My Vintage Underwood |
An excerpt from Intrepid Americans: Bold Koreans-Early Korean Trade, Concessions, and Entrepreneurship. iBooks. https://itun.es/us/tRBJE.l
God and Mammon
Thus do commerce and the Church go hand in hand, here [in
Korea] as elseware, in forwarding His kingdom and spreading abroad the
knowledge of the Prince of Peace.
—Horace G.
Underwood, The Call of Korea, 1908
Fig. 7.8 Horace Grant Underwood |
Instrumental in fostering the development of Korean business
and capitalism was the work of Protestant missionaries in Korea. To some
Koreans, Protestantism was a path to national salivation, economic
self-strengthening, and progress. By the 1890s, Dr. Allen by then head of the
American diplomatic legation in Seoul, and others, began stressing the vibrancy
of western technology, capitalism, and civilization over Korean orthodoxy.
Essentially, the changes and reforms to the Korean socio-economic landscape
coupled with Church policy of egalitarianism impacted those of the lower and
commoner classes, not to mention women and the oppressed such as the paekchông
(butchers and meat handlers). Many Koreans hindered for eons from social and
economic mobility by a rigid social stratification embraced Protestant
teaching, western education, and western thinking, as they searched for
opportunity in the newly restructured society.
Within this climate of change, the missionaries specifically
targeted merchants, lower level government officials, clerks, technicians, and
professionals. It was hoped that members of the newly emerging middle class
with some financial means would form the backbone of the Korean Protestant
church. This group of Koreans worked for businessmen like Collbran [an westerner i discuss extensively in the book] during the
week and attended church on Sundays—church services that saw poverty as sinful,
and praised worldly gains. In other words, weekdays and work served as
opportunities for ambitious Koreans to learn western business and technological
skill, while Sunday sermons drenched them with the missionaries’ capitalist
gospel.
Adding to the dynamics, American industrialism also funded
much of the Church’s missionary movement—a uniting of God and gold. For
example, British-born Horace Grant Underwood who had grown up in upstate New
York came from a religious and prosperous business family. Underwood’s older
brother John grew the family ink manufacturing business into the highly
successful Underwood Typewriter Company, which funded much of Horace’s work in
Korea. Underwood’s rivals in Korea even called him the millionaire missionary.
(see Fig. 7.8 and 7.9) In fact, missionaries including Underwood at times
ventured into trade, importing kerosene, farming implements, and manufactured
goods. This suggests that Koreans who were interested in learning about
business and capitalism not only found role models in western concessionaries
and traders, but also drew familiarity, support, and encouragement from the
Protestant clergy.
Fig. 7.9 Early Underwood Print Ad |
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