Beautiful as the Rainbow

Chapter One: FATE’S CRUEL JOKE 


“The queen is dead! Her Majesty, the Queen, has been murdered!” 
The frantic shouts of a shaken palace guard broke the silence of the Seoul morning as the sun was just breaking out in the eastern horizon with its rays touching the majestic sky lines of Gyeongbok Palace and the gently flowing waters of the Han River. 
It was in the early morning of October 8, 1895. 
A group of terrifying Japanese soldiers and restless ex-samurai had broken into the forbidden inner private quarters of Gyeongbok Palace, the political center of Korea’s Joseon Kingdom, slashing and slaying every palace guard in their path. 
In savage rage, they were looking for Queen Min, the consort wife of Gojong, the king of Korea. 
When they found her, after frenzied room to room searches, they brutally and mercilessly cut down the queen in the face of her terrified and helpless palace ladies-in-waiting. 
The queen was slim and slight but still a beautiful woman at 44. 
After thrusting a sword into the queen’s abdomen once, twice, and thrice, some twenty of the bloody samurai soldiers violated the dying queen in turn, continuing their acts of desecration even after she had stopped breathing. The murderers then cut out the breasts of the queen and those of the palace women. 
As their final act of savagery, they mutilated the queen’s body with their swords from head to toe. They then dragged the slim, torn body outside, wrapped it in a blanket, doused it with kerosene, and burned it to ashes, leaving no trace of the queen. 
<When Japan embarked on the modern era under the leadership of Emperor Meiji in 1868 it eagerly aspired to become an imperialist power like the Western nations. 
In addition, to solve the problems of its growing urban population and limited arable lands it set its eyes on the Asian continent and chose Korea as its first target of conquest. 
In 1876, with armed threats the Meiji government forced Korea to sign an unequal treaty with Japan, which opened a way for ambitious Japanese to freely move into Korea and begin their economic and political exploitations 
Following its victory against Imperial China in the Sino-Japanese War in April, 1895, the Japanese in Korea became more aggressive, strangulating Korean interests in business, commerce, finance, and even in the political arena. 
Gojong and Queen Min concluded that the Japanese were determined to destroy their nation and sought to protect Korean independence. Of the two, Queen Min was more forceful and determined in her opposition to the Japanese high-handed tactics and ambitions in Korea. 
The Japanese were enraged, calling the queen “a shrewd fox” to be eliminated. 
In August, 1895, Ito Hirobumi, Japan’s first prime minister under Emperor Meiji, chose Viscount Miura Goro, a retired general in Japan’s Imperial Army and a trusted fellow samurai from his hometown of Hagi in Yamaguchi Prefecture (old Choshu Domain), as resident minister extraordinary and plenipotentiary in Korea. 
Miura had power and permission to do whatever he wanted to do, and his mission was to resolve the “Korean problem.” 
Within a few weeks of his arrival in Seoul, Miura, firmly convinced that Japan’s conquest ambitions in Korea would be thwarted by Queen Min, adopted an assassination plan code-named “Operation Fox Hunt.” 
With meticulous planning, he organized a death squad consisting of regular Japanese soldiers, restless ex-samurai seeking adventure, and Japanese civilians with expansionistic ambition. 
At 3 o’clock in the morning of October 8, Miura’s assassination team was given the order to find and murder the queen. 
It was Japan’s first open act of diabolic trampling of modern Korea, making itself a mortal enemy of Koreans for years and decades to come. 
Following the death of Queen Min, Gojong took Lady Eom, his favorite court lady-in-waiting, as his second wife, impressed by her intelligence, wisdom, and political sagacity. 
Within a few days of the bloody murder, the Japanese aggressors, feeling triumphant, put pro-Japanese Koreans in key government positions, quickly turning Joseon Kingdom into a Japanese puppet. 
Lady Eom advised Gojong to take refuge in the Russian Embassy for his personal safety as well as for launching counter offensive measures against the Japanese. Russian friendship with Gojong would soon lead to the Russo-Japanese War, but that is another story. 
Two years later in 1897, Gojong had a son by Lady Eom and named him Yi Eun. He would become Korea’s last crown prince. 


Three years later, in 1900, far away across the ocean in Tokyo, an imperial princess was born in a palatial mansion built, of all people, by Miura Goro, the Japanese official responsible for the murder of Queen Min, the wife of Gojong, Yi Eun’s father. 
The princess was named Masako. 
Sixteen years later, in 1918, Imperial Japan’s rulers decided that Princess Masako would marry Crown Prince Yi Eun “to enhance peace and harmony between the Japanese and the Koreans and Korea-Japan union.” 
A noble Japanese princess born in a house built by Miura Goro was bidden to marry a Korean, whose father was long in mourning over the death of his beloved consort wife, Queen Min, murdered by Miura Goro!