[War and Management] Lessons from Ugeumchi

Ugeumchi Battle Record Painting. Image source = Donghak Peasant Revolution Foundation website/www.1894.or.kr

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyunwoo Lee] The recently emerging buzzword in the Korean stock market, the 'Donghak Ant Movement,' is a neologism likening it to the 'Donghak Peasant Movement' of 1894, a social reform movement led by peasants against foreign intervention and feudalism. The name was given because the way individual investors fend off sell-offs from foreign investors with overwhelming capital to protect stock prices resembles the 'Battle of Ugeumchi,' where the Donghak peasant army fought against the Japanese army armed with machine guns.

In reality, the Battle of Ugeumchi was far more brutal. Over 20,000 peasant soldiers were disastrously defeated by a Japanese force of just about 2,000. The main reason for the defeat, despite the more than tenfold difference in troop numbers, was not solely due to differences in weaponry. Rather, it was largely due to the fixed tactical mindset held by the Donghak peasant army leadership.

Before the Battle of Ugeumchi, in battles against the Joseon government forces, the peasants mainly used tactics of massing superior numbers and pushing forward in dense formations. Since the peasant army outnumbered the smaller Joseon forces, they overwhelmed them by numbers, often breaking the morale of the government troops, who would then retreat. This dense formation tactic became a fixed winning strategy for the peasant leadership.

However, unlike the Joseon forces, the Japanese army did not break psychologically upon seeing the dense formations. On the contrary, the concentration of troops in a narrow space made them easy targets for machine guns. The Japanese first occupied the high ground of the Ugeumchi valley to defend and continuously attacked with machine guns. The peasant army, whose firearms had a range more than five times shorter, charged forward only to fall like leaves in a storm. Nevertheless, trusting their numerical superiority, the peasant leadership repeatedly sent troops into the Ugeumchi valley about 40 times, resulting in a devastating defeat.

There were opinions to bypass Ugeumchi and attack from other regions or to disperse to avoid becoming machine gun targets and engage in guerrilla warfare, but the peasant leadership dismissed these suggestions, fearing a drop in morale. It was the lunar November winter, and the peasants had no winter supplies, yet the leadership continued to encourage the troops with the morale boost of defeating the Japanese invaders. The leadership emphasized that if they could capture Gongju Fortress, located just behind Ugeumchi and housing a large supply depot, they could advance to Hanyang with those supplies.

In reality, they were short on supplies and unable to use bypass strategies, making it a situation where battle should never have been fought. However, excessive confidence in numerical superiority and a fixed tactical mindset based on previous victories led to a catastrophic defeat.