(1858-1932)
pioneer Protestant missionary to Korea
Horace Newton Allen was born in Delaware, Ohio, on April 23, 1858. He attended Ohio Wes-leyan College and Miami Medical College in oxford, ohio, from which he graduated in 1883. He married soon after graduation and moved to China as a medical missionary under the auspices of the Foreign Mission Board of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. The Allens did not like China, where they first settled, and asked for reassignment. They were relocated to Korea in 1884.
Korea did not permit missionary activity at the time, but Allen was free to introduce Western medicine.He founded a hospital and began educating Koreans in Western medicine. Several months after his arrival, the queen's nephew, Young Il Min, was wounded during a revolt. Under Allen's treatment he recovered. Allen was subsequently appointed the physician to the king and his family. This opened the way for fellow Presbyterian J. Heron and Methodist W. Scranton to join him at the Kwanghewon (Extended Grace Clinic) the following year.
As had been the case in China, Allen was unable to work cooperatively with other missionaries. Happily for all concerned, in 1887 the king named him foreign secretary to the Korean legation to Washington, and he devoted the next two years trying to block China's assertion of hegemony over Korea. He also had time to write his first book, Korean Tales (1889). When he returned in 1889, the U.S. government made him secretary of the American consulate in Korea. He was later appointed assistant consul and finally consul in 1901. His determination to work against Japanese hegemony in Korea increasingly alienated him from Washington. In 1905, he resigned and moved back to Ohio, where he practiced medicine in Toledo. He died in Toledo on December 11, 1932.
The clinic he founded continued to serve tens of thousands of patients. Korea subsequently received hundreds of missionaries and became home to one of the strongest Protestant communities in Asia.
See also medical missions.
Further reading:
■ Horace Newton Allen, Korea: Fact and Fancy: Being a Republication of Two Books Entitled "Korean Tales" and "A Chronological Index" (Seoul: Methodist Publishing House, 1904); , Things Korean: A Collection of Sketches and Anecdotes Missionary and Diplomatic (New York: Fleming H. Rev-ell, 1908)
■ George Lak Geoon Paik, The History of Protestant Missions in Korea, 1832-1910, 2nd ed. (Seoul: Yonsei University Press, 1971).