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Joseon envoy who signed the Treaty of Ganghwa and the treaty with the United States
A military officer, he took part in defending Ganghwa during the French campaign of 1866. After the Un'yō Incident he served as chief negotiator and signed the Treaty of Ganghwa with Japan's Kuroda Kiyotaka in 1876. In 1882, as plenipotentiary, he concluded the Korea–United States Treaty with Robert Shufeldt.
Joseon's first modern treaty, signed with Japan on 27 February 1876. It opened Busan and two other ports and contained unequal terms.
Joseon’s first treaty with a Western country, signed with the US at Jemulpo through Qing mediation; it included extraterritoriality and most-favoured-nation terms.
From the Opium War to the Boxer Protocol — sixty years in which China, Japan and Korea, forced open by Western gunboats, each tried to reform and went separate ways
From dolmens to the Treaty of Ganghwa — Goryeo’s refuge capital and the stage of Korea’s opening, the island the kingdom fell back on in every crisis
Port of the Japan House and of the 1876 opening — Korea’s gateway to Japan, and wartime capital in the Korean War