Yi Un (이은; 李垠; 20 October 1897 – 1 May 1970) was the last crown prince of the Korean Empire, the head of the former Korean imperial house after 1926, and a lieutenant general in the Imperial Japanese Army. He was the seventh son of Gojong of Korea and the son of Imperial Noble Consort Sunheon.
Yi Un was designated crown prince in 1907 and was taken to Japan later that year for education under Japanese supervision. After the annexation of Korea by Japan in 1910, the former Korean imperial house was incorporated into the Japanese-created ōkōzoku system. He married Princess Masako of Nashimoto in 1920 and succeeded Sunjong of Korea in 1926 as Yi Wang (李王), the Japanese-recognized head of the former Korean royal house.
Yi Un served in the Japanese army, reached the rank of lieutenant general, served on the North China front, commanded the First Air Army, and was appointed a military councillor near the end of the Pacific War. After Japan's defeat in 1945, he lost his royal status in Japan and remained there until South Korea permitted his return in 1963. He returned while seriously ill and died at Changdeokgung in 1970.
Yi Un's personal name was 李垠. In Japanese, the same characters were read as Ri Gin (りぎん). His title before 1926 was commonly rendered in Korean colonial sources as Wangseja Jeonha (왕세자, 전하, 王世子殿下), meaning "His Highness the Crown Prince". The Korean honorific jeonha (전하, 殿下) corresponds to Japanese denka (殿下), conventionally translated as "His Highness".
The title Yeongchinwang, (영친왕, 英親王, "Prince Imperial Yeong") combined the title-name Yeong (英) with chinwang (친왕, 親王), an imperial-prince rank used in the Korean Empire for Gojong's sons and elder brother.
After Sunjong's death in 1926, Yi Un's official colonial style was Changdeokgung Yi Wang Un Jeonha (昌德宮 李王垠 殿下; Japanese: 昌徳宮李王垠殿下). The title used Changdeokgung as a palace-name prefix and Yi Wang (李王, "Yi king") as the Japanese-recognized title for the head of the former Korean royal house. It did not denote Korean sovereign authority.
The palace-name prefix had older East Asian analogues in court language. In Korea and China, Donggung (동궁]], 東宮, "Eastern Palace") referred to the crown prince's residence and, by extension, to the crown prince. The specific formulas Changdeokgung Yi Wang and Deoksugung Yi Taewang were introduced in the 1910 annexation order for the former Korean monarchs.
Yi Un was born at Deoksugung, then Gyeongungung, in Seoul on 20 October 1897. His mother, Eom Seon-yeong, had entered the palace as a court lady and later became one of Gojong's consorts. She was posthumously known as Imperial Noble Consort Sunheon. Yi Un was a younger half-brother of Sunjong of Korea and Yi Kang.
In 1900 he received the title Prince Imperial Yeong. In 1907, after Gojong's abdication and Sunjong's accession, Yi Un was designated crown prince. The proclamation linked the appointment to the continuation of the royal line and the duty to maintain sacrifices at Jongmyo.
In December 1907, on the initiative of Itō Hirobumi, Yi Un was taken to Japan for education. The move was meant to ensure that the Korean royal family would not take any further anti-Japanese actions following The Hague Secret Emissary Affair, and amounted to detention as a hostage in practice. Japanese Emperor Meiji, who largely ignored his own grandchildren, devoted a lot of attention to Yi Un, acting as his guardian. Itō would bring Yi Un whenever he was visiting the princes Hirohito, Chichibu and Takamatsu. Meiji apparently stopped seeing Yi Un so frequently after Ito's assassination. Yi Un attended Gakushūin and later followed a Japanese military education.
The annexation of Korea in 1910 ended the Korean Empire and changed the legal position of the former imperial family. Japanese authorities created the ōkōzoku (王公族]], Korean 왕공족, "royal and princely families") status for Gojong, Sunjong, Yi Un and other members of the former ruling house. The status placed the Korean royal and princely families above the Japanese peerage and below the Japanese imperial family.
The Japanese court issued regulations for the Korean royal and princely families. The Yi Royal Household Office, instituted in 1910, administered household personnel, property, accounts, palace buildings, gardens, documents, books and genealogical records. It also organized receptions, gifts, banquets, court music, ancestral rites, and inspections of royal shrines, tombs and graves. The office operated within an administrative structure linked to the Japanese Imperial Household Ministry and the Governor-General of Chōsen. It also became a site of factional competition among Korean nobles.
In January 1927, the Japanese court issued the Ordinance concerning the dress of the royal and princely families (王公族ノ服装ニ関スル件). The ordinance applied the Japanese Imperial Family Dress Regulations to the Korean royal and princely families and replaced cherry-blossom devices with the Yi-flower emblem on the coat, cap, sword and buttons. The Yi flower, or ihwa (이화, 李花), had been used as an emblem of the Korean imperial house on decorations, stamps, court dress and military uniforms.
Court supervision and household management
After his 1920 marriage, Kuratomi Yūzaburō was appointed adviser to Yi Un. His task was to guide Yi Un so that he acquired the virtues of a Korean royal under Japanese rule; although he was not formally assigned to household affairs, his diary also recorded household administration. Ko Huigyeong, an official attached to Yi Un, was Kuratomi's main Korean counterpart in the household.
Kuratomi and Ko discussed how to handle Koreans seeking audiences or access to the household, including Korean nobles, Government-General officials and poor students. They also discussed mourning practice after Gojong's death because Korean opinion might interpret Japanese-style one-year mourning by Yi Un, contrasted with Sunjong's three-year mourning in Seoul, as insufficient filial piety and excessive Japanization.
Before 1945, Yi Un's household income came through the finances of the former Korean royal house. The Government-General of Chōsen paid the Yi royal house an annual allowance, or sebi (세비, Japanese 歳費), from its special account. The allowance was 750,000 won in 1910, 1,500,000 won from 1911 to 1920, and 1,800,000 won from 1921 onward.
The household also received income from former crown properties in Korea administered by the Yi Royal Household Office. These properties were divided into basic property, such as securities, loans and cash, and general property, such as fields, paddies and forests. Forest land was the largest part of the general property, and timber or forestry income entered the household accounts. In the 1932 budget, the 1,800,000-won allowance was supplemented by forest income, bond interest, stock dividends, deposit interest, admission fees from Changgyeongwon, and real-estate rents.