Anne Soon Choi

10.18399/acta.2008.11.3.002

Korean Protestantism Woodrow Wilson Korean nationalism Korean Congress Philip Jaisohn Helen Kim

This article examines how various Protestant Christian Korean students in the United States understood and utilized the overlapping discourses of Christianity and Wilsonian democracy, which emerged in the decades before World War II as a particular language of Americanism as they struggled for Korean independence from Japanese colonial rule. Specifically, this article explores how students used this discourse to articulate an anti-colonial vision grounded in the ideas of modernity, progress, and civilization during the “Wilsonian moment,” with a special focus on the activities and statements of such key figures as George L. Paik, a president of Yonsei University and the first Minister of Education of the Republic of Korea, Syngman Rhee, an overseas independence activist during the colonial period and the first president of the Republic of Korea, Philip Jaisohn, a long-time independence activist in the United States and Helen Kim, an early woman student in the United States and subsequently the dean of Ewha Womans University.