Rosetta Sherwood Hall

Life

Rosetta Sherwood Hall was a physician and Methodist medical missionary, born in the United States in 1865. She studied medicine at an institution that is a predecessor of today's Drexel University College of Medicine. In 1890 she came to Korea, then the Joseon kingdom, and worked at Bogu Yeogwan, a hospital for women founded by Mary Scranton. Bogu Yeogwan is regarded as the origin of the Ewha Womans University Medical Center.

Her husband, William James Hall, was a physician and minister. After doing medical mission work in the slums of New York City, he came to Korea and pioneered mission work in Pyongyang. He is reported to have died at a young age. Rosetta Hall wrote a biography of her husband. Their son, Sherwood Hall, also became a physician and is known to have carried out tuberculosis treatment and prevention work in Korea.

Rosetta Hall worked in Seoul and Pyongyang for more than forty years; sources variously give the length of her service as forty-three or forty-four years. She died on April 5, 1951, and the Hall family is buried at the Yanghwajin cemetery in Seoul.

Ministry and Achievements

• Medical care for women: She emphasized "the treatment of women by women." According to one account, she removed skin from her own arm to graft onto a girl who had suffered burns; other missionaries and members of the patient's family who witnessed this are said to have donated skin as well.
• Training women physicians: She helped Esther Park study in the United States. Park became the first Korean woman to train as a physician in Western medicine. In September 1928, Hall founded the Chosun Women's Medical Training Institute, Korea's first institution of medical education for women. The school is a predecessor of today's Korea University College of Medicine.
• Education for the blind: She founded a school for the blind in Pyongyang. She was the first to use Korean Braille and is known to have taken part in producing Korean Braille teaching materials.
• Institutions founded: According to the Korea University Medical Center, Rosetta Hall founded a number of institutions: two hospitals for women, two children's hospitals, and two nursing schools, as well as one tuberculosis hospital, one school for the blind, one school for the deaf, one high school, and one elementary school.
• Records: A 32-meter scroll letter she wrote around the time of her arrival in Korea survives. It contains fifty-nine photographs she took herself, and it was restored and made public by the National Archives of Korea and the Yanghwajin Archives.

Influence on the Korean Church

Rosetta Hall's work clearly illustrates the approach of early Methodist missions, which founded hospitals and schools alongside evangelism. She treated care for marginalized people, such as women and the disabled, as an integral part of mission. For this reason she is frequently cited as an early example of medical missions and disability ministry in the Korean church. She is also commonly cited as a leading example when explaining how the work of early missionaries, through medicine and education, contributed to the transformation of Korean society.

Assessment

Rosetta Hall is regarded as a pioneer of modern medicine and women's education in Korea. The Korea University College of Medicine honors her as the figure who laid the school's foundation. No significant criticism of or controversy surrounding Hall personally is widely known.