Sad, romantic story of Dilkusha

By Kim Ji-myung

A beautiful young British actress was travelling in Japan where she met a smart and gentle American entrepreneur from Korea. At the time she lived in India. When she visited an old 19th century park named Dilkusha Kothi in Lucknow in northeastern India, she resolved to give that name to her own house one day. The two young people fell in love and later married in India.

George Albert Taylor, whom everyone called Bruce, and his wife Mary Linley came to Korea in 1917 where Bruce became a successful gold mine developer. His father, George Alexander Taylor, was one of the first American businessmen to land in Korea when it was forced to open its ports to access from the outside world.

In late February, 1919, Mary was lying in a room at the Severance Hospital, waiting to give birth to their son, Bruce Tickell Taylor. The baby arrived just one day before the nation-wide March 1 Independence Movement in Korea. She did not know it then, but she played a pivotal role in that historic event.

Preparing for the uprising on March 1, the independence activists had printed the Declaration of Independence somewhere at the Severance Hospital. Japanese police searched the building and discovered the printing equipment. But the printed declaration itself evaded their eyes, being hidden underneath the mattress of Mary’s bed.

Was it a coincidence, or providence?

Bruce (the father) had just been recruited by the United Press International as a correspondent. He wrote an article about the independence movement. His brother Bill hid the article and the printed declaration in his shoe and went to Japan. The news was telegraphed worldwide immediately.

Six years later, when she built a house of her own in today’s Haengchon-dong, near Gyeonghui Palace in Seoul, she remembered, “From that moment in India when first I saw Dilkusha, the Palace of Heart's Delight, I dreamed of this moment when I would bestow upon our home the name Dilkusha.”

The story of this young couple and their life in Seoul during the dire period of Japanese colonial rule has all the dramatic elements for a literary work. It was long a favored topic among the foreign community in Seoul.

However, the exotic name Dilkusha has remained alien to most Koreans, though some tour guides mention it to tourists. In 2006, KBS television made a documentary about the house, and some thought, “the secret of this deserted, haunted house has been revealed at last.”

Two recent events have drawn fresh attention to this dilapidated house, Dilkusha, and its owners. However, I think the many romantic and sad episodes are too many and too deep to receive due treatment in this small space.

Firstly, the Seoul Metropolitan Government will pass new bylaws to protect modern landmarks as a heritage of the past century from rapid urban development. It specified: “A two-story red brick house named Dilkusha, where Albert Taylor, a U.S. entrepreneur and Seoul correspondent of United Press International, lived from 1923 to 1942, when he was expelled from Korea by the Japanese.”

Secondly, Mary's autobiography, “`Chain of Amber,” published in 1992, was recently published in Korean. Song Young-dal, a retired Korean-American professor living in the United States, found the book very relevant to his personal memories, and received translation approval from Mary’s son, Bruce.

Song has been on my list of “persons of interest” as he shared my interest in foreigners who lived in Korea around the time of the declining Joseon Dynasty, the Korean Empire (Daehanjeguk) and the Japanese occupation.

While my attention is limited to reading, writing or bibliographic search about those people, Song collects books and paintings of this period and translates them for the Koreans.

Mary asked her son to publish “Chain of Amber” when she died in 1982. She may not have imagined that it would later be printed in Korean, and that contemporary Koreans would read it.

“Amber” carries a very detailed description of the life of Koreans around the house. There are vivid accounts of historic events such as funeral of Emperor Gojong, the independence movement and Japanese colonial policies as observed by the family. “Koreans are by nature very mild and kind. But foreign influence and Japanese rule seem to have changed this,” Mary observed.

The original lovely house, in an old photo, standing alone in wide, wild nature on a hill near a legendary several hundred years old ginkgo tree is a pang to the heart when contrasted with the ugly shapes of today, squeezed between daunting concrete multiplex houses and apartments.

Only narrow paths surround the house today. It is fortunate, however, the original stone with the name Dilkusha inscribed remains intact despite disasters including the lightning that completely destroyed the house in July 1926.

Bruce had engraved on the stone, under the name, Psalm 127, Verse 1:

“Except the Lord build the house,

They labor in vain that build it:

Except the Lord keep the city,

The watchman waketh but in vain.”

The writer is the chairwoman of the Korea Heritage Education Institute (K*Heritage). Her email address is Heritagekorea21@gmail.com.