Colonial-era collaboration and the controversy surrounding Helen Kim's statue

An article titled "Controversy continues over 'treacherous' 1st Ewha President" appeared in the Korea Times a few days ago. It reports on Ewha University students who put up a sign Monday near a statue of the university's first president, Kim Hwal-ran, or Helen Kim, to draw attention to her "treacherous," "pro-Japanese" statements "under the Japanese occupation."

The students said a continued failure to remove the statue represents the shameful history the country is in the process of eradicating.

“Pro-Japanese activities are a crime that in no way can be justified under any circumstances. Many figures including Kim who committed such acts are still revered on the campuses of many universities,” they said.

Kim’s controversial remarks included, “We are now able to welcome the overwhelming joy of the long-awaited conscription. We, the women, should send our husbands and sons to the battlefield with a graceful smile.” She justified her words as "necessary in order to keep Ewha open under harsh colonial policies.”

Personally, I don't think a sign including some of a public figure's less laudable acts to give a more balanced picture is a bad thing. I doubt "balance" is what these fundamentalist students are aiming for, however. Rather than celebrating a woman who "spent 40 years at Ewha as an educator," who was "the first Korean woman to earn a Ph.D.," and the founder of the Korea Times, the students want the statue removed and one of Yu Gwan-sun put up instead. Personally, I'm surprised there isn't a statue of Yu at Ewha University (there is one at Jangchungdong Park). At the same time, despite her courage, it seems to me it's her martyrdom - her "innocent victim" status, of the sort that motivated the 2002 candlelight protests - that has been memorialized above her accomplishments. She seems more remembered for her death than her life, and replacing Helen Kim's statue with one of her would be like tearing down Horace Underwood's statue (for the third time) at Yonsei and replacing it with one of Lee Han-yeol. (Admittedly this isn't the best comparison; Lee's death, despite his presence at the protest, was more of a tragic accident; Yu organized and took part in protests, and continued to protest in prison, knowing full well the fate that likely lay in store for her.)

To give an idea of what the sign the students erected looks like, it's not the placard or banner I was expecting (from here):

There's nothing wrong with highlighting the less-than-patriotic statements of public figures, but it seems to me what Helen Kim wrote or said was not all that uncommon at the time. It really should say above that her statements were made during the Pacific War. Saying "under the Japanese occupation" creates the impression she did this for years, and not under the extraordinary conditions of total war and "imperialization" of Koreans in the Japanese Empire in the early 1940s. While there are certainly people who deserve the label "pro-Japanese" (Yi Wan-yeong, for example), others fall into a much grayer area, particularly those who made statements during the war.

Though combat never reached the peninsula (other than a few bombings), the Pacific War was still a time of suffering and difficult choices for Koreans, particularly for those drafted / coerced into the Imperial Army, labor battalions, or into becoming comfort women. Korean intellectuals and artists faced challenges throughout the colonial period, what with being educated most often in Japan but finding little chance for employment in Korea (see Chae Man-sik's story 'Ready-Made Life,' for example). During the Pacific War, however, they faced two options: to make statements or art supporting the war effort, or to not work. Some, like author Yi Tae-jun, retired to the countryside for the duration of the war (as detailed in his story 'Before and After Liberation' which is translated in On the Eve of the Uprising and other stories from colonial Korea). For most people, however, foregoing an income was not an option.

To what degree intellectuals actually supported the war effort can be hard to tell. To be sure, some people were rather genuine supporters of Japan. That younger people would have supported Japan wouldn't be too surprising, considering that generation grew up under Japanese rule. Once the war started, some who were more critical of Western imperialism may have been happy to see Japan "liberating" Asia. As described in Mark Caprio's book Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945, for example, Yun Chiho responded to the "electrifying news" of Pearl Harbor by writing in his diary, "A new Day has indeed dawned on the Old World! This is a real war of races—the Yellow against the White." For the first six months of the Pacific War, Japan was winning (and did its best to hide its subsequent losses), so it wouldn't be surprising that some would have seen Japan as the right horse to back.

To highlight their defeat at the hands of the Japanese Army, 1,000 British and Australian Prisoners of War captured in Singapore were shipped to Korea, marched through the streets of Busan, Incheon, and Seoul in late September 1942, and interned in POW camps in the latter two cities. Some POWs were ordered to labour in front of Koreans to emphasize how defeated they were. From accounts by these POWs, however, it's clear that many Koreans were sympathetic to them and did things like give them food. Even Korean POW guards shared information with them, wanted to learn English from them, or even, in one case at the end of the war, offered to give them their guns to break out of the prison camp.

British and Australian POWs marching through Pusan

Upon the arrival of the POWs in Korea, the Maeil Sinbo, the Korean-language mouthpiece of the Government General, published numerous articles about the POWs over two days. On the second day, September 26, 1942, there appeared numerous testimonials by intellectuals (some Korean, others perhaps Japanese, though since by that point most Koreans had Japanese names, it can be hard to tell). Here is one I translated:

Thinking again about the crimes of the British and Americans
Shirehara Rakujun

After the Great East Asian War our grateful citizens will always be moved by seeing in photos and newspaper articles the military exploits of the invincible imperial army, but today as we saw the POWs directly with our own eyes this deep feeling grew further and we were thankful for the efforts of the imperial army.

Now as we strive to make greater efforts to impress upon those people the spirit and power of the empire, we deeply feel that we are in the glorious position of victorious imperial subjects and will ever more firmly resolve to win.

Looking from the position of a religious person, I think again about the British and Americans when they came in the past with an overly proud attitude of arrogance, of only pretending to believe in Christianity, and also masking this.

Now they have surrendered before the righteous imperial army and the day when they must keenly feel the sins of the past has come.

Now when we face the POWs we will fulfill our duty with a solemn bearing as imperial subjects and meanwhile we will not become careless and carried away by the feeling of victory but will further strive to achieve our goal in the Great East Asian War

The Korean name of Shirehara Rakujun was Baek Nak-jun, better known as George Paik, friend of missionaries and, up to 1939, a teacher at, and then dean of, Chosen Christian College. According to this book, Paik spent much of the war under house arrest, so one assumes he wrote the above column under duress. He went on to organize Seoul National University after liberation, became president of Yonhui College and oversaw its merger with Severence Medical College in 1957 into Yonsei University, and served as Minister of Education from 1950 to 1952.

What Baek wrote (or what is attributed to him) is typical of that kind of writing that was in the Maeil Sinbo when the POWs arrived. It seemed as if the Japanese believed that by repeating mantras like "we felt ever more moved to have become imperial subjects and felt more keenly the deep desire to support the war to its end," Koreans would actually believe it. I thought Jun Uchida put it quite eloquently in her book Brokers of Empire when she spoke of "the veneer of submission that the majority of Koreans were forced to maintain under total war."

Where should Baek be placed on the scale of collaborators and nation builders? And what of Helen Kim, whose statue has so raised the ire of certain Ewha students? It's not an easy question, and is one needing careful examination of evidence, consideration of the pressure put on intellectuals and prominent Koreans in the 1940s, and the weighing of their actions before and after their statements. As Koen De Ceuster's "The Nation Exorcised: The Historiography of Collaboration in South Korea" and Don Baker's "Memory Wars and Prospects for Reconciliation in South Korea" make clear, however, the question of whether someone is guilty of collaboration is beholden to serving current political needs more than anything else.

The truth that many do not want to admit is that most intellectuals at that time made statements or created works supporting the war; it was what they had to do to continue working. Likewise, most people were forced to recite oaths of loyalty to the Japanese Empire, bow at Shinto Shrines, or to compromise in other ways. The Shinto Shrine issue proved incredibly divisive for Korean Christians, particularly when some foreign missionaries thought they should simply obey and tell themselves they were simply "looking at their shoes" when they bowed. Some did not compromise, of course, and actively stood up to Japan, facing prison or death for their efforts, but by the 1940s most of those actively resisting Japan did so outside of the country. The problem with admitting this is that it seems to allow for only exiles, or those serving prison terms at the time, to have any kind of legitimacy. That certainly seems to have been the way Kim Ku felt, as related by Mark Gayn in his book Japan Diary, about his visit to Korea in 1946:

I recalled the story of a press conference at which Kim Koo, the irreconcilable enemy of Japan and of Korean collaborators. was asked what he would do with the latter. With characteristic bluntness, Kim Koo said:

"Practically everyone in Korea is a collaborator. They all ought to be in jail."

A young adviser doubling in brass as an interpreter did not even blink. "Mr. Kim Koo says," he translated, "that it's problem to be studied carefully." [Page 433-34]

And studied carefully it has been, with a Biographical Dictionary of Collaborators (친일인명사전) listing over 4,300 people having been published in 2009 by the Institute for Research in Collaborationist Activities (민족문제연구소). In 2004, the Institute for Research in Collaborationist Activities published Colonial Korea and War Art (식민지 조선과 전쟁미술), which spent 30 pages listing Korean artists who made art "glorifying the war." It charged that these artists

beautified and supported the Japanese Empire’s foreign war of aggression, and it was a time of extreme, treasonous acts like urging [Koreans] to go as far giving their lives for the emperor and the construction of Greater East Asia. Therefore the pro-Japanese activities of a good many Korean artists which got into full swing after the [start of the] Sino-Japanese War were not just anti-national / traitorous acts, but, in regard to driving a good number of Koreans to become cannon fodder in the war of aggression, compelling their deaths, they were also war crimes. The pro-Japanese art of that time deserves to be ruled as anti-national and anti-human criminal activity. [Page 179]

Needless to say, declaring the activities of artists to be "war crimes" pulls off the neat trick of making Kim Ku's "Practically everyone in Korea is a collaborator. They all ought to be in jail" seem moderate in comparison. Kim was right to some degree, in that everyone living in Korea had to make some kind of accommodation with the Japanese, regardless of how they felt. But admitting to such complexity does not seem to make for a useful national memory of the colonial period, so it's easier to draw a line and single out a small number of "traitors" who committed the sin of not resisting Japanese rule like the rest of the nation. As Don Baker pointed out, the argument between left and right in South Korea has not been over whether to allow for more or less nuance, but where to draw the line, with the left wanting Park Chung-hee and other elites connected to authoritarian rule and jaebeols included, and the right resisting this.

With the kind of Manichean discourse quoted above, rife with terms like "anti-national," "anti-human" and "war crime," being seen as not out of the ordinary in South Korea, it's not surprising that Ewha students would want to tear down the statue of a woman who devoted 40 years of her life to their university for her "traitorous" act of making comments supporting the Pacific War, whether it was a common-enough act among intellectuals at the time or not. Returning to the Ewha protest, here is a photo of the banner the students displayed (from here):

The text in red reads "I say goodbye Hwal-ran, okay" in English, but written in Hangeul. Ignoring the rudeness of using her first name, I couldn't help take note of the English in use on the sign. This actually dovetails into a thought experiment that came to mind some time ago in regard to the question of collaboration. Namely, what would happen if North Korea took over the South and and had to deal with a population that included many, many people who had links to the Korean race's eternal enemy, the United States? Would being able to speak English be cause for suspicion? (One assumes many English loan words would be excised from the language, as South Korea's Yusin government announced it would do in 1976.) Defectors have already spoken of the North Korean military's plan to set up camps to exterminate "half breeds," but what of people who had, say, studied in the US? They might say they were just trying to improve their lot in life, that it didn't mean they had any great love for the US, but if the North Koreans used the fundamentalist logic of the Institute for Research in Collaborationist Activities, they'd be sent off to camps - or worse - with little debate. While the excuses they might make for their "collaboration" with the US - a nation that some even now declare is "occupying" Korea - might suffice to justify themselves in their own eyes, it seems such latitude is not to be extended to people faced with difficult choices more than 70 years ago. 

All things considered, the issue of collaboration is a complex one, and is part of a debate which is still very much unfinished in Korea - as I believe much related to the colonial era will continue to be, as long as the country is divided. So it might be worthy of a bit more gravity than party hats and the equivalent of shouting "Na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye."

Dr. Haysmer and the apple thief: The "barbaric American incident" of 1926

Dr. Haysmer and the apple thief: The "barbaric American incident" of 1926 

Part 1: Clyde Haysmer, Kim Myeong-seop, and the response in Korea

It's unfortunate that Robert Neff's article in the Korea Times last week has a title that does little to reflect the importance of the story it tells. When it comes to bitter memories of Westerners in Korea, the tale of Dr. Haysmer (erroneously spelled 'Haysmeir' in contemporary news articles) and how, as a missionary, he punished a twelve-year-old boy from stealing apples from the mission orchard stands above the rest. It's best remembered in North Korea, where it became the basis of one its most xenophobic, anti-American, and influential novellas. I first heard of the case by reading Donald Clark's Living Dangerously in Korea: The Western Experience, 1900-1950. I turned up photos related to the story years ago and thought I'd write a quick post including them, but some crowd sourcing of information on Facebook led me to dig further, and I found that the event is far more fascinating than I realized, both for how it was used by different groups for their own agendas at the time, and for how pertinent the story is today.

What follows is based on English-language sources (like the New York Times, Japan Times, Japan Chronicle, North China Herald, Seventh Day Adventist materials and genealogical information from Ancestry.com) and a quick reading of some of the Korean sources (from the Donga Ilbo, Chosun Ilbo, and Maeil Sinbo). A more sustained look at the numerous Korean sources would turn up much more information, as would access to the Seoul Press, which I sadly lack (except for quotations from it in the Chronicle). A number of sources here were provided by Jacco Zwetsloot; they are marked with a ***.

Clyde Albert Haysmer was born in Kingston, Jamaica, on December 6, 1897 to Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) missionaries Albert James Haysmer and Dora Wellman Haysmer, who were originally from Michigan. Dora's father, Elam Van Densen was also an elder in the same church and a missionary. Albert and Dora had started their missionary work in Jamaica in 1893, accompanied by their son, Elam Dolphus, who was seven years older than Clyde. The family would, by 1904, be assigned to Barbados. Both Clyde and his brother would eventually be trained as doctors. An SDA newsletter in 1913 notes under the title "Southern Training School" that "Clyde Haysmer writes from Lowell, Michigan that he is doing work this summer with the Fireside Correspondence School at Washington, D. C." By 1917 his father had become an elder and president of the West Indian Union Conference. In late 1918 his elder brother, Elam, died during the influenza pandemic. Clyde is later found crossing into B.C. in July 1920, two weeks ahead of that year's Alberta Conference Association of Seventh-day Adventists in Calgary, which was announced by his father in the previous month's Advent Review and Sabbath Herald magazine. It was likely here that he met his wife. The July 27, 1979 issue of the Atlantic Union Gleaner described her early life:

Ida Louise Hanson was born to Charles and Helen Hanson at Selbey, South Dakota, on March 4, 1892. The family moved to Alberta and Ida attended school at Lacombe and later at Walla Walla, Washington. She graduated from the nurses course at the Portland, Oregon, Sanitarium in 1920. A year was spent nursing in the Alberta Sanitarium and as school nurse at the Hutchinson Theological Seminary in Minnesota. In 1922 she returned to Alberta and was united in marriage to Dr. C.A. Haysmer. 

It adds that they spent a year at the Portland Sanitarium. A later issue of Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, from July 9, 1925, announced that on March 20 "Dr. and Mrs. C. A. Haysmer went forward for medical missionary work in Korea. Dr. Haysmer is a graduate of our medical college, and had spent a short time practising at the Portland (Oreg.) Sanitarium, and now takes charge of the Soonan Dispensary in Korea." This was also commented on in the March 31, 1925 issue of Western Canadian Tidings:

It was a pleasure to welcome Dr. and Mrs. C. A. Haysmer in the office for a few minutes Thursday, the 19th. They left for Rest Haven prior to joining the "Empress of Australia" at Victoria on Friday, the 20th. Dr. and Mrs. Haysmer were connected for a number of years with our sanitarium in Alberta and lately with the Portland Sanitarium. They accepted a call to Korea recently and will take charge of the medical dispensary at Seoul. Our prayers go with these faithful workers and others as they leave the shores of the homeland from month to month.

They sailed for Korea March 20, 1925, and the May 1925 issue of the SDA publication Far Eastern Division Outlook*** reported that "Dr. and Mrs. C. A. Haysmer are now in attendance at the Language School in Seoul, preparatory to service in the Soonan Hospital Dispensary." As the same magazine*** reported two months later:

Dr. and Mrs. C.A. Haysmer are now in attendance at their second term of language school study in Seoul, Chosen. It is their plan to open the hospital-dispensary at Soonan soon after the beginning of the new year.

During the recent session of the Chosen Union plans were laid for developing as rapidly as possible a strong training center at Soonan for medical missionary evangelists. To this end a nurse's training class will be formed and operated in collaboration with the Chosen Union Training School.

It would appear that they arrived in Sunan, just north of Pyongyang (and the location of its current airport) earlier than the beginning of the new year, for Korean newspapers would report that his deed which would live in infamy took place that summer. As Robert writes:

On July 15, while walking through the orchard, he encountered 12-year-old Kim Myoung-sup, a Korean boy living in the neighborhood. Haysmeir later claimed the boy was stealing apples but Korean newspapers reported the boy was merely in the orchard without permission and ran because he was afraid of the American missionary.

What followed next was a horrendous act that marred not only the image of missionaries in Korea but also the face of the young boy.

According to Ransford S. Miller, the American Consul-General in Seoul, after Haysmeir caught the boy, he summoned the boy's mother, Yoon, to the orchard. She begged Haysmeir not to summon the Japanese authorities, and he agreed not to but was insistent that the boy had to be taught a lesson. He had one of the nurses bring him some caustic soda (acid) and then used it to write 'dojeok' (thief) on the boy's cheeks. He then proceeded to lecture the boy for over an hour and cautioned the crying boy to never steal again.

In his article, Robert lays out some of the differing accounts of what happened. Many accounts say he used silver nitrate on the boy's face(one I found said it was 'silver acetic acid'); this is dealt with in more detail below. What seems clear is that the word 'thief' was still visible on his skin a year later and that he later was forced to leave school. The issue lay dormant for almost a year until the Chosun Ilbo reported on it - extensively - on June 28, 1926; the Donga Ilbo followed two days later, and the incident quickly became a cause célèbre. On July 1 both the Chosun Ilbo and Donga Ilbo referred to the event as the "barbaric American incident." On July 4 the Donga Ilbo published this photo of Kim Myeong-seop; it's hard to make out the scarring:

As Robert notes,

According to DongA Ilbo, just after midnight on July 1, 1926, Haysmeir went to the boy's house and tried to negotiate a settlement with his mother. She suggested that she would consider the matter closed for a sum of 10,000 yen ($5,000) but Haysmeir refused and countered with an offer of 420 yen as compensation and 200 yen for treatment for a total of 620 yen ($310). Eventually Haysmeir did pay the 620 yen and offered an apology in the newspapers[.]

Of course, the newspapers were having a field day. As a Reuters report put it, "A wave of indignation is sweeping Korea." Referring to the Seoul Student Federation, this Donga Ilbo article's headlines give a sense of the outrage being cultivated in Korea by the press:

Student organizations stirred to action...in regard to barbaric American incident
Prepare to send a written appeal to worldwide Seventh-Day Adventist Church
Facts of the insult to the minjok come out: Haysmer threatened the victim's mother, "Pay me 5 won or I'll write 'thief'"
The story told by Kim Myeong-seop [the victim] who arrived in Seoul

There were calls for monetary support to treat Kim, who had arrived in Seoul for treatment on July 5. Two days later the Donga Ilbo reported that the Gaesong Youth Federation had met July 5 and that one of its resolutions that day was to send a warning to the “barbaric American, Haysmer.” Within days reports were coming in from around Korea of such actions in places like Mokpo or Masan ("Masan youths roused, excessively aggrieved over the Haysmer incident"). As is described in Donald Clark's Living Dangerously in Korea, "Civic groups joined in. The Bar Association passed a resolution demanding the doctor's deportation. 'We don't like to be experimented on like animals,' wrote a Korean in a letter to the editor of the Seoul Press."

Many called for expulsion or legal punishment, and the Japanese authorities soon obliged on the latter request. A handful of articles, originating from Chinese newpapers, suggested that the incident was dug up by the Japanese to encourage anti-American and anti-missionary feeling. For example, the China Weekly Review of August 14 argued that "the Japanese press and police dug up the affair and a great sensation was made of the action of the American missionary in 'lynching' the Korean boy." However, the chronology of newspaper reports suggests otherwise. The first reports in the Korean papers were in late June; the first articles in the Government General-controlled Maeil Sinbo didn't appear until July 4.

Korean groups displayed a great deal of anger, conveyed by the Korean press. One reason that they could express this may be that the "barbaric enemy" in this case was an American rather than a Japanese. In fact, the abstract for a paper (in Korean) titled "Korean National Cooperative Front and Anti-Christian Movements in 1920s - Focused on Haysmer's Event," by Kang, Myung Sook, says of the post-Samil nationalist movement:

To establish a strong movement the Seoul Group made the issue [of] Haysmer's Event in 1926 which happened in 1925. Koreans considered Japanese' brutalities as Haysmer's brutalities. Through the criticizing of Haysmer's Event, Koreans [criticized] Japanese' exploitation and suppression.

The idea of this bitter criticism of an American missionary being a surrogate for criticism of Japan has merit, I think. While the Maeil Sinbo would, once it joined in, certainly encourage the Koreans in criticizing American "barbarity," it became apparent that this could also be used against the Japanese. On July 11, the Chosun Ilbo reported that a "second Haysmer incident" had occurred in Masan, where a Japanese person beat a Korean child. On August 27 the Japan Times would report another "second Haysmer case" which took place in Pusan, when a Mrs. Iihara was arrested for pouring coal tar over a Korean girl who stole melons from her orchard. It goes to show how the Korean-owned newspapers would make use of openings given to them by the Japanese authorities.

On July 22, the Japan Chronicle published a statement made to the Japan Advertiser by Baron Atsushi Akaike, a member of the Peers and former Chief of the Metropolitan Police Board, which provided more details on the case:

Unfortunately the report about the branding of the Korean boy 12 years old by a certain Dr. Haysmeir is true. I had hoped with vain hope that it was the usual sort of Japanese newspaper talk, gaining weight in travelling. Plain facts are now before us, so I think it is better to inform the public of the bare truths and let justice have its way than to attempt concealing it and thereby deepening suspicion.

"The facts are simple. Kim En Sop, the young boy, stole a few apples and was caught by Dr. Haysmeir, chief of the local hospital and missionary. Dr. Haysmeir sent for his mother. When she arrived he demanded a damage of Y5 a sum impossibly large for her means. When it was manifest that she could not pay it, he instructed the nurse to bring shosangin [초산은 ] (translated in Japanese-English Dictionary as nitrate of silver, caustic silver or lunar caustic) and wrote the inscription on the boy's face. Accused, thereupon, wrote the syllables in to eunman on the left cheek of the boy with nitrate of silver and the latter chyok on the right cheek, and baked the syllables in the sun for about half an hour before the boy was allowed to go home. The doctor also told the boy to come and weed the grass in his garden for a week in lieu of payment of damage, but the boy never returned.

The drug used for the inscription has since corroded part of the outer layer of Kim's cheek, and though he was cured of the injury in four or five days, pigmentary deposit of blood due to inflammatory hyperemia still remains on the outer layer of the skin. It is expected that proper medical treatment of some six months' duration will be required to remove the traces. As to the reason why the affair, which took place last September, had not come to the notice of the local police until recently, Mr. Akai, Chief Public Procurator in Heijo Local Court, is represented as stating in a press interview that Kim, from remorse at his own misdeed, had kept it secret, and that the discovery was due to his having been brought to a hospital for treatment by Min (mentioned in the writ of indictment) who met Kim at the market on the 11th of the Fifth Moon and saw the disgraceful marks on his cheeks.

A statement regarding the investigation's findings by SDA Mission superintendent Edward J. Urhquart appeared days later in (most likely) the Japan Advertiser, which was then quoted in part by the Japan Times on July 23:

The mother was told that this time something must be done by way of teaching the boy the seriousness of his offence. Whereupon the doctor made the mother two propositions: (A) That the mother pay two yen and have written on the boy's face with silver nitrate two Korean characters meaning 'thief,' or (B) That this boy be taken to the police station. (It was explained to the mother that the marks from the silver nitrate would be carried for about two weeks.)

The mother, hearing this proposition, of her own volition chose the mark of thief on the boy's face rather than a visit to the police station. The doctor, therefore, wrote the two characters upon the boy's face and he was liberated. (Now I wish to make it plain that there was no attempt at torture, nor was the boy driven to tears at any time during the proceedings. The act was done at the request of the mother, in preference, of course, to a visit to the police.)

The Seventh Day Adventists' General Conference Committee Minutes for 1926 reveal in more detail how the General Conference Committee responded to these events on July 14, 1926:

Special meeting was called to give consideration to an Associated Press report, stating that one of our doctors in Korea had branded the word "thief" on the face of a Korean boy caught stealing apples from the mission yard.

Not having any information other than that contained in the newspapers, it was decided to request J L Shaw to call at the State Department in Washington, to ascertain whether the matter had been reported to them.

A few hours later, they got a response:

KOREAN INCIDENT:
J L Shaw reported the result of his visit to the State Department. The Department had not received a report on the branding of the Korean boy, but on request of Elder Shaw at once cabled for information.

After some study as to what should be done, it was decided to ask I H Evans to cable Korea, to ascertain facts relative to the charges against Dr Haysmer referred to in the newspapers.

Further, that the chairman be asked to issue a statement to the Associated Press to the effect that we utterly repudiate any mistreatment of any race by a missionary, and that we only await confirmation by the State Department of the reports, and our own official channels, before taking action in the matter.
Adjourned.
W A SPICER, Chairman.
B E BEDDOE, Secretary.

Regarding the suggested public statement, on July 16 the Japan Times reported that the Foreign Mission Board of the Seventh Day Adventists was investigating the case, and that the board's chairman stated that the Board "disapproves and dissociates itself utterly from any mistreatment of any person by any missionary." Two days later, on July 16, the matter was brought up again by the General Conference Committee:

KOREAN INCIDENT:
Report was received from the Department of State relative to the situation in Korea, as follows:

"Reply received from the American Embassy, Tokyo, to request through the Department of State of the General Conference, Seventh-day Adventists, Takoma Park, concerning the alleged branding of a Korean boy by Dr Haysmer, missionary at Chosen:

"'According to a statement which was issued by the Governor General at Chosen, Korea, which has been substantially confirmed by the president of the Mission Board as received on July 15, from Miller, Dr. Haysmer last September branded the word "thief" with chloric acid which was said to have been silver nitrate according to the mission superintendent. The markings failed to disappear, as was expected. There followed agitation, started by Koreans and Japanese, after a solatium was given to the family of the boy. Proceedings against Dr Haysmer were instituted on July 12, according to the American Embassy."

Also the following cable was received from E J Urquhart, the superintendent of the Chosen Mission:

"July 15,1926 Heinanjunan.
“Adventist, Evans.
" Newspaper reports exaggerated. Public opinion adverse. Trial soon. Following Shanghai advice, Haysmer dismissed. Outcome uncertain."

In view of this word received by cable, stating that the missionary in Korea who had marked the word "thief" on the face of a Korean boy has, on the advice of the Far Eastern Division, been dismissed, it was--
VOTED, That we approve of the prompt action taken by our board in the Far East in dismissing the missionary.
Adjourned.
W A SPICER, Chairman.
B E BEDDOE, Secretary.

On July 18 it was reported that Haysmer had been "dismissed from the denomination." He was not kicked out of the SDA; rather, he had been stripped of his position as a missionary. The July 29, 1926 issue of the SDA's Advent Review and Sabbath Herald contains this report about the incident by General Conference Committee chairman W.A. Spicer; you can see how some of the information was edited for public consumption:

SAD NEWS FROM KOREA
WHEN newspaper dispatches reported the marking of a Korean schoolboy's face by one of our missionaries as a punishment for stealing, many wrote us for information. Our people, naturally, hoped for denial of the report. Such have doubtless seen in the press our statements, first of disapproval and repudiation of any mistreatment of any one by a missionary, and later the announcement that our Far Eastern Division committee had taken action.

On seeing the press reports, we felt assurance that the division office in Shanghai would take steps to ascertain the facts and act in the matter. As given out by us a week ago to the press, the following Cable was received in Washington from Elder E. J. Urquhart, of the Korean Union:

"Following Shanghai advice, Haysmer dismissed. Trial soon. Outcome uncertain." On receipt of the cable, our board in Washington took action, voting, "That we approve of the prompt action taken by our board in the Far East in dismissing the missionary."

Meantime the State Department in Washington had been making inquiry at our request, their information confirming the fact that the doctor had marked the boy's face with a solution, "said by the mission superintendent to have been silver nitrate." We learn also that when, "contrary to expectations, markings did not disappear," the doctor paid a monetary consideration to the boy's family. We know from the press dispatches that he also advertised his apologies in the Korean press. But the act of a thoughtless moment could not be recalled. Though the missionary would gladly have spent his life in ministry to the sick and needy in that hospital dispensary, some other must do this service. We hope a man may quickly be found to fill the gap in this emergency. The Far East committee is no doubt already making call to this end.

We may well be thankful that in every great mission division we have these division conference committees, made up of responsible and experienced men, ready on the ground to give counsel and to act in every emergency.
W. A. SPICER,
President General Conference.

The August 4, 1926 issue of the  Atlantic Union Gleaner offered this commentary on Haysmer and his dismissal:

ENCOURAGING EDITORIAL

The members in our field will take courage from the following editorial copied from the Spokane "Chronicle".

Cruelty is not Religion 

"The Seventh-day Adventist church should have commendation of every denomination maintaining missions abroad for its dismissal of the missionary charged with branding the cheeks of a Korean boy for stealing apples.

"Missionaries in the foreign fields are supposed to typify American ideals of religion. A single act such as that charged against the discharged missionary misrepresents America in foreign countries and discounts the sincere efforts of all missionaries.

News Item Copied from same Paper 
"Branding Cost Him Job" 

"Washington, July 17 (A. P.)— Dr. C. A. Haysmer, the Seventhday Adventist missionary charged with branding the cheeks of the Korean boy for stealing apples, has been dismissed by the Far Eastern organization of the denomination, Adventist headquarters here announced today. The mission board here approved the dismissal."

While every Seventh-day Adventist blushes with shame when he thinks of the foolish mistake of Dr. C. A. Haysmer, yet we must not let this episode deter us from courageously meeting the public and asking them to support our foreign missions program.

No reasonable man will cast reflections on the integrity and honesty of the denomination because one of its 9000 workers committed an unpardonable crime. We can yet turn this dark experience into a mighty victory for our Harvest Ingathering work by assuring our friends that the high standards of our denomination do not countenance cruelty or oppression of any kind, and the prompt dismissal of Dr. C. A. Haysmer testifies to that fact.
F. D. Wells.

For Haysmer, being dismissed was likely the least of his problems. The New York Times reported that on July 13 that he had been "formally charged with inflicting bodily injury by the Heijo [Pyongyang] Procurator General." His trial was to take place at the end of that month in Pyongyang, though luckily for the doctor, as Baron Akaike, revealed, "It is telephoned from Heijo that Dr. Haysmeir will not be held in custody pending trial of the case."

The trial began July 29 and much was made of his court appearance in Pyongyang. The Donga Ilbo published this photo of Haysmer:

The Maeil Sinbo published this photo of him in court:

A slightly clearer version is here***:

The Japan Chronicle reported on the trial:

PROCEEDINGS IN PUBLIC COURT.
The Seoul Press produces a long account of the proceedings at Heijo Local Court on the 29th ult. when Dr. C. A. Haysmeir appeared to answer a charge of inflicting bodily injury on a Korean boy. Mr. Justice Aramaki presided and Mr. Mitsui, for the defence. Long before the court was opened at 9 a.m. large numbers of Koreans, despite the wet weather, assembled at the gate, all eager to get admission tickets, which were restricted to 100 owing to the limited accommodation. Dr. Haysmeir appeared in lounge suit.

After all usual preliminaries were gone through, Public Procurator Shimmnaru explained why action was brought against the doctor, and examination of him by the Court followed with English interpretation by Mr. N. Kondo. The accused admitted the facts set forth in the speech of the Public Procurator, and expressed his regret that the inscription on Kim's cheeks had not yet vanished now that nearly one year had elapsed since he wrote the syllables meaning thief with nitrate of silver with the intention of chastising the youthful delinquent, and thinking that the inscription would disappear in a fortnight or so. In answer to a question by the Court the accused also stated that were apples stolen so frequently as was done by the Korean boy he would have punished an American boy in the same way.

The Public Procurator then delivered another speech in the course of which he said that as the accused admitted the charge his offence was quite evident. A question in doubt, however, was that the accused wrote the syllables to chyok on the Korean boy's cheeks really believing that they would vanish in a fortnight. At any rate, the act of the accused was cruel and repulsive, especially when the fact was taken into consideration that he was a medical missionary of the religion propagating the text of universal love. It would be no very great exaggeration to say that by making such an ignominious inscription on the cheeks of the Korean boy, the accused morally killed him, and for his act deserved severe punishment. At the same time the Public Procurator acknowledged that the bodily injury caused by the act was not serious and brought home the fact that the accused was now penitent, having paid damages to the victim. The majesty of law, however, must be upheld, and the Procurator asked the Court to sentence the accused to three months' penal servitude by virtue of Art. 204 of the Penal Code.

Mr. Mitsui, counsel for the defence, pointed out that the crime of bodily injury presupposed an unlawful attack, but in the present case the accused acted after obtaining the consent of the mother of the boy, so that the act of his client did not constitute the crime of bodily injury. Could his act be well termed violence, then it required a suit by the party concerned for the Court to take it up - a thing omitted by the party interested. Mr. Mitsui insisted on the acquittal of his client as not guilty. The Court reserved judgment till August 5th.

A Japan Chronicle report describes the outcome of the trial:

Judgement was delivered on Dr. Haysmeir, in the Pyongyang District Court, Korea, on the morning of the 5th instant, when he was sentenced to three months imprisonment with postponement of execution of sentence for two years. Dr. Haysmeir is reported in a Japanese dispatch to have shown relief at this sentence.

On August 7, the Maeil Sinbo reported that the prosecution considered the fact that the sentence was suspended to be unfair and filed an appeal, meaning that Dr. Haysmer's ordeal was not yet over. On August 26, the Chronicle reported that "The Procurator's appeal in the Haysmeir case is to be heard by the Heijo [Pyongyang] Court of Cassation on the 26th" of August. The Maeil Sinbo later reported that on September 2 the Pyongyang Court of Cassation gave him the same result as the first trial – "two months in prison [sic] suspended for two years." This was declared by the prosecution to be unfair and immediately appealed yet again, meaning the next trial would be in Seoul. The Maeil Sinbo was nice enough to include a photo with this report - said to be of the apple tree in question, with Haysmer's house behind:

Meanwhile, the summary of the SDA's General Conference Committee meeting of October 14, 1925 makes clearer why the General Conference Committee dismissed him:

DR C A HAYSMER:
A petition had been received from a number of brethren in Korea, requesting that Dr. C A Haysmer be allowed to remain in the Korean field. The situation was carefully reviewed, and it was—
VOTED, That answer be sent to the dispensary workers at Soonan expressing our appreciation of their sentiments so kindly expressed, but replying that in view of the unfortunate incident and the world-wide publicity given to it, and the possibility that agitators at any time might easily make use of the case to promote their own ends and to oppose the cause of missions, we feel that the best interests of our brother and the best interests of the cause in general will be served by retirement now from the field.

Meanwhile, the Maeil Sinbo reported that the appeal, held at the high court in Seoul, began on November 5, and was dismissed on November 18. As the Chronicle reported,

HAYSMEIR CASE. PROCURATOR'S APPEAL DISMISSED.
In the Seoul High Court of Justice Judgement was delivered on Mr. Hays- Their, the American missionary doctor, of Junan, Heian- nando, Korea, yesterday morning at 11 o'clock. The procuratorial appeal was dismissed, and Dr. Haysmeir was sentenced to three months Penal servitude with postponement of the sentence for two years, the same as in Courts of First and Second Instance. This judgement is final.

On November 26 the Donga Ilbo reported that Haysmer would leave Korea within a week. He and his wife appear on the passenger list for the Protesilaus, which had sailed from Yokohama and arrived in Vancouver December 22, 1926. It notes that he had $150 with him and that his passage was paid by "Korea Union Mission, SDA." A later SDA publication shows that "Prof. and Mrs. A. R. Tucker, of Washington, [went] to Korea" in August of 1927 - perhaps they replaced him.

Ida Haysmer's obituary in the July 27, 1979 issue of the Atlantic Union Gleaner described her life after her marriage to Clyde Haysmer:

Later, after spending a year at the Portland Sanitarium and a short term in the mission field, they connected with the New England Sanitarium and Hospital in Stoneham, Massachusetts, in 1927. Except for three interludes during which Dr. Haysmer took further surgical training, they were connected with that institution until 1964. During much of this time Mrs. Haysmer served in various nursing capacities.

After a year of travel, Yucca Valley, California, was chosen as the best location, both for climate and to carry on surgical practice. Owing to their increasing years, it was thought best to be near relatives; so in 1977 a move was made to Alhambra, California, to be near their niece and nephew.

Mrs. Haysmer's health deteriorated and she died in the White Memorial Hospital at 7:00 a.m. October 28, 1978. A memorial service was held in Yucca Valley and interment was in the family plot in Stoneham, Massachusetts.

If this narrative seemed to gloss over their time in Korea, describing it as only "a short term in the mission field," it may be because the obituary was written by Clyde Haysmer himself. This omission may give a hint as to his feelings about the incident half a century later. His appearances on passenger lists traveling to and from England in the late 1920s and late 1930s may point to the "interludes" when he undertook "further surgical training." Four years after writing this obituary, he died in Alabama in November 1983.

While this would appear to be the end of the story, it went well beyond Korea, and in the summer and fall of 1926, as legal action was taken against Dr. Haysmer, Japanese-controlled newspapers and foreign-run newspapers would battle over interpretations of the incident, as we will see in part two.

Bits and Pieces

Over at the Grand Narrative, James posted about a newspaper cartoon from the 1930s which reveals how certain attitudes toward women have persisted.

At Zen Kimchi, Joe posted an interesting chapter from an unpublished book about marketing Korean food abroad - it's well worth reading.

And on the music side of things, Mark Russell's guest appearance on Shawn Despres's radio show is worth a listen if you're a fan of classic Korean rock (or 90s Korean indie rock).

As reported a couple weeks ago, the Korean government is asking you to help it fight inaccuracies about Korea:

On Sept. 1, the Korean Culture and Information Service (KOCIS), part of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, launched the Facts:Korea website, a new website designed to help correct inaccurate information that is out there about Korea.

The site receives and deals with reports about inaccurate statements or errors made online about Korea, as well as incorrect statements or statistics used by smartphone apps. Through this website, people from around the world will be able to report false statements made about Korea, anywhere and at any time.

Inaccurate information about Korea covers all sorts of incorrect facts that might exist in content produced outside Korea. For example, the national Taegeukgi flag might be upside down, or Korea's traditional Hanbok attire might be mistranslated into English as "kimono." Once, South Korea was even referred to as being in Southeast Asia.

That last sentence is certainly not an indignant response to a geographical mistake, as perhaps made clearer by this sentence:

“We will continue to work to make right any misinformation about Korea, so as to improve the national image,” said KOCIS Director Kim Kabsoo.

The site can be found here (or "download the app directly to your smartphone"), but to make a report you need to download lots of active x junk, as is par for the course on any government website.

Perhaps someone will report as misinformation this article, titled "The boozy, narcissistic culture shock of working in South Korea," which is about the book "Seoul Man" by Frank Ahrens, who lived in Seoul for three years working as director of global p.r. for Hyundai. The book jacket urges readers to "Take a wild ride into the formal-by-day, crazy-by-night Asian business world" (oh, those wacky Asians!) and chapter titles like "At Work: Alien Planet." To be fair, these may reflect the choices of the publisher rather than the author. The article, in between highlighting the drinking and plastic surgery in Korea, describes a few scenes from the book:

Ahrens tried to bust through the culture, including throwing a party at his house with people from work and others. But his employees viewed it as an obligation. They spoke to no one there but their fellow co-workers, and spent the night serving drinks to their superiors.

When Ahrens asked his team leader about this, the reply was, “Sir, we don’t go to parties where we don’t know everyone.” Ahrens said that parties in America were often for meeting people but was told that Koreans “make their friends for life in school.”

“How do you make friends as an adult?” Ahrens asked.

“We don’t,” was the reply.

This is likely more about 'telling foreigners what we want them to think about Korea'; some men seem to have no trouble making friends after high school (sarcasm off). Still, the author's anecdotes about the culture of hierarchy at work can be amusing:

Ahrens got a taste of this extreme hierarchy while representing the company at a car show.

The chairman of Hyundai dropped by, throwing employees into a panic. When he decided to walk the convention floor, Confucian custom declared that his top aides follow along behind him. But it also meant that their top aides had to follow them — leading to a ridiculous trail of people that left onlookers stunned.

“I climbed to the second floor of our booth,” writes Ahrens. “There was the chairman making his way through a parting motor-show crowd, at least 20 dark-suited men following, some taking notes. The effect was that of a long, black eel snaking its way through a crowd of startled media.”

On the topic of foreigners working in Korea, Gi-Wook Shin and Rennie J. Moon's article, "A way to bridge aging societies," points out the need for foreign workers in the Japanese and Korean economies as their populations age. But there are problems...

Maria, a Guatemalan professional, decided to leave South Korea after working for six years in the overseas marketing department of a large Korean corporation. "Some Koreans complain that foreigners leave after a few years, but we leave because we're never included in the first place. Korean companies pay a lot to bring foreigners here. And then they don't even ask these people about their opinion."[...]

In South Korea, with a shorter history of foreign student intake, a Study-Work framework has yet to emerge. While 64.3% of South Korean companies say they need and want to hire foreign students, only a very small portion of foreign students work in South Korean companies after graduation, perhaps as low as 1%. South Korea's immigration laws for foreign students have eased slightly in recent years, but there is an urgent need to develop solid, institutionalized support for responding to the substantial demand by foreign students who wish to find employment after their studies.

One of the recommendations the article makes is that "Universities and corporations should establish diversity offices, as seen in the U.S. and elsewhere, to promote a culture of tolerance and non-discrimination." A problem with this is that various kinds of discrimination are built into the hiring process for many companies, as this study reveals:

Among undisclosed qualifications at companies, age was most often cited at 44.8 percent (multiple responses were possible). 33 was the average age limit for men imposed by firms, whereas it was 31 for women.

Second in rank was gender (31.9 percent), with companies typically maintaining a male to female ratio of 67 – 33.

Other qualifications not revealed to applicants included place of residence (29.3 percent), college major (25 percent), certificates and licenses (23.3 percent), marital status (18.5 percent), educational background (15.9 percent), internship or job experience (15.9 percent), military service status (13.8 percent), and religion (7.3 percent).

What was most significant on the survey, however, was that 89.2 percent of the companies said they had rejected candidates because they did not fit their confidential standards.

And these are just for Korean applicants.

The Accidental Citizen-Soldier: An English teacher's worst nightmare?

In 2002, Young Chun - born and raised in the U.S. by parents who had emigrated from Korea - came to Korea to teach English and pay off university debts. When he applied for an F-4 visa at the immigration office, he was informed by a confused immigration officer that he couldn't get one because he was, in fact, a Korean citizen; someone had put his name on the family register when he was born. Through a string of bad luck, he eventually found himself with an immigration exit ban and orders to report for military service - even though he didn't speak Korean. Given no assistance by the country of his birth, and unable to evade this order without going to prison, he reported for basic training in January, 2004, and began a two-year experience which would even involve deployment to Afghanistan.

This story is told in Young Chun's recently-released memoir "The Accidental Citizen-Soldier: The Story of an American in the Korean Army." He was kind enough to send me a pdf to review, and within a few pages I was hooked. In addition to having fascinating subject matter, it's well-written, well-paced, and sprinkled with enough humour to lighten an otherwise somber story. Military service is an experience almost all Korean men have to suffer through, and "The Accidental Citizen-Soldier" provides a first-hand look at what it entails, detailing all of the humiliations, power struggles and occasional kindnesses. It's gratifying to see him proceed through what is often an inhumane system and come to understand it and use it to his benefit, even finding time to translate a Korean novel for a translation contest.

More about Young's story can be found in this interview he gave to a Seattle newspaper in 2004 (which didn't go over well when his superiors found out), as well as at his blog, where you can listen to a recent interview given for TBS radio.

The book is well worth reading and can be found at Amazon.com for what should be $2.99 for a Kindle edition (a way to get around a tacked-on $2.00 'international charge' is detailed on his blog). A softcover version is also available and there are currently a handful of copies at the Gwanghwamun branch of Kyobo Bookstore.

I asked Young a few questions about his experience, beginning with the differences between how the ROK and US militaries treat their soldiers:

I think the biggest difference is each army's attitude towards its soldiers. The US Army treats its soldiers as human beings with civil rights to be respected and needs to be fulfilled. At the time, I felt like the Korean Army saw its conscripts as nothing more than tools, no different than a shovel or a toilet. Prior to my induction, I had heard that the pay was atrocious; I hadn't heard that I would be worked almost constantly with very little sleep, sometimes having to skip meals because the officers wouldn't let me take a break from work (even though they made sure to go themselves). There was never a guarantee of free time, and there were no counseling services even though I was depressed and frustrated for most of my first year.

When I was in Afghanistan, I was amazed at all the welfare facilities available on base. They had almost everything I could think of and a lot I couldn't have even imagined. On the other hand, on my base in Daegu, the only real welfare facility for conscripts was the PX, which was dwarfed by the one in Afghanistan. The BX on Bagram Air Base was a Wal-mart. The PX on my base in Daegu was a 7-11. At least, that's how it felt. My company in Daegu had a small trailer with some gym equipment and a single basketball hoop. I've heard that other units had a noraebang and a computer for conscripts to use; my company had neither. I couldn't even check my e-mail on base.

In Bagram, I was also amazed by how civilly American soldiers treated each other. In Daegu, it was only ridicule and bullying between soldiers. Aside from your donggi (soldiers who started the same month as you), everyone was someone to be feared or someone to order around. It is the ROK Army culture that forces people to act in such an unnatural way. While on deployment, there was no such protocol in the 2nd Construction Company, and it was much more bearable.

I have heard that the ROK Army has been working on treating conscripts marginally better. I've heard that privates now make something like 130,000 won a month and the general atmosphere among conscripts is better, but I don't know for certain. It's kind of a general understanding that it gets a little better and more comfortable every year, and people who did their service earlier are keen to point out that things were more difficult for them.

While the Korean soldiers in Afghanistan are depicted in the book as getting along well enough with the American soldiers there, some incidents - such as one which ends with an high-ranking American officer storming out after muttering, "God damn Koreans" - made me wonder if the ROK military presence there might have done more harm than good:

To be honest, I don't think the Korean Army's presence in Afghanistan made a difference one way or the other. Sure, we were a nuisance, but most of the truly outrageous things were suffered by those in command--the base command and the command of the 109th Engineers--rather than the average soldier. That being said, I don't think anyone thought we really contributed to the war efforts, and I don't think much was expected of us. The Dasan Engineering Unit poured concrete around the base and the Dongeui Medical Unit treated local nationals, and for the most part, the Korean soldiers kept to the Korean compounds when they weren't busy shopping.

I also asked him about the effect his experience had upon his attitude toward Korea in general.

I get asked this question often because people are surprised that I decided to stay in Korea and they usually expect me to be very bitter. Of course, I don't look back at the experience fondly, but the Korean Army is the Korean Army and Korean society is Korean society. There are things that I greatly enjoy about Korea and things that frustrate me to no end, but I don't let my experience in the service color my judgment of Korea.

With regard to the people, wherever you go in the world, there are good, kindly, decent people, and there are cruel, selfish, arrogant assholes. The US is no different, Korea is no different, the Korean Army is no different. Granted, the culture in the Army brought out the worst in people, which is one of the reasons why I prefer not to see people I met in the Army. I try to surround myself with the former.

I do deeply sympathize when I hear my friends talking about their experiences in corporate Korea because it often reminds me of my time in the Army, and I've determined never to put myself in such a hellish and poisonous environment again.

Lastly, I asked him about how he went about learning Korean:

For the first three or four weeks, I simply parroted whatever I was taught without knowing what the words meant. Once I got my Korean-English pocket dictionary, I was constantly looking up words that I heard throughout the day and tried to piece things together. When I was a private, I once got verbally abused for looking at my dictionary while I was walking. I had only wanted to look up a word before I forgot it. "Privates don't get to read and walk," the sergeant said, after he had given me a good shoulder to the back.

Once I was in Daegu, I had access to a small library in the squad room. I would choose a novel and go through it, looking up every word I didn't know until I could piece together what was being said. It was very slow-going; I remember spending a couple of days on a single paragraph. The book that I translated for The Korea Times Literature Awards was maybe the first Korean novel I was able to read from cover to cover. I also bought a book on Korean grammar when I was on furlough prior to pre-deployment training. I think I copied most of the entries in my journal. Needless to say, I wrote pages upon pages of vocabulary words and grammar points.

That was one aspect of my learning Korean. The other was the hostile environment. If I said something grammatically incorrect or even mispronounced any little word, I was ridiculed and shamed mercilessly. Some people would respond by working harder until their ability was recognized; I basically just shut my mouth and kept to myself. I never yelled at anyone when I was a sergeant, partially because I knew better than anyone how it felt but mostly because I couldn't yell in Korean. I still can't.

It's a little embarrassing, but I couldn't speak Korean decently until after I got discharged. Everything I had studied didn't get processed until I finally had the time to process it. Needless to say, I don't recommend going to the Korean Army if you're interested in learning Korean.

Thanks to Young for answering my questions.

The history depicted in "Ode To My Father"

In my previous post, I reviewed and offered an interpretation of the recent film "Ode To My Father (국제시장)." Along the way to writing the post I did quite a bit of reading about the events portrayed in the film, so below I will look at how the film followed (or didn't) the historical facts.

While the scene of a Korean begging the American general to save the refugees at Hungnam is not really what happened, it accords with the basic facts. Several accounts point to Dr. Hyun Bong-hak as being in great part responsible for the evacuation of almost 100,000 refugees from Hungnam. As this brief biographical entry about him describes it, he was from Hamheung and studied medicine at Severance Medical School before studying in the U.S. in the late 1940s. When the Korean War broke out, he headed south, treated wounded civilians, and volunteered his services as a translator for the U.S. Military, who asked him to work for the commander of the US X Army Corps in Hamheung. As his children described him in a recent Korea Herald article:

During the Korean War, our father served as a civil affairs Adviser to Maj. Gen. Edward M. Almond to help rebuild Hamheung, North Korea. Christianity had a strong foothold in Hamheung, so when the Americans liberated Hamheung from the communists, they were embraced by the locals.

Shortly thereafter, the U.N. forces began to retreat. This was disastrous for the Christians, local government leaders and anyone working for the U.N. Forces, as all would be tortured and massacred by the communists. Our father advocated for a civilian evacuation, stating, “It didn’t seem fair to me that those who had risked communist retaliation by cooperating with the Americans should be abandoned so readily.”

He received constant encouragement from Col. Edward R. Forney, the foremost amphibious expert at the time who masterfully plotted out how the evacuation would be implemented; and together, they met with Gen. Almond several times. Gen. Almond approved of the mission with a planned evacuation of 4,000-5,000 civilians from Hamheung to Heungnam by train.

The Hamheung railroad station was flooded with more than 50,000 people. Over 100,000 arrived at Heungnam Port circumventing the roads, which were reserved for military personnel and closely monitored by MPs. Blankets and rice were given to the refugees who remained at the port in minus 10 degrees Celsius weather.

The Meredith Victory was the last ship to leave the Heungnam Harbor, which was rife with mines. Designed to carry 12 passengers with a 47-person crew, it brought 14,000 refugees to safety and ultimately made it into the Guinness World Records as “the largest evacuation from land by a single ship.” The port was blown up to render it useless to the communist forces. Many civilians who should have been evacuated were left behind.

It's interesting that this account refers to many being left behind, while American accounts I've read describe getting all of the refugees out. For statistics, as this article notes,

At the finish a total of 105,000 US and ROK military personnel had been embarked and 91,000 civilian refugees. The statistics of supplies and equipment were equally impressive—17,500 vehicles and 350,000 measurement tons of cargo loaded out of Hungnam on 6 APA, 6 AKA, 12 TAP, 76 time-charter ships, 81 LST, and 11 LSD loads.

As for the aforementioned Meredith Victory, it appears in the movie as the ship they escape on. As it turns out, there is not only a book about this voyage - during which 5 babies were born - there is also a documentary that can be watched here, and a monument to the Hungnam evacuation which features a model of the Meredith Victory was unveiled in 2005 on Geoje-do, where the ship unloaded the refugees. This article also points to Maryknoll Father Patrick H. Cleary, a missionary in Korea who joined X Corps as a chaplain, as someone who contributed to the refugee rescue effort. What should be clear is that yes, there was a Korean who asked an American general to evacuate the refugees, but it certainly didn't happen at the last minute once the Americans were aboard and ready to leave, which makes them appear more callous than they were. This contributes to a social Darwinist view of the world as a harsh place in which Korea was the 'shrimp among [Chinese and American] whales' and had to beg the (initially cold and unwilling) Americans for help in order to survive.

Years after the war, once Deok-su had grown into a young man who worked as a labourer to support his family, he is convinced by his friend Dal-gu to apply to work in West Germany as miners, where they could make lots of money. These "workers sent to Germany" (padok nodongja) are examined in an article by Kim Won titled "Memories of Migrant Labor : Stories of Two Korean Nurses Dispatched to West Germany" [The Review of Korean Studies, 12(4), 2009.12, 111-151]. As the article notes,

In the case of mine workers, padok started in 1963 and continued until 1978. Until 1980, the Deutchemarks that a total of 7,936 padok miners and 10,032 padok nurses remitted to Korea were an important means of “foreign exchange earnings” (oehwa beori) and for solving the domestic labor surplus problem before the advent of a loan economy (cha-gwan gyeongje). At present [2009], about 5,000 out of the over 20,000 padok workers continue to live in Germany, and some 5,000 padok workers eventually chose to immigrate to the Americas. Among Korean residents in Germany, the number of nurses is said to be about 500 today. The last Korean miner retired in 2003.

The article also adds that in 1967, "padok workers’ remittances to Korea represented 36 percent of the total foreign exchange holdings of the country." It wasn't only men working as coal miners who worked in West Germany, however. Deok-su soon meets and falls in love with Yeong-ja, who is working as a nurse there. As the above article notes, Korean women were initially, in 1959, sent to Germany to study nursing for three years and then could work as nurses there. Then in 1966 a new phase began with the sending of nurses already trained in Korea to Germany, which was initially organized by a medical organization and coordinated by the Korean Foreign Development Corporation. These were all organized through civilian, medical, or Christian organizations, however and it wasn't until August 1969 that an agreement between South Korea and West Germany on the hiring of nurses was signed, and a quota was set. Prior to this agreement, 2,080 nurses had worked in Germany, and numbers increased a great deal in the ensuing years, as per the article:

In the end, some 18,000 Koreans worked as coal miners or nurses in West Germany and their earnings in foreign currency contributed a great deal to the growth of the Korean economy.

Another very large contribution to the Korean economy's growth was the Vietnam war, and Deok-su is depicted going to Vietnam with his friend Dal-gu to work as contractors and make lots of money. Over 300,000 Korean soldiers fought in the war, leaving behind a legacy, literally, of Korean-Vietnamese children abandoned by their fathers, as well as a reputation for brutality. In addition to these soldiers being paid in U,S. dollars, South Korea also benefited in many other ways from the Vietnam War (much as Japan did from the Korean War), as pointed out in "America's rented troops: South Koreans in Vietnam," by Frank Baldwin, which was published in the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars Volume 7 Number 4, and is available as a pdf here (pages 33-40):

The major forms of U.S. commercial assistance were procurement of war supplies in South Korea and construction/service contracts for R.O.K. firms in Vietnam. Among the major South Korean exports to Vietnam were military uniforms, jungle boots, corrugated metal roofing and cement. In the construction and service field, at one point more than eighty South Korean companies held contracts with the U.S. government in Vietnam. Their activities included construction and engineering, transportation of goods, and operating service facilities such as laundry shops and entertainment clubs. South Korean civilian workers in Vietnam were especially well rewarded. According to U.S. government estimates, there were sixteen thousand South Korean foreign contract workers in Vietnam (of a total of twenty-five thousand). Their annual earnings were $8,400-compared to an average of about $200 in South Korea.

ROK troops pulled out in March 1973, though the Korean military did send a ship to rescue South Koreans from Vietnam in 1975 as Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese. As described in "The Pursuit of State Status and the Shift toward International Norms: South Korea’s Evolution as a Host Country for Refugees," by Hans Schattle and Jennifer McCann, published in Journal of Refugee Studies (2014) 27 (3) (pgs 317-337):

The influx of Indochinese asylum seekers into South Korea began with the April 30, 1975 evacuation from Vietnam of a group of South Korean nationals, their non-South Korean family members, and a number of primarily Indochinese refugees by a South Korean military vessel (Korean Red Cross Busan Chapter 1993). In the absence of appropriate domestic legislation, the government treated arrivals on an ad hoc basis, setting up a temporary shelter in the port city of Busan. By the end of 1975, officials had managed to settle the 1,562 Indochinese refugees by encouraging female Indochinese refugees married to or in a common-law relationship with a South Korean national at the time of their arrival, to become naturalized citizens or by granting them a continuous permission of sojourn as a stateless person (South Korea did not officially recognize Vietnam at this time) (I. Chung 2009). By contrast, the 977 refugees without such ties to Korean nationals were quickly resettled in third countries (Korean Red Cross Busan Chapter 1993). Then in 1977 a new wave of Indochinese refugees poured into the South China Sea. However, unlike the refugees evacuated in 1975, the government perceived arrivals less as victims of political persecution than as so-called economic migrants (I. Chung 2009), and therefore responded by securitizing arrivals.

It goes on to explain that the ROK went out of its way to stop its ships from picking up Indochinese "boat people," firing a captain who did so and confining those boat people who did arrive to a newly built 'Vietnamese people’s relief center'. "Although criticized for such an approach (Koh 2011), officials pressed hard for third-country resettlement, and as a result, not a single Indochinese refugee who arrived between 1977 and 1989 was permitted to settle in South Korea."

I first became aware of the presence of Vietnamese refugees a few years ago when reading through Korea Herald articles from late 1975 and early 1976. Here is one from December 17, 1975:

Here is another from January 31, 1976:

As mentioned in the previous post, in 1983 KBS broadcast the TV show, "Reuniting Separated Families," planning only to do a single broadcast, but when it proved successful it continued for over four months and led to the reunion of over 10,000 separated families (episodes can be watched here).
The Korea Bang post linked to above says that the reason it took so long for such a reunion show to happen was that the government was too busy developing the country to care much about divided families, and that it was only by the 1980s that enough people had televisions for such a show to be effective. This misses an important factor, I think. Under the anti-communist governments of Syngman Rhee and Park Chung-hee, admitting that you had relatives that might be in North Korea was likely enough to make the authorities suspect your loyalty.

Hopefully the above information proves helpful for those who have seen "Ode To My Father" and wanted to learn more about the history it depicts.

Screening of Lee Man-hee's 1975 film 'Road to Sampo' this Saturday

This Saturday, October 4, at 3pm, the Royal Asiatic Society Cinema Club and Seoul Film Society will have a free screening of the 1975 Lee Man-hee film "Road to Sampo" (삼포 가는 길) with English subtitles at Seoul Global Center's Haechi Hall in Myeongdong. As it's described here,

Adapted from Hwang Seok-young's novel, A Road to Sampo is the final and posthumous work of director Lee Man-hee. Young construction worker Young-dal (Baek Il-seop) meets a middle-aged man named Jeong (Kim Jin-kyu), who is on his way back to his hometown after serving time in prison and wandering from one construction site to another. It has been ten years since Jeong has seen his hometown of Sampo. Young-dal and Jeong meet Baek-hwa (Moon Suk), a runaway bar hostess [...] and the group travels to the train station, each reminiscing about his or her past as they go.

This road movie, one of the very few in Korea's earlier film history, was the last film by Lee Man-hee, who died during its post-production. I'll be giving an introduction to the film and short story and looking at the struggles the director went through to make it, and the film will be followed by a discussion of the film for those wishing to take part.

Those wishing to read the short story the film is based on by Hwang Seok-young can download a pdf here (or if it's not cooperating, search for "The Road to Samp'o" at the Korea Journal's site.

Directions to Seoul Global Center's Haechi Hall can be found here, and more information about the film is here, and the screening, here.

Uncovering the truth about "The Korean Seductress Who Betrayed America"

This AP article was pointed out to me the other day:

Back in the days of "Commies" and "pinkos," of Red scares, black lists, suspicion and smear, Kim Soo-im stood out as a one-woman axis of evil, a villainess without peer.

"The Korean Seductress Who Betrayed America," as the U.S. magazine Coronet labeled her, was a Seoul socialite said to have charmed secret information out of one lover, an American colonel, and passed it to another, a top communist in North Korea.

In late June 1950, as North Korean invaders closed in on this teeming, panicked city, Kim was hastily executed by the South Korean military, shot as a "very malicious international spy." Her deeds, thereafter, only grew in infamy. [...]

The record of a confidential 1950 U.S. inquiry and other declassified files, obtained by The Associated Press at the U.S. National Archives, tell a different Kim Soo-im story:

Col. John E. Baird had no access to the supposed sensitive information. Kim had no secrets to pass on. And her Korean lover, Lee Gang-kook, later executed by North Korea, may actually have been an American agent.

The petite woman smiling out from faded photographs, in silken "hanbuk" gown, may have been guilty of indiscretions. But the espionage case against her looks in retrospect -- from what can be pieced together today -- like little more than a frame-up.

Baird and fellow Army officers could have defended her, but instead the colonel was rushed out of Korea to "avoid further embarrassment," the record shows. She was left to her fate -- almost certainly, the Americans concluded, to be tortured by South Korean police into confessing to things she hadn't done.

I'd heard this story before - of the Korean mistress of an American officer passing on military secrets to a North Korean lover, but missed this uncovering of the truth of the story when it came out in 2008. It's well worth reading the entire article.

An example of the smearing that Kim Soo-im received is further illustrated by the cover of the February 1961 issue of Men (posted at this blog), which advertises a sensationalized version of the story with the headline "Miss Kim: The Streetwalker Who Tipped Our Battle Plans In Korea," and contains this image of her in 'seduction class' learning that 'Yankees like to be caressed.'

The version of the above-linked AP story I first read was on Fox News, but as this blog points out, that version leaves out a few things, such as the claim that most Koreans after liberation desired a socialist or communist government, as well as an illustration of torture methods used by Korean police as described by an American officer: "Electric shock and the use of pliers is frequent."

Reading that brought to mind the chapter about Korea in Mark Gayn's Japan Diary (and looking at his Wikipedia entry, I had no idea he moved to Canada and became a top editor at the Toronto Star - how about that).

Gayn's must-read chapter about his several-weeks-long visit to Korea in the fall of 1946 portrays the American Military Government and its ties with rightist Koreans in a very negative light. For example:

"The Koreans in the Military Government," one official told me today, "represent a conspiracy of insufferable corruption. People we now use to govern Korea are rightists who happily did Japan’s dirty work. There are now men in the Korean police force who actually were decorated by the Japanese for their cruelty and efficacy in suppressing Korean nationalism."

We did, I was told, issue a stern order for the purge of collaborators. This was mistranslated so skillfully by our Korean interpreters in the Military Government that when the hour of purge came, it was discovered that in all of our zone the order could be applied to only one official.

I was also told this: One day early last spring, it dawned on our policy-makers on the Potomac that our Korean allies – and our own blunders – were losing us Korean good will at a catastrophic rate. If on September 7, 1945, our men landing in Korea were greeted with hosannas, now a Military Government poll of public opinion showed that the Koreans in our zone preferred the Japanese to us.

Ouch. Gayn's book can be found in pdf form in the Royal Asiatic Society's online library, specifically in the collection of almost 400 scanned books about Korea which belong to former British Ambassador Martin Uden. Gayn's book is here, and the chapter on Korea (covering his visit between October 15 and November 8, 1946) can be found between pages 358 and 452 of the pdf (or pages 349 and 443 of the book).

(Hat tip to Hamel.)