Ye Wanyong

show This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in Korean. (May 2019) Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation like DeepL or Google Translate is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 416 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary Content in this edit is translated from the existing Korean Wikipedia article at [[:ko:]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated page}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Ye Wanyong
이완용
7th Prime Minister of Korea
In office 11 August 1910 – 29 August 1910
Monarch	Sunjong
Preceded by	Pak Che-soon
Succeeded by	Office abolished
Personal details
Born	(1858-07-17)17 July 1858 Seongnam, Korea (now Seongnam, South Korea)
Died	12 February 1926(1926-02-12) (aged 67) Keijō, Japanese Korea (now Seoul, South Korea)

Ye Wanyong (pronounced [iː wɐȵoŋ]; 17 July 1858 – 12 February 1926), also spelled Yi Wan-yong or Lee Wan-yong (Korean: 이완용),^[1] was a Korean politician who served as the 7th Prime Minister of Korea. He was pro-Japanese and is best remembered for signing the Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty, which placed Korea under Japanese rule in 1910.

Early life and education[]

Lee Wan-yong was born to a poor aristocrat family in 1858, but grew up with a lot of support after he became the stepson of Lee Ho-jun, a friend of Heungseon Daewongun and in-laws. He learned English and theology at Yookyoung Park, went to the United States to live as a diplomat, and returned to Korea to serve as a pro-Russian politician until 1896, when the Agwan Pacheon(Korea royal refuge at the Russian legation) incident took place. However, as Japan grew stronger, he turned to pro-Japanese group politician.^[2]

Ye was a founding member of the Independence Club established in 1896 and belonged to the "reform faction" which wanted to Westernize Korea and to open the country to foreign trade.^[3][4]

Career[]

Ye was a prominent government minister at the time of Eulsa Treaty of 1905, and was the most outspoken supporter of the pact which made the Korean Empire a protectorate of the Empire of Japan, thus stripping it of its diplomatic sovereignty. The treaty was signed in defiance of Korean Emperor Gojong, and he is thus accounted to be the chief of five ministers (including Park Jae-soon, Lee Ji-yong, Lee Geun-taek, Gwon Joong-hyun) who were later denounced as Five Eulsa Traitors in Korea.

Under Japanese Resident-General Itō Hirobumi, Ye was promoted to the post of prime minister from 1906 to 1910. Ye was instrumental in forcing Emperor Gojong to abdicate in 1907, after Emperor Gojong tried to publicly denounce the Eulsa Treaty at the second international Hague Peace Convention. In 1907 Ye was also chief amongst the seven ministers who supported the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1907, which further placed the domestic affairs of Korea under Japan's control, thus completing the colonialisation of Korea by Japan. Ye is therefore also listed in Korea amongst the Seven Jeongmi Traitors. In 1909, he was seriously injured in an assassination attempt by the "Five Eulsa Traitors Assassination Group".

Japanese rule[]

General power of attorney to Lee Wan-Yong signed and sealed by Sunjong.

In 1910, Ye signed the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty by which Japan took full control over Korea, while Korean Emperor Sunjong refused to sign. For his cooperation with the Japanese, Ye is also listed in Korea amongst the eight Gyeongsul Traitors. He was rewarded with a peerage in the Japanese kazoku system, becoming a hakushaku (Count), in 1910, which was raised to the title of kōshaku (Marquis) in 1921. He died in 1926.

Legacy[]

After the independence of Korea at the end of World War II, the grave of Ye was dug up and his remains suffered the posthumous dismemberment, which is often considered to be the most disgraceful punishment in Confucian ideology.^{[verification needed]} Ye's name has become a byword for "traitor" in contemporary South Korea.^[1]

However, Seo Jae-pil's Dongnip Sinmun (Independence Newspaper) never wrote a single line of criticism against him.^[5]

The South Korean Special law to redeem pro-Japanese collaborators' property was enacted in 2005 and the committee confiscated the property^[6] of the descendants of nine people that had collaborated with Japan when Korea was annexed by Japan in August 1910. Ye is one of those heading the list.^[7]

In popular culture[]

• Ye is portrayed by Woo Sang-jeon in the 2015 film Assassination.
• Both Ye Wanyong as well as Lee Wan-ik, a fictional pro-Japanese Korean Minister that resembles Ye in name and action, are characters in the South Korean television series Mr. Sunshine.

References[]