Movement to Vindicate the Donghak Founder

Also called: Boeun Rally, Samnye Rally

Donghak followers held rallies at Gongju and Samnye, petitioned at the palace gate and gathered at Boeun to clear the name of their executed founder Choe Je-u and win recognition for Donghak. At Boeun they raised the banner "Repel the Japanese and Westerners, raise righteousness".

After Choe Je-u was executed in 1864 for "deluding the people", Donghak still spread through the three southern provinces under Choe Si-hyeong’s network of local units. Officials and clerks often seized believers’ property on the pretext of the ban. The followers sought to clear the founder’s name, have Donghak recognized and end the persecution.

At rallies at Gongju (10th lunar month, 1892) and Samnye (11th month) they asked the governors of Chungcheong and Jeolla to vindicate the founder and stop the extortion of corrupt officials. In the 2nd month of 1893 representatives knelt before the palace in Seoul to petition, without success. In the 3rd month of 1893 some 20,000 gathered at Boeun in Chungcheong, while another rally met at Geumgu (Wonpyeong) in Jeolla. The Boeun rally raised the slogan "Repel the Japanese and Westerners, raise righteousness" and demanded the purge of corrupt officials, turning a religious movement into a social and political one. The government sent Eo Yun-jung as pacification commissioner to disperse it.

The movement knit the Donghak organization together across the provinces and laid the ground for the Donghak Peasant Revolution of 1894.