Introduction

In 1925, a group of sixty American missionaries and Korean church leaders met in the city of Seoul for a conference with John R. Mott. As chairman of the International Missionary Council, Mott was visiting the country to learn more about the progress of the Korean Church. During the meeting, Mott asked the group to talk about their challenges. His question prompted varying responses from the participants. They discussed the economic depression, growing Korean interest in socialism, and the threat of theological modernism. 1 But one veteran Korean pastor, Han Seok-jin, expressed the view that the greatest danger to indigenous Christian growth was the missionary. Instead of transferring their work to Korean leaders, the missionaries ruled over the churches and schools with a “sense of superiority” that ran contrary to the “true spirit of the gospel.” 2 He then turned to his dearest missionary friend, Samuel Austin Moffett, who was sitting nearby, and said, “Reverend Moffett, even you, if you do not leave soon, your presence will do more harm than good.” 3

Samuel Austin Moffett had no intention of leaving. Despite their close relationship-Han was one of Moffett’s first students-the two pastors simply disagreed about the demands of Korean Protestants for a greater measure of control over their churches, schools, and hospitals. Moffett still had plans for the mission station in Pyongyang that he had founded three decades ago. Until he retired in 1934, he directed operations on a 120-acre Presbyterian campus with a modern hospital, a college, a seminary, industrial shops, several Korean churches and schools, a separate foreign school for missionary children, and numerous Western-style houses for missionaries to live comfortably. 4 He had no interest in suddenly, or even slowly, turning this vast investment of time and energy (and money) over to the Koreans who, as Moffett saw it, benefited immensely from the efficient organization that knowledgeable American missionaries were able to provide. To have followed Han Seok-jin’s advice would have been to accept a reversal in the authority and control of the Korean Church that Moffett could barely even imagine.