KOREA ENCOUNTERS Jeong-dong: where foreign missionaries, diplomats, educators found themselves at forefront of Korea's modern history
The Appenzeller-Noble Memorial Museum, formerly Baejae Hakdang, in central Seoul's Jeong-dong / Courtesy of Matt VanVolkenburg
One of the best-known areas of Seoul, often visited by tourists, is Deoksu Palace and Seoul Plaza, but few realize the storied importance of the neighborhood behind the palace, known as Jeong-dong.
Scattered behind the palace are over a dozen Western-style brick-and-stone buildings built between 1890 and 1938, including schools, churches, foreign embassies and homes. These buildings are hallmarks of a time when Jeong-dong was Seoul’s foreign neighborhood, hosting the British, American, Russian, French, German and Italian legations.
This foreign settlement began to take shape in the early 1880s when the kingdom of Joseon first opened its ports and signed treaties with Western powers. The British and Americans were the first to buy land in the area for their legations. Little did the Americans realize the house they were sold was avoided by the locals because its owner had been murdered in a military uprising in 1882 and was believed to be haunted.
Throughout the 1880s the legations of other Western countries were established in the neighborhood, including France, Russia, Italy and Germany. Almost immediately, schools and churches began to appear.
The Baejae Hakdang, a school for young men, opened in 1885, and Ewha Hakdang, a school for girls, opened the following year. Both were established by missionaries and taught a Western curriculum, but one of the main draws was the fact that they taught English. Chungdong First Methodist Church was built in 1897, and Seoul Foreign School opened in 1912.
Ewha Museum, formerly Ewha Hakdang / Courtesy of Matt VanVolkenburg
Part of the old Russian Legation still stands in central Seoul's Jeong-dong. Courtesy of Matt VanVolkenburg
While this neighborhood is today perceived as being behind Deoksu Palace, when Westerners first moved to the area, the palace on that spot was small and insignificant. It was only after the Japan-orchestrated murder of Queen Min in 1895 when King Gojong was made a prisoner in Gyeongbok Palace, that he sought somewhere new to rule from. During his captivity, he relied on Western missionaries to bring him food to avoid possible poisoning, and in early 1896, he outmaneuvered his Japanese captors and fled to the Russian Legation.
The following year, he expanded what is now Deoksu Palace, then Gyeongun Palace, and made it the seat of his rule precisely because it was surrounded by the British, American and Russian legations, which he counted on to keep him safe from the Japanese.
This strategy ultimately failed, however. In what was then a war featuring the largest armies facing off against each other in modern history, Japan defeated Russia in 1905 and that November the royal power of Korean kings was all but nullified by the Eulsa Treaty forced upon the Korean cabinet at Jungmyeongjeong, a building currently next to the American ambassador’s residence that was restored more than 15 years ago and converted into a museum.
Jungmyeongjeong / Courtesy of Matt VanVolkenburg
Equally beautiful buildings abound in Jeong-dong. The Anglican Cathedral, arguably Seoul’s most beautiful church, was built in the 1920s but left unfinished due to a lack of funding and the later loss of its original blueprints until they were discovered in an archive in England in the 1990s.
The Chungdong Anglican Cathedral in central Seoul's Jeong-dong / Courtesy of Matt VanVolkenburg
It hosts the only tomb in Jeong-dong, of Anglican Bishop Mark Trollope, who had been RAS Korea president for several years over three nonconsecutive terms. On a wall in the cathedral hang photos of church leaders killed during the 1950-53 Korean War, particularly due to the grueling winter death march of prisoners in North Korea in late 1950. Among these martyrs was Father Charles Hunt, who was serving as president of the Royal Asiatic Society (RAS) Korea in 1950 when he was taken captive and who died near the border with China due to exhaustion after a week of almost constant walking in sub-freezing temperatures.
Inside the Anglican Cathedral in central Seoul's Jeong-dong / Courtesy of Matt VanVolkenburg
Another foreboding location in Jeong-dong was the sidewalk outside the southern wall of Deoksu Palace, where it was said any couple who walked its length would soon break up. While some explanations for this leaned on tales of spectral jealous concubines who had been passed over by the king, others noted that the reason for this belief likely lay in the fact that a courthouse hosting the family court, where divorces were processed, was to be found at the end of that path. The courthouse was refurbished into the Seoul Museum of Art 20 years ago.
Seoul Museum of Art was built out of a former courthouse 20 years ago. Courtesy of Matt VanVolkenburg
The most recent addition to the buildings that can be visited is the recently restored Chosen Savings Bank executive residence, which was built in 1938 and later became a secondary U.S. Embassy residence. This building came into the possession of the United States in 1945 when Park Gerdine, a self-described “missionary kid,” was, due to his experience in Korea and his language abilities, among the first American soldiers to enter Korea after Japan’s surrender.
He quickly made contact with a childhood Korean friend who set about helping him find a place to live, which led him to the Chosen Savings Bank residence. As Gerdine recalled in a lecture for RAS Korea in 2005, in response to his friend’s knock at that house’s door, “a middle-aged Japanese man in a beautifully embroidered kimono opened the door.” His friend spoke to the man residing there — the bank president — “in a harsh and commanding voice” and then returned to Gerdine and said with a smile, “You can move in this evening.”
The former residence for Chosen Savings Bank executives / Courtesy of Matt VanVolkenburg
These stories — and many more involving the foreign community’s close connections with some of the most important moments in Korea’s modern history — will be recounted this coming Saturday in an excursion by RAS Korea. Participation costs 40,000 won or 30,000 won for RAS Korea members. Visit raskb.com for more information.
Matt VanVolkenburg has a master's degree in Korean studies from the University of Washington. He is the blogger behind populargusts.blogspot.kr, and co-author of "Called by Another Name: A Memoir of the Gwangju Uprising."