South Koreans honor missionary

Columbus Dispatch

COLUMBUS

In South Korea, Horace Newton Allen is credited with helping to spread Christianity and establish a system of modern medicine.

In his Ohio hometown of Delaware, he is less well-known.

Nineteen South Koreans consider him important enough to travel to Ohio to honor his memory and the 200th anniversary of First Presbyterian Church in Delaware, where he worshipped.

Allen, who lived from 1858 to 1932, was a doctor, diplomat and missionary.

He was one of the earliest missionaries in Korea, which was then unified, said Clark Sorensen, chairman of the Korean studies program at the University of Washington. Today, North Korea and South Korea are separate countries.

Back then, being a missionary was illegal and punishable by death, so Allen entered the country in his role as a physician. He saved the life of a member of the royal family and was allowed to establish the country’s first modern hospital.

“I’m so thankful for him,” Ko Kyung-Ryang said as she looked at Allen artifacts in Ohio Wesleyan University’s Leon A. Beeghly Library this week. Allen graduated from Ohio Wesleyan in 1881 and from the former Miami University Medical School in Cincinnati in 1883.

“Because of him, other Protestant missionaries could come.”

At least a quarter of South Koreans are Protestant Christians, and the largest faith is Presbyterianism, Sorensen said.

Most of the visitors are from Namdaemoon Presbyterian Church in Seoul, which lays claim to Allen as its founder in 1887.

Some are from Yonsei University and Severance Medical Center, both in Seoul. Severance is the descendant of that first hospital Allen started in the 1880s, said Paul Kostyu, an Ohio Wesleyan journalism professor who studies Allen and his legacy.

Allen was appointed U.S. ambassador to Korea by a fellow Ohioan, President William McKinley. Allen was fired in 1905 because he disagreed with President Theodore Roosevelt about which country should control Korea. Allen supported an independent Korea or, failing that, Chinese control; Roosevelt favored the Japanese.

Allen is such a big deal, the Korean visitors said, that a TV drama about him recently was released.

The Korean group, which includes a 9-year-old girl, has had a busy week of exploring Allen’s American life.

On Tuesday, they toured Ohio Wesleyan and Delaware County. At the university, they looked over Allen’s college photos and records. He went by “Newt” back then. They also saw 18th- or 19th-century suits of Korean armor that Allen had donated to the school.

A Korean woman studying at Ohio Wesleyan translated for the visitors, most of whom do not speak English.