Abstract
This article is a study of the first large-scale observation mission sent abroad by the Korean government in modern times-the so-called Korean Courtiers' Observation Mission dispatched by King Kojong to Japan in 1881. While a minority of the Mission members perceived Japan as a model for building a modern nation-state in Korea, the more conservative majority was interested only in limited technical borrowing along the lines of the "Eastern Morality and Western Skills" reasoning that was popular in China at that time. Unlike the famous Iwakura Mission (1871), the Korean Mission did not produce any widely published account of its experience that could be used for the popularization of reformist ideas. Handwritten accounts of the mission were kept in the royal library, available only to the king and his closest associates. The accounts were used as blueprints for modernization during the Kabo reform drive (1894-95). Thus, it can be concluded that the Korean Mission's experiences eventually were utilized for the sake of promoting Westernizing reforms.
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