Koreas last American gold miner in early 1960s

Frederic Dustin processes some of the gold in this photo taken in the early 1960s. As an employee of the Korean Consolidated Mining Company (KCMC), he helped establish the Tongsan Mine in Sanbuk-ri, Wanju-gun.
/ Robert Neff Nodaji Collection

By Robert Neff

Deep in the mountains of North Jeolla Province is the small community of Sanbuk-ri, Wanju-gun. Here, in the middle of a stream, is a large stone formation that resembles a ship and is known as Baebawi (stone ship).

The small village that surrounds this stone is pretty much the same way it was fifty years ago, albeit with a smaller and older population.

The deep pool at the base of the formation once served as the village’s water source and further down, in the shallower area, women used to wash clothing by hand, but those days have passed.

Now this area serves as a quiet place of solitude where villagers can escape the heat of summer or gather in the senior citizens’ center and remember the past. It was the past that brought us to this village — Korea’s last American gold miner.

It might surprise many people but in the early nineteenth century, Korea had some of the richest gold mines in the world. Most of these mines were in the northern part of the country and were, for the most part, operated by foreign companies: American, English, German, French and Japanese.

In 1939, just on the eve of World War II, the last and largest of the Western gold mines, the American-owned Oriental Consolidated Mining Company (OCMC), was sold to a Japanese firm.

Mismanagement by the Japanese during World War II and the subsequent damage caused by the Korean War left these mines virtually inoperable.

In the late 1950s, war-torn South Korea was a land filled with opportunity and promise for those willing to take the chance — one man willing to do that was Richard S. Whitcomb.

Whitcomb was a retired general who had commanded the Second Logistical Operation in Busan during the Korean War.

Convinced there was money to be made, he formed the Korean Consolidated Mining Company (KCMC) and, along with his partners — Koreans and Americans — negotiated with owners of inoperative mines throughout South Korea to develop them in return for a share of the profits. One of these mines was the Tongsan Mine, located in Baebawi.

In the early 1960s, Frederic Dustin, an employee of KCMC, arrived in Baebawi to help establish the Tongsan Mine.

Dustin had first come to Korea during the Korean War with the United States military and then returned to teach English at Yonsei University and later Joongang University. Although he enjoyed teaching, he grew bored with academia and desired to get to know Korea better — the Korea that was outside of Seoul.

He also craved the romance of adventure. As a boy, Dustin grew up listening to his father’s tales of gold mines in eastern Oregon, so when Whitcomb offered him a position as supervisor/advisor at the undeveloped Tongsan Mine, Dustin promptly accepted it.

For the next two years, Dustin lived and worked at the mine. Under his direction, and often with his own hands, a mine office/manager’s residence, a short tramway and a large aerial jig-back ore bucket system to convey the ore from the three mine adits (tunnels) to the ten-stamp mill were built.

At the height of the mine’s operation, nearly thirty Koreans were employed. Because of the technical skills needed, which could not be found in the local village, most of these men were from other parts of Korea. They were paid about 700 hwan ($1.07) per day, which, considering Korea’s per capita income at the time was only $80, was extremely good wages.

The Korean miners lived in the villagers’ spare rooms and drank in the small tavern located next to the stream. They were an important part of the local economy.

Life at the mine, especially in the beginning, was rather Spartan. Until his residence/office was built, Dustin stayed in Kim Man-gyu’s home (now the senior citizens’ center) and developed a close friendship with not only the Kim family but the entire community.

Dustin recalled that his time at the mine was “an eating to live rather than living to eat” existence but noted that he never went hungry.

Because of the mine’s remote location, keeping it well-supplied required patience, ingenuity and the willingness to adapt — especially in regards to food.

Most of the food was procured from the local village. According to Dustin, the villagers were extremely kind and often gave him vegetables from their fields and during special events, such as national holidays or weddings, invited him to their celebrations.

Even meat, which one would think would have been hard to come by, was fairly easily obtained. In the 1960s, Dustin wrote: “Most villages which are reasonably well organized and have some form of income will have at least one pig killed each week or two so pork is available most of the time.”

Supplementing his diet were the region’s abundant pheasants, ducks, and grasshoppers. It was an old Korean miner who had escaped from North Korea that taught Dustin how to fry grasshoppers:

“I remember one of my greatest treats was fried grasshoppers which then abounded in the local fields the two summers I was there — (they were) best fried in Wesson Oil.”

There were basically two types of mines. According to Dustin, nodaji (“bonanza” is the Korean bastardization of the English phrase “no touch”) mines were high-grade mines with visible gold where as the Tongsan mine was a low-grade mine that yielded about 4 grams of gold per ton of mined-ore.

It is unknown just how profitable the mine was but Dustin estimates that about five kilograms of gold bullion was recovered and was worth, at the time, about $160,000. This gold was processed at Tongsan into small gold bars or buttons and then carried to Seoul in Dustin’s pocket.

Mining is inherently a dangerous occupation but fortunately there were no fatal accidents at Tongsan. In the spring of 1962, Dustin splattered some chemicals into his eyes while processing gold. After a lengthy convalescence, he quietly drifted away from mining and began a new career with the Korea Republic (now the Korea Herald) as a copy editor and one of its first English teachers at its newly-opened language academy.

The mine shut down operations shortly after Dustin’s accident and subsequent departure. There are no known records of the mine’s output but it is very likely that it was shut down due to poor profits and not the accident.

After nearly five decades, very little remains of the mine except for the concrete cyanide leaching tanks and a few foundation stones where the mill once stood. Although most of the adits are overgrown and dangerous to enter, at least one elderly villager occasionally prowls their depths to obtain bats for home remedies to cure her ailments.

There are still several elderly villagers who remember Dustin and have followed his career in Korea, even aware that he had moved to Jeju Island and had taught there for a number of years.

Not only did they ask about his health but they also anxiously inquired if he and the KCMC would come back and reopen the mine. Unfortunately, the KCMC is a thing of the past — its role in South Korea’s redevelopment largely overlooked.

All that remains are the memories of a few elderly Koreans and the sole surviving Western employee, 80-year-old Dustin, who sums up his experience with the KCMC as “one of the greatest experiences of my life.”