Missionary's Reward

One of the first Protestant missionaries in Korea was an Underwood--Presbyterian Horace Grant Underwood, of the typewriter family. He went out to the Orient in 1885, married a medical missionary who became royal physician to Korea's Queen Min. In his buttoned-up black coat and white tie, doughty Dr. Underwood strode coolly through cholera epidemics and equally formidable Korean political squabbles. He raised his son, Horace Horton Underwood, to labor in the same vineyard.

A Lot of Education. Tilled by the Underwoods and their colleagues, Korea became one of the fastest-growing missionary fields in the Orient. Today 600,000 Koreans are Christians, and still more are educated. When the missionaries came, Korea was almost completely illiterate; today the literacy rate is about 60%. Patriarch Underwood founded Chosen Christian College in Seoul. Later it was headed by son Horace, who worked in Korea for 32 years before he found time to be ordained in the Presbyterian ministry. Ordained with him (TIME, March 13, 1944) were his twin sons, John (now in Korea) and James (now in the U.S.). Another son is teaching at Korea's Chosen Christian College, a fourth is at New York's Hamilton College.

Dr. Underwood had married Ethel Van Wagonner in 1916, four years after she arrived in Seoul as a missionary teacher. They worked there together until the Japanese interned them in 1941, repatriated them to the U.S. the following year. Within a year after V-J day, Dr. & Mrs. Underwood were back among the people to whom they had devoted their lives.

Last week, 60-year-old Ethel Underwood was giving a tea when two men forced their way into the Seoul house, one at the front door and one at the back. Outwardly unshaken by the invasion, Mrs. Underwood left her guests and confronted one of the men in the foyer. As she was trying to persuade him to leave the house, his accomplice raised a sawed-off U.S. Army carbine and fired. Mrs. Underwood's guests found her lying in the foyer, a bullet through her abdomen. "I want to see my husband," she said. But on the way to the hospital she died.

Revenge or Mistake? Communists murdered Ethel Underwood. Of that one fact, police and U.S. Army investigators were sure. The entire Seoul detective force was assigned to dig into the Red underground for the criminals. The most favored theories: that it was revenge for the recent expulsion of suspected Communists from Chosen Christian College; that the Communists had mistaken Mrs. Underwood for her guest of honor, a Korean woman noted for her pro-United Nations activities. One high U.S. official thought he had the answer: "If the Communists are looking for a way to make Americans distrust and dislike Koreans, they could find no better one than to kill this good American woman . . ."

Most missionaries would disagree. When they make their choice, missionaries coolly look the risks in the eye. After that, they seldom turn--for any reason--against the people to whom they have dedicated their lives. In 1900, hundreds of Protestant and Roman Catholic missionaries were killed by the fanatically nationalist Boxers of China; as a result the influence of Christianity became more pervasive than it had ever been in the land of Confucius. Throughout the Orient in the past ten years, death has come to many missionaries as it came last week to Missionary Underwood.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.