"I had two paths before me. Either to acquiesce in Japan's actions and collude with them to enjoy comfort, or to defend the rights of the Korean people and tell the world of the mounting injustices they were suffering. There was no middle ground for me to occupy."
Homer B. Hulbert (1863-1949), an American missionary, chose the latter. For a man who devoted his life to Korea's modernization and to defending the sovereignty of the Korean Empire, Korea was a second homeland.
A memoir recording Hulbert's turbulent life from 1886, when he first arrived in Korea, through 1932, along with his insights into international affairs, has been published in Korea after more than 90 years. Hulbert typed the memoir from the 1920s through the end of 1932. Its existence became known in Korea in 1994, and only portions were released in facsimile form in 2000. Ok Sung-deuk, a chair professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, obtained the manuscript held at Columbia University's library a decade ago, translated it into Korean, annotated it and published it as a book.
In the preface, Hulbert wrote that the experiences recorded in the book came from more than 20 years of living in "an obscure corner of the world, the country of Korea." He also assessed that Korea "experienced both the glory of its long history and the tragedy of political extinction, entirely because of its geopolitical position," adding that "Korea became the first stepping stone for Japan to evolve from an island nation into a continental power."
Hulbert entered Korea in 1886 at age 23, invited as a teacher at Yukyoung Gongwon, Korea's first modern public school, and remained in the country until Japanese colonial authorities expelled him in 1909. A missionary, he was also an educator who wrote "Samin Pilji," Korea's first textbook in the Korean alphabet; a journalist who published the Korea Review and created the English edition of The Independent; and a linguist who recognized the merits of Hangul.
During the 1895 assassination of Empress Myeongseong, he exposed Japan's atrocities to the world. He wrote of the incident: "The queen was driven into a corner of a room in her quarters and was brutally killed there. Because only the assassins were beside the victim, no one can say with any certainty who inflicted the fatal wound, but all the circumstances point to the Japanese as the perpetrators."
Hulbert also kept night watch in the palace sleeping quarters to protect Emperor Gojong. The memoir includes his assessment of the emperor. "The point I wish to emphasize is that whatever judgment is passed on the Korean king as a ruler, from beginning to end he never once voluntarily submitted to Japanese coercion. Out of a sense of duty, he did everything within his power to save the nation from political destruction."
Hulbert later traveled to Washington on a secret mission from Emperor Gojong in 1905 to block the Eulsa Treaty, and in 1907 he worked to support the Korean envoys to the Hague peace conference, after which Japanese authorities forced him out of the country. In 1909, Ahn Jung-geun, under interrogation by Japanese police after shooting Ito Hirobumi, said, "No Korean should forget Hulbert for even a single day."
Hulbert returned to Korean soil in July 1949 at the invitation of the South Korean government, more than 40 years after his departure, but died in Seoul in August of bronchitis. In keeping with his wish to "be buried in Korea rather than in Westminster Abbey," he was interred at the Yanghwajin Foreign Missionary Cemetery in Seoul.
Ok, the translator and editor, said his life, devoted to Korea's independence and democracy, "delivers a weighty message to us as we look at today's international situation, where war, dictatorship and militarism persist."
Purun Yoksa, 776 pages.
