Dispatches from the Wilderness: A History of the Canadian Missionaries and Korean Protestants in Northern Korea and Manchuria, 1893 - 1928
Date
2018-09-12
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Abstract
This thesis examines the motivations of the Canadian Missionaries and Korean Protestants in in Hamgyeong Province (Northeastern Korea) and Gando (Southeastern Manchuria) as well as the influence they had on one another during the first two decades of the twentieth century. The analysis of Canadian motivations demonstrated that they were wholly consumed with building the mission and would do nearly anything to ensure that it succeed, including: working themselves to exhaustion, cooperating with Protestant nationalists, vigorously protesting against the Japanese colonial government's brutal suppression of the Koreans in 1919 and 1920 as well as capitulating to the demands of their constituency when they were forcefully expressed in the 1920s. The Korean Protestants wanted changes to be made to the educational and financial policies of the mission and some resorted to violence in an effort to spur the Canadians into action. The examination of Korean motivations shows that they gravitated toward the Church for a variety of reasons, one of the most salient being, their desire to reclaim their nation from the Japanese imperialists. The discussion of the influence that the Canadians had on the Koreans revealed, among other things, that their decision to work with, rather than against the nationalists, contributed to further radicalizing the Church, and their "women's work" helped to transform the nature of gender relations in Hamgyeong and Gando. The investigation of the Koreans showed that they too had much influence. The Canadians understood that they had to "do the bidding" of the Koreans for the mission to succeed, as is most clearly seen in their resolve to transform the mission in the 1920s. The study of the Canadians and Koreans in Hamgyeong and Gando enhances our understanding of the missionizer and the missionized in the overseas mission field by providing a different way of viewing the motivations of the former and emphasizing the agency and power of the latter; enriches our knowledge of Korean Christian history by revealing how and why the Canadians and Koreans built a distinct mission and Church; and illuminates the role that the Presbyterian Maritime Church played in the Canadian missionary movement.
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Canadian Missionary Movement, Korean Christian History, North Korean History, Japanese Imperialism, World Christianity, Canadian-Korean Relations, Gender and Mission
Citation
Glover, F. J. (2018). Dispatches from the Wilderness: A History of the Canadian Missionaries and Korean Protestants in Northern Korea and Manchuria, 1893 - 1928 (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/32960