Kim Ok-kyun is one of the leading revolutionaries in Kapsin Cheongbyeon, the Coup d'Eta in 1884. In spite of rhe gigantic amount of historical documents about him and of his importance as a political leader, he has been at once overlooked by historians and thus consequently brought broad ranges of interpretation from the father of pro-Japanese group to a quintessential patriot. In memory of its 120years of anniversary since the breakup of the Kapsin Cheongbyeon, this paper intends to provide a new interpretation about him and his contemporanes including the viewpoint of Korean Provisional Government.
The historical evaluation about him is too diverse to pinpoint in simple statements. Among his contemporaries, Kim Hong-jip, Kim Yun-sik, and Eu Yun-jung criticised him and the Kapsin Cheongbyeon as a treacherous subject and a treacherous movement respectively. On the other hand, his friendly companies such as Yun Chi-ho and Yu Kil-Chun were ambivalent, pardy supporting him as a real patriot in terms of his personality and partly denouncing the Kapsin Cheong bye on's radicalness. A few Korean Provisional Government officials like Park Eun-sik underevaluated Kapsin Cheongbyeon at first, bur highly praised him as a positive tevolutionary or a founding father of the Independence Party later.
According to Hanil Kwankei Saryojip, a historical document about the relationship between Korea and Japan, he possesses both aspects of a real innovator to improve Korean political system and of a pro-Japanese politician who broke up the Kapsin Cheongbyeon with the instigation of Japanese government, which gradually accelerated the clash between China and Japan. Another interpretation by Sohn Jeong-do said that his political revolution was an effort to replace a corrupted Korean government with a new fresh one, but only to fail because of foreign countries' intervention and domestic politicians' non-cooperation.
A political scholar like Cho So-ang insisted that Kim Ok-kyun conttibuted to founding the Korean Independence Party, whose energy was drawn from the Kapsin Cheongbyeon, furthermore justifying the violence applied in the movement. Moreover, in his memorial speech of the 60th anniversary of the Kapsin Cheongbyeon in 1944, Cho expressed even the regret that the Kapsin Cheongbyeon could have prevented the Japanese annexation of Korea once the political revolution had succeeded. He also maintained that next generations of Koreans succeed the spirit of the Kapsin Cheongbyeon and apply it in recovering the independence of colonized Korea from Japan. Tokrip Kongron, a book dealing with Korean independence, also supports the positive role of Kim Ok-kyun. It argues that Kim is the only national hero among modern revolutionaries, and that his political uprising represents the genuine essence of renovations for the last six hundred years of Chosun dynasty.
To make a long story short, a historical approach about Kim needs new and multiple investigation. Especially the negative studies by small groups of politicians are asked to review in more attentive and careful steps.