The following table was drawn from the book “Korean Empire Era, Decoration System” 대한제국시대 훈장제도.1 While the book lists most of the Award Recipients by name, it does not list recipients who were immediate members of the royal family,2 and it does not list any recipients for the Commemorative Medals 기념장. There is a table similar to this on page 210, but if you check the totals in that table, the numbers are off for several of the rows and columns. This table was built from the lists of recipients found on pages 115 through to page 209.
There are no known records showing that an Order of the Purple Falcon was ever issued.
For the Order of the Auspicious Phoenix, there were a total of 77 issued. Except for a damaged breast star, there are no known originals that still exist. The Michael Quigley collection did have an original case and sash for the Order. The original damaged breast star is in a private collection.
I have been looking at the Empire Orders and Commemorative Medals for more than 25 years. To date, I have never seen an 8th Class of the Order of Taeguk (51 issued). All of them were issued in Aug. 1910, the last month of the Korean Empire.
Pictured at left is the Emperor Kwangmu. There are numerous websites that list the Emperor’s Korean awards as the Order of the Golden Measure and the Order of the Plum Blossom. This picture clearly shows him wearing the Order of Taeguk on his upper right. I have never seen this award annotated on any website. The sash under it is for the Order of the Golden Measure.3
His foreign awards include:
- Italy: Grand Cross of the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus 성 마우리치오 & 나사로 훈장 – July 23, 1895
- France: Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour 레지옹 도뇌르 훈장 – July 23, 1895
- Japan: Grand Cordon of the Order of the Chrysanthemum – March 23, 1897
- United Kingdom: Honorary Grand Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire – December 17, 1900
- Spain: Grand Cross of the Order of Charles III, with Collar – 1900 (Exact date unknown)
- Belgium: Grand Cordon of the Royal Order of Leopold 레오폴드 훈장 – March 23, 1901
- Denmark: Knight of the Order of the Elephant – August 31, 1903
- China: Order of the Double Dragon, Class I Grade I – December 1, 1903
- Russia: Knight of the Order of St. Stanislaus, 1st Class – December 1, 1903
- German Empire: Knight of the Order of the Black Eagle – March 20, 1904
- Japan: Korean Annexation Medal – August 1, 1912
The location of his foreign awards is unknown. There was a palace fire recorded on Nov. 10, 1917 in which valuable items, described as “Honors (勳記), Medals (勳章), Insignia (徽章), and Commemorative Plaques (記念章)” were destroyed. This could possibly explain what happened to his Awards, but I have no information of substance.
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If you find any mistakes in this table, please let me know.
Footnotes:
- Yi Kang-chil 이강칠 (李康七) (1999), publisher 백산출판사, pp. 115 – 211.
- As an example, there were 25 awards of the Order of the Golden Measure; however, the recipient list does not include: the Emperor Kwangmu 광무, the Emperor Sunjong 순종 and the Crown Prince, Heir Apparent Yi Un 이은
- Picture from the Alice Roosevelt Longworth Collection of Photographs from the 1905 Taft Mission to Asia. Located in the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives, Smithsonian Institution.