Korea’s Movers and Shakers from Gwangju-Jeonnam: Seo Jae-pil and Han Chang-gi – March 2025

By Park Nahm-Sheik

The Gwangju-Jeonnam area has produced quite a few torch bearers for modern Korea, one of whom ended up having no choice but to seek refuge abroad.

Every Korean student of my generation learned in school that Seo Jae-pil (서재필, aka Philip Jaisohn, 1864–1951) was a leading Korean intellectual representing the decades bridging the 19th and 20th centuries. He was born in Boseong County (보성군) in what was then known as the Jeolla Provence of Joseon. Among other things, he was the founding publisher of the first-ever Korean-language newspaper Tongnip Sinmun (독립신문, The Independence Times).

Seo became a persona non grata in Korea when the Gapsin Coup of 1884 (갑신정변) came to naught. As a ringleader of this failed palace coup, all over the land there were droves of sleuths and bounty hunters on Seo’s trail. His wife was executed along with the rest of his family. He thus ended up being reduced to seeking asylum in the United States via Japan. The Rev. Grant Horace Underwood reportedly helped arrange Seo’s trans-Pacific passage aboard the USS China from Japan to San Francisco.

Upon arrival in San Francisco, Seo Jae-pil managed to get odd jobs, again with references from Underwood. From there, he proceeded on to Pennsylvania, where he worked at night and attended school by day. He began by attending high school to study English. He went on to the School of Medicine at a local institution, which is believed to have been the predecessor of today’s George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

He eventually obtained an MD, which must have been almost like a holy grail to him at the time. He then went on to open a small clinic in the area but had a hard time attracting a clientele. He fell on hard times again and again, evidently a target of discrimination against people of color and/or Asian descent.

Known by his newly minted American name, Philip Jaisohn, by this time, Seo was practically shedding blood and sweat, as well as tears, in his struggle to live up to his aspirations as a revolutionary nationalist reformer. No wonder, a grateful nation had come to embrace him with unwavering love and respect. Gwangju-Jeonnam is entitled to pride itself as the birthplace and hometown of this extraordinary patriot. He holds pride of place as a nautilus to many of today’s aspiring young Koreans.

“Gwangju-Jeonnam is entitled to pride itself as the birthplace and hometown of this extraordinary patriot.”

Han Chang-gi (한창기, 1936-1997) may have been among the first prominent youngsters from Bosang County to find an ideal role model in Seo. He grew up in Beolgyo, within a stone’s throw of Seo’s hometown of Mundeok. Like Seo, he too was a trailblazer of historical proportions and started leaving his footprints early on while the country was still striving to clear the roadblocks to modernization. With his near-native command of English, Han was the envy of his entire school. The miracle weapon in his arsenal happened to be none other than William Maxwell, his roommate for all of his three years of high school. Maxwell was at the time an adjunct professor of English at Chonnam National University in Gwangju. He was a “bard of color,” as it were. His expertise as a Shakespearean specialist was very impressive to the impressionable Gwangju High School class of 1958, me included.

Han was a legendary culture lover-preserver and writer-publisher. He may very well have been Korea’s single most significant creative mind of the day. What set him apart most of all was his dedication to the collection and preservation of pansori (판소리, a well-known traditional Korean music genre), exhibits of folk drawings (minhwa,민화), collections of tea utensils, and kitchen and table utensils. He is known to have accumulated a collection of items dating from Korea’s olden times. Some 6,500 pieces are on display at a museum set up in Suncheon under his auspices.

“Not many are aware of the part he played as a selfless patron of Korean studies.”

Furthermore, Han Chang-gi deserves eulogizing as a top-notch publisher-writer. He is remembered as the founding publisher of a couple of highly influential popular magazines of the mid-to-late 20th century. To wit, Deep-Rooted Tree (뿌리깊은 나무) and Inexhaustible Well (샘이 깊은 물) are two great magazines that he painstakingly crafted almost single-handedly while at the helm of Encyclopedia Britannica Korea.

As a child, Han is said to have been called an aengbo (an implacable crybaby) by his neighbors. True to this childhood sobriquet, he turned out to be anything but easy to please when immersed in his lifelong pursuit as a culture lover-preserver-restorer. Parenthetically, aengbo may in part be an onomatopoeic word having something to do with the buzzing sound of honey bees or hummingbirds. The one-of-a-kind sales and publishing phenom that Han had evolved into had also won the heart of the late Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978), who was a high-profile American statesman of his day. They happened to be in one and the same corporate orbit of the Encyclopedia Britannica for a brief span of the 1970s.

Lest it be permanently buried in the dustbin of history, let me reveal one momentous secret behind probably the greatest contribution Han made to the cultivation of the language and culture of his motherland. Not many are aware of the part he played as a selfless patron of Korean studies with particular reference to the study of Korean grammar. The late Prof. Seo Jeong-su was among the best known students/scholars of Korean grammar who benefited most immediately and immensely from Han’s patronage. He was also from the province that Han came from: Jeonnam. He was from Muan County’s Illo Township and graduated from Mokpo High School.

This great compendium of Korean grammar compiled and written by Seo Jeong-su would not have seen the light of day had it not been for Han seeing to it that it got completed without a single misstep along the way. In fact, Han was a cantankerous overseer and an equally fastidious proofreader. Interestingly, Prof. Seo began by majoring in physics at Seoul National University.

He later earned an MA and a PhD in Korean language at Yonsei University.

Years later, I had the unique privilege of seeing in person Han Chang-gi and his younger brother Pan-gi at work at their Encyclopedia Britannica Offices in Seoul. About a decade into my tenure at Seoul National University, I was invited to their Encyclopedia Britannica corner offices a couple of times. True brotherly love permeated their work together. It was in evidence all over. May their legacy live forever and light up the world for generations to come!

By the way, I was one year behind Chang-gi at Gwangju High School and two years ahead of Pan-gi at the same high school. As luck would have it, I got to teach English to Pan-gi in one of my private tutorials, thereby getting to know the two brothers up close and thus that much better.