Security· East Asia Operations
Seoul Legation Marine Guard established
The beginning of a lasting Marine presence in Korea.
From 1888 onward, Marine guards were posted at the American legation in Seoul to protect the American minister and the consular establishment in a country only recently opened to the West and still subject to internal upheaval, notably the disorders of the Tonghak rising in the mid-1890s. The duty was guard and protection rather than combat, the Marines standing watch over the legation and its people. Similar guards served the American establishments at Tientsin and Peking in China. No casualties attended the Seoul posting. It was the first standing American Marine presence in Korea, and though it began as a small legation guard, it marked the start of a Marine connection with the country that would recur over the following decades, through the turbulence of the turn of the century and, much later, the Korean War.
Record no. 469