Chŏn Tŏk-ki

Life

Chŏn Tŏk-ki was born on December 8, 1875, in Jeong-dong, Seoul, the eldest son of Chŏn Han-gyu and his wife, a woman of the Im family. His clan seat (bon-gwan) was Jeongseon, and he also went by the name Chŏn Pong-un. He grew up in a poor family. In his teens he worked as an errand boy in the household of William B. Scranton, a missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church (the northern American Methodist church), and there he embraced the Christian faith. He went on to help Scranton and his wife lay the foundations of Sangdong Church, which had been established in 1888 in the Sangdong neighborhood inside Seoul's Namdaemun (South Gate).

In 1898 he became a class leader at Sangdong Church; in Methodism, a class leader is a lay leader who guides a class meeting, a small fellowship group of church members. In 1901 he became an exhorter, a layperson authorized to preach, and in 1902 he was appointed a local preacher by the Korea Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He later succeeded Scranton as the first Korean senior pastor of Sangdong Church. In the early 1910s he was arrested by the Japanese authorities and severely tortured, reportedly in connection with the 105-Man Incident. Although he was released without indictment, he suffered from the lasting effects of his ordeal and died on March 23, 1914.

Ministry and Achievements

• Youth movement and education: He organized a chapter of the Epworth League, the Methodist youth organization, within the church. According to the biographical dictionary of the Independence Hall of Korea, he reestablished the Sangdong Youth Society in 1903 and founded the Sangdong Youth Academy in 1904. The Korean-language scholar Chu Si-gyŏng taught Korean at the academy. At the church-affiliated Gongok School, Chŏn taught impoverished young people.
• Opposition to the Eulsa Treaty: In November 1905 he led a week of prayer meetings for the nation at Sangdong Church. Together with Kim Ku, Yi Jun, Yi Tong-nyŏng, and others, he gathered at the church to oppose the treaty through memorials (petitions submitted to the emperor) and street speeches. Members of the youth society, resolved to die if necessary, attempted to present a memorial in front of Daehanmun Gate with axes on their shoulders, but they were dispersed by Japanese military police. Some records also state that he plotted the assassination of the "Five Eulsa Traitors," the ministers who had approved the treaty.
• The Hague envoys and the New People's Association: In 1907 he worked behind the scenes to support the dispatch of secret envoys to The Hague. That same year he played a leading role in founding the New People's Association (Sinminhoe), a secret society organized at Sangdong Church. During the National Debt Repayment Movement, a collection office was set up inside Sangdong Church. The nationalist activists who gathered around Sangdong Church during this period are sometimes referred to as the "Sangdong Group."

Influence on the Korean Church

He is regarded as a leading example of how early Korean Protestantism responded to the national crisis. Sangdong Church is remembered as a place where pastoral care for the poor, education, and the nationalist movement went hand in hand. The Methodist Church honors him as a model pastor who served both church and nation. The South Korean government posthumously awarded him the Order of Merit for National Foundation, Independence Medal, in 1962, and named him "Independence Activist of the Month" for March 2014.

Assessment

He is generally held in high regard as a pastor who embraced the poor and as a central figure in the anti-Japanese movement of the 1900s. His activities also reveal the tensions surrounding the church's involvement in politics. According to the biographical dictionary of the Independence Hall of Korea, missionaries under Japanese pressure disbanded the Sangdong Youth Society in 1906, and many of those involved went into exile abroad. Because accounts of his life were reconstructed from later sources, such as a manuscript copy made by one of his disciples, details vary from source to source. For example, some sources give his birthplace as Icheon in Gyeonggi Province, and others date the disbanding of the youth society to 1903.