Yun Ch'iho kept his diaries in English while Korea fell to Japan
A Korean aristocrat who studied in Shanghai, Tennessee and Georgia, Yun Ch'iho wrote his private diary mostly in English. Those pages trace a long and uncomfortable arc: from reformist campaigner for Korean independence to a man who, after years in a Japanese prison, urged his countrymen to learn, wait and eventually back Japan's war.
Yun was born in 1865 into a yangban family; his father, General Yun Ung-nyeol, was a Joseon minister. At sixteen he joined a delegation sent in 1881 to study Japan's modernisation, and the contrast with the isolated kingdom at home stayed with him. In 1885 he went to the Anglo-Chinese College in Shanghai and became a Christian, seeing the faith as a progressive force. From 1888 he studied at Vanderbilt and then Emory, admiring much of America while bristling at the white supremacy he met in the South.
Back in Korea he interpreted for Lucius Foote, the first American envoy, and joined the Independence Club, which promoted Korean history, the Hangeul alphabet and more representative government until rival factions forced it to disband in 1899. He was Vice President of the Privy Council from 1898, was banished the following year, and returned in 1903 as Vice Foreign Minister. He opposed the Eulsa Treaty that made Korea a Japanese protectorate, warning that its signers would be remembered as traitors.
After Japan annexed Korea in 1910 he spoke out against the occupation. In 1911 he was accused of helping plot to assassinate Governor-General Terauchi Masatake and was among six convicted from over a hundred charged. An amnesty freed him after six years, and his release marked a sharp change. When Koreans marched peacefully for independence on 1 March 1919, he doubted Europe would listen and argued that schooling a poor boy served the nation better than street protest.
During the Second World War he went further, urging young Koreans to support Japan's war effort. Yet in 1936 and 1938 he also stood guarantor for arrested members of Korean enlightenment clubs, winning their release. A devout Methodist and early YMCA leader, he died in December 1945, and many Koreans now remember him as a collaborator.
Source: Yun Ch'iho
