghak Peasant Revolution in 1894 provided a seminal pretext for direct military intervention by Japan in the affairs of Korea. In April, 1894 the Korean government asked for Chinese assistance in ending the Donghak Peasant Revolt. In response Japanese leaders, citing a violation of Convention of Tientsin as a pretext, decided upon military intervention to challenge China. On May 3, 1894, 1,500 Qing Dynasty forces appeared in Incheon. The same day, 6,000 Japanese forces also landed in Incheon producing the Sino-Japanese War. Japan won the First Sino-Japanese War and China signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895.
ITTL

Impressed by the expand of Western power in Asia and doubtful about the real aims of Japan, Gojong of the Korean Empire decides to contact Karl Ivanovich Weber, the Russia's first consul general to Korea (who IOTL was a personal friend) in order to find a solution against the Donghak Peasant Revolution of 1894. We are the 15th February 1894 (battle of Jeongeup).

Ivanovich Weber explains him that Russia is ready to help his country in exchange of the rights to exploit natural ressources and to use a few ports. One modern Korea is seen by the russian strategists has a good buffer against the Japanese expansion. It could also provide many ports and a control on the Korean Straits. Free navigation is necessary for developpement of eastern Russia. Russia can't let Japan control those straits.

Ivanovich Weber also tells him, that without any ally, Korea would soon be conquered by the quickly industrializing Japan. The only possibility to save Korean sovereignity was to accept one limited protectorate. Balancing the various foreign barbarians wasn't the best method to survive in the new world order. During the night, Ivanovich Weber teaches the young King about the European colonization process and about the real bad position of Korea in the world. :p

Gojong is shocked by such informations and decides , after months of deep reflexion and numerous discussions with members of the Court, to speak about the "protectorate" possibility to his spouse. He meets her in March and explains her that this system was similar to the symbolic tribute that Korea continued to pay to the Middle Kingdom. The Russians was he told, would just ask to minor economic and trade concessions, in exchange a small and light populated country like Korea would become able to resist to the gigantic China and to win a new battle of Myeongnyang against the modern Japan.

His spouse is astonished to listen to such political maturity coming from her usually weak husband. She asks him, where he found such valuable informations about the world. Informations which totally contradict the informations she gets from her officials. Gojong immediately introduces her to Ivanovich Weber who was waiting in another room of the palace. The man explains her that Japan has expansion plans projects which include Korea. He even informs her that the Japanese could decide to assasinate her, painting one very negative image of the Japanese leadership. It's a bluff, but it works.

Queen Min calls her court and diplomatically informs the Japanese and the Chinese about the arrival of a small number russian advisors into Korea. Weber was also able to persuade her to appoint a new cabinet consisting of a "pro-Russian faction" led by Yi Wan-yong, Yi Boem-jin and Yi Yun-yong (as in OTL). In May 1894 (1896 in OTL), Weber signs the Kormura-Waeber Memorandum with his Japanese counterpart Komura Jotaru, granting Russia the right to station troops and ships in the Korean peninsula, and requiring the Japanese to recognise the new cabinet (as in OTL). Russia will also acquire mining and forestry concessions in (the) North (of) Korea :p as in OTL.

A second memorandum is signed with the Chinese envoy whose I forgot the name.

The main difference in TTL treaties is that Russia will not only send a huge number of troops, but also many civilians who will help to developp the country and to link it to the Trans-Siberian railways. Russian engineers, teachers and university professors will help to turn the Kingdom of Korea into one "Meiji Korea". Korean troops will participate to the international force sent to quell the Boxer Rebellion. This participation will ensure the entrance of Korea among the concert of civilized nations (and into the SDN later).
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Before the Russo-Japanese War, the Russian navy and the Russian troops firmly implanted themselves into Korea. The Korean military will also be modernized and ready to fight any future military aggressions from Japan or China. The Russo-Japanese War began in 1905. The Japanese decision to avoid the Korea theater took the Russian defensive plan by surprise. This plan was based on one massive Japanese attack on Korea.

The Japanese surprise landing between Vladivostock and the Korean Peninsula bypassed the Korean Peninsula. The consecutive Pyrrhic Japanese victory of the Yalu River pushed General Aleksey Nikolaevich Kuropatkin, in charge of the Far East, to keep his russian and korean troops inside the Peninsula for the duration of the war. The lack of those potential reinforcements turned most of the next battles into Russian defeats. The Russian troops stationned in Korea could have been able to send reinforcements to Vladivostock or Port-Arthur.

Even if the presence of Korean ports helped the Russian Navy to save some of her military and civilian ships, it couldn't avoid the surprise attack of Port Arthur and the disastrous battles of the Yellow Sea and ill-fated battle of Tsushima.

In accordance with the treaty of Porstmouth, both Japan and Russia agreed to evacuate Mandchuria and split its sovereignty between China and Korea, but Japan leased the Liaodong Peninsula (containing Port Arthur and and Talien), and got the right to use the Russian rail system in southern Manchuria with access to strategic resources. Japan also received the southern half of the Island of Sakhalin from Russia. The treaty also cancelled the Russian protectorate on Korea.

The British impressed by the "Bushido spirit" and by modernity of the Japanese forces, decided to renew the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. This renewal can easily be explained as a British tentative to counter the increasing weight of the Russo-Korean Alliance in the area. The necessity to block the expanding Russian sphere of influence in Eastern Asia was capital to protect the colonies of India and the Middle East, according to the geopolitical theory of Mackinder (OTL English vision).

--> Mackinder, H.J. "The geographical pivot of history". The Geographical Journal, 1904, 23, pp. 421–37.

Many historians also consider that this alliance was a product of the European racist Zeitgeist : The fear of the Eurasian peril. The idea of the new Eurasian hordes, consisting of the fearless Japanese, the numerous Chinese, the born for war Mongols, all commanded by the industrious Koreans and the treachous Russians was popularized by a few books and seemed to have been interiorized among the Western European elites. The British-Japanese Alliance was a mean to divide those potential hordes : Divide ut regnes.

During WWI, Korea fought alongside in the Entente and helped to raid the german port of Tsingtao, alongside the Japanese troops. After the Soviet Revolution, many white Russians fled to Korean administrated Mandchuria and to Korea. The Russian minority is still nowadays, the third minority of the Korean Republic, only outnumbered than the Chinese and the Mandchu minorities. Russian is one of the numerous minority languages recognized in the country.

The Korean political situation after WWI was grim. The Korean soviet party established by Soviet advisors, the Royal Party and the Korean Republican Party had been unable to find any agreements during two decades since the end of the war. A political tremor occured when the KSP and the KRP decided to launch a common referendum in 1929 to abolish the monarchy. The King prefered to abdicate. This sudden abdication plunged the country into chaos which almost turned into a civil war. One solution was finally drawned. The country would a parliamentary Republic and the King would stay the representative of the Korean nation.

The Mandchurian plebiscite united the de-facto Korean administrated Mandchuria with Korea into one dual Confederation in 1935. The interbellum period (1918-1944) was difficult for Korea without its russian traditional protector and ally. The country, fearing a japanese hegemony, quickly modernized its military forces and economy with the help of Germany, Soviet Union, USA and Japan. Indeed, Korea even chose to kowtow Japan and sent many Korean students in the country to learn the best of the Japanese universities. Economically, the trade of minerals with Japan did not stop until 1943. The license and construction contracts with the Japanese military forces were highly profitable for the Korean industries.

Many Korean officiers were also sent into Japanese military academies. The three "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" divisions, exclusively trained by the Japanese military, the constructions of two Korean Yamato-class battleship Koryŏ and Gojong in Japan symbolized this new alliance.

The Interbellum period is particularly long as Korea is basically in the same situation as Switzerland. A neutral country with good armed forces, able to provide goods to the belligerents. Korea also chose to have friendly relations with Japan, playing the role of one sycophant.

The beginning of WWII wasn't a surprise for the neutral Korea which had became one armored turtle since 1935. In mid-1943, Japanese launched a sneaky attack from the South and began to land troops at Pusan. This landing was helped by a coordinated mutiny of the three "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" divisions and by a national-wide uprising of members of the pro-japanese "Prosperity" movement.

After bloody delaying battles, the Korean loyalist troops were pushed as far as the 38th parallel north, saving the industries which were evacuated further in the north. The attack on Korea was decided by the Japanese Army leaders, disappointed by the important role given to the Japanese Navy against USA. The tensions and the distrusts between the two main components of the Japanese military explains the lack of important amphibious combined attacks on Korea.The Korean choice to base its fleets on cheap numerous fast ships/boats armed with torpedo and rockets combined with the clever use of submarines efficiently paralysed most of the japanese attempts to land on the Korean coasts.

The only major amphibious assault launched on Incheon was quickly repelled by russian and german-made Korean tanks shielded by the Korean Air Force.T he battleships Koryŏ and the four Korean aircraft carriers Goguryeo, Baeke, Silla and Gaya sacrified themselves to stop this landing and were able to sink numerous Japanese ships. The battleship Gojong, the only capital ship which fled in the north, was used later to sign the Treaty of Incheon, ending the war between Japan and Korea.

The Korean Air Force equipped with german, russian, american and Japanese planes which were stationned in multiple hidden runways around the country transformed the Korean Peninsula into one gigantic aircarrier. Its torpedo planes and dive bombers crippled the Japanese Navy during the early invasion. The destruction of the runaways and the retreat to the north was carefully planned.

The invasion of Korea was finally repelled with the combined help of Nationalist China's and Soviet troops in early 1944. Korean troops were among the first ones landing on Japanese Islands in 1947 and in Taiwan in 1948. Korean troops fought again on chinese soil from 1949 to 1990, helping to defeat the rebellious communist forces, called Maoists.

The Korea economic miracle is still famous in history. The 1952 decision to link the recovering Japanese economy and the developping chinese economy to the still prosperous korean market was a move of genius. The East Asian Economic Community (EAEC) which nowadays also include Indochina, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Brunei, Indonesia and the Free City of Singapore was born. The economic and military presence of Korea helped to stabilize the area during the Cold War, even if military interventions were still necessary (Chinese Maoists, Indochina war, Indonesian genocide, Red Tibet crisis).

... continue or not to continue ? ...
 
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I'll be brief.

Impressed by the expand of Western power in Asia and doubtful about the real aims of Japan, Gojong of the Korean Empire decides to contact Karl Ivanovich Weber, the Russia's first consul general to Korea (who IOTL was a personal friend) in order to find a solution against the Donghak Peasant Revolution of 1894. We are the 15th February 1894 (battle of Jeongeup).

Why would he do this? Weber was a close friend, but any settlement would require extensive negotiations with China and Japan as well, especially given that Korea remained as a firm tributary of China, while most of the intellectuals who had been educated abroad had closely examined Japanese policies. Russia had been considered as a counter-balance to the other two countries, and had always been considered as the final alternative, as the latter was busy with affairs in Europe and the Middle East at the time.

Ivanovich Weber explains him that Russia is ready to help his country in exchange of the rights to exploit natural ressources and to use a few ports. One modern Korea is seen by the russian strategists has a good buffer against the Japanese expansion. It could also provide many ports and a control on the Korean Straits. Free navigation is necessary for developpement of eastern Russia. Russia can't let Japan control those straits.

Japan had key interests within Korea, but its direct influence was far from consolidated until after the Sino-Japanese War (1894-5) and Russo-Japanese War (1904-5). Japan certainly exerted a major influence on Korea, but it was far from the most significant one before 1905, after its neighbors suffered from major decisive defeats in each war.

Ivanovich Weber also tells him, that without any ally, Korea would soon be conquered by the quickly industrializing Japan. The only possibility to save Korean sovereignity was to accept one limited protectorate. Balancing the various foreign barbarians wasn't the best method to survive in the new world order. During the night, Ivanovich Weber teaches the young King about the European colonization process and about the real bad position of Korea in the world. :p

I have no idea what you mean by "real bad." Korea had been relatively neglected because of its remote geographical location, not to mention a lack of viable resources.

Gojong is shocked by such informations and decides , after months of deep reflexion and numerous discussions with members of the Court, to speak about the "protectorate" possibility to his spouse. He meets her in March and explains her that this system was similar to the symbolic tribute that Korea continued to pay to the Middle Kingdom. The Russians was he told, would just ask to minor economic and trade concessions, in exchange a small and light populated country like Korea would become able to resist to the gigantic China and to win a new battle of Myeongnyang against the modern Japan.

His spouse is astonished to listen to such political maturity coming from her usually weak husband. She asks him, where he found such valuable informations about the world. Informations which totally contradict the informations she gets from her officials. Gojong immediately introduces her to Ivanovich Weber who was waiting in another room of the palace. The man explains her that Japan has expansion plans projects which include Korea. He even informs her that the Japanese could decide to assasinate her, painting one very negative image of the Japanese leadership. It's a bluff, but it works.

The queen/empress was well-aware of the tense situation among the three, so she would have been adamant about throwing her weight mostly to Russia, not to mention that it would require at least 50 years of consistent economic and military development in order to significantly change Korea's status, both of which are lacking ITTL due to an extremely late PoD, not to mention an extremely low population/labor force. In addition, that would be an extremely horrific bluff, considering that the assassination IOTL was carried out by a secretive group that decided to "punish" Korea for continuously blocking Japanese interests, so the situation would generally remain unchanged ITTL.

Queen Min calls her court and diplomatically informs the Japanese and the Chinese about the arrival of a small number russian advisors into Korea. Weber was also able to persuade her to appoint a new cabinet consisting of a "pro-Russian faction" led by Yi Wan-yong, Yi Boem-jin and Yi Yun-yong (as in OTL). In May 1894 (1896 in OTL), Weber signs the Kormura-Waeber Memorandum with his Japanese counterpart Komura Jotaru, granting Russia the right to station troops and ships in the Korean peninsula, and requiring the Japanese to recognise the new cabinet (as in OTL). Russia will also acquire mining and forestry concessions in (the) North (of) Korea :p as in OTL.

Again, providing such concessions would make it much more likely for Russia to swallow Korea up altogether, as the lack of competing interests would allow Russia to maintain a firm monopoly. Two decades or so of development, no matter how rapid, would do very little to change the geopolitical situation, given Japan's developments beforehand.

A second memorandum is signed with the Chinese envoy whose I forgot the name.

The main difference in TTL treaties is that Russia will not only send a huge number of troops, but also many civilians who will help to developp the country and to link it to the Trans-Siberian railways. Russian engineers, teachers and university professors will help to turn the Kingdom of Korea into one "Meiji Korea". Korean troops will participate to the international force sent to quell the Boxer Rebellion. This participation will ensure the entrance of Korea among the concert of civilized nations (and into the SDN later).
.
Before the Russo-Japanese War, the Russian navy and the Russian troops firmly implanted themselves into Korea. The Korean military will also be modernized and ready to fight any future military aggressions from Japan or China. The Russo-Japanese War began in 1905. The Japanese decision to avoid the Korea theater took the Russian defensive plan by surprise. This plan was based on one massive Japanese attack on Korea.

The Japanese surprise landing between Vladivostock and the Korean Peninsula bypassed the Korean Peninsula. The consecutive Pyrrhic Japanese victory of the Yalu River pushed General Aleksey Nikolaevich Kuropatkin, in charge of the Far East, to keep his russian and korean troops inside the Peninsula for the duration of the war. The lack of those potential reinforcements turned most of the next battles into Russian defeats. The Russian troops stationned in Korea could have been able to send reinforcements to Vladivostock or Port-Arthur.

Even if the presence of Korean ports helped the Russian Navy to save some of her military and civilian ships, it couldn't avoid the surprise attack of Port Arthur and the disastrous battles of the Yellow Sea and ill-fated battle of Tsushima.

In accordance with the treaty of Porstmouth, both Japan and Russia agreed to evacuate Mandchuria and split its sovereignty between China and Korea, but Japan leased the Liaodong Peninsula (containing Port Arthur and and Talien), and got the right to use the Russian rail system in southern Manchuria with access to strategic resources. Japan also received the southern half of the Island of Sakhalin from Russia. The treaty also cancelled the Russian protectorate on Korea.

You're just making it much easier for China and Japan to collectively gang up on Russia and eventually partition the peninsula altogether, given that the Sino-Japanese War has not occurred ITTL, while the latter is investing heavily on resources within the peninsula. As specified before, it will take much longer for Korea to build up a significant military only after tackling complicated societal issues, as Korea's development even IOTL was extremely rapid, relatively speaking, although there were complicated issues.

You also need to thoroughly tackle a tangle of issues throughout the 19th century before even thinking about the 20th century, so I will not discuss the rest in detail here.
 
'Huge number of troops'
'Connections to the TransSiberian Railway'

Given that the TSR doesnt exist yet, as it was only just completed in time for the RussoJapanese war, getting 'huge' numbers of troops east, and supporting them, just isnt going to be possible.

Can the Russians get a couple of thousand Cossacks to Korea? Sure. Can they get significant numbers of infantry? I doubt it. Can they get enough artillery, and the logistics for a major cammpaign east? I really dont see it.

The most likely way I see this working is if Russia provides a couple of thousand Cossacks, and a treaty. Japan or Qing Cina could, either one, defeat such a force, but it would be expensive and set them at war with Russia, which both would be hesitant to do. This could give Korea a few years of grace, while Russia madly pushes the TSR forward.
 
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