1. The First Beginnings
The Royal Asiatic Society Korea Branch was born at 4:30 pm on June
16, 1900, when a founding meeting attended by seventeen men (all but
four of them missionaries) was held in the Reading Room of the Seoul
Union Club. On that day officers were elected and a constitution
(based on that of the London RAS) was adopted. Among those present
were the acting British Chargé d’affaires, J. H. Gubbins, and
the missionaries James S. Gale, Homer B. Hulbert, George Heber
Jones, Horace G. Underwood, H. G. Appenzeller, D. A. Bunker and
William B. Scranton. Other missionaries who were members of the
RASKB from the very start included H. N. Allen, O. R. Avison and M.
N. Trollope.
The first paper presented to the Society, on “The Influence of China
upon Korea,” was given by James Scarth Gale on October 24, 1900 and
it was the first paper published in Volume One of Transactions a few months later. It
stressed the overwhelming influence of Chinese culture on Korea. The
second paper, by Homer B. Hulbert, on “Korean Survivals,” sought to
contradict it and stress the role of native Korean traditions and
values. In the two years that followed, seven more lectures were
given and 2 more volumes of Transactions were published. But, after
a final lecture about Ginseng at the end of 1902 and the publication
of Volume 3 of Transactions soon after, everything stopped. The
RASKB seemed to be dead.
The foundation of the RASKB in 1900 came at the
end of two decades in which Korea had experienced almost
unimaginable changes, in the course of traumatic events of which the
most dramatic included the Gapsin Coup, the 1894 Donghak Rebellion
and the resulting Sino-Japanese War, the Gapo Reforms with the royal
decree ordering the cutting off of men’s topknots and the abolition
of the Gwageo exam in 1895, the assassination of the Queen in 1895,
and the proclamation of the Daehan Empire in 1897.
Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, a series of
remarkable Protestant missionaries, mostly from North America, came
to settle in Korea. They founded schools and hospitals, set up a
printing press, studied Korean, set about translating the Bible, and
began to explore the very unfamiliar culture in which they were
plunged. They began to publish books, reviews, even newspapers.
Their activity went far beyond founding churches, it was essentially
designed to transform Korea by contact with the modern
world-at-large into something very different from what it had been
hitherto. Outwardly, at least, their program of modernization linked
in with the long-standing wish of the Korean intellectuals of the
the reformist Silhak (practical learning) and Gaehwapa
(enlightenment) schools. Equally importantly, it echoed many of the
most positive aspects of Japan’s Meiji reforms.
2. Korean Transformations 1882-1900
The choice facing Korea at the end of the 19th century, between the
old and the new, was vividly reflected in the events that shook
Seoul late in 1884, the Gapsin
coup. Following the opening of Japan to western trade and
modernization, the Gaehwapa (Enlightenment Party) group of reformers
led by Kim Ok-gyun and Pak Yong-hyo sought to initiate rapid changes
within Korea along similar lines. Thwarted by conservative factions
within the court, particularly the pro-Chinese Sugupa, they launched
a coup d'état with Japanese support on 4 December, 1884. On
the evening of that day, a banquet was held at the new post office
in Seoul to celebrate the successful inauguration of Korea’s postal
system. Members of the diplomatic community and Korean government
officials were in attendance. This party was part of a plot to
overthrow the pro-Chinese Korean clique, dominated by the Min clan,
and establish a new government that would be more progressive and
pro-Japanese. Chief amongst the conspirators in attendance were Hong
Yong-sik, the host of the party and leader of the conspiracy; Pak
Yong-hyo, the conspiracy’s director of operations; and Kim Ok-gyun
who was responsible for contact between the conspirators and the
Japanese legation and planning the coup. In addition to the
conspirators were their foes, three conservative Korean ministers:
Min Yeong-ik, head of the pro-Chinese Min clan, Yi Ja-yeon and
General Han Kyu-sik. Just before 10 p.m., a small building near the
post office was set afire, luring Min Yeong-ik out into an ambush.
An assassin severely wounded him but he managed to stagger back into
the building, bleeding profusely. By the end of the night the
conspirators had gained control of the Korean government.
Faced with this threat to royal authority,
Chinese military intervened, and after three days the revolt was
suppressed by 1500 troops of the Chinese garrison based in Seoul.
During the ensuing battle, the Japanese legation building was burned
down, and forty Japanese were killed. The surviving Gaehwapa
activists escaped to the port city of Chemulpo under escort of the
Japanese minister to Korea, Takejo, and there boarded a Japanese
ship for exile in Japan. Under intense international pressure, the
Chinese and Japanese agreed to withdraw their troops, which had been
stationed in Seoul since the food riots of 1882, but the underlying
tension between the two countries remained alive and ultimately led
to the Sino-Japanese War in 1894. Kim Ok-gyun and his companions had
already understood in 1884 that Japan held the key to the
modernization which Korean society urgently needed, particularly if
it was to resist the territorial ambitions that Japan was already
manifesting. China was in decline and its policies toward Korea
strongly favored the status quo. In particular, Japan’s army and
navy were already far better equipped and trained.
From February until November 1894, the Donghak Rebellion raged
through Korea; China and Japan both sent in troops, still competing
for control over Korea. The First
Sino-Japanese War began late in July, 1894, and led to the
invasion by Japan of western Manchuria and northern China. The war
ended with a virtual Chinese surrender. The Treaty of Shimonoseki
was signed on April 17, 1895. It gave Japan control over the
Liaodong Peninsula, ended the tributary relationship between Korea
and the Qing Dynasty, and gave Japan control over Taiwan. However,
Russia brought France and Germany to its side and they forced Japan
to return the Liaodong Peninsula to China. This only made Japan more
determined to take full control of Korea, where Russia by now too
had ambitions.
On October 8, 1895, the Queen was assassinated by a band of Japanese,
because of her ongoing opposition to Japan’s plans, and during the
following months the terrified King, fearing for his life, insisted
that a group of western missionaries should sleep close to him in
the palace each night. The core members of this group were James S. Gale, Homer B. Hulbert, George
Heber Jones, Horace G. Underwood, H. G. Appenzeller. All of
these men were involved a few years later in the foundation of the
RASKB. Mrs. Underwood had
acted as the Queen’s doctor and after the assassination she prepared
meals for the King, who thought people were trying to poison him.
They could hardly be closer to the making of Korean history.
3. The Founders of the RASKB
Henry Gerhard Appenzeller (1858 – 1902) was the first
Methodist missionary to reach Korea. He and the American
Presbyterian Horace Underwood arrived together in Korea on Easter
Day, 1885. Appenzeller was a dynamic man with little interest in old
Korean culture or traditions. He came as an agent of change,
convinced that Koreans needed above all to become Christian, receive
a western-style education, and adopt American-style democracy. He
opened the first western-style school in the country in 1885, Pai
Chai Hakdang (Hall for the Rearing of Useful Men). A brick school
building was erected in 1887. In January 1890, Appenzeller founded
the Trilingual Press (producing books in English, Hangul, and
Chinese) on the school grounds. This later became the Methodist
Printing and Publishing House. In 1892, the publishing house, under
the direction of Rev. F. Ohlinger began to produce The Korean Repository, a
monthly magazine about Korean life. Appenzeller was a born leader.
He founded the Bible Society, the Literature Society and the Seoul
Union Club, a social center for foreign residents, where the RASKB
was born. He was on the Board of Official Translators of the Korean
Bible, working with James Gale, Horace G. Underwood, William B.
Scranton, and William D. Reynolds. But alas, still young, he was
drowned in June 1902 when the boat he was on sank after colliding
with another near Mokpo. His son later continued his work in Korea,
especially in Pyongyang.
The
first Vice-President of the RASKB was the Rev. Dr. George Heber Jones, a scholarly Methodist
missionary born in Mohawk, NY on Aug 14, 1867. In 1887 the Methodist
Episcopal Mission Board appointed him to Korea, where he was at
first connected with Pai Chai High School and College in Seoul. In
1892 he moved to Chemulpo (Incheon), where he was stationed for the
next ten years. Proficient in Korean and a member of the Board of
Translators of the Bible, he was one of the founding editors of and
a regular contributor to the Korean Repository, and later wrote for
Hulbert’s monthly Korea Review, as well as being the founder and
editor of the Sin-hak Wol-po, a Korean-language theological review.
One of his main interests seems to have been the comparative study
of religions and this is reflected in his three contributions to
Transactions. After returning to the U.S. in 1903, in 1907 Jones
came back to Korea and became president of the Bible Institute of
Korea and Theological Seminary of the Methodist Church. He returned
permanently to the U.S. in 1911 to care for his elderly parents and
died in 1919. His published works in English include: Korea, the Land, People and Customs
(1907), The Korea Mission of the
Methodist Episcopal Church (1910), and Christian medical work in Korea
(1910?). He is remembered in Korea as one of the editors of the
first Korean hymn book.
Books etc: online Books about Korea
George Heber Jones, Korea,
the land, people, and customs (1907) PDF
download George Heber Jones, The
Bible in Korea (1916) PDF
download Books about KoreaJones, George Heber. The
Japanese Invasion. The
Korean Repository (January, 1892), pp. 10-16; (February,
1892), pp. 46-50: (April, 1892), pp. 116-121; (May, 1892), pp.
147-152; (June, 1892), pp. 182-188; (July, 1892), pp. 217-222;
(October, 1892), pp. 308-311. Jones, George Heber. Some
Aspects of Reform in Korea.
The Journal of Race Development, Vol. 1 (July, 1910), pp.
18-35.
Papers published in RASKB Transactions:
Korea's Colossal Image of Buddha. I:57-70. 1900.
The Spirit Worship of the Koreans. II, part I:37-58. 1902.
Ch'oe Ch'i-wun [Ch'oe Ch'i-wŏn]: His Life and Times. III:1-17. 1903.
Probably the most admired by later generations of Koreans, for his
support of Korean autonomy, Homer
Bezaleel Hulbert was born on January 26, 1863 in New Haven,
Vermont, graduated from Dartmouth College in 1884, then entered
Union Theological College. While he was studying there, the Korean
government announced plans to establish a school in Seoul teaching
English and asked the American government to send teachers. As a
result, Homer B. Hulbert arrived in Korea in 1886 with a few others
to act as “professor” in the Royal English School, where the sons of
high officials were to learn English. However, seeing no future in
his role as teacher of a narrow-minded elite with no interest in
English, he left Korea at the end of 1891.
Appenzeller encouraged Hulbert to return as a
member of the Methodist mission. The Methodists had established the
Trilingual Press in Seoul, at the time in question under the
management of the Rev. Franklin Ohlinger. In the summer of 1893,
Ohlinger left for Singapore and Hulbert was invited to replace him
at the press. He felt that his knowledge of Hangul would enable the
Press to produce the general educational materials the country
urgently needed. So he returned to Korea in 1894 to take charge of
what was already a major printing house and in the years that
followed he worked hard to improve its equipment. Early in 1892,
encouraged by George Heber Jones, the Ohlingers had begun to produce
the monthly Korean Repository,
and although it was not published for one year after their
departure, it was published again from 1895-8, with Appenzeller and
George Heber Jones as co-editors. Hulbert became its editorial
manager by virtue of his position at the Press and began to
contribute articles about aspects of Korean culture and life.
In 1897, the King decided that Korea needed to
train teachers who would teach in the western-style schools that
were to be established across the country. He asked Hulbert to serve
as the Principal of the Royal Normal School and prepare the
necessary textbooks. Hulbert therefore passed management of the
Trilingual Press (and the
Repository) to another Methodist missionary, D. A. Bunker,
who had formerly taught at the English School and was now head of
the English Department at Pai Chai. Soon after the Royal
Normal School was founded, its name changed to the Imperial Normal
School with the proclamation of the Daehan Empire in the autumn of
1897. Later it became known as the Imperial Middle School. (Hulbert's story continues below)
James
Scarth Gale was born on February 19, 1863, in
Pilkington, Wellington County, Ontario (Canada), and graduated from
University College at the University of Toronto with a B.A. in
foreign languages in 1888. He had planned to study theology but
instead left for Korea as a missionary volunteer with the YMCA the
same year. He arrived in December 1888, and spent 1889 and 1890
preaching and teaching English in a number of places, in northern
Korea and in Busan, before visiting Manchuria. In 1894 he published
Korean Grammatical Forms at the Trilingual Press and in 1895 he
produced a Korean translation prepared by himself and his wife of
John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s
Progress at the same press, the first translation of a work
of English literature into Korean. In 1897 he published his
Korean-English Dictionary at Yokohama as well as Korean Sketches in Chicago.
Gale was the leading scholar of the Korean language at this time,
and he clearly enjoyed writing works of a literary kind, too. He
later served as President of the RASKB in 1915, then as
Vice-President 1923-7. Gale left Korea in 1927 to retire in Bath,
England, where he died in 1937. His History of the Korean People was re-edited and
published with a detailed biography by Richard Rutt (RASKB. 1972)
Related sites: Gale
archive, University of Toronto
Papers published in RASKB Transactions:
The Influence of China upon Korea. I:1-24. 1900.
Han-Yang (Seoul). II, part Il:1-43. 1902.
The Korean Alphabet. IV, part I:12-61. 1912-13.
Selection and Divorce. IV, part III:17-22. 1913.
The Pagoda of Seoul. VI, part II:1-22. 1915.
The Diamond Mountains. XIII:1-67. 1922.
(trans) A Shipwreck (Korean) in 1636 A.D. XV:3-22. 1924.
Another of the founders of the RASKB was Dr. Horace N. Allen (1858-1932). Allen had first
come to Korea in 1884 as a Presbyterian missionary doctor stationed
in the American legation. Soon after his arrival, he saved the life
of Min Yeong-ik, the Queen’s favorite nephew, when he had been
seriously injured during the Gapsin Coup in 1884, demonstrating the
value of Western medicine. In 1887 he accompanied the first Korean
legation to Washington, D.C.. This led him to move from missionary,
medical activities to diplomacy. In 1890, he became secretary to the
American legation in Seoul. By 1897 he was US Minister and consul
general in Seoul. In 1905 he left Korea, in part at least because he
favored Russia over Japan while the American State Department was
committed to supporting Japan's intervention in Korea. He returned
to medicine in the US, becoming a doctor in Toledo, Ohio.
The first hospital in Korea was founded in 1885 by Allen as the
Royal Hospital Gwanghyewon (House of Extended Grace) where the
Constitutional Court stands today. Soon after its creation, the
hospital was renamed Jejungwon (House of Universal Helpfulness), and
in 1886, Jejungwon Medical School, Korea’s first modern medical
school, was founded. At the same time Dr. John Heron, a Presbyterian
missionary, arrived in Seoul and began work alongside Dr. Allen,
later succeeding him as superintendent of the hospital. In 1888
Presbyterian Dr. Lillias S. Horton took the responsibility of the
women's department in the hospital and became the trusted physician
of the Queen. Horton married Rev. H. G. Underwood in 1889 and
continued working in Korea for many years, opening a women's and
children's dispensary in 1895. Jejungwon grew, and by 1899 it was
determined that a new facility had to be erected. In 1900, Louis H.
Severance, an American philanthropist, heard from O. R. Avison of
the need for a modern hospital in Seoul. He had been hoping to fund
a project of the sort and decided that Seoul would be an ideal place
for his donation. The hospital was completed in September of 1904
and was named Severance Memorial Hospital.
Dr. William B. Scranton
(1856-1922) came to Korea in June 1885 to begin medical work and
soon opened Sibyeongwon (Universal Relief House), in Jeong-dong
where Jeil Church now stands, and other clinics, including
Boguyeogwan (in Jeong-dong) for women with the support of his
mother, Mary F. B. Scranton, in the same area. His mother
established Ewha Hakdang as the first school for girls, also in
Jeong-dong, in 1886.
Oliver R. Avison (1860-1956) was born in England, his
family moving to Canada when he was six. He became a doctor there
and arrived in Korea in 1893 as part of the Presbyterian mission
after meeting Horace G. Underwood. He became the head of Jejungwon
Medical School in 1894 and his appeal for funds at a conference in
New York decided Louis Severance to make his donation. The names
were changed to Severance Hospital and Severance Medical School. The
first seven graduates in 1908 received the first doctors’ licenses
issued by the Korean government. In 1913, the name changed to
Severance Union Medical College. In 1916, on the death of H. G.
Underwood, Avison also became president of Chosun Christian College.
He was forced out of Korea by the Japanese in 1935, and L. George
Paik (Paik Nakjun) was his successor as President of the Severance
Union Medical College. In 1945, Paik became president of the newly
named Chosen Christian University, that was to become Yonsei
University in 1957.
Papers online: Books about KoreaAvison, O.R. Cholera
in Seoul. The Korean Repository, Vol. II (September,
1895), pp 339-344. Avison, O.R. Disease
in Korea. The Korean Repository, Vol. IV (March,
1897), pp. 207-211
One of the leading misisonary families through
several generations were the Underwoods. Horace Grant Underwood was born in London, England,
on July 19, 1859, then immigrated to the US when he was thirteen. He
arrived in Korea on the same boat as Henry G. Appenzeller on Easter
Sunday (April 5), 1885. Underwood worked with the other scholars
mentioned above on the Korean Bible, producing the New Testament in
1900, the Old Testament in 1910. He married a doctor, Lillias
Horton. MD (1851-1921), who served as doctor to the Queen prior to
her murder. Underwood founded the Gyeongsin School in 1886, then
Chosun Christian College, which first opened in March 1915 at the
Seoul YMCA. It was renamed "Yonhi College" two years later in 1917.
The current location of the main campus of Yonsei University was
purchased in 1917 through a donation from Mr. John T. Underwood, the
typewriter maker.
In 1916 Underwood
returned to the US in ill health and died almost at once.
Horace Grant Underwood’s son, Horace
Horton Underwood, who returned to Korea from studies in
1917, was to play a leading role in denouncing
the Japanese repression of the March 1 1919 Movement. He
served as president of Chosun Christian College from 1924 until
1941. He was active in the RASKB, especially after the death of
Bishop Trollope in 1930. He was still in Korea when the Pacific War
began, was repatriated by the Japanese in 1942 and returned to Korea
soon after Liberation. His wife Ethel was murdered during an attack
on their house by communists in 1949. He was in the US when the
Korean War began, returned despite poor health, and died in Busan
early in 1951.
Books and papers by Horace H. Underwood available online Modern
education in Korea by Horace Horton Underwood Underwood, Horace H. Occidental
Literature on Korea. Transactions of the Korea Branch of the
Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. XX (1931), pp. 1-186,i-xvi.
Papers published in RASKB Transactions:
Hunting and Hunters' Lore in Korea. VI, part II:23-43. 1915.
Korean Boats and Ships. XXIII, part I:1-99. 1934.
Occidental Literature on Korea. XX:1-15. 1931.
A Partial Bibliography of Occidental Literature on Korea, From Early
Times to 1930. XX:17-185. 1931.
Their son Horace Grant Underwood II (1917–2004) served as an
interpreter in the Korean War armistice talks and was elected
President of the RASKB when it resumed activities in 1957, then
again in 1992-3 and 2000-1. He gave a lecture only a few weeks
before he died.
One of
the rare British, Anglican missionaries, Mark Napier Trollope was born in London on March 28,
1862, studied at New College, Oxford, then at Cuddesdon College and
he was ordained deacon in 1887 and priest in 1888. Until 1890 he was
Curate at Great Yarmouth and while there he responded to an appeal
from Bishop Corfe in Korea for volunteers. He came to Korea in the
same year. From 1890 to 1902 he was Chaplain to the Bishop and
Senior S.P.G. Missionary, and from 1896-1902 he was Vicar General.
In 1902 he returned to England for a time on account of the ill
health of his father. He returned to Korea as the new Bishop in
later 1911 and continued to serve there until his sudden death in
1930. Bishop Trollope served as President of the RASKB 1917-19,
1922-25, 1928-30.
Papers published in RASKB Transactions:
Kang-wha [Kanghwa]. II, part I:1-36. 1902.
Introduction to the Study of Buddhism in Korea. VIII:1-41.
1917.
Arboretum Coreense, Being a Preliminary Catalogue of the Vernacular
Names of Fifty of the Commonest Trees and Shrubs Found in Chosen.
Part I. IX:69-90. 1918. Part II. XI:39-100. 1920.
Corean Books and Their Authors, Being an Introduction of Corean
Literature. XXI:1-58. 1932.
Book Production and Printing in Corea. XXV:101-107. 1936.
The
first President of the RASKB was J.
H. Gubbins, at the time acting as her Britannic Majesty’s
Chargé d’Affaires in Seoul. The first Vice-President was
George Heber Jones; the Honorary Secretaries were James S. Gale and
Homer B. Hulbert. J. H. Gubbins had long lived in Japan but only
spent comparatively little time in Korea. He was well acquainted
with the Asiatic Society of Japan, of which he spoke at the
inaugural meeting of the RASKB. John Harington Gubbins (1852-1929)
attended Harrow School then became a student interpreter in the
British Japan Consular Service in 1871. On June 1, 1889, he became
Japanese Secretary at Tokyo, and was appointed Second Secretary at
the Tokyo legation on February 13, 1890. He briefly served as acting
Chargé d’Affaires in Korea from May 18, 1900 until November
4, 1901. Later he was appointed lecturer in Japanese language at
Oxford University (1909-1912) but the position was soon terminated
for lack of pupils. He published two books, The Progress of Japan,
1853-1871 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911) and The Making of Modern Japan
(London: Seeley, Service & Co, 1922).
The
second President, in 1901-2, Sir
John Newell Jordan GCMG GCIE KCB PC (1852 – 1925), as he
later became during an illustrious diplomatic career, was the
official British Chargé d'affaires whom J. H. Gubbins had
been replacing during an absence the previous year. Born in Balloo,
County Down, Ireland, he was educated in Ireland, then in 1876 he
joined the Chinese Consular Service as a student interpreter. He
held various posts in South China before being appointed Chinese
Secretary at the British Legation in Peking in 1891. In 1896 he was
appointed Consul-General at Seoul, becoming Chargé d'affaires
in 1898 and Minister-Resident in 1901. He remained there until
November 1905. In 1906 he was appointed HM Envoy Extraordinary and
Minister Plenipotentiary to China as the successor to Sir Ernest
Satow and remained in the post until his retirement in 1920. He was
also appointed to the Privy Council in 1915.
4. Steps to Annexation: 1903-1910
There is no way of knowing exactly why the RASKB stopped meeting
after the end of 1902. Clearly, the drowning of H. G. Appenzeller in
June 1902, the departure from Korea for a time of George Heber Jones
in 1903, the increasing involvement of Hulbert in the Emperor’s
affairs, the return to England of Mark N. Trollope in 1902, the
departure together (for Europe by the Trans-Siberian railway) in
June 1903 of Gale and Hulbert, and Gale's further absences in the
years following on account of his wife’s ill-health, as well as the
Russo-Japanese War (February 1904 - September 1905) and the
departure of many diplomats with the closing of the legations late
in 1905, all might help explain it.
In 1901 Homer
Hulbert founded The
Korea Review, which was very similar in format and scope to
the Korean Repository.
However, the editorial policy of the Review was perhaps more strongly oriented by its
editor’s vision than the Repository
had been. His main ideas included the affirmation that Koreans were
capable of the highest achievements but oppressed by ignorance;
therefore widespread education conducted in Hangul was essential.
The most controversial idea, one that he nourished almost to the
end, was an idealistic view of Japan as a source and model of
enlightenment and social progress, to which he opposed the Russian
model of autocracy and stagnation.
Hulbert’s positive vision of Japan prior to 1905
and some other of his ideas, as well his relatively outspoken manner
of writing, were strongly opposed by another of the founders of the
RASKB, the American diplomat Dr. Horace N. Allen. Allen was
increasingly convinced that Russian domination in Korea would be
better than a Japanese takeover, and his conflict with Hulbert
reached a peak during the Russo-Japanese War (February 1904 -
September 1905), during which Hulbert continued to maintain an
idealistically pro-Japanese position in the Review, only criticizing the
negative activities and attitudes toward Korea of individual
Japanese. Allen’s support for Russia displeased the State Department
in Washington, who strongly supported Japan, and perhaps led to his
being recalled in 1905.
Throughout the same period, Korean ministers
acting without the King’s permission were signing a series of
treaties with Japan, a process that would culminate in the notorious
Japan-Korea Treaty of 1905, also known as the Eulsa Treaty, signed
by just five ministers on November 17, 1905. This gave Japan
complete responsibility for Korea’s foreign affairs, and placed all
trade through Korean ports under Japanese supervision, in effect
making Korea a protectorate of Japan.
It was not until the September 1905 issue of the
Korea Review that Hulbert
finally denounced plainly the Japanese plans for reducing Korea to a
protectorate. Then, early in October, he left for the United States,
secretly carrying a letter for the American President signed by the
Emperor, asking the United States to prevent Japan from taking
control of Korea. At the time, nobody in Korea knew of the
conversations that had been held late in July 1905 between the
Japanese prime-minister Katsura Taro and the United States Secretary
of War William Howard Taft, during which the American encouraged the
Japanese plans to take full control of Korea.
Hulbert arrived in Washington at almost exactly
the same moment as the Korean foreign minister signed the Eulsa
Treaty in Seoul, which the Japanese claimed was sufficient to ratify
it. The pro-Japanese American government therefore refused to accept
the Emperor’s letter, claiming that the ratification of the Treaty
was a matter of fact, even though the Emperor himself had not signed
it. After trying in vain to alert American public opinion through
the press, which was also largely sympathetic to the Japanese,
Hulbert returned to Korea in the summer of 1906. By the time he
returned, all the foreign legations in Seoul had been reduced to the
level of consulates.
When Hulbert returned to Korea in 1906, the
Emperor immediately asked him to prepare to go as his ambassador to
the nations due to attend the Second International Peace Conference
to be held in The Hague in June 1907. His task was to contact the
major powers, asking them to support the independence of Korea. His
role was to be secret, behind the scenes, and in April 1907 the
Emperor secretly appointed three Korean representatives. They were
all unable to gain access to the conference and Hulbert left The
Hague only a day or so before the Emperor was forced to abdicate on
July 19, 1907. He was succeeded by his feeble fourth son, who became
known as the Yunghui Emperor, or Sunjong. On July 24 1907 the new
ruler signed over control of the country’s internal administration
to Japan. On 22 August, 1910, the Empire of Daehan was annexed by
Japan under the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty, a final formality.
Hulbert knew that he could never again live in
Korea. He made a final visit to Seoul in the autumn of 1909. He was
there when the Korean patriot An Jung-geun assassinated the former
Japanese premier Ito Hirobumi in Harbin in October. A year before,
in March 1908, Korean nationalist patriots had assassinated Durham
White Stevens in San Francisco. Stevens had been an American
diplomat stationed in Japan since 1873 then became a Japanese
diplomat in 1883. In November 1904, Stevens was appointed as adviser
to the Korean Foreign Office. He was intensely pro-Japanese and
advocated the annexation. Previously, in July 1907, an attempt had
been made by some Koreans to murder George Heber Jones for having
praised the Japanese police for putting down a nationalistic
demonstration. All these violent expressions of Korean resistance
only served to drive the foreign community in Korea, whether
missionaries or diplomats, towards stronger support for Japan, since
they reinforced the feeling that Koreans were a violent, anarchic
people incapable of governing themselves. Hulbert continued to
support Korea's wish for independence in various ways
throughout his life. In 1949 he finally returned to Korea, by train
across Russia, and died a week after his arrival.
Biography: The best is that by Weems, Clarence Norwood, in his
edition of Hulbert's History of
Korea (1962)
Papers published in RASKB Transactions:
Korean Survivals and Discussion. I:25-50. 1900.
Korean Folk-tales. II, part II:45-79. 1902,
National Examination in Korea. XIV:9-32. 1923.
5. The RASKB Returns to Life: 1911
This was the context in which, on January 23, 1911, the RASKB was
reborn, at a meeting attended by eight men and one woman. Only two
of the original founders of the RASKB were present at the January
1911 meeting, James Gale and the Methodist missionary doctor William
Benton Scranton (1856-1922). The meeting was held in Scranton’s
Sanitarium.
When
the RASKB was revived, the first President elected was the British
consul at Chemulpo, Arthur Hyde
Lay (1865 - 1934). Lay was born in China, educated in
Britain and arrived in Japan in 1887 as an interpreter trainee. From
1899 until 1902 he worked in Japan as an interpreter but seems to
have mastered Korean by 1904. He published Chinese Characters for
the Use of Students of the Japanese Language in 1898. He served as
British Consul at Chemulpo (Incheon) in 1911, then went to be consul
in Hawai’i (1912) and Shimonoseki (1913). From 1914 until 1927 he
was British consul-general in Seoul and seems to have developed a
great affection for Korea. However, Ku Daeyeol notes that “Lay had a
stereotyped view of Korea, commonly shared by almost all Western
diplomats. In a report he wrote following his retirement, he
recalled that the Korean political situation had been dismal before
the Russo-Japanese War of 1904, and concluded that the country still
lacked the ability to maintain an autonomous government.” In October
1911, Lay was obliged to resign as President of the RASKB since he
was leaving Korea for Hawai’i. His son has written that he had grown
so attached to Korea that he did everything to have his posting to
Hawai’i cancelled. He was replaced as President by James S. Gale,
who resigned in February 1916, allowing Lay, now back as British
Consul-General in Seoul, to be re-elected President for another year
before he was replaced by Bishop Trollope.
Paper published in RASKB Transactions:
Marriage Customs of Korea. IV, part III:1-15. 1913.
One other diplomat who clearly played a vital
role in the 1911 RASKB revival was the American consul-general George Hawthorne Scidmore
(1854-1922). A career diplomat, he first came to Yokohama (Japan) in
1881 after several years in Europe, served in Oceania 1891-4,
returned to Japan, then served as consul-general in Seoul 1909-13
during the annexation, before becoming consul-general in Yokohama,
where he died. Several RASKB meetings were held at his invitation in
the US Consulate General. Ku Daeyeol writes: “George Scidmore, the
American consul general at the time of annexation, supported
Japanese policy, as he had been impressed by Japan's efficient
reform drive in his previous appointments in many Japanese ports,
which he deemed to contrast the corrupt Korea that lacked any reform
drive.”
The first lecture given to the resurrected
Society, at a meeting held on March 4, 1911, in the U.S. Consulate
on the invitation of Scidmore, was titled “The Old People and the
New Government.” It was given by Midori Komatsu, the Japanese
Director of Foreign Affairs of the Government General of Chosen. It
was the first paper published in Volume Four of Transactions a few
months later. Komatsu’s paper was a formal justification for the
annexation of Chosen, based on claims that Korea had “originally”
been a state founded from Japan, that the two peoples were “really”
one “race”, and as such it was natural and desirable for them to be
reunited.
It is sometimes claimed that the Japanese imposed
the paper on an unwilling Society but this is fairly clearly not the
case. First of all, it must be said that in early 1911 a large
majority of the foreigners living in Korea still considered the
annexation in a positive light. Besides, the accounts of the
Council’s meetings published in Transactions Volume IV Part 2 make
it clear that it was the president, Mr. Lay, and James Gale who
decided on February 8, 1911, that this should be the first paper.
Then, on March 4th, the paper was given in the US Consulate on the
invitation of George Scidmore with nine RASKB members present, as
well as “many guests,” “including members of the local diplomatic
corps and ladies.” At the end, the Chairman (Lay) proposed a “hearty
vote of thanks.” Later, on April 12, the Council met and “directed”
the Recording Secretary (James Gale) to ask Mr. Komatsu for a copy
of his paper for publication.
Two other papers were given by Japanese speakers
that same year and were published in other parts of the same volume
of Transactions, after which no papers by Japanese were ever given
or published. One, that by Isoh Yamagata, the editor of the Seoul Press, evokes in cheerful
tones the restoration of cordial relations between Japan and Korea
after the Imjin War. The Seoul Press was the only English-language
newspaper allowed in Korea and its role was to express the official
Japanese version of events. The other, on “Coinage of Old Korea” by
Morihiro Ichihara, who had earned a Ph.D. in finance from Yale and
was first governor of the Bank of Chosen (I909-I915), begins: “To
find and destroy the venerable old coins of Korea and replace them
with new ones . . . has been my duty for many years.” It ends: “New
Chosen begins its career with new vigor and strength as a part of
the Empire of Japan.”
It is hard to know what was in the minds of Lay,
Scidmore and Gale in deciding to invite these very highly placed,
offical Japanese speakers, or to sense what considerations, if any,
led to the invitations. That the Western diplomats and missionaries
were still trying to be positive about Japan’s ways of dealing with
Korea and optimistic about the future seems clear. Within ten years,
by the time of the March 1 1919 uprising, much had changed but it is
easy to imagine that the RASKB Council of early 1911 felt that they
could deal with the top members of the Japanese administration as
reasonable, educated gentlemen like themselves. They might even have
hoped that by bringing them into the Society they would help them
better understand the concerns of the western community in Seoul,
and the demands of the civilized world. They very quickly learned
that they were wrong.
6. From the Annexation to March 1,
1919
Ku Daeyeol has stressed that as soon as Japan had annexed Korea, or
even before, the British government began to be anxious that it
would soon be moving to take control of Manchuria and then China,
which Britain considered a threat to its interests. However, he
continues:
Establishing a Government-General
invested with “supreme authority” by the emperor and therefore
unhindered by the Japanese constitution, the Japanese pursued, on
the one hand, a modernization policy based on “efficiency” and
“conciseness” and, on the other hand, an assimilation policy bent
upon eradicating the national identity of the Korean people. While
the powers did not agree with this program in its entirety, they
expressed a supportive attitude, especially when they compared the
Japanese policies with the corruption and inefficiency of the
former Korean government. While the United States and Great
Britain characterized the projects pursued by Japan as “costly and
burdensome,” and Japan as “having bitten off more than she can
chew,” they also portrayed them as “decidedly progressive” and as
programs that would result in an increase of material wealth for
Koreans. They, therefore, emphasized that “it is patience and
help, not criticism, that are required.” At the same time, Korean
resistance against the Terauchi administration was roundly
condemned: “still the voice of calumny is raised against the
authorities by good-for-nothing fellows whose ambitions are
thwarted.” In other words, as long as Japanese policies were
viewed positively, the Korean independence movement was seen as
nothing more than the expression of a “rancorous hatred of the
Japanese” occasioned by a “distorted idea of patriotism.”
Now the first set of quotations in this text are
from dispatches written by Arthur Hyde Lay in February 1911, the
later quotations were written by Lay in July 1911, at the very
moment that the RASKB was engaged with these high-ranking Japanese
speakers. We know that Lay was essentially supportive of Japan.
Lay and Gale soon began to hear reports of what was to become known
as the “Christian Conspiracy case” or the “Case of the One Hundred
Five.” Early in 1911, the Japanese began to claim that there had
been an attempt to assassinate the Japanese Governor-General
Terauchi Masatake during a meeting between him and the American
missionary George Shannon McCune in Seoncheon, North Pyeongan
Province, on December 28, 1910. From October 1911, especially,
hundreds of Koreans were arrested, including Kim Ku and other
leaders of the Sinminhoe, and, most important, a great majority of
them were Christians. Nagata Akifumi points out that Gale, far from
being indignant at the arrests, “demonstrated his sympathy for
Terauchi with the statement that he had ‘succeeded to the difficult
task of governing an alien people of Korea after the Japanese
annexation of Korea.’ He further wrote that Korea had prospered or
been improved by the Japanese intervention, and would continue to do
so under the rule of Terauchi, a ‘Governor of good manners and so
kindly disposed to every one.’ He argued that Korea was under
military rule at the time when the Case occurred, and that it had
happened during ‘the period of change,’ thereby implying the
necessity of overlooking faults in Japan’s governing of Korea.
[Gale, “Count Terauchi, Governor of Chosen,” New York Independent,
29 February 1912, and The Christian Question in Korea, 2 March
1912.]”
By the time 123 of those arrested came to trial
on June 28, 1912, world opinion had been alerted that the Japanese
were persecuting Korean Christians. The trial was a farce, the
accused had been tortured to produce confessions, there was no
evidence and the accused were not allowed to defend themselves;
foreign missionaries were not allowed to testify in support of them.
105 were found guilty of treason and sentenced to prison with hard
labor. The leaders of American churches with missions in Korea held
a meeting with the American President Taft in July 1912 to express
their dismay. They pointed out that the Korean Protestant mission
included “330 foreign missionaries, 962 schools, a medical college,
a nurses’ training school, thirteen hospitals, eighteen dispensaries
. . . 600 churches, a Christian community of 250,000.”
A lengthy appeals process brought little
satisfaction but finally, by February 1915, all those convicted had
been released; it was probably less that the Japanese realized that
a mistake had been made, more a matter of their feeling they had
made their point. American legal experts condemned the Japanese
criminal code and court system as “archaic, barbaric and
uncivilized.” Ku Daeyeol writes: “Japanese colonial rule was viewed
as having failed its moral obligations to provide legal protection
to Koreans and to treat them in an equitable manner.” The British
Ambassador to Japan, Sir Claude MacDonald, told the Japanese Foreign
Minister, Uchida Yasuya, that the trial was a “travesty of justice.”
Everyone understood that the case had revealed Japan’s deep distrust
of and hostility to Christianity and the presence of western
missionaries in Korea.
The other way in which the Japanese quickly lost
the sympathy and support of the western community was by legislation
limiting the right of foreigners to be active in education, medical
work and business in Korea. Ku Daeyeol writes: “The first of these
laws was the Company Law, put into effect in early 1911. The Company
Law made it necessary to obtain Government-General’s approval to set
up new companies in Korea, to locate branch offices in Korea, and to
conduct business in Korea. In its practical application, this law
was used in a variety of ways to discourage and prevent foreign
firms from establishing a base of operations in Korea. As a result,
the powers had lost nearly all of their rights and privileges on the
peninsula within a few years of the Annexation.” In November 1913,
ordinance 100 was issued that made it almost impossible for
non-Japanese to practice medicine. In August 1914, ordinance 83 made
it necessary to obtain government permission to open a new church or
pay church workers; in March 1915 the Bible was excluded from school
curricula at the same time as the Japanese language was made the
sole language of instruction within the next five years . . . The
ultimate result within Korea was the 1919 March 1 Independence
Uprising.
This led to a violent crackdown culminating in
the burning of the church in Cheam-ri, near Suwon, with thirty or so
Koreans locked inside, on April 15, 1919, and the destruction of
many villages in the surrounding region. Raymond Scofield (US
Vice-Consul 1913-18; Consul, 1918-19), Horace H. Underwood, and A.
W. Taylor, a gold miner and photographer serving as correspondent of
the A.P. News Agency in Seoul, traveled to the region and Underwood
wrote a report for the State Department. Another American
missionary, W. A. Noble, went to Cheam-ri a few days later with
William M. Royds, the acting British Consul General in Seoul.
Nagata summarizes what followed:
After this, a delegation of
Christian missionaries including Noble met with Governor-General
Hasegawa, and Noble informed Hasegawa of the things he had seen
and heard at Cheamri. Hasegawa expressed his regret and told the
delegation that not only would the persons in charge of the
incident be punished, but also that such an atrocity would never
happen again. He insisted that no order to massacre the
inhabitants of Cheam-ri and destroy the village had been given to
the military police. But the delegation was not greatly persuaded
by Hasegawa’s explanation, because by that point a further
eighteen villages besides Cheam-ri had been destroyed. (. . .)
Under these circumstances, the American
missionaries in Korea could not ignore the brutality of the Japanese
authorities evident in their suppression of the March First
Movement, and “No Neutrality for Brutality” became a common slogan
among them. [The Japanese Prime Minister] Hara’s wish to transform
the “Rule by Bayonet” into “Cultural Administration (Bunka Seiji)”
was realized by naming the former Naval Minister Makoto Saito to the
post of Governor-General. (. . .) Saito met several times with
American missionaries over dinner in 1919. So the American
missionaries in Korea had to change their views. Originally they had
had no intention of intervening in political issues in Korea
(especially the issue of Korean independence). Knowing that measures
were being taken to reform the rule of Korea by Japan (especially
regarding the issue of religion) and the new Government-General of
Korea was reacting severely against the participation of Christian
groups with Korean nationalist movements, the American missionaries
in Korea sought a way to cooperate with the new Governor-General.
Some missionaries warned Korean church leaders not to take part in
Korean nationalist movements and to keep aloof from Korean politics.
In trying to imagine the context in which the
RASKB came into being and was revived, one important fact has become
clear. Whereas missionaries usually came directly to Korea from
their home countries, learned Korean language and first experienced
life in Asia in the Korean cultural context, the same was not true
for diplomats. With the exception of John Newell Jordan, who came
from and soon went back to China, and Horace Allen, who began his
life in Korea as a missionary doctor, the diplomats mentioned
previously had without exception spent long years in Japan before
being assigned to Korea. They had mostly mastered Japanese language
and culture and were familiar with some of the most refined and
talented figures in Meiji Japan. What united both groups was a
conviction that Korea needed to be rescued from its old self and
re-made in a modern form; Japan was seen on both sides as working
for such change.
It would be interesting to have greater access to
personal expressions of the ways in which missionaries and diplomats
viewed Koreans and Japanese. It is too easy for us to see things
with hindsight and to assume that the rightness of the Korean demand
for independence from Japan was always widely supported by the
missionaries, at least. Clearly this was not the case until events
following the Annexation forced the Western powers to realize that
many of the Japanese viewed the missionaries as enemy agents of
foreign powers and the Korean Christians as a threat. Even after the
suppression of the 1919 March 1 Movement, there were some
missionaries who continued to support Japan unconditionally, but
they were certainly a minority, although many probably tried to
avoid direct confrontations.
One other American diplomat with very strong
Japanese connections had been active in the RASKB from 1914. Ransford Stevens Miller Jr.
(1867-1932) was born in Ithaca, New York on October 3, 1867. He
entered Ithaca High School from Ithaca Grammar School in September,
1880, graduated in 1884, and entered Cornell University the same
year. He graduated A.B. in 1888. He went to Japan in about 1890 to
serve as secretary to the International Committee of the YMCA in
Tokyo. He quickly mastered Japanese and from 1895 was acting as
interpreter to US Legation, Tokyo. By 1898 he was acting as
“Japanese secretary” in the American Legation in Tokyo, having
become part of the diplomatic corps by an indirect route. He served
for a time as a member of the Council of the Asiatic Society of
Japan. In 1909 he was called to Washington to become chief of the
Division of Far Eastern Affairs at the State Department. There he
drafted, in negotiation with Japan, the U.S. policy memorandum
supporting Japan's 1910 annexation of Korea. He was present at the
meeting of the Protestant leaders with President Taft in 1912. He
was appointed as the consul general to Seoul in 1914 and remained in
that post, with an unexplained interruption 1917-1920, until 1930.
Miller was absent from Korea at the time of the
March 1, 1919, demonstrations, returning soon after. He was first
elected to be a Councillor of the RASKB on February 5, 1915, and
served as President of the RASKB for a year in 1920, replacing
Bishop Trollope. This was probably because at that critical juncture
the missionaries felt that an association with the American
consul-general at its head was more likely to be left in peace. Once
they had gained a positive impression of the new attitude espoused
by Saito, they felt able to bring Trollope back as President the
following year. The RASKB continued to be active until the outbreak
of the Pacific War in December 1941, when its president, Horace H.
Underwood, and the other remaining foreigners from non-Axis
countries were detained then repatriated.
E. Taylor Atkins. Primitive Selves: Koreana in the Japanese Colonial
Gaze, 1910-1945. University of California Press, 2010.
Ku Daeyeol. “A Preliminary Study on the World Powers’ Approaches to
the Korean Question before 1945.” Korea Journal 41:2 (Summer 2001)
292-319
Ku Daeyeol. “Korean International Relations in the Colonial Period
and the Question of Independence.” Korea Journal 38:4 (Winter 1998)
90-129.
Wi Jo Kang. Christ and Caesar in modern Korea: a history of
Christianity and politics. NY: SUNY Press. 1997
Mark Caprio. Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea,
1910-1945. Seattle: University of Washington Press. 2009.
Hyung Il Pai. “The Creation of National Treasures and Monuments: The
1916 Japanese Laws on the Preservation of Korean Remains and
Relics and Their Colonial Legacies.” The Journal of Korean Studies,
Vol. 25, No. 1, 72-95. University of Hawaii, 2001.
Henry Gerhard Appenzeller
The first paper presented to the Society, on “The Influence of China
upon Korea,” was given by James Scarth Gale on October 24, 1900 and
it was the first paper published in Volume One of Transactions a few months later. It
stressed the overwhelming influence of Chinese culture on Korea. The
second paper, by Homer B. Hulbert, on “Korean Survivals,” sought to
contradict it and stress the role of native Korean traditions and
values. In the two years that followed, seven more lectures were
given and 2 more volumes of Transactions were published. But, after
a final lecture about Ginseng at the end of 1902 and the publication
of Volume 3 of Transactions soon after, everything stopped. The
RASKB seemed to be dead.
The
first Vice-President of the RASKB was the Rev. Dr. George Heber Jones, a scholarly Methodist
missionary born in Mohawk, NY on Aug 14, 1867. In 1887 the Methodist
Episcopal Mission Board appointed him to Korea, where he was at
first connected with Pai Chai High School and College in Seoul. In
1892 he moved to Chemulpo (Incheon), where he was stationed for the
next ten years. Proficient in Korean and a member of the Board of
Translators of the Bible, he was one of the founding editors of and
a regular contributor to the Korean Repository, and later wrote for
Hulbert’s monthly Korea Review, as well as being the founder and
editor of the Sin-hak Wol-po, a Korean-language theological review.
One of his main interests seems to have been the comparative study
of religions and this is reflected in his three contributions to
Transactions. After returning to the U.S. in 1903, in 1907 Jones
came back to Korea and became president of the Bible Institute of
Korea and Theological Seminary of the Methodist Church. He returned
permanently to the U.S. in 1911 to care for his elderly parents and
died in 1919. His published works in English include: Korea, the Land, People and Customs
(1907), The Korea Mission of the
Methodist Episcopal Church (1910), and Christian medical work in Korea
(1910?). He is remembered in Korea as one of the editors of the
first Korean hymn book.
Probably the most admired by later generations of Koreans, for his
support of Korean autonomy, Homer
Bezaleel Hulbert was born on January 26, 1863 in New Haven,
Vermont, graduated from Dartmouth College in 1884, then entered
Union Theological College. While he was studying there, the Korean
government announced plans to establish a school in Seoul teaching
English and asked the American government to send teachers. As a
result, Homer B. Hulbert arrived in Korea in 1886 with a few others
to act as “professor” in the Royal English School, where the sons of
high officials were to learn English. However, seeing no future in
his role as teacher of a narrow-minded elite with no interest in
English, he left Korea at the end of 1891. 
James
Scarth Gale was born on February 19, 1863, in
Pilkington, Wellington County, Ontario (Canada), and graduated from
University College at the University of Toronto with a B.A. in
foreign languages in 1888. He had planned to study theology but
instead left for Korea as a missionary volunteer with the YMCA the
same year. He arrived in December 1888, and spent 1889 and 1890
preaching and teaching English in a number of places, in northern
Korea and in Busan, before visiting Manchuria. In 1894 he published
Korean Grammatical Forms at the Trilingual Press and in 1895 he
produced a Korean translation prepared by himself and his wife of
John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s
Progress at the same press, the first translation of a work
of English literature into Korean. In 1897 he published his
Korean-English Dictionary at Yokohama as well as Korean Sketches in Chicago.
Gale was the leading scholar of the Korean language at this time,
and he clearly enjoyed writing works of a literary kind, too. He
later served as President of the RASKB in 1915, then as
Vice-President 1923-7. Gale left Korea in 1927 to retire in Bath,
England, where he died in 1937. His History of the Korean People was re-edited and
published with a detailed biography by Richard Rutt (RASKB. 1972)
Another of the founders of the RASKB was Dr. Horace N. Allen (1858-1932). Allen had first
come to Korea in 1884 as a Presbyterian missionary doctor stationed
in the American legation. Soon after his arrival, he saved the life
of Min Yeong-ik, the Queen’s favorite nephew, when he had been
seriously injured during the Gapsin Coup in 1884, demonstrating the
value of Western medicine. In 1887 he accompanied the first Korean
legation to Washington, D.C.. This led him to move from missionary,
medical activities to diplomacy. In 1890, he became secretary to the
American legation in Seoul. By 1897 he was US Minister and consul
general in Seoul. In 1905 he left Korea, in part at least because he
favored Russia over Japan while the American State Department was
committed to supporting Japan's intervention in Korea. He returned
to medicine in the US, becoming a doctor in Toledo, Ohio.
Dr. William B. Scranton
(1856-1922) came to Korea in June 1885 to begin medical work and
soon opened Sibyeongwon (Universal Relief House), in Jeong-dong
where Jeil Church now stands, and other clinics, including
Boguyeogwan (in Jeong-dong) for women with the support of his
mother, Mary F. B. Scranton, in the same area. His mother
established Ewha Hakdang as the first school for girls, also in
Jeong-dong, in 1886.
Oliver R. Avison (1860-1956) was born in England, his
family moving to Canada when he was six. He became a doctor there
and arrived in Korea in 1893 as part of the Presbyterian mission
after meeting Horace G. Underwood. He became the head of Jejungwon
Medical School in 1894 and his appeal for funds at a conference in
New York decided Louis Severance to make his donation. The names
were changed to Severance Hospital and Severance Medical School. The
first seven graduates in 1908 received the first doctors’ licenses
issued by the Korean government. In 1913, the name changed to
Severance Union Medical College. In 1916, on the death of H. G.
Underwood, Avison also became president of Chosun Christian College.
He was forced out of Korea by the Japanese in 1935, and L. George
Paik (Paik Nakjun) was his successor as President of the Severance
Union Medical College. In 1945, Paik became president of the newly
named Chosen Christian University, that was to become Yonsei
University in 1957.
One of the leading misisonary families through
several generations were the Underwoods. Horace Grant Underwood was born in London, England,
on July 19, 1859, then immigrated to the US when he was thirteen. He
arrived in Korea on the same boat as Henry G. Appenzeller on Easter
Sunday (April 5), 1885. Underwood worked with the other scholars
mentioned above on the Korean Bible, producing the New Testament in
1900, the Old Testament in 1910. He married a doctor, Lillias
Horton. MD (1851-1921), who served as doctor to the Queen prior to
her murder. Underwood founded the Gyeongsin School in 1886, then
Chosun Christian College, which first opened in March 1915 at the
Seoul YMCA. It was renamed "Yonhi College" two years later in 1917.
The current location of the main campus of Yonsei University was
purchased in 1917 through a donation from Mr. John T. Underwood, the
typewriter maker.
In 1916 Underwood
returned to the US in ill health and died almost at once.
Horace Grant Underwood’s son, Horace
Horton Underwood, who returned to Korea from studies in
1917, was to play a leading role in denouncing
the Japanese repression of the March 1 1919 Movement. He
served as president of Chosun Christian College from 1924 until
1941. He was active in the RASKB, especially after the death of
Bishop Trollope in 1930. He was still in Korea when the Pacific War
began, was repatriated by the Japanese in 1942 and returned to Korea
soon after Liberation. His wife Ethel was murdered during an attack
on their house by communists in 1949. He was in the US when the
Korean War began, returned despite poor health, and died in Busan
early in 1951. 
One of
the rare British, Anglican missionaries, Mark Napier Trollope was born in London on March 28,
1862, studied at New College, Oxford, then at Cuddesdon College and
he was ordained deacon in 1887 and priest in 1888. Until 1890 he was
Curate at Great Yarmouth and while there he responded to an appeal
from Bishop Corfe in Korea for volunteers. He came to Korea in the
same year. From 1890 to 1902 he was Chaplain to the Bishop and
Senior S.P.G. Missionary, and from 1896-1902 he was Vicar General.
In 1902 he returned to England for a time on account of the ill
health of his father. He returned to Korea as the new Bishop in
later 1911 and continued to serve there until his sudden death in
1930. Bishop Trollope served as President of the RASKB 1917-19,
1922-25, 1928-30.
The
first President of the RASKB was J.
H. Gubbins, at the time acting as her Britannic Majesty’s
Chargé d’Affaires in Seoul. The first Vice-President was
George Heber Jones; the Honorary Secretaries were James S. Gale and
Homer B. Hulbert. J. H. Gubbins had long lived in Japan but only
spent comparatively little time in Korea. He was well acquainted
with the Asiatic Society of Japan, of which he spoke at the
inaugural meeting of the RASKB. John Harington Gubbins (1852-1929)
attended Harrow School then became a student interpreter in the
British Japan Consular Service in 1871. On June 1, 1889, he became
Japanese Secretary at Tokyo, and was appointed Second Secretary at
the Tokyo legation on February 13, 1890. He briefly served as acting
Chargé d’Affaires in Korea from May 18, 1900 until November
4, 1901. Later he was appointed lecturer in Japanese language at
Oxford University (1909-1912) but the position was soon terminated
for lack of pupils. He published two books, The Progress of Japan,
1853-1871 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911) and The Making of Modern Japan
(London: Seeley, Service & Co, 1922).
The
second President, in 1901-2, Sir
John Newell Jordan GCMG GCIE KCB PC (1852 – 1925), as he
later became during an illustrious diplomatic career, was the
official British Chargé d'affaires whom J. H. Gubbins had
been replacing during an absence the previous year. Born in Balloo,
County Down, Ireland, he was educated in Ireland, then in 1876 he
joined the Chinese Consular Service as a student interpreter. He
held various posts in South China before being appointed Chinese
Secretary at the British Legation in Peking in 1891. In 1896 he was
appointed Consul-General at Seoul, becoming Chargé d'affaires
in 1898 and Minister-Resident in 1901. He remained there until
November 1905. In 1906 he was appointed HM Envoy Extraordinary and
Minister Plenipotentiary to China as the successor to Sir Ernest
Satow and remained in the post until his retirement in 1920. He was
also appointed to the Privy Council in 1915.
When
the RASKB was revived, the first President elected was the British
consul at Chemulpo, Arthur Hyde
Lay (1865 - 1934). Lay was born in China, educated in
Britain and arrived in Japan in 1887 as an interpreter trainee. From
1899 until 1902 he worked in Japan as an interpreter but seems to
have mastered Korean by 1904. He published Chinese Characters for
the Use of Students of the Japanese Language in 1898. He served as
British Consul at Chemulpo (Incheon) in 1911, then went to be consul
in Hawai’i (1912) and Shimonoseki (1913). From 1914 until 1927 he
was British consul-general in Seoul and seems to have developed a
great affection for Korea. However, Ku Daeyeol notes that “Lay had a
stereotyped view of Korea, commonly shared by almost all Western
diplomats. In a report he wrote following his retirement, he
recalled that the Korean political situation had been dismal before
the Russo-Japanese War of 1904, and concluded that the country still
lacked the ability to maintain an autonomous government.” In October
1911, Lay was obliged to resign as President of the RASKB since he
was leaving Korea for Hawai’i. His son has written that he had grown
so attached to Korea that he did everything to have his posting to
Hawai’i cancelled. He was replaced as President by James S. Gale,
who resigned in February 1916, allowing Lay, now back as British
Consul-General in Seoul, to be re-elected President for another year
before he was replaced by Bishop Trollope.