Kim Ok-Kyun

Born Feb. 23, 1851, in the village of Chonganmyon, Kongju district, province of Chungchong-namdo; died Mar. 28, 1894, in Shanghai. Korean political figure. Came from the nobility.

In 1884, Kim Ok-kyun became an official of the Hongmungwan, an institution charged with the care of Confucian treatises and historical books and with supplying answers to the king’s questions. From the early 1880’s he headed a reform movement advocating social and economic changes of a bourgeois nature. Kim Ok-kyun intended to carry out his plans with the support of Japan. On Dec. 4, 1884, the reformers led by Kim Ok-kyun carried out a political coup and seized power, but after two days they were defeated by royal troops and Chinese forces who had been in Korea since the summer of 1882. Kim Ok-kyun fled to Japan. During a trip to Shanghai he was killéd by an agent of the Korean government.