Chris Marker – Les Coréennes 1959
On September 25,1866 the escort vessel Déroulède appeared in Seoul harbor. Its name implied revenge. The French expedition to Korea was an 1866 punitive expedition undertaken by the Second French Empire in retaliation for the earlier Korean execution of seven French Catholic missionaries.
Missive from the Regent of Korea ( Heungseon Daewongun ) to the expedition leader :
“...This time you pillage my cities, you kill my people, you destroy my goods and my flocks. Never have we seen a more serious violation of the Heavens and the laws. What is more, it is said that you wish to spread your religion in my kingdom. In this you do wrong. The different books have particular sentences in which they present the true and the false. What harm is it that I follow my religion, and you, yours? If it is blameworthy to renounce one’s ancestors, why then do you come to teach us to abandon ours and to take others foreign to us? If men with such teachings may not be put to death, we shall do better to renounce Heaven itself!”
L'expédition militaire française en Corée : dirigée en 1866 contre le royaume coréen pour venger l’assassinat de missionnaires. Le contre-amiral Pierre-Gustave Roze, commandant la division navale des mers de Chine écrit : « Dans cette conjoncture, il me semble de toute nécessité de ne pas laisser sans une réparation éclatante un attentat barbare dont nos compatriotes ont été les victimes et dont la perpétration émane de la volonté royale… »
Byeong-in yangyo (병인양요)
L’expédition de l’amiral Roze en Corée en 1866
