One of the Five Eulsa Traitors · Minister of Home Affairs (pro-Japanese collaborator)
| Life | 1870 ~ 1928 |
| Era | 근현대 |
| Clan | 전주 이씨 |
Yi Ji-yong was a minister of the Korean Empire.
Pro-Japanese activity: as Minister of the Interior he was one of the "Five Eulsa Traitors" who approved the 1905 Eulsa Treaty, and he received a count's title after annexation.
Yi Ji-yong (1870–1928), a great-grandnephew of the Regent Heungseon Daewongun, passed the state examination in 1887 and went on to serve as vice-minister of the Royal Household and as minister to Japan. As acting Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1904, he accepted money from Japanese minister Hayashi Gonsuke and helped secure the Korea-Japan Protocol; in 1905, as Minister of the Interior, he approved the Eulsa Treaty, becoming one of the five ministers branded traitors for that act. After Japan's annexation of Korea in 1910 he was granted the title of count (as a member of the "Korean nobility") and appointed an advisor to the Government-General's Central Advisory Council. In 2007 the Presidential Committee for the Inspection of Collaborationist Property ordered his family's property confiscated to the state.