Philip Jaisohn, the Political Evangelist, 1896–98

Abstract:The objective of this article is twofold: first to argue that Philip Jaisohn, upon his return from the United States to Korea in 1896, sought to subvert, if not overthrow, the monarchical government, and second, to argue that Jaisohn drew on specifically Christian intellectual and ideological resources to articulate his arguments. The rhetoric of loyalty, love, lawful resistance, private property, and slavery are, as such, in need of analysis through the Protestant conceptual prism. Previous studies analyzing modern political thought have focused on the nature of translation from the West; this study focuses on the conceptual aspect of the political language Jaisohn introduced in order to effect revolutionary changes in the popular vernacular. His goal was not just to present resistance against the incumbent governing authority as morally defensible, but to frame it in terms of the right of individual property. Finally the article suggests avenues through which religious thinking affected the reception and dissemination of Western political thought in Korea, and concludes by reflecting on the relevance of religious thought in the analysis of modern Korean political thought.