William James Hall

Life

Hall was born on January 16, 1860, in a log cabin in Glen Buell, Ontario, Canada, the eldest of five children. In 1887, after hearing a sermon by Dwight L. Moody, he is said to have felt a calling from God to help the poor of Asia. He then studied medicine at Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York. After graduating, he served as director of the Madison Street Medical Mission, a Methodist-affiliated medical mission in the slums of New York. There, in 1890, he met the physician Rosetta Sherwood (Rosetta Hall).

In December 1891 he arrived in Korea (then Joseon) as a missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and on June 27, 1892, he married Rosetta in Seoul. Their son, Sherwood Hall, was born in 1893. In 1894 Hall moved with his family to Pyongyang, but the outbreak of the First Sino-Japanese War soon forced them to take temporary refuge in Seoul. After the Battle of Pyongyang ended, Hall returned alone to Pyongyang to care for wounded soldiers and residents. Worn down by overwork, he contracted malaria and typhus and died on November 24, 1894, at the age of 34. He is buried in the Yanghwajin Foreign Missionary Cemetery. His daughter Edith, born after his death, died of dysentery in early childhood and was also buried at Yanghwajin.

Ministry and Achievements

• Pioneering the Pyongyang mission: Among the Presbyterians, Samuel Moffett first visited Pyongyang in 1890. Hall is generally recognized as the first Methodist missionary to visit Pyongyang, beginning mission work there in 1892. The Methodist mission appointed him to lead its pioneering work in Pyongyang, and at first he stayed at an inn while treating patients.
• Founding a clinic: In 1893 he purchased land and a house near the West Gate of Pyongyang and opened a clinic. Although Min Byeong-seok, the governor of Pyongan Province, ordered the missionaries to leave and local residents fiercely opposed them, Hall continued his medical work.
• Churches and schools: The work of Hall and his wife is regarded as the starting point for the Methodist churches, schools, and hospital later established in the Namsanhyeon area of Pyongyang. Kwangsung School is also said to have grown out of Hall's ministry. His Korean assistant, Kim Chang-sik, shared in Hall's work in Pyongyang and later became one of the first Korean Methodist ministers.

Influence on the Korean Church

After Hall's death, William Noble and his wife were assigned to Pyongyang in 1896, where they took over and expanded his work. Rosetta Hall founded a hospital in Pyongyang in her husband's memory (the Hall Memorial Hospital) and devoted her life to medical care and education for women and children and for the blind and deaf. In 1898 she published a biography of her husband. Their son, Sherwood Hall, became a physician and worked to combat tuberculosis in Haeju, Hwanghae Province; he is known as the person who issued the first Christmas Seals in Korea. In this way, the Hall family left a significant mark on medical missions in Korea across two generations.

Assessment

Hall is regarded as the pioneer who opened the Methodist mission in Pyongyang. Because he lost his life caring for patients amid persecution and war, he is commonly remembered in the Korean church as a missionary who died in the line of duty. No notable criticism of him has been documented. However, details vary somewhat among sources. Some accounts give his year of death as 1895, and while some sources state that he died in Pyongyang, others say his illness worsened on the way back to Seoul.