Yi Gu

Prince Yi Ku (29 December 1931 – 16 July 2005) was a claimant to the throne of Korea, contested twenty-ninth head of the Korean Imperial family, and the grandson of Gojong of the Korean Joseon Dynasty.

Gu was born in Kitashirakawa Palace (now Akasaka Prince Hotel), Kioicho, Kojimachiku, Tokyo, Japan; his father was Crown Prince Eun of Korea, and his mother was Princess Bangja, born Masako Nashimoto, a Japanese princess. If his claim had been accepted, and Korea were still a monarchy, his title would have been "His Imperial Highness the Crown Prince of Korea".

Gu attended the Gakushuin Peers' School in Tokyo. He later attended Centre College, Danville, Kentucky and studied architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology both in the U.S.. He was employed as an architect with I.M. Pei & Assocs, Manhattan, New York on 1960 to 1964. Made stateless by Japan in 1947, Gu acquired U.S. citizenship in 1959, and Korean citizenship in 1964. He married Julia Mullock (b.1928) on 25 October 1959 at St George's Church in New York, and they adopted a daughter, Eugenia Unsuk.

After the fall of Syngman Rhee, he returned to Korea in 1963 with the help of the new president Park Chung-hee, moving into the new building in Nakseon Hall, Changdeok Palace with his mother and wife. He lectured on architecture at Seoul National University and Yonsei University and also managed his own airline, Shinhan. When that went bankrupt in 1979, he went to Japan to earn money. In 1982, his family forced him to divorce his wife because she was sterile; his mother died in 1989. He started living with a Japanese astrologer, Mrs. Arita.

In November 1996, he made what he hoped would be his permanent return to Korea but, showing signs of a nervous breakdown, he was unable to adjust to life in Korea. Restlessly going back and forth between Japan and Korea, he eventually died of a heart attack at the age of seventy-three, on 16 July 2005 at the Akasaka Prince Hotel, the former residence of his parents in Tokyo, Japan. His funeral was held on 24 July 2005 and his posthumous title decided as "Prince Imperial Hoeun of Korea" by the Lee Family Council.

External links

• Korean royalty
• Death announcement in Korea Times
• Farewell to royal heir evokes memories of Korea's past
• obituary in the English edition of Dong-A Ilbo