Patriot sacrificed family for country

By Lee Tae-hoon

Miriam Ching Louie, 61, arrived in Seoul last week to search for traces of her late grandfather, who dared to sacrifice his family for the independence of Korea.

“It appears that my grandfather could have been a big shot, but he didn’t choose to be so,” Louie said as she showed a document suggesting that her grandfather was admitted to Harvard University. “It was my grandmother who fed his children, including my mother.”

Born in 1880 in Yangju, Gyeonggi Province, her grandfather Yoon Pyeong-koo lived during one of the most turbulent periods in the country’s history. Records show that Yoon lost his parents at an early age and was adopted by one of his relatives.

Despite that, he managed to excel at his studies and master English while studying at Baejae Hakdang (Academy) and Han Sung Normal School in Seoul.

He became an English translator for the Korean Review, a periodical published by the Methodist mission in 1901.

“I guess he became involved in the independence movement at the Baejae Hakdang which was run by missionaries,” she said.

He went to Hawaii in 1903 to help settle the first generation of Koreans in the United States and later served as a spiritual leader of Korean-Americans and an advocate of Korean independence.

“He translated for Korean plantation workers in the United States and helped to set up churches,” Louie said. “It is hard to imagine how they did the things they did. They were really resilient. Six were dead before my grandma died.”

Of Yoon’s 11 children, two died of malnutrition, two others of food poisoning after eating rotten food and two more died in other accidents. Her eldest uncle Joe, a truck driver, died in a car accident after falling asleep at the wheel. Her aunt Sarah took her own life.

She said her uncle Frank, the ninth child, related memories of hardships due to his parents’ participation in the independence movements.

“He said they were ashamed of being poor and did not understand why they had to go through that kind of suffering,” Louie said. “Yoon’s sons and daughters showed up at school with old clothes, worn-out shoes or often barefoot. There was a lot of shame, crying and running away.”

She said her uncles Frank and James joined the U.S. Navy, which was their idea of being patriotic.

“They wanted to fight for U.S. interests, but also fight as a Korean against the Japanese,” she recalled. “They were in the Navy fighting against Japan, but people called them Japs and treated them in a really racist way.”

Records show Yoon helped the Joseon Kingdom’s clandestine diplomatic team to convince President Theodore Roosevelt to defend Korea’s sovereignty at the Russo-Japanese Peace Conference in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1905.

At the request of then-President Rhee Syngman, Yoon served as an advisor in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the newly established government of the Republic of Korea. He was posthumously awarded the Order of Merit for National Foundation, the Independence Medal in 1977.