Trifter

Seoul Foreigners’ Cemetery — Photo by Jeffrey Miller

On a wooded knoll overlooking the Han River in northwestern Seoul, the history of the foreign presence in Korea has quietly marked its time through the ages.

Since 1890, the Seoul Foreigners’ Cemetery in Hapchong-dong has been the final resting place for many foreigners who have made Korea their home over the years. A walk along the paths in this small (14,000 square meters/4,000 pyong) cemetery often referred to as “Yanghwajin’’—a name derived from a Han River ferry landing that had once existed there—is literally a walk back in time through over a century of the Western impact on Korean life.

“Being this close to the foreign presence in Korea gives a great sense of continuity with the past,’’ said Reverend Julian Holdsworth of the Seoul Union Church. “We follow in the footsteps of pioneering giants—ordinary human beings used by an extraordinary God.’’

The history of the cemetery mirrors not only a century of oppression, political instability, and war on the peninsula, but also the missionary work in Korea. Among the 517 foreigners from 13 countries buried here are some of the first missionaries to arrive in Korea, as well as diplomats, educators, soldiers, and even children.

The site was initially acquired on the occasion of the death of a Presbyterian missionary physician, Dr. John W. Heron, who had come to Korea in 1885. Dr. Horace Allen, the first Protestant missionary doctor in Korea, used his connections to obtain the bluff overlooking the Han River. Ironically, the site chosen for the cemetery already had historical significance: in 1839, a number of French Catholic missionaries were put to death there; 27 years later, a number of Korean Catholics were also killed in a mass execution on a nearby riverbank.