The last Chinese Imperial Dynasty, the Ching Dynasty, lasted from 1644 to 1912. The historians are fond of saying that it vanished without a trace overnight.....not exactly true. The last Chinese Emperor, Pu Yi may have abdicated in 1912, but he was "resurrected" by the Japanese when they planted him in Manchuria in 1934 and proclaimed him to be the Emperor of Manchukuo, Japan's puppet government in their colony, Manchuria. Japan, during its ambitious Japanese Imperial period was fond of taking Royal members of their colonies (Manchuria, Korea, Okinawa) and transplanting them in Japan. In case of Okinawa, they simply moved the entire Okinawan Royal family of Sho to Tokyo, gave them minor positions and forgot about them. But they couldn't take all of Chinese Royalty, for one thing it was too large, and for another thing, they did not have control of the entire country, only Manchuria. So they settled with taking some minor princes and princesses to Japan and educating them in their country, turning them pro-Japanese. Such was the case with the "Last Manchurian Princess." I have blogged about this much earlier. They couldn't take Pu Yi to Japan, since he was in Peking (Beijing) which was not under Japanese control. But they maintained contact with him and were able to convince him to become their puppet later to become the short lived Emperor of Manchukuo.
The situation with Korea was a bit different. The Yi Dynasty which started in 1392 came to an end in 1910 when Japan annexed Korea. The annexation of Korea was complicated and convoluted process that began actually in the 19th Century with the killing of the Korean Empress, the very popular and progressive Queen Min. The Japanese feared her because unlike the rest of the Korean court, she was very progressive and forward thinking. She is the one who appointed an American, Judge Owen Denny, who was a former U.S. Consul General to Shanghai, as the head of Korea's new Foreign Ministry. He had the title of a "Chief Advisor" but in fact he was the Foreign Minister of Korea! Queen Min was assassinated by the Japanese in 1899. This was followed by Japan's victory in Russo-Japanese War in 1905 (which was fought over control of Korea) and which led directly to the annexation of Korea in 1910.
The surviving King of Korea, the husband of Queen Min was a weak individual and the Japanese easily controlled him. He died shortly after the annexation and the Crown Prince, Yi Un, was sent to Japan to be educated. He attended the Peer's College (Gakushuin) where all royal members of Japanese family are educated, then sent to the Japanese Imperial Army Academy from which he graduated in 1917. He lived in Kitashirakawa Palace in Akasaka, Tokyo. This was a palace that was reserved as a Royal Prince's residence. So, the Korean Crown Prince was treated with exceptional honor and dignity, treated like a Japanese Prince, which he was in a sense since Korea had become a part of Japan as its colony and Koreans had Japanese nationality at the time. The Crown Prince Yi Un who was called Ri Gin in Japanese, had a flourishing career in the Japanese Imperial Army. He was apparently very bright and made an outstanding officer. In 1920 he was married to Princess Masako Nashimoto, daughter of the Japanese Emperor's cousin! Yi Un or Ri Gin, rose to the rank of Lieutenant General. Fortunately for him, he was not involved in any acts that could have made him a war criminal, so he survived World War Two.
When in 1948 South Korea elected Syngman Rhee to be its president, he asked to return to Korea. However, Syngman Rhee refused to allow him to return. But, in 1963 when Park Chung Hee came into power, he allowed Yi Un to return to Seoul and establish residence in one of the palaces that had been refurbished. However, many Koreans had mixed feelings about their Crown Prince for his service in the Japanese Imperial Army. But, they quickly forgot about it since their own President, Park Chung Hee was a former officer in the Japanese Imperial Army. Yi Un had one surviving son. The first born Yi Jin died before he reached one year of age, and the second son, Yi Gu, who was born in Tokyo in the Kitashirakawa Palace in 1931 (which was incidentally torn down in the 1960s and Akasaka Prince Hotel built on its grounds!) graduated from Gakushuin (Peer's College) then went on to college in the U.S. He studied architecture and graduated from MIT and worked for I.M. Pei's architecture firm for a while. In 1959 Yi Gu met and married an American girl, Julia Mullock. They came to Korea when the father was allowed to return in 1963, but chose to live most of their time in America, since Yi Gu was an American citizen and married to an American!
All of this came about because when the war ended in 1945, the former Japanese colony members who ostensibly had Japanese nationality during the Imperial Japan's reign, became stateless, because there was no more Imperial Japan! That's what happened to all of the Koreans and Taiwanese who were brought to Japan as slave laborers. They became stateless, people without a country and the new Japanese government would not grant them citizenship. However, North Korea quickly extended its citizenship to the Koreans in Japan, and when Chinese Nationalists established their government in Taiwan in 1949, they extended Nationalist Chinese citizenship to all Taiwanese living in Japan. However, the Royal Korean family did not receive the citizenship offer from North Korea. When Yi Gu came to U.S. to study in 1949, Japan was still under U.S. Occupation, so the Korean Royal family was still stateless. The father, Yi Un, having been a Lieutenant General in the Japanese Army, although it was the Imperial Army, nevertheless received consideration from the Japanese government. Besides, he was married to a Japanese Princess, so he was granted Japanese citizenship. When he returned to Korea in 1963 he was also granted South Korean citizenship. The son Yi Gu also received South Korean citizenship and belatedly, because his mother was after all, a Japanese Princess, he received Japanese citizenship as well. But, by that time he was already a U.S. citizen and married to an American as well.
Yi Un died in 1970 in Seoul, in the Royal Palace grounds and the title of Crown Prince passed on to his American citizen son, Yi Gu. However, Yi Gu and his American wife Julia were childless. Although they adopted a girl, she did not qualify to resume the royal line of Korea. So, although there are some cousins and other distant relatives that are of royal linage, including a cousin by the name of Yi Seok who lives in Seoul, for all practical purposes, the Korean Royalty ended with Yi Gu who died in 2005. It is interesting that had Yi Gu and Julia had a son, that son would have been the rightful heir to the Korean throne, the pretender Crown Prince, an American!
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