By Andrei Lankov
``He stays in the royal suite at the Chosun Hotel.'' For decades, this remark could be found in newspaper reports about the rich and famous who visited the Korean capital. One had to be very famous or very rich to warrant the privilege of staying in the `royal suite' or `Room 201' of the old Chosun Hotel.
The Old Chosun does not exist any more. In 1967 it was replaced by a new building which bears the same name. The new Westin Chosun is luxurious and has many rivals. Its predecessor, the old Chosun, had none. When Chosun (or "Chosen," as it was known until 1945) was opened in 1914 it offered the only top-class accommodation available in the Korean capital. Out of its 69 rooms, Room 201 (the royal suite) was by far the most luxurious. It was reserved for the exclusive use of royalty - a group more numerous in the 1910s than today.
Most of the people who stayed in room 201 between 1914 and 1945 came from the Japanese Imperial family. In September 1920 ,Prince Hirohito, the future Emperor of Japan and, for many Koreans, a symbol of the colonial regime and a war criminal, stayed in the room during his official tour across the empire. Years later, room 201 hosted a less controversial visitor: Prince Yi Un, a heir to the Korean throne who had been taken to Japan and graduated from a Japanese military academy. He visited Korea with his Japanese wife, Princess Masako, much later in the early 1960s (they returned to Korea permanently).
However, not all the guests of Room 201 were Japanese. In 1926, Swedish crown prince Gustaf Adolf stayed there. An amateur archaeologist, he came to Korea to look at the royal tombs of the Silla Kingdom, which had been recently discovered by Japanese archaeologists.
In 1915, Herbert Hoover, U.S. President from 1928-1932, also stayed in the hotel. But at the time he was merely a successful mining engineer and upstart politician, so he could not aspire to the comforts of room 201. Of all the U.S. Presidents, President Hoover was probably most seriously involved with Korea. As a mining engineer he had some interests in gold mines, which were operated by an American company in what is now North Korea.
In 1935, the 'royal suite' hosted a person who did not belong to royalty, possibly for the first time. Serge Rubinstein, a brilliant but unscrupulous financier, was the financial advisor to Rasputin in the last days of the Russian Tsars. By the 1930s he had vast financial interests in Korea. He was considered a guest of the Japanese imperial household, but this did not prevent him from cheating on his ``hosts" and smuggling gold and silver from Korea on huge scale. Such was his style…
With the fall of the Japanese Empire in 1945, the royal suite came to be occupied by a number of colourful and remarkable personalities. For a few days in September 1945 it was home to General Hodge, the highest commanding officer of US troops in Korea. He soon moved to the neighbouring Pando Hotel, but room 201 was not left empty: it was taken over by Dr. Syngman Rhee, a leader of the Korean government-in-exile and future first president (some would say dictator) of the Republic of Korea.
Soon afterwards, room 201 became the residence of So Chae-pil (Dr. Philip Jaison). A participant of the reformers' plot in 1884, he became a vice-minister at the age of 20, a railroad worker at 22, and a medical doctor with a degree from George Washington University at 30. His contribution to the Korean nationalist movement was second only to Syngman Rhee's, and the jealous Dr.Rhee saw Dr. Jaison as a dangerous rival. In the late 1940s, Dr. Jason (well into his 80's but very fit and active) served as a political adviser to the US military government in Korea and tried ― unsuccessfully ― to check Dr. Rhee's dictatorial inclinations. During his long stay in the Chosun Hotel, the royal site was a venue for a number of secretive meetings in which all political heavyweights of the era participated. However, all attempts to prevent the gradual slide into a dictatorship proved unsuccessful, and a disappointed Dr. Jaison permanently left Korea for the U.S.
In late June 1950, the Communist tanks rolled into Seoul. With them, a new inhabitant for room 201 arrived. Yi Sung-yup, a prominent leftist intellectual who had been one of the leaders of the South Korean Communist underground prior to the war, was appointed head of the Seoul Communist administration and stayed in the 'royal suite' until mid-September when Seoul changed hands once again.
The Korean War was a disaster from which the 'royal suite' never completely recovered. For a while the Chosun Hotel was used as a rest place for aircrews, and then became the headquarters of the U.S. relief agencies. Although restored in the late 1950s, the Chosun had lost its unique standing among Korean hotels. The last dignitary to stay in room 201 was U.S. Vice President Humphrey, who in July 1967 came to Seoul to take part in the inauguration of President Pak Chung-hee. In order to accomodate him, the long-planned demolition of the old Chosun Hotel was postponed for a few days before finally being demolished.
Prof. Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and now teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. He has recently published “The Dawn of Modern Korea,” which is now on sale at Kyobo Book Center and other major bookstores. The book is based on columns published in The Korea Times.