Initiated in the 1860s (with roots in the 1850s) by Ch'oe Che-u (1824-64), a leader who had failed the civil service exams, similar to Hung Hsiu-ch'üan of China's Taip'ing Rebellion.
Syncretic, millenarian doctrine combining Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism to protect Korea against Western learning (sohak), while incorporating Catholicism and native Korean spirit and mountain deity beliefs.
Core principle: The unity of heaven and mankind and the universal equality of all people.
Practice included magical chants, propitiating spirits, oral songs (p'ansori), and satirical mask dances.
Slogan: "Drive out the Japanese dwarfs and the Western barbarians, and praise righteousness."
Following peasant rebellions in 1862, Ch'oe Che-u was arrested in 1863 and executed in 1864, driving the movement underground for three decades.
Socio-Economic Causes of Peasant Distress
Korea's state taxation system was an exaction-heavy network attached to agrarian production, levying land taxes, surcharges, taxes on fallow fields, military taxes (one bolt of cloth per able-bodied male), local official/estate taxes, and taxes on commodities like salt, fish, and boats.
Taxes were exacted on infants, the elderly, dead people, and runaway neighbors or relatives; citizens attempted to escape taxes by joining student, official, or draft-exempt yangban rolls, or fleeing to the mountains.
Usurious grain loan systems from state officials and local moneylenders further impoverished sedentary peasants.
Opening the country in the 1870s exacerbated distress via massive rice exports to Japan, price inflation, Japanese fishing companies in coastal waters, and severe droughts in 1876-77 and 1888-89 (especially in Chŏlla provinces).
Resurgence and Escalation in the 1890s
By 1892, Tonghak demonstrations spread across the southwest, met by government suppression such as the governor of Ch'ungch'ŏng Province seizing rebel properties.
In April 1893, fire signals linked rebel groups, leading at least twenty thousand people to gather at Poŭn.
Four Tonghak leaders submitted a petition at the palace gates in Seoul to King Kojong, who rejected their learning as deceptive, while wall writings calling for the expulsion of foreigners and extirpation of Catholicism appeared across Seoul.
The 1894 Rebellion and Demands for Reform
Corruption by Kobu district magistrate Cho Pyŏng-gap (taxing fallow land, embezzling corvée laborer pay from irrigation projects, and blackmailing local wealthy citizens) triggered an uprising led by village teacher (sonsaeng) Chŏn Pong-jun.
Chŏn Pong-jun and one thousand peasants occupied the country office, seized armory weapons, demolished the irrigation reservoir, and distributed grain stocks.
Government attempts to arrest protesters ignited a general rebellion across Chŏlla; rebels overcame government troops and captured towns.
The movement advanced twelve demands, including the removal of yangban oppression, burning slave registers, ending the social hierarchy, land redistribution, and ending the requirement for paekchŏng outcastes to wear their distinct "P'yongyang hat".
The movement evolved from a classic peasant rebellion into a modern demand for agrarian revolution and proto-nationalism under the banner of "our nation" (uri nara).
King Kojong dispatched eight hundred men from the elite capital garrison to suppress the revolt, but half deserted and the remaining half failed.