The Marmot’s Hole

 ”In the early 20th century, Korea had several Western mining communities spread mainly throughout the northern part of the peninsula. Although many of these mining communities were quite small — only a handful of Westerners and a couple hundred Korean, Chinese and Japanese workers — others were huge with several thousand employees. The largest was the Oriental Consolidated Mining Company’s concession at Unsan. ”

It has been popular over the last couple of years to speak negatively about the Western gold mining concessions in Korea.  Often these operations are thinly referred to as forms of modern slavery in which the Korean miners (there were also a lot of Chinese and Japanese) were paid low wages and lived poorly.  While they may have been paid less than the Western supervisors - they were paid better than the average Korean laborer and there was no shortage of Koreans who tried to work for the mines.

While there were many negative aspects to the mining concessions - there were positive ones as well.  One of these positive aspects was free medical care provided by the American mining concessions to just about anyone who could make their way to the hospital.  It didn’t matter if you worked for the company or not.  At one of the smaller mining concession (Seoul Mining Company) the company’s hospital treated more than 63,000 Korean patients in just four years .

“Health was a constant concern to the gold miners and their families. Mining is inherently dangerous, and miners were often injured or killed while performing their duties. But even more alarming than the accidents was the constant threat of disease. Due to poor living conditions, sanitation, and health care, disease was rampant in Korea and epidemics often swept through the country leaving hundreds and thousands dead.”

“In an effort to protect its miners and their families, Western and Asian, the Oriental Consolidated Mining Company (OCMC) established a hospital at their main mine at Tabowie (Unsan). ”

The hospitals at the mines were held up as examples of “how foreign capital invested in the wilds of Korea benefit both financially and physically the Korean people” and brought about their “happiness, comfort, good living and good behaviour.”

However, not all of the mining communities’ residents were happy. Dr. Stryker, according to his father-in-law, frequently received death threats, but he disregarded them and continued on with his work.

It is obviously clear by the title what happened to Dr. Stryker, but if you want to know more about it and how he died (his murderer is not who many of you would have expected) you will have to read the rest of the story here.  Please note that there are a few more photographs and, even more important in my opinion, a map with the locations of the various Western mines.