The Marmot’s Hole

PROK Missionary Education Center — One for the Canukistanis

A bit off the beaten trail, hidden away off of Chungjeong-no 2ga in Seodaemun-gu, is a pleasant, ivy-covered Western-style residence.

This building is the old Missionary Education Center of the Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Korea (PROK).

In 2003, the building became a source of controversy when the PROK wanted to level the stately old structure to put up a new, 13-story office building. To justify its plans, the PROK said the building was built as a home for a Japanese colonist (during the colonial period, the Chungjeong-no area was a residential area for wealthy Japanese and Westerners) and was a blight upon Korean history. It even cited testimony by two (presumably) elderly pastors who said the Japanese owner turned over the building to missionaries of the United Church of Canada right before the end of the war. In other words, it was a jeoksan gaok, a term used to describe Japanese homes that were usually hastily turned over to Korean owners as the Japanese Empire came crashing down, and its impending demise should be welcomed.

This met with a good deal of opposition from within the church and out. In a 2005 op-ed, Hwang Pyeong-woo of the Citizens’ Network for Cultural Reform discussed the building’s history while arguing for its preservation. He noted that according to Japanese records from 1919, the property was owned by a Westerner by the name of S. Morris, who might or might not be the same Westerner who was awarded railroad and mining concessions by the Korean government in 1889. After the Korean War, Canadian Presbyterian missionaries — who had spent much of the colonial period working in the Gando region — acquired the building as a base of operations. When they left in the 1970s, they turned the building over to PROK.

In 2004, the Hankyoreh Shinmun reported that a Christian history research center had discovered material suggesting that the building had been built in 1921 by a Canadian Presbyterian missionary by the name of T.D. Mansfield and owned by Canadian missionaries up to at least 1941.

For what it’s worth, the Cultural Heritage Administration (which registered the building as a cultural property on the last day of 2004) says the building was built in 1931 and used as a residence by Canadian missionaries.

At any rate, the 2-story house (not including its basement and attic) is a rare example of colonial-era Western residential architecture. But aside from being old, pretty and architecturally valuable, it carries with it great symbolism, both in terms of Canadian missionary history, the history of the Presbyterian church in Korea, and Korea’s modern democratization movement.

Said Hwang in the afore linked op-ed:

Without the active support of Canadian missionaries, the PROK — which played a leading role in Korea’s democratization movement — could never have existed. From the early years of missionary work through the Japanese colonial period to Liberation and even the Park Chung-hee dictatorship, the love of Canadian missionaries through the Presbyterian church was special. When Japanese imperialists tried to erase the Korean people’s spirit and suppressed freedom of religion, Canadian missionaries protected the national identity of the Korean church, unlike American missionaries who collaborated with the Japanese imperialists, and discovered pioneers with the same aims and ethnic identity and supported them both physically and materially.

Hwang also said that Canadian missionaries encouraged independent Korean leadership and theological activities, unlike the Americans, who tried to limit it to protect their own authority and prestige.

Interestingly, when the Korean Presbyterian church split into the conservative Presbyterian Church of Korea (PCK) and the liberal Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Korea (PROK) in 1953, US and Australian missionaries tended to support the PCK, while the Canadians — left-wing anti-American pinkos that they are — tended to support the PROK.

Korean Protestantism Fun Fact: Like Catholicism, Protestantism came to Korea before the first Western missionaries arrived. Suh Sang-ryun, who was baptized by Scottish missionaries working with the Korean community in Manchuria, set up a Presbyterian church in Hwanghae-do in 1884. This page has a lot on the work Scottish missionaries did with translating the Bible into Korean.

During the 1970s and 1980s, the PROK Missionary Education Center became a center of the pro-democracy movement. It was the haunt of pro-democracy clergymen and liberation theologians like Kim Jae-jun, Ahn Byung-mu, Seo Nam-dong and Moon Ik-hwan, as well as the gathering place of professors, students, reporters, laborers and other anti-dictatorship people.

Namdaemoon Presbyterian Church

You’ve no doubt noticed the rather imposing Gothic church on the hill across the street from Seoul Station. This church is Namdaemoon Presbyterian Church, one of Korea’s most historic places of Christian worship and, more interesting for me, a beautiful piece of work by one of the vanguards of Korean modern architecture, Park Dong-jin.

Namdaemoon Presbyterian Church began its life not as a church, but as a hospital — Korea’s first Western hospital, in fact, the Jejungwon. The Jejungwon was founded in Je-dong in 1885 by Horace Allen, the American missionary, doctor, businessman, diplomat and, if I might say, model of late 19th century Western imperialism. According to this Kookmin Ilbo piece, the hospital was located in a relatively safe place between Chungdong First Methodist Church in Jeongdong and Horace Underwood’s Saemoonan Presbyterian Church, which made it a perfect place for Big-Noser and his Korean Christian lackies to hide during the anti-foreign unrest in the wake of the 1888 Myeongdong Cathedral Incident (when the Catholic Church — backed by the French and Russian legations — laid the cornerstone of what is now Myeongdong Cathedral despite a royal request to change the church’s location), the ensuing royal edict against the propagation of Christianity and the Baby Riot (don’t ask, you don’t want to know). It was during this time that the hospital began its life as a place of worship.

In 1887 (according to the sign in the front of the church), the hospital was moved to Gurigae by Dr. John Heron, who died of illness three years later at the age of 28. He secretly founded a church in the hospital so that he could supplement his medical duties with a little proselytizing on the side. Church and hospital split — kind of — in 1909 when a 70-pyeong church was built on the grounds of Severance Hospital. By this time, the church had a congregation of about 1,000.

Anyway, the church got toasted during the Korean War, and work on the present structure began in 1955. The design was left to Park Dong-jin, one of Korea’s first modern architects and the man behind Korea University, Choong Ang High School and Youngnak Presbyterian Church. As you can see by his list of work, Park liked to work with granite, and a big granite Gothic church is what you get. Work on the church was finished in 1969.

Aside from the granite, you’ll notice other common Park Dong-jin motifs, including the distinctive spires and the Tudor arches.

The church, sitting atop a hill, is a really pleasant place to walk about, if for no other reason than it shares its garden with the Hilton Hotel Seoul.

See the Flickr slideshow here.