By Mark Peterson
Last week, inspired by the paper presented by my colleague Prof. Kirk Larsen, I wrote about the ill-fated 1866 General Sherman incident, the ship that was attacked and burned to the water line on the outskirts of Pyongyang. Prof. Larsen mentioned a missionary onboard who died with the rest of the crew. I have been curious about him and decided to look up his story and write about it today.
It was a remarkable story. Often, in relating the story of the "sinking" of the General Sherman, Robert Jermain Thomas is mentioned as one of the passengers and he is described as a Welsh missionary. That caught my curiosity ― who was he?
His story is tragic ― beyond losing his life on the ill-fated ship. But to jump to the end of the story, his legacy is great ― he is heralded by the Protestant community in Korea as the first missionary in Korea. And there is a shrine built to him in his hometown in Wales where sometimes Korean Christians visit and pay their respects.
Tragedy struck Thomas earlier in his life as well. As a young man, the son of a minister, he decided to attend a theological school and become a missionary. Within a few months of graduating, being ordained, he also got married. He was 24, and described as passionate and mercurial. He applied to go to China, and was denied, initially, but accepted on a second application. Not long after marrying, he took his wife and left for the long sailing trip to China, arriving in Shanghai. He was not pleased with the "insanitary" conditions there, left his pregnant wife there while he went to Hankow to look for a better situation. While he was away, she miscarried and died four days later.
Despondent, he resigned his position as a missionary and ended up in working as a customs officer in Zhifu (Chefoo) for a time. Then he visited friends from school in Beijing, and ended up teaching English, and there he met two Koreans who reported on the success of the Catholics in Korea, though under great persecution from the Korean court. At this point, he heard of 11 French priests who were helping the underground church in Korea.
The report of Catholic success in Korea ignited his Protestant spirit once again, and he determined to go to Korea. He made one trip in the summer of 1865 where he sailed along the coast and made a few contacts and placed a few Chinese-language versions of the Bible. That venture ended in a shipwreck in the monsoon season, but all onboard survived and returned to China by land. Through all this time, he was working on learning Korean. And was proficient enough to market himself to the French Navy that was going to sail to Korea to rescue the surviving two French missionaries of the original eleven ― nine had been executed by the court. But that French ship was diverted to Saigon because of a rebellion reported there.
This led Thomas to the General Sherman with its American owner and captain. There was one American "mate," and British "adventurer," and a crew of Thai and Chinese. Thomas was the interpreter. And this gave him the chance he was looking for. He may have been the one that suggested Pyongyang as the objective, rather than the capital of Seoul that clearly would not welcome aliens, and particularly Christians.
Thomas scattered Bibles at each port stop on the Taedong River, sailing toward Pyongyang. With the demise of the ship, and the death of all on board the legend grew. There are several accounts of how Thomas died, but an interesting sidelight is the story of one of his Bibles. Most of the Bibles were collected and destroyed, but one enterprising person decided to use the paper of the pages of the Bible to wallpaper this house. The story goes that later people read the Chinese and became Christians and even established a church on the site of the house. This gives new meaning to the phrase, "reading the writing on the wall."
Pyongyang, in 1907, experienced a great "revival" and many joined the Protestant movement. In an odd twist, last week we wrote about the hagiography of Kim Il-sung's great grandfather who is said to have led the attack on the General Sherman. I know of a master's thesis that explores the Christian philosophy hiding in Kim Il-sung's version of communism, and the hypothesis that his mother or grandmother may have been one of the Pyongyang protestants who left some core teachings with a young Kim. Though persecuting Christians outwardly, some of Christian ideals are identifiable within Kim's ideology. While his great grandfather was attacking and killing Robert Jermain Thomas, the philosophy survived, and helped in the intellectual formation of a young Kim Il-sung.
Mark Peterson (markpeterson@byu.edu) is professor emeritus of Korean, Asian and Near Eastern languages at Brigham Young University in Utah.
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It was a remarkable story. Often, in relating the story of the "sinking" of the General Sherman, Robert Jermain Thomas is mentioned as one of the passengers and he is described as a Welsh missionary. That caught my curiosity ― who was he?
His story is tragic ― beyond losing his life on the ill-fated ship. But to jump to the end of the story, his legacy is great ― he is heralded by the Protestant community in Korea as the first missionary in Korea. And there is a shrine built to him in his hometown in Wales where sometimes Korean Christians visit and pay their respects.
Tragedy struck Thomas earlier in his life as well. As a young man, the son of a minister, he decided to attend a theological school and become a missionary. Within a few months of graduating, being ordained, he also got married. He was 24, and described as passionate and mercurial. He applied to go to China, and was denied, initially, but accepted on a second application. Not long after marrying, he took his wife and left for the long sailing trip to China, arriving in Shanghai. He was not pleased with the "insanitary" conditions there, left his pregnant wife there while he went to Hankow to look for a better situation. While he was away, she miscarried and died four days later.
Despondent, he resigned his position as a missionary and ended up in working as a customs officer in Zhifu (Chefoo) for a time. Then he visited friends from school in Beijing, and ended up teaching English, and there he met two Koreans who reported on the success of the Catholics in Korea, though under great persecution from the Korean court. At this point, he heard of 11 French priests who were helping the underground church in Korea.
The report of Catholic success in Korea ignited his Protestant spirit once again, and he determined to go to Korea. He made one trip in the summer of 1865 where he sailed along the coast and made a few contacts and placed a few Chinese-language versions of the Bible. That venture ended in a shipwreck in the monsoon season, but all onboard survived and returned to China by land. Through all this time, he was working on learning Korean. And was proficient enough to market himself to the French Navy that was going to sail to Korea to rescue the surviving two French missionaries of the original eleven ― nine had been executed by the court. But that French ship was diverted to Saigon because of a rebellion reported there.
This led Thomas to the General Sherman with its American owner and captain. There was one American "mate," and British "adventurer," and a crew of Thai and Chinese. Thomas was the interpreter. And this gave him the chance he was looking for. He may have been the one that suggested Pyongyang as the objective, rather than the capital of Seoul that clearly would not welcome aliens, and particularly Christians.
Thomas scattered Bibles at each port stop on the Taedong River, sailing toward Pyongyang. With the demise of the ship, and the death of all on board the legend grew. There are several accounts of how Thomas died, but an interesting sidelight is the story of one of his Bibles. Most of the Bibles were collected and destroyed, but one enterprising person decided to use the paper of the pages of the Bible to wallpaper this house. The story goes that later people read the Chinese and became Christians and even established a church on the site of the house. This gives new meaning to the phrase, "reading the writing on the wall."
Pyongyang, in 1907, experienced a great "revival" and many joined the Protestant movement. In an odd twist, last week we wrote about the hagiography of Kim Il-sung's great grandfather who is said to have led the attack on the General Sherman. I know of a master's thesis that explores the Christian philosophy hiding in Kim Il-sung's version of communism, and the hypothesis that his mother or grandmother may have been one of the Pyongyang protestants who left some core teachings with a young Kim. Though persecuting Christians outwardly, some of Christian ideals are identifiable within Kim's ideology. While his great grandfather was attacking and killing Robert Jermain Thomas, the philosophy survived, and helped in the intellectual formation of a young Kim Il-sung.
Mark Peterson (markpeterson@byu.edu) is professor emeritus of Korean, Asian and Near Eastern languages at Brigham Young University in Utah.
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