Interesting story in the Korea Times by historian Robert Neff who always seems to find strange and interesting tales from Korea’s past.  This one is about a historical incident in 1866 Korea involving a German merchant, a French priest, and body snatching:

Ernest Jacob Oppert is perhaps one of the most infamous and notorious Westerners in Korean history. Oppert was a German merchant in Shanghai, China, in the 1860s who was obsessed with opening trade with Korea. First in March and then in August, 1866, he sailed to Korea in hopes of establishing trade ties but the Koreans refused. Although financially ruined, Oppert was not discouraged.

But Oppert was not the only foreigner in Shanghai interested in opening Korea. In the early spring of 1868, Oppert met Father Stanislas Feron.

Feron was one of three French priests who managed to get out of Korea alive during the religious persecution in 1866 — the same persecution that resulted in a short war between France and Korea.

Feron told Oppert that he had a plan to open Korea to the West. According to Feron, the average Korean desired relations with the West, but it was Daewongun, the regent, who was violently anti-foreigners. If Daewongun could be removed or coerced, Korea could then be opened up. He then said:

“If the project I am going to lay before you will at first sight appear to you strange and out of the common, remember that a great aim can never be gained by small means, and that we must look at this affair from another point of view than that which may be taken by narrow-minded people.”

Feron stressed the reverence Koreans held for their ancestors before he proposed something that was completely unacceptable to Westerners and Koreans alike — to dig up the bones of Daewongun’s father and hold them hostage.  [Korea Times]

You can read the rest of this sordid misadventure at the link.