Among her opponents were the king's father the Heungseon Daewongun, the pro-Japanese ministers of the court, and the Korean army regiment that had been trained by Japan: the Hullyeondae.

[3] After the queen began to align Korea with the Russian Empire to offset Japanese influence, Miura struck a deal with Adachi Kenzō of the newspaper Kanjō shinpō and the Daewongun to carry out her killing.

[8][11][12] Sentiment shifted against Japan in Korea; the king fled for protection in the Russian legation and anti-Japanese militias rose throughout the peninsula.

[13][14] For over a century now, scholars from various countries have analyzed varying portions of the body of evidence and have reached differing conclusions on significant issues.

[19] Her gender also played a role in how she was perceived; in both Japan and Korea at that time, women were expected to be relatively secluded and it was uncommon for them to hold significant political power.

[21] Beginning around the 1860s, groups of young men called sōshi [ja] (壮士) emerged in Japan and engaged in political violence.

[24] According to historian Danny Orbach, a mix of sexism,[20] racism, and political agendas led to members of the Kanjō shinpō taking the lead in plotting her assassination.

[28] They began to romanticize her killing; in his memoirs, founder of the Kanjō shinpō Adachi Kenzō described the queen as "that bewitching beauty, who cunningly, ubiquitously, and treacherously manipulated virtuous men for over a generation".

[20] Adachi and others at the Kanjō shinpō referred to her in writings as a "fox" or "vixen", and began frequently commenting to each other that she should be killed,[24] which they described as hōru (屠る; lit.

[28][38] However, British explorer Isabella Bird, who was in Korea around this time, wrote of this assurance:The Korean sovereigns would naturally think themselves justified in relying on the promise so frankly given by one of the most distinguished of Japanese statesmen... and it is clear to myself that when the fateful night came, a month later, their reliance on this assurance led them to omit certain possible precautions, and caused the Queen to neglect to make her escape at the first hint of danger.

Journalist Kobayakawa Hideo reportedly almost burst into tears when he was initially told to stay behind, and later claimed that he felt like he was among "heroes of a novel" during the assassination.

[13] According to historians of Japan Orbach and Donald Keene, on 5 October, Okamoto met with the Daewongun and implied that an uprising was imminent.

[13] They originally planned to execute the murder in mid-October, but officers of the Hullyeondae, especially the Korean commander of the Second Battalion U Pŏm-sŏn [ko], warned the plotters that the queen was about to take action against them.

[40] According to Orbach and Keene, in the early hours of 8 October, Okamoto, Deputy Consul Horiguchi Kumaichi [ja], Police Inspector Ogiwara Hidejiro (荻原秀次郎), and an armed group of men in civilian clothing went to the Daewongun's residence at Gongdeok-ri.

[43] Around 5 am,[13] as the sun was beginning to break,[4] some of the Japanese policemen climbed the walls of the palace using folding ladders and opened the gates from the inside.

Queen Min introduced her relatives to the Court and place them around Our person, whereby she made dull Our senses, exposed the people to extortion, put Our government in disorder, selling offices and titles.

We knew the extreme of her wickedness, but could not dismiss and punish her because of helplessness and fear of her party... We have endeavored to discover her whereabouts, but as she does not come forth and appear.

[54] On the morning of the 9th, Miura arranged for the new pro-Japanese war minister to claim that Korean rebels had dressed up in Japanese clothes.

[6] American journalist John Albert Cockerill, who wrote for the New York Herald and happened to be in Seoul at the time, attempted to telegraph news of the killing.

[9] At 8 a.m. on the 9th, Miura telegraphed Japanese acting foreign minister Saionji Kinmochi with the assurance that the commotion was merely infighting between Korean troops.

[63] Miura placed the blame of the incident on the queen, and reportedly hinted that she needed to have been prevented from disbanding the Hullyeondae and decreasing Japanese influence in Korea.

[63] Uchida initially considered whitewashing the whole affair, especially as he was still unsure as to whether Japanese people had been involved, but ultimately began his own investigation.

[10][11] The verdict cited Article 165 of the Meiji Code of Criminal Procedure (刑事訴訟法), which gave judges the authority to acquit if they believed evidence was insufficient.

The tribunal ruled that the defendants did not know there was a plot to kill the queen, and that they were only guarding the gates and helping the Daewongun enter the palace.

[9] Several months later, Kim Ku, who later served as the president of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, assassinated a Japanese man as revenge for the queen's murder.

[13][76] This incident, as well as the Short Hair Ordinance [ko], ultimately lead to the rise of various civilian anti-Japanese and anti-government militias called righteous armies.

[13] Historian of Japan Peter Duus has called this assassination a "hideous event, crudely conceived and brutally executed".

[79]In May 2005, 84-year-old Tatsumi Kawano (川野 龍巳), the grandson of Kunitomo Shigeaki, paid his respects to Empress Myeongseong at her tomb in Namyangju, Gyeonggi, South Korea.

The lawsuit was to be filed if the Japanese government did not accept their demand to issue a special statement on 15 August offering the emperor's apology and promising to release relevant documents on the murder case.

[87] They included (among others): In Korea, King Gojong declared that the following were the 'Eulmi Four Traitors (을미사적; 乙未四賊; Eulmisajeok)' on 11 February 1896: New pieces of information appeared in 2021 in the form of private letters written by a Japanese consular officer to his best friend in Japan.