The War against the Church

From its birth to the present day, there has been an ongoing war against the North Korean Church. The discussion that follows provides highlights of events leading up to the birth of the Korean Church, persecution and compromise under the Japanese occupation, and North Korea’s ongoing war against the Church.

Forerunners of the Indigenous Church (1628 - 1866)

In 1666, eight of the captives escaped after a fourteen year imprisonment. Though there are no documented conversions of Koreans to Christianity from these contacts, one may infer from the writings of Hendrik Hamel, the Sparrow Hawk’s bookkeeper, that Koreans likely took note of Christianity.

Similarly, Hamel’s 1668 book, An Account of the Shipwreck of a Dutch Vessel off the Coast of Qelpart, Together with a Description of the Kingdom of Corea, also introduced Western Christians to the existence of this far-off land.

In 1784, the Korean scholar, Yi Sung Hun was converted to Roman Catholicism while studying in Peking (Beijing). In 1785, the same year the first Roman Catholic missionary entered Korea, King Chongjo outlawed Christianity. Nevertheless, in 1794, the first Catholic priest arrived in Korea. Despite harsh persecution of Roman Catholics that began in 1801, the Catholic Church steadily grew to about 23,000. In light of neighboring China’s experience with Western powers, Korean leaders generally formed a negative impression of Westerners and opposition to Korean Catholics continued throughout the rest of the century. >p> The next Protestant contact with Korea occurred in 1832, when the German missionary, Reverend Karl Gutzlaff, came to Korea while serving as interpreter for the British ship Lord Amherst. The Korean royal court refused to enter into a commercial trade agreement with England. Though Gutzlaff did not document any conversions during his month-long stay, he did give the Koreans some tracts and a Chinese translation of the Bible he had obtained from Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary to China. As Gutzlaff departed Korea, he wrote:

In the great plan of the eternal God, there will be a time of merciful visitation for them. While we look for this, we ought to be very anxious to hasten its approach by diffusing the glorious doctrine of the cross by all means in our power . . . The Scripture teaches us to believe that God can bless even these feeble beginnings. Let us hope that better days will soon dawn for Corea.[ii]

In 1860, Taesinsa founded the militaristic and anti-western Tonghak, or “Eastern Learning” movement that espoused agrarian reform, equal rights for all and man as God. Then, in 1863, amidst such prevalent anti-Western sentiment, Taewn Gun (also translated Taewongun and Taewon-gun), the regent and father of the Yi Dynasty’s then boy-king, Kojong, prohibited the propagation of Christianity. Taewn Gun instituted a hard-line closed-door policy that effectively isolated Korea from the outside world. These edicts were accompanied by the Korean regent decreeing the eradication of all Catholics. Over 8,000 converts and nine French priests were executed. This harsh persecution virtually obliterated the Korean Catholic Church.

As a result of Taewn Gun’s massacre of Catholics, France sent their Indochina squadron, under the command of Admiral Pierre G. Roze, to Korea’s western coast off of Kanghwa Island at the mouth of the Han River. On October 13, 1866, French troops landed on the island. However after capturing a fort, their landing party was repulsed by Korean forces, and the French fleet withdrew. Several years later, an U.S. Marine Corps officer wrote:

The French came three years ago to avenge their priests, who had been murdered, when they skinned a French doctor, and crucified him on the beach under the eyes of the Frenchmen who had been driven off, and who were unable to help their friends.[iii]

Taewn Gun considered the French withdrawal a Korean victory. Following the failures of the American General Sherman (described later) and the French punitive naval expedition attempts to “open” Korea, the Choson regent had stone tablets erected throughout Korea that warned:

The barbarians from beyond the seas have violated our borders and invaded our land. If we do not fight we must make treaties with them. Those who favor making a treaty sell their country.[iv]

These “successes” encouraged Taewn Gun to think that he could hold out indefinitely against external pressure. Korea closed its borders and resisted all foreigners. Thus, Korea came to be known as the Hermit Kingdom. Amid this anti-Western sentiment within Korea, Western powers, including the British, Russians and Prussians, continued to insist that the Choson Dynasty enter into commercial relations with them. For example, in 1866, the Prussian merchant Ernest J. Oppert twice requested trade with Korea, but was refused.

Probably the most notorious of these attempts to establish trade was the infamous General Sherman incident, which occurred near Pyongyang during August and September of 1866. In August 1866, the General Sherman, an American trading schooner under lease by a British company, sailed up the Taedong River past the port of Nampo in open violation of the Hermit Kingdom’s isolationist foreign policy. One of the General Sherman’s passengers was a man named Robert J. Thomas.

Robert Thomas was a young missionary from Scotland. After he was ordained on June 4, 1863, the London Missionary Society sent him to Shanghai, China where he remained for several years. After his wife died in Shanghai in 1866, the Reverend Thomas heard about the upcoming voyage of the General Sherman, which laden with a cargo of European merchandise, would seek to establish trade relations between Korea and the United States.[v]

Thomas secured free passage in return for his services as an interpreter. In August 1866, as the General Sherman proceeded upriver toward Pyongyang, Thomas tossed gospel tracts to Koreans along the riverbank. Despite official warnings to immediately depart, the American schooner continued upriver until she ran aground on a shoal and stuck fast in the muddy river bottom. The situation went from bad to worse.

Local Koreans appeared along the river bank waving long machete-like knives at the strange looking foreign vessel. Then, Pak Kyu Su, the Governor of Pyongyang, initiated attacks against the grounded ship. As the Koreans attempted to board the ship, Americans opened fire. Over the next two weeks, the Americans held off repeated attacks killing twenty Koreans and wounding many others. The Koreans finally succeeded in setting fire to the ship and killed the crew as they came ashore.

Among the knife wielding Koreans who attacked the General Sherman was a plain peasant named Kim Ung U. He was the father of Kim Bo Hyon, who later had a son named Kim Hyong Jik.He, in turn, was the father of Kim Il Sung.[vi]

Since no crew member survived, the historical account of the General Sherman's fate is incomplete. Accounts vary. One account alleges that the American crew had intended to pillage the tombs of Koryo dynasty kings. Another recounts that the local Koreans allegedly cut up the corpses, pickled them, took them in the interior and set them up as curiosities![vii]

However, Harry Rhodes, the first American missionary to Korea, gave one of the more believable versions of the incident:

"At Sook-Syum, Preston, the owner of the ship and his Chinese interpreter went ashore and met the governor of Pyongyang and the commander of the garrison. The commander and three of his men went out to visit the ship. The ship's crew asked to see his insignia of office, which had been given to him by the King, and refused to give it back. Then the four men were forced into the ship's long boat and taken up the river. The Koreans on the shore offered a large reward to anyone who would rescue their comrades."

"A man by the name of Pak Choon Kwun rowed out in a scull to the "long boat" which was having difficulty getting up the rapids . . . The Koreans attempted to jump into the scull. The general and one of his men were saved but the other two were drowned . . . Firing from the ship continued off and on for two weeks, during which time twenty Koreans were killed and a large number wounded."

"Meanwhile the ship was hopelessly grounded in the mire and the crew began to sue for peace. They sent a man and an interpreter to make apologies to the governor. The men were bound and ordered to send for the rest of the crew if apologies were really meant. But this order was suspected to be a ruse and as soon as a note on paper was sent back, firing from the ship resumed. The Koreans now determined to burn the General Sherman and sent down against the ship a large scow loaded with pine branches of fire, on September 3, 1866. The crew in attempting to escape, jumped into the water and were killed as they came ashore." [viii]

Once ashore, the Reverend Thomas exclaimed “Jesus, Jesus” in Korean and offered his Korean Bible to a Korean man. The man refused. When Thomas knelt to pray, the man cut off Thomas’ head and threw it into the river. The young missionary’s life had been cut short and to what end?

Thomas’ legacy was not over. The Korean man who killed him was quite convicted in his spirit that he had killed a good man. So, he took the Bible home. The man used the pages of the book to wallpaper his guest house and later became a Christian. In 1891, a full quarter century later, an American visited the area and asked the proprietor about the unique wallpaper in the guest house. The owner told of how, over the years, people had come from far and wide to “read the walls.” In the years that followed, the killer’s nephew graduated from Pyongyang’s Union Christian College and served as part of a team that revised the Korean Bible. The Word had come to Korea at the price of martyr’s blood.

The Birth of the North Korean Church (1867 - 1893)

In 1882, during these years of work with the Koreans in China, Ross and McIntyre obtained the help of Korean language teachers to translate the Gospel of Luke into Korean. By 1887, they succeeded in translating the entire New Testament into the Korean language. One of these language teachers was an itinerant medicine merchant named So Sang Yun. On one of his trips to northeastern China, he became ill and was cared for by McIntyre.

McIntyre’s great compassion so moved Sang Yun, that the Korean merchant assisted in the task of translation. During the course of their work, So Sang Yun and his brother, So Kyong Yun, were converted. After completion of the New Testament, So Sang Yun and his brothers returned to Korea, and settled in Sorae on the west coast of Hwanghae Province. There, where they established a Presbyterian church, So Sang Yun became one of the first Protestant, Korean-ordained ministers. However, he was most likely not the first.

Several years before, after the Gospel of Luke had been translated, three Korean scholars, who were converted to Christianity while studying in China, headed back home. These men asked and received Bible scrolls so that they could proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ in their homeland.

As one of the three neared the border, he had a vision of scrolls made into ropes. So, he unrolled his precious Gospel of Luke and rolled, twisted and braided it into a rope. Then, in obedience to the vision, he used the rope to tie his belongings to his back. When he arrived in Korea safely, he learned that his two friends had been executed at the border. The charge? Bringing in a foreign religion!

Afterward, this remaining scholar unrolled the rope and shared the Gospel with his fellow Koreans. And thus, the Korean church was born at the price of the blood of martyrs. When Western missionaries arrived during the next decade, they were surprised to find that an small community of established Christians already in place in what is now North Korea.

Though missionaries helped strengthen and disciple the Korean believers, North Korea is distinct from most other nations, in that a native Korean first brought the gospel to his own people, not a foreigners (like the Ethiopian in Acts 8:27). Ross and McIntyre laid the foundation for Korean Protestantism in northeast China. But it was Koreans, converted in China, who first penetrated the Hermit Kingdom with the gospel. In the decades that followed, the rapid growth of Christianity in Korea had an increasing impact on the nation as she emerged from the politics of isolationism.

In 1871, only five years after the General Sherman incident, U.S. ships again appeared off of Korea’s western coast. This time it was Navy warships that exchanged fire with shore batteries on Kanghwado Island and then U.S. marines landed. The marines captured some forts on the island, and then withdrew due to stubborn resistance from the Chosun Dynasty’s forces. A sharp contrast existed between foreigner and Korean views during this era.

For example, in 1871, U.S. Marine Corps Captain McLane Tilton recorded in his diary that the Americans did not anticipate hostilities because:

". . our mission being a peaceful mission, and for the purpose only of exacting a reasonable promise from the Korean government that Christian seamen wrecked on their coast may be treated humanely."[ix] >p> However, they did end up engaging in hostilities accompanied by the following unexpected response from the Koreans, who rejected their seemingly reasonable overtures:

"Today we got a communication from the Head Man at the fort . . . who stated . . . he didn't see why we wanted to come so far to make a treaty. They had been living 4,000 years they said, without a treaty with us, and of course they couldn't see why they shouldn't continue to live as they do!" [x]

In the decade that followed, such gunboat diplomacy influenced the Chosun Dynasty to reluctantly depart from its hard-line Hermit Kingdom policy through the signing of treaties with Japan (1876) and the United States (1882). With the signing of the Treaty of Peace, Amity, Commerce and Navigation (the "Shufeldt Agreement"), the United States was the first Western power to establish diplomatic relations with Korea.

In the years that followed, Korea also established treaties with Great Britain (1883), Germany (1883), Russia (1884) and France (1886). The U.S., in particular, helped to build Korea into a modern industrialized nation. In addition, the establishment of diplomatic relations was quickly followed by many U.S. missionaries entering Korea. Many Korean scholars also traveled to the United States to study at American colleges and universities. However, the publication of William Elliot Griffis' 1882 book, Corea: The Hermit Kingdom, strongly influenced Western opinion to the view that Korea was not capable of self rule.

In 1884, R.S. Maclay obtained permission from Great Britain’s Queen Victoria for British Protestant missionaries to go to Korea. These missionaries gained unexpected favor after Dr. Horace Allen, the first western missionary to Korea, saved the life of a royal prince injured in the December 1884 pro-Japanese Kapsin Coup that was put down by Korean and Chinese troops. That same year, Dr. Horace Underwood, Henry G. Appenzeller, Samuel Moffatt, W. J. Reynolds, and others began strengthening the new Korean church.

Protestant missionaries also had the benefit of learning from the mistakes of the Catholics. As a result, Protestant mission­aries focused on edu­cation and health care to reach the hearts of the Korean people for Jesus Christ.

These missionaries, who included doctors and teachers, established schools, hospitals and orphanages throughout Korea. For example, Methodist missionary Henry Appenzeller founded the first missionary school, Paichai Haktang. Later missionaries founded both Yonsei and Ewha universities. Their proclamation of the gospel in word and deed resulted in tens of thousands of Koreans becoming Christians. Typical life for these early Korean Christians included Bible study, prayer (including frequent 4:00 AM prayer meetings), self-support and a heavy emphasis for all believers to win souls to Jesus Christ.

References:

[ii] Kim Wi Jo. "Christ and Caesar in modern Korea: a history of Christianity and politics", (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997).

[iii] McLane Tilton, Captain, USMC, personal papers (Archives and Library, Historical Branch, Headquarters, Marine Corps). (May 20, 1871) as quoted in Carolyn A. Tyson, Marine Amphibious Landing in Korea, 1871 (Washington, D.C.: Naval Historical Foundation, 1966), 8.

[iv] E. M. Cable, "United States Korean Relations, 1866-1871" – English Publication No. 4 (Seoul: Y.M.C.A. Press, 1939), 62.

[v] In Chefu, China, the Reverend Thomas met two Roman Catholic Koreans at the home of the Rev. Alexander Williamson of the National Bible Society of Scotland. Equipped with funds, tracts and Scriptures from Williamson, Thomas and his two companions, spent three months in Hwanghae Province where he worked with the Korean Christian community before returning to Chefu, China for a visit in December 1865.

[vi] Varying accounts and much confusing exists surrounding the General Sherman incident. For example, though the General Sherman was a commercial vessel, some Korean accounts describe the General Sherman as a warship because the crew had firearms. One writer even mixed up the 1866 General Sherman massacre account with the 1871 U.S. naval expedition which landed a force on Kangwha island near Seoul to come up with an entirely new "revisionist" historical account [Korea Herald, "Letters to the Editor: Act of Colonization?" By Cooper Leggett 2 February 1998]. This fictional account alleges that the General Sherman was never burned and the crew never was killed.

To further confuse historians, in 1866, there were five U.S. commercial vessels were named General Sherman, none of which were the ship that was burned in Korea in 1866! [Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives Navy Maritime Group.] Actual accounts and interviews of Korean participants from the 1866 and 1867 U.S. Navy reports investigating the loss of the schooner General Sherman 19^th century are located on microfilm rolls 251 and 252 in the U.S. National Archives.

[vii] Tilton, personal papers as quoted by Tyson, Marine Amphibious Landing in Korea, 8.

[viii] Horace N. Allen Diary, April 6, 1885.

[ix] Ibid., 6.

[x] Ibid., 10.