[KS] Was he Korean? Ludwig Kim (Université de Strasbourg)

[Frank Hoffmann]

Hello Brother Anthony, dear all:

Good and interesting points you are bringing up.

I do not know the 1903 _Korea Review_ articles, but I am pretty sure, 
from what you say, that must be Father Wilhelm. The dissertation of Dr. 
Franklin D. Rausch and several of his most recent articles and a book 
chapter deal with Father Joseph Wilhelm and his relation to An 
Chung-gŭn and Bishop Mutel. (Absolutely worth reading!) You all have 
seen this photo in various history books:
 
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I would not have known had Dr. Rausch not pointed that out -- Father 
Joseph Wilhelm turns the back to us. This is at Port Arthur (Lushun) 
Prison, March 10, 1910. Joseph Wilhelm is seen with the back to us, 
faces his former pupil, assassin, and Korean national hero An Pong-gŭn; 
left of him sit the prisoner's brothers Kong-gŭn and Ch?ng-gŭn. Mutel, 
or rather the Société des Missions Étrangères, seems to have received 
orders from the Vatican (their official website indicates so!), to get 
rid of Father Wilhelm. When he left Korea he did not, as Korean history 
books have it, go to France but lived for a year with the German 
Benedictines in Bavaria. He only left the German monastery when World 
War I broke out, and only so because the German authorities might 
otherwise have, going by the book, incarcerated him as a French citizen 
in one of their horrible war-time POW camps. Most of the next 30 years 
he spent in two villages right on the French-German border--he could 
virtually through stones over the border from the church roof. While 
still in Korea, I think it was 1911(?), when P. Norbert Weber of St. 
Ottilien visited, it was Father Wilhelm who guided him around through 
the entire country. In Weber's book _Im Lande der Morgenstille_ that is 
well documented. Interestingly, they also visited An Chung-gŭn's house 
and there is a long text passage about An and his family. Again, that 
is AFTER the assassination of It?.  

 
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The above photo shows Weber and Wilhelm (left) at a wedding ceremony at 
the An Chung-gŭn household. 
One has to remember that Father Wilhelm was kind of the household 
priest for the entire, wealthy and influential An clan; my impression 
is that together with An Chung-gŭn's father and then his three sons 
half of the Hwanghae-do province converted to Catholicism ? and those 
who did not became Presbyterians. So yes, there was a real intense 
fight going on between Catholics and Presbyterians around 1900, and 
Father Wilhelm seems to have been a man of the wooden stick, it seems. 
The Japanese prison interpreter, and then his family, had kept copies 
the transcripts of Wilhelm's three prison visits and conversations, and 
those were published I think a year or two ago, and one of the points 
that impressed me was that Wilhelm then apologized to An Chung-gŭn that 
he had beaten him up too hard ::)
Anyway, I am mostly interested in this man because he continued to be 
active for Korean independence AFTER he left Korea?
But to summarize, and there are many more points to make, Wilhelm was 
anything but a French nationalist; what he was is a localist, someone 
who really loved Alsace-Lorraine (Elsass-Lothringen)--otherwise he 
spoke German just as good as French, and like very many people then and 
now living in that area he certainly felt he belonged to both cultures 
? we can clearly see that from a multitude of documents and stories. 

So, the thing is that he would not have send someone "to Germany" to 
study but he would have send someone to the university at his home. 

Speculation:  I know Wilhelm returned to Europe with a Korean student 
coming with him (I am in the process of writing about that person). 
*If* that here mentioned Ludwig Kim was also Korean--he might or might 
not--then that may mean he returned with more than just one student. 
The time line fits perfectly, and after 1914 he seems to have worked 
very close with the German Benedictines in any case.

??...
Unrelated -- at least not directly related -- but since I have your 
attention ? another quizz:

 
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This is a detail from a photo taken in Bavaria in 1940, and now 
published at the "Mirok Li Homepage"--right here:
http://mirokli.com/zbxe/Photo/323
The person in the middle is Mirok Li (_The Yalu Flows_ novel author), 
the person on the right, also with glasses, I am convinced, must be 
Chang Kŭk, that is one of the two brothers of the former South Korean 
prime minister Chang My?n (reg. 1960 to 1961). I do have a good idea 
who the person on the left (without glasses) is, and I am very 
interested in establishing this (as there seems not a single other 
photo of him) ? but at this point that is not for sure. My question 
therefore: if you know who that is on the left, please, please post 
here or send me a personal mail. 


Thank you so much!
Frank


> Would a French priest (Fr. Wilhelm was a member of the Paris Foreign 
> Mission) have sent a Korean to Germany to study? Alsace had been 
> German territority since the 1870s, although the French never 
> accepted that, of course, and took the region back at the end of the 
> First World War.
> Is this Father Joseph Wilhelm the same priest as the Hong Sin-bu at 
>the center of the Catholic - Protestant conflicts so vividly 
> documented in the 1903 Korea Review?
> 
> Brother Anthony
> Sogang University etc

--------------------------------------
Frank Hoffmann
http://koreanstudies.com