Korean Studies Internet Discussion List KOREAN STUDIES REVIEW
Living Dangerously in Korea: The Western Experience 1900-1950, by Donald N. Clark, 2003. Norwalk: CT: EastBridge. 453 pages. (ISBN 1-891936-11-5).
Reviewed by Don Baker
University of British ColumbiaIn his title, Don Clark advertises this book as an account of the Western missionary experience in Korea over the first half of the twentieth century. He is too modest. This book is much more than that. Because he writes about how the missionaries responded to the various situations they found themselves witnessing, and sometimes caught up in, he has actually provided a history of Korea from 1900-1950, albeit one filtered through the eyes of Western residents.
The son and grandson of missionaries, Clark avoids the sin committed by many who write about their own parents and grandparents. He does not make them the prime movers and shakers of the times in which they lived, nor does he even make them the axis around which their world revolved. Instead, he lets them, and their missionary colleagues, serve as the eyes and ears through which we can observe what life was like in Korea back then, and how both they and their Korean converts and friends were affected by the many tumultuous events of that half-century.
He begins with the arrival of his grandfather, Charlie Clark, in Korea in 1902. That provides him an excuse to sketch the cultural and political environment on the peninsula on the eve of annexation. He also explores the cross-cultural barriers the missionaries faced in trying to convert Koreans not just to Christianity but to the particularly rigid form of Christianity they preached, which demanded that Koreans give up such time-honored customs as smoking, polygamy, social drinking, and most difficult, the ritual honoring of ancestors. In addition, he discusses the problems preaching in Korean posed for those English-speaking missionaries. As someone who vividly remembers the many mistakes I made when I first began speaking Korean in Korea, I particularly enjoyed the story about the sermon on ttam (sweat) when the missionary actually intended to warn his congregation against the sin of t'am (envy).
Since Western missionaries, including Charlie Clark, remained in Korea after the annexation of 1910, Clark is able to provide a different view of Japanese rule than is usually found in Korean accounts. First of all, he points out that most of the missionaries (with the conspicuous exceptions of Hulbert and Allen) were at first ambivalent about the Japanese takeover, hoping that a colonial government more modern than the Confucian government it replaced would open up more space for missionary activity. However, they soon found out that the Japanese were not enthusiastic about the spread of Christianity in Korea and in fact raised barriers to it. Japanese demands that medical missionaries pass qualifying exams in Japanese and that the curriculum in missionary schools be redesigned to conform to the curriculum in secular schools run by the Japanese government (which meant that religion could not be taught in those schools) soured the missionaries on Japanese rule. However, Clark makes clear that, despite such disappointments during the first decade of colonial rule, the vast majority of the missionaries were not prepared to support uprisings against the Japanese, even after March 1, 1919 showed how unpopular Japanese rule had become. Instead, the missionaries welcomed the appointment of a more liberal governor-general near the end of 1919, since Admiral Saito rolled back some of the restrictions which had been placed on their schools a decade earlier.
A more serious problem for the missionaries in the 1920s was the rise of resentment by some Korean Christians of the missionary domination of Korean Christianity. Koreans wanted control of Christian schools such as the Chosen Christian College (now Yonsei University) to be turned over to them faster than the missionaries wanted to relinquish control. Clark tells us that such prominent Korean Christians as Paek Nakchun and Yun Ch'iho resented what they considered "missionary paternalism" in this and other matters. However, such disputes paled in comparison with the issue that confronted both the missionaries and Korean Christians in the 1930s. When the Japanese demanded that Christian schools permit their students to participate in Shinto rituals, both the missionary community and the Korean Christian community were split over how to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's while remaining faithful to the laws of God. The issue was soon rendered moot for the missionaries by the rise of tension between the US and Japan which led to the expulsion of most of the missionaries in 1940. Korean Christians were left behind to resolve that moral dilemma for themselves.
As Clark tells the tale, that expulsion of the missionaries and their five-year absence from Korea led to renewed strains between missionaries and Korean Christians in 1945. During the war years, Koreans took charge of their own churches and schools and were not ready to return control to the missionaries when those missionaries returned after the war was over. However, just as in the 1930s, an external threat to Christianity in Korea brought both missionaries and Korean Christians closer together again. That threat was, of course, the North Korean invasion of 1950. Clark ends his book with a moving account of what life was like for both Catholic and Protestant missionaries, as well as Korean Christians, caught up in that horrendous civil war.
While guiding us through the turbulent waters of Korean history from the final years of the Chosôn dynasty to the Korean war, Clark manages to take us on some interesting side trips as well. He devotes a chapter to pre-Communist Pyongyang, when it was known as the Jerusalem of the East, and another chapter to the White Russians who were stranded in Korea after the victory of the communist revolution in their homeland. He also has an entire chapter on life for Koreans and missionaries alike in Manchuria in the 1920s and 1930. However, the chapter that will probably attract the most interest is the one he titles "Western Women in the Land of the Morning Calm." Despite that title, he spends almost as much time in that chapter on Korean women as he does on missionary women. By doing so, he sheds light on an aspect of modern Korean history often overlooked in standard textbook surveys. Another chapter that will attract interest is "Soldiers of Freedom," an account of the birth of a South Korean army and government and the subsequent uprisings in both Cheju and Sunch'on. Clark's comments on Park Chung-hee's role in that latter rebellion is the clearest account I have seen in English of how Park managed to become involved with that incident, and how he managed to extricate himself.
In summary, don't be misled by title of this book. It is a fascinating and informative read for anyone interested in modern Korean history and is not just for those interested in missionary history or the history of Korean Christianity. In fact, this book would make a good supplementary text for a class on the history of Korea in the twentieth century.
Citation:
Baker, Don 2004
Review of Living Dangerously in Korea: The Western Experience 1900-1950, by
Donald N. Clark (2003)
Korean Studies Review 2004, no. 14
Electronic file: http://koreanstudies.com/ks/ksr/ksr04-14.htm