Thursday, 1 November 2018
Perhaps the shame of Teddy’s Roosevelt’s handover of Korea to Japan in 1905, for which ironically he received the Nobel Peace Prize, can be somewhat expiated by the great contribution of the American Christian missionaries, who were active in Korea during the same period.
Christian missionaries are often given a bad rap for their imposition of Western values on the “native people.” The Christian work of such as Oliver R. Avison, who laid the basis for what is now the world famous Severance Hospital in Seoul, and the founding of Ewha College, the largest educational institution for women in the world, by Mary Scranton, American Methodist missionary, certainly imposed Western values, values that encouraged the Koreans to demand for themselves the values of freedom, dignity, and gender equality. The search for the best in health care continues today at Severance Hospital, and the ongoing demand for gender equality is sustained and inspired by the work of earlier generations of Korean Christian women, who devoted their lives to developing an emerging women’s consciousness in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century, who sacrificed for Korean independence even while the Korean men scoffed at their participation.
While American women knew friendship and interaction with other women and men within their communities, Korean women were historically forbidden contact with persons outside the home of their father, husband, or son. When Christian missionaries offered the message of equality, accompanied by a basic education, Korean women, living much as slaves, eagerly embraced it, and early on after the arrival of Christianity in Korea, women outnumbered the men in the churches.
Aside from these deep matters now occupying my mind, it was another beautiful day in Seoul. Again, clear blue skies and crisp autumn weather.
But something else was going on today. I noticed, on the corner, silent serious men holding a banner.
Apparently, conservative Christians are militant in Korea. Cordons of police were gathered on the sidewalk.
I walked under this golden canopy of entwined branches, just across the street from the watching policemen.
Another banner. 
In the courtyard between these two impressive high rise buildings. what must have been a political rally was being held: a Hitler-type harangue, shrill in its fervor, punctuated with programmed roars.of approval, spilled out over the orderly well-policed streets. Whatever the movement, it was not being supported by the strolling consumers. Girls and families were again in costume.
In one busy store, rows of plastic bowls rioted with their colors in the sunlit window. Maybe there is a good use for plastic.
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Women were buying facial masques for brightening and lightening.
And flowers in their flower pots were for sale on the sidewalk.
