The Square Is Closed

This article explores the downplayed yet critical contestation between Kojong and the Independence Club (Tongnip hyŏphoe) during the 1898 street protests in Seoul. It traces the spatial trajectory of the club's activities and demonstrates how it transformed Seoul's streets into a populist space. By interpolating disparate groups of Koreans into “citizens” endowed with the right to freedom of speech and assembly, the club turned the streets into a focal point of its reform movement. The club's occupation and claiming of the streets created a new public urban space that acquired its identity as a square from the demonstrations manifested there. This transformation clashed with Kojong's vision of the streets as a sovereign space, incorporating its users into his dutiful and patriotic subjects. This article argues that this contestation not only reified Kojong's vision to transform Seoul into an imperial capital that projected the visibility and authority of the emperor but also his aspirations to rebuild the Taehan Empire as an absolute monarchy intolerant of political activism and dissent from below.