by Philip Jaisohn. Sun-pyo Hong (ed.)

size: A5, 436pages. publisher: Yonsei University Press, 1999.

About this book

This is a collection of the English writings of Philip Jaisohn (So Chae-p'il in Korean, 1864-1951), a Korean-born American medical doctor who made an outstanding contribution to the causes of Korean reform and independence beginning in the 1880s and stretching all the way to 1951.

This volume consists of four parts and appendices: Part I presents Dr. Jaisohn's recollection of his early life in Korea, with emphasis on his role in the abortive coup of 1884 and the Independence Club movement of 1896-1898. Part II is a collection of articles and documents which he wrote to promote the cause of Korean independence between 1919 and 1922, when he served as Director of the Korean Information Bureau in Philadelphia. Part III contains his serialized political commentaries on the Sino-Japanese conflict from 1937 to 1940, which appeared in The New Korea, a Korean newspaper published in Los Angeles. Part IV is a collection of the texts of radio broadcasts he directed to his compatriots during his short stay in Seoul as Special Korean Counselor to Gen. John R. Hodge, the commander of the United States occupation forces in Korea, from July 1947 to September 1948.

Dr. Jaisohn was the first Korean to earn a medical degree from an American university, after having received thorough training in classical Chinese literature in Korea, modern military arts in Japan, and humanities in the United States. Reflected in this volume is his patriotic appeal to the Korean people to rebuild Korea as a modern nation based on the principles of democracy and Christianity, after having suffered at the hands of the authoritarian rulers of the old Choson dynasty and the Japanese colonial government. Readers will be impressed by Dr. Jaisohn's perspicacious comments on world civilization, history, international relations, political philosophy, economics, and religion, in addition to medical science of which he possessed professional expertise, and by his mastery of the English language.

This volume not only is a sine qua non to historians interested in the late nineteenth-century Korean reform movement and the post-1919 independence movement, but also an insightful guide to social scientists and humanists who search for the roots of modern political thought in Korea.


Table of contents
Part I. My Days in Korea
Part II. Korea for the Korean
Part III. Random Thoughts
Part IV. The Way to Freedom and Democracy
Appendices: Dr. Philip Jaisohn, the Man