고종시대 서양 기술 도입: 철도와 전신 분야를 중심으로 = The Introduction of Railway and Telegraph during the Reign of King Gojong

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Yeok-won 驛院 and bongsu 烽燧, two major transportation and communication systems during the Choson dynasty, did not function properly in the 19th century. King Gojong and few of his enlightened officials then tried to modernize the communication and transportation systems by introducing railway and telegraph. They dispatched “observation missions” to Japan and the United States to obtain more information, and even draw blueprints for the introduction. While the construction of the railroad was postponed largely because of its heavy cost, the government was eager to build telegraph system. The government made extensive use of the media (Hanseong Sunbo 漢城旬報) to advertise the necessity of these two modern marvels. All these efforts however met great danger because of the ill-fated coup in gapshin year (1884). Those who had been eager to introduce both railway and telegraph were the major conspirators of the coup and therefore purged. Nonetheless King Gojong and his government continued their efforts to construct railway and telegraph systems but it was tragically too late. Japanese and Chinese developed their own program to build the systems for their imperialist need.