1. Pioneer Protestant Missionaries in Korea Seoul/1887 William Elliot Griffis Collection, Rutgers University
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1. Pioneer Protestant Missionaries in Korea Seoul/1887 William Elliot Griffis Collection, Rutgers University This rare early photograph includes several of the most prominent pioneer American Presbyterian and Methodist missionary families just a year or two after their arrival in Korea. At the far left in the top row is John W. Heron, the first appointed Presbyterian medical doctor who died of dysentery in 1890, only five years after his arrival in Korea as a missionary. In the middle of the same row is Henry G. Appenzeller, the pioneer Methodist missionary educator who established the first Western-style school in Korea known as the Paejae Academy. At the far right is William B. Scranton, the pioneer Methodist medical missionary who perhaps is most remembered today for having brought his mother to Korea. In the middle row at the far left is Mrs. John “Hattie” Herron, who in 1892 became Mrs. James S. Gale following her husbandʼs untimely death. To the right are Mrs. Henry Ella Dodge Appenzeller, Mrs. William B. Scranton, and the indomitable Mrs. Mary F. Scranton, the mother of William B. Scranton, who founded the school for girls that developed into Ewha University. In the bottom row (l–r) are Annie Ellers—a Presbyterian missionary nurse who later transferred to the Methodist Mission following her marriage to Dalzell A. Bunker—Horace G. Underwood, the first ordained Presbyterian missionary in Korea who is most prominently remembered as the founder of the predecessor to Yonsei University, and (probably) Lousia S. Rothwilder, who worked with Mrs. Mary F. Scranton at Ewha and succeeded her as principal. The child standing at bottom center is most likely Augusta Scranton, the eldest daughter of Dr. and Mrs. William B. Scranton, who was a two-year old when her parents brought her to Korea in1885. (Our thanks go to Professor Sung-deuk Oak of UCLA and Ellen Svea Swanson for their assistance in identifying several of the individuals in this photograph.) The group is gathered on the front steps of what appears to be the first Underwood residence located in what today is known as the Chŏng-dong district of Seoul. This photograph captures the anomaly of the situation of these pioneer Protestant missionaries in a country that only recently had rescinded the ban on the entry of Christian missionaries. In time, life in Korea would transform them as it did most missionaries. At this early point in their missionary career, however, they seemingly remain resolutely American even in a thoroughly Korean setting. 2. Funeral Cortège of Bishop Florian Démange Taegu/February, 1938 Maryknoll Mission Archives Florian Démange (1875–1938) was appointed as the first bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Taegu by the Paris Foreign Missions Society (Missions Étrangères de Paris). He adopted the Korean name Ahn Sehwa and spent the last 28 years of his life in Korea. The length of his funeral cortège and the large number of wreaths on display are reflections of the bishopʼs high standing in the local community. The storefront sign appearing in the middle of the photograph indicates that the building is a funeral parlor. The spire in the distance belongs to the Taegu Cheil Presbyterian Church, the first to be established in Taegu, as its name in Korean indicates. The first Western Catholic missionaries to enter Korea were French missionary priests dispatched by the Paris Foreign Missions Society. They began arriving in Korea in the 1840s by stealth, either via the Korean border with Manchuria or the Yellow Sea, to proselytize to a growing Korean flock. During its 350-year history since its establishment in 1659, the Society has dispatched over 4,200 missionary priests to Asia with the mission of adapting Catholicism to local customs, establishing a native clergy and keeping close contacts with Rome. In the 19th century, local persecutions of the Societyʼs priests were often a pretext for French military interventions in Asia, including the French campaign against Korea in 1856 (pyŏngʼin yangyo). 3. St. Benedictʼs Abbey and Seminary Tŏkwŏn/Date Unknown Maryknoll Mission Archives In 1909, missionary Benedictines from the Archabbey of Otillien in Bravaria, Germany, established St. Benedictʼs Priory in Seoul. The priory was elevated to the status of an abbey in 1913 after the arrival of additional monks from several other German monasteries of the Ottilien Congregation. Due to tensions with French missioners in Seoul, the abbey was relocated in 1927 to a newly constructed monastic complex in Tŏkwŏn, near the city of Wŏnsan, in what today is North Korea. The complex included a seminary for educating priests that is shown in the foreground of this photograph. From their new base, the priests and brothers of St. Benedictʼs Abbey conducted missionary activities all throughout an area that ran from the thirty-eighth to the forty-eighth parallel, 1100 km to the confluence of the Amur and Ussuri Rivers in Manchuria. The work of the abbey was supplemented by a community of missionary Benedictine sisters from the Abbey of Tutzing, which also is located in Bravaria, who established a missionary station in Wŏnsan. In May 1949, St. Benedictʼs Abbey with its related missionary stations was brutally suppressed by the recently established government of the Democratic Peopleʼs Republic of Korea. Seventy German and Korean Benedictines, including twenty Tutzing sisters, were arrested and led off to prison. Ultimately, between 1949 and 1952, one abbot/bishop, eighteen priests, thirteen brothers, and three sisters were either executed or died from hunger and disease in prisons or in detention camps in North Korea. The forty-two German Benedictines in North Korea who survived the ordeal were repatriated to Germany in 1954. The Korean Benedictines who survived or were able to escape this oppression regrouped in 1952 and settled in South Korea at Waegwan, which is near Taegu, to form a new monastery known today as the Abbey of St. Maurus & Placidus. Some of the German Benedictines, who had returned to Korea shortly after their repatriation to Germany, rejoined the community in this new location. 4. Translating the Bible into Korean Chŏnju/1910 Norman Thorpe Collection William D. Reynolds of the Southern Presbyterian Mission is at work with his Korean assistants, Seung-Doo Lee and Jung-Sam Kim, translating the Bible into Korean written entirely in the native Korean alphabet. At the time, the written language of the elite in Korea was Chinese, but the missionaries preferred to use the native Korean alphabet (hanʼgŭl) since texts written in it were accessible to anyone who had only a basic education. Continuing the practice pioneered by Catholic missionaries, who began publishing excerpts from the Gospels in the native Korean alphabet in 1780, Protestant missionaries began to use it extensively beginning in the later 19th century. This was one of the major factors that made it possible for the Christian faith to be spread rapidly. The widespread circulation of Christian literature promoted the general use of the native Korean alphabet, which soon contributed to a sharp rise in literacy rates among Koreans. This postcard was one of a series meant to promote overseas missions. It was designed by the Presbyterian Committee of Publication in Richmond, Virginia, and printed in Germany to take advantage of superior German color printing techniques. 5. Maryknoll Sisters Studying Korean Ŭiju/1925 Maryknoll Mission Archives Four Maryknoll sisters—(l–r) Eugenia, Augustine, Sylvester and Andrew— are studying Korean with their tutor Helen Soh. Known officially as the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America, Maryknoll began missionary work in Korea in 1923 with the establishment of stations in northwestern Korea. The Maryknollers were the first American Catholics to enter the Korea mission field. Living in religious communities together with their Korean counterparts, American Maryknoll sisters acquired levels of fluency in Korean that were rare among other foreigners. 6. Stacy Roberts with his Korean Tutor Sonchʼŏn, North Pʼyŏngan Province/1908 Donald Clark Collection Stacy Roberts, who was assigned to the Presbyterian station in Sonchʼon, North Pʼyŏngan Province after his arrival in Korea in 1907, is studying Korean with a tutor. The setting gives a glimpse of how missionaries modified the interiors of traditional Korean houses to be more congenial to a Western lifestyle. An ordained minister, Roberts later taught at the Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Pyongyang, and subsequently served as its president from 1924 until 1930. The missionaries recognized the urgent need to learn Korean, but even the most basic tools for language study were lacking. This problem began to be addressed when Horace Grant Underwood—the first ordained Presbyterian missionary in Korea—undertook to compile a concise Korean dictionary for English speakers. While some of his fellow missionaries initially were opposed to his work on the dictionary for being overly ambitious and likely to divert too much time away from the primary work of evangelism, Underwood kept the project manageable by basing his work on a Korean–French dictionary produced by Catholic missionaries in the early 19th century. Published in 1890, Underwoodʼs dictionary proved to be invaluable to the missionary effort in Korea. It was supplemented by a more comprehensive dictionary published in 1897 by James Scarth Gale, another pioneer missionary who previously had worked with Underwood on his dictionary project. Newly arrived missionaries were expected to spend a substantial part of their time studying Korean with tutors. These tutors were often the first Koreans with whom the missionaries had sustained contact. As an incentive to promote language study, Protestant missionaries normally were required to pass a Korean language fluency examination to be confirmed as full voting members of their mission organizations. Not all missionaries acquired a mastery of the language, however, especially if it was not critical to their assigned work.