ABSTRACT
In 1885, a desperate Korean mother reluctantly turned to an American missionary physician to cure her ailing nine-year-old son. From her village in the southern outskirts of Seoul, she viewed the missionaries in the heart of the city with suspicion. The devout Buddhist noblewoman believed the foreigners threatened traditional Korean norms. But now her son had contracted smallpox and suffered from blinding pain in his eyes. After trying every possible remedy to no avail, she had her son treated by the strange new doctor. The doctor examined the boy and prescribed medicine that restored him to full health in three days. After his recovery, the boy presented a straw bundle of ten eggs to the doctor as a token of gratitude. The doctor politely refused, telling the boy to keep the eggs and feed his own family. 1 The boy, Syngman Rhee, grew up to become a political and religious leader among Koreans in Hawaii and the United States for nearly forty years before his election as the Republic of Korea’s first president in 1948. This was the first of Rhee’s many relationships with American missionaries. They were happier when he was a young boy than when he later matured to become Korea’s political leader. American missionaries and Korean Protestants transmitted the religion among Koreans at home and abroad, but their religious ideas clashed as much they converged during the Japanese occupation, and Rhee, as much as anyone, exemplified the sometimes subtle, sometimes overt conflict.
