The Joseon Dynasty Fell in 1910 — Where Are Korea's Royals Now?

Описание: In 1392, General Yi Seonggye founded a dynasty that would rule the Korean peninsula for over five hundred years. It gave the world the Korean alphabet, ironclad warships, and one of history's most sophisticated bureaucratic systems. By 1910, it was gone — absorbed, dismantled, and reorganized by Japanese imperial authority in a process so methodical that even the royal family was rebranded as Japanese nobility.

This is the full story of the Joseon dynasty and the House of Yi. From Sejong the Great and the creation of Hangul, to the assassination of Empress Myeongseong inside her own palace, to the last crown prince educated in a Japanese military academy and married to a Japanese princess by imperial design. And the final heir, Yi Gu, who died alone in a Tokyo hotel room in 2005 with no children, ending the direct male line entirely.
The palaces are still there. The tombs are UNESCO protected. The ancestral rites are still performed. But the dynasty that built all of it signed its final document with a borrowed seal.

SOURCES & FURTHER READING:
— "Assassination of Empress Myeongseong" — Wikipedia (Eulmi Incident, October 8, 1895; on Miura Gorō's role: scholars generally agree he commissioned the attack)
— "Eulmi Incident" — New World Encyclopedia
— "Yi Un" (Crown Prince Euimin, 1897–1970) — Wikipedia
— "Yi Ku" (1931–2005) — Wikipedia: born Kitashirakawa Palace, Tokyo; died July 16, 2005, in the same building, by then the Akasaka Prince Hotel
— "Yi Bangja" (Princess Masako of Nashimoto) — Wikipedia
— "Yi Hae-won" — Wikipedia (on the disputed headship after 2005)
— Jeonju Lee Royal Family Association records (posthumous titles)