This golden seal of Emperor Gojong with a tortoise-shaped handle is elaborately inscribed with four letters which reads, “皇帝御璽”, literally meaning “a seal of the emperor”.
This seal was printed on an array of the Emperor’s letters: a letter sent to the Italian emperor on November 23, 1903, declaring the neutrality of the Korean Empire in the imminent Russo-Japanese War and asking for his support in those challenging circumstances; a letter to his American advisor, Homer Hulbert, sent on January 1, 1909, in which the Emperor asked him to look after his nephew studying in the US. Both letters are clear evidence demonstrating this portable seal was made in secret and used on his confidential letters to overseas contacts to express his strong will to impede Japan’s threat to the empire’s sovereignty, and the emperor still used the seal on his letters even after his dethronement in 1907.