General Sherman (ship)
The General Sherman was an armed American side-wheel steamer named after the Civil War General William T. Sherman .
In 1866 it was sent to Korea by the American merchant and owner of the ship WB Preston and the British trading company Meadows & Co. (based in Tianjin ) , where negotiations were to begin on the opening of the hermetically sealed country. The ship left the port of Yantai , China on August 6, 1866 with a cargo of glass, cotton, tin, laudanum , saltpeter, and other goods intended for trade.
On August 16 or 18, the ship reached the mouth of the Taedong River and continued on to Yangjak Island near Pyongyang . The ship's crew was initially welcomed in a friendly manner and provided with food by the Koreans. The governor of Pyongyang ordered the ship to wait downstream until the Korean King Gojong was informed of the foreigner's concerns. However, the king decided that the ship should leave Korea immediately, otherwise all crew members would be killed. The governor was then taken hostage by the crew of General Sherman , which led to a Korean attack on the ship. The crew fired on-board cannons at the crowd on the riverbank. Eventually the General Sherman was set on fire by the attackers and the entire crew who tried to get to safety were killed.
The General Sherman affair plays an important role in the official North Korean historiography and propaganda. It is seen as an early example of the threat to the Korean nation from outside, better still from the US side , which reached its climax so far in the Korean War instigated by the US - according to North Korean propaganda . The incident of 1866 and the following events serve to justify the North Korean state ideology Chuch'e , which propagates self-sufficiency, isolation, and the survival of a nation on its own.
The destruction of General Sherman is portrayed as a heroic deed in North Korea to this day. Allegedly Kim Ung-u, the great-grandfather of the North Korean head of state Kim Il-sung , was involved.