Koreans Mourn Last Heir to Throne

SEOUL —  Five hundred years of Korean royal blood flowed in Yi Ku, but he lived in such obscurity in Japan that when he died of a heart attack July 16, his body was not discovered for two days.

Still, thousands of mourners followed the coffin of the last direct heir to Korea’s throne through Seoul on Sunday, paying their final respects to the Chosun dynasty, which ruled the peninsula from 1392 to 1910.

Japan forced Yi’s grandfather from power in 1907 and annexed Korea in 1910. After Korea’s liberation in 1945, the royal family wasn’t allowed to return for fear that it would meddle in the new government’s affairs.

“May he join his parents in enjoying all the happiness that he did not enjoy in this life,” South Korean Prime Minister Lee Hae Chan, a relative of Yi’s, said in a funeral address at Changdeok Palace, where Yi’s ancestors lived until Japan took the peninsula.

Yi, 73, was born in Tokyo in 1931 to Yi Un, the dynasty’s last crown prince, and Princess Masako Nashimoto of the Japanese royal family. He was raised in Japan and finished his education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, majoring in architecture. He lived largely apart from other Koreans and was more fluent in Japanese and English than Korean.

Yi married a German American, Julia Mullock, in New York in 1958. The couple returned to South Korea in 1963 and lived in Changdeok Palace until he moved to Japan in 1977 after a business failure. The couple, who had no children, divorced in 1982.

In his later years, Yi lived in a small Tokyo apartment and survived on a meager subsidy provided by a royal organization in South Korea.

Yi returned to Seoul last year and experienced the life of a crown prince for a day when he took part in a royal parade. He wore traditional robes and was carried through the streets in a palanquin.

In an interview at that time with the South Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo, Yi said he had “no regrets” about his role in the ceremony. “As a member of the family, I feel that I should inherit the culture. I am doing this for the benefit of Korea.”

Mourners in the crowd Sunday acknowledged the passing of an epoch with Yi’s burial. “I came to pay respects to the last imperial grandson,” said Lee Seung Hae, 28, a graduate student in Seoul. “It’s his last passage.”