My name is Daniel. I was an English teacher in Seoul, South Korea, and now I am a writer who has published three books including South Korea: Our Story by Daniel Nardini.

             There is no way to miss it: just about every historic place and just about every museum talks about, even celebrates the Joseon dynasty that ruled Korea from 1392 to 1910. The Joseon is celebrated in so many doc-umentaries and in soap opera TV series. There is of course much that the Joseon did that was good, insightful, and produced some golden eras in Korea's long history. The end of the Joseon was less than glorious. It seems that so many historians in Korea believe that the Joseon tried to modernize but that the external forces arraigned against Korea---especially Japan---were able through conspiracy take over Korea and eventually make it a colony in the Japanese Empire. There is no question that Japan made Korea a colony, but the Joseon was far from being innocent in its own destruction. The fact is that the Joseon basically did not want to change, and this lack of change is what brought down the Joseon. Even when King Gojong switched the Joseon to become the Korean Empire (Taehan Empire), it did not solve most of Korea's problems. He had military officers who either did not want to modernize the Korean Army or were pro-Japanese, pro-Chinese and pro-Russian whose loyalty were questionable. Much of the royal Korean court resisted modern changes, and Korea's infrastructure remained largely unchanged outside the Seoul and Incheon areas. There was no public transportation throughout the rest of the country, no public health system, and a still extremely primitive communications system that was 300 years out of date. Given all this, it was obvious that the Joseon was dying out long before the Japanese took it over. The Japanese simply brought an end to a dying dynasty.