2024-25
JOHN NEAR GRANT Recipient
From Tuskegee to Tongnip: Yun Chi-ho’s Diaries as a Transpacific Dialogue on Uplift, Sovereignty, and Assimilation
Jason Shim
From Tuskegee to Tongnip:
Yun Chi-ho’s Diaries as a Transpacific Dialogue on Uplift, Sovereignty, and Assimilation
Jason Shim
2025 Near Scholar
Mentors: Mr. Byron Stevens & Ms. Amy Pelman
April 14, 2025
On December 7, 1889, 24-year-old Korean nobleman Yun Chi-ho wrote his first diary entry in the English language. As one of the first Korean people to study in the United States, he wrote in halting prose, “My Diary has hitherto been kept in Corean. But its vocabulary is not as yet rich enough to express all what [sic] I want to say. Have [sic] therefore determined to keep the Diary in English.”1 He subsequently recorded his experiences as a revolutionary and missionary in English until 1943, two years before his death months after World War II ended.2 Yun’s seemingly innocuous comment foreshadowed the racially charged situations he would experience further along his education in America. In implying that the English language possessed a superior lexis for the conversations he wished to hold, Yun hinted at his lifelong belief that the Korean nation was in desperate need of enlightenment through education to rise above its current status. However, Yun struggled throughout his life to reconcile his goals for Korean education with the oppressive reality of Japanese hegemony. Further complicating his objectives was the increasing incompatibility of the self-determination famously promised by Woodrow Wilson with Social Darwinist definitions of civilization and progress. Nevertheless, Yun found American counterparts to his perspective in the racial uplift ideologies of African American leaders such as Booker T. Washington, whom he personally met at Tuskegee University in 1910.3 Yun Chi-ho’s faith in racial uplift through vocational education, informed by his experiences with race relations in Reconstruction era America, motivated his seemingly
1 Ch'i-ho Yun, Yun Chi-ho's Diary (South Korea: National History Compilation Committee, 1973), December 7, 1889.
2 Andrew Urban, "Yun Ch'i-ho's Alienation by Way of Inclusion: A Korean International Student and Christian Reform in the 'New' South, 1888–1893," Journal of Asian American Studies 17, no. 3 (2014): 308, https://doi.org/10.1353/jaas.2014.0032.
3 Chris Suh, The Allure of Empire: American Encounters with Asians in the Age of Transpacific Expansion and Exclusion (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2023), 103-4.
contradictory beliefs in both assimilation to and resistance against imperial Japanese education in twentieth-century colonial Korea.
Yun Chi-ho’s Formative Years
Examining the extent to which Yun’s experience in Reconstruction era America impacted the Korean independence movement requires a brief overview of his biography and an in-depth exploration of the two worlds he inhabited. Yun was born on December 26, 1864 to yangban aristocrats in the Kojong administration.4 His childhood familiarized him with the Confucian classics, and his ambition was to eventually become governor of Jeolla Province.5 In 1881, Yun seized the opportunity to study abroad in Japan as a student attendant of O Yun-jung of the Gentlemen's Tour Group, which King Kojong dispatched to Japan in an ambassadorial effort to observe Japanese modernization.6 During this experience, Yun crossed paths with Yu Kil-chun, a fellow student aide to O Yun-jung. Yu would later travel to America in the 1883 first-ever pobingsa (special diplomatic mission) from Korea to the United States, become the first Korean student in America, and publish his experiences in the 1895 Observations on Travels in the West 7 Yun began his own diary during his studies in 1883 in Japan, and both Yun and Yu would become prominent supporters of modernization within the Korean independence movement.8 Moreover, both would later become vilified in Korean historiography due to their collaboration
4 Yun Chi-ho and Hyung-chan Kim, Letters in Exile: The Life and Times of Yun Chʼi-ho (1980), 4, Korean History Compilation Committee.
5 Yun and Kim, 4.
6 Hyung-chan Kim, "Portrait of a Troubled Korean Patriot: Yun Ch'i-ho's Views of the March First Independence Movement and World War II," Korean Studies 13 (1989): 79, JSTOR.
7 Kim, 79.
8 Chai-sik Chung, "Changing Korean Perceptions of Japan on the Eve of Modern Transformation: The Case of Neo-Confucian Yangban Intellectuals," Korean Studies 19 (1995): 45, JSTOR.
with the Japanese government during colonial rule. These early transnational encounters not only shaped Yun’s worldview but also positioned him at the intersection of competing ideologies modernization, nationalism, and colonialism that would define his controversial legacy within the broader struggle for Korean independence.
During his education in Japan, Yun also established contact with revolutionary Kim Okkyun and Lucius Foote, the first American ambassador to Korea, who hired him as an interpreter despite his elementary knowledge of English.9 In the Joseon court, Yun served as an indispensable link between Kim Ok-kyun, a reformist member of the Progressive Party, and the American legation. It was due to this proximity to the Progressive Party that Yun eventually fled from Korea after Kim and fellow Progressive Party members, frustrated at the slow pace of King Kojong’s reforms, staged the failed three-day Gapsin Coup, which was suppressed by Qing China.10
Yun Chi-ho in Reconstruction America
In 1885, Yun abandoned the political turmoil of Korea for Shanghai, where he studied at the Anglo-Chinese Institute and received guidance from its founder, Dr. Young J. Allen, to receive further education in America.11 On October 26, 1888, Yun Chi-ho spent his first night in America at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in San Francisco.12 Earning supplementary money as an itinerant preacher, he carried out the English Theological course of study at Vanderbilt University between 1888 to 1891 and received a varied liberal arts education at Emory College
9 Yun and Kim, Letters in Exile, 7.
10 Kim, "Portrait of a Troubled," 79.
11 Kim, 79.
12 Yun, Diary, October 26, 1888.
from 1891 to 1893.13 These formative years in the American South undoubtedly played a crucial role in shaping Yun’s evolving views on race, education, and national identity. Exposed to both the ideals of Christian egalitarianism and the harsh realities of racial segregation, Yun began to draw complex parallels between the oppression of African Americans and the colonial subjugation of Koreans. His encounters with American racial hierarchies, combined with his theological and liberal education, laid the foundation for his later efforts to adapt vocational uplift and moral reform as tools for Korean modernization.
During his travels in the South, Yun quickly grew to question American narratives of white racial supremacy. Just two weeks after Yun arrived in Nashville, he encountered a passionate discussion at Vanderbilt University about whether Black individuals should be relocated to Africa.14 He observed that the “Southerner wishes to keep the negro in ignorance; and that the Yankees are more catholic [sic] in their spirit and practice.”15 Yun’s comparison of Southern suppression with Northern inclusivity reflects an early awareness of regional differences in racial ideology and hints at how these views would inform his thinking on race and education. This early encounter with the realities of racial segregation and the intellectual climate of the South certainly played a role in shaping Yun’s later efforts to apply American lessons of racial uplift to Korea, albeit within a colonial context that demanded careful navigation of both racial and imperial power structures.
As an outsider to this society himself, Yun was taunted variously out of church and outside school as a “sly Jap, or dirty Chinaman,” which certainly brought him unease and a
13 Yun and Kim, Letters in Exile, 12-15.
14 Yun and Kim, 63.
15 Yun, Diary, December 8, 1889.
willingness to sympathize with victims of racial injustice.16 Perhaps motivated by similar degradations even by colleagues on campus, Yun vocally supported immigration restrictions on the grounds that they would prevent the “ignorant rabble” from debasing the reputations of their home nations in America.17 Whether or not his nativist attitude was a reflection of his true beliefs or a survival strategy, his outward frustration with underperforming members of his race mirrored that of his contemporary and future model Booker T. Washington, who famously possessed little patience for African Americans who lived less than exemplary lives. Yun’s experiences and reactions demonstrate the degree to which imperialist lines of thought penetrated him even as he sought enlightenment for his oppressed nation. Yun’s willingness to criticize his fellow Koreans, despite his dedication to Korean independence and dignity, hints at the deep psychological and cultural wounds caused by colonial subjugation. As a stranger in a strange land developing a worldview compatible with his perspective, Yun Chi-ho’s experiences with American racism betray the ways in which imperialism not only oppressed nations but also fractured their people’s internal cohesion and senses of self.
Yet Yun did not accept these discriminatory beliefs without question, and his interest in America’s racial divide was further evident from his conversations with African American Christians living under Jim Crow laws. He frequently made visits to Black churches, making sure to maintain attendance at Sunday sermons.18 Moreover, on the topic of African American education, he recorded that although one of his white colleagues “was glad of the emancipation of the negroes, and though he was willing to preach to them, he would not, for any consideration,
16 Yun and Kim, Letters in Exile, 64-65.
17 Urban, "Yun Ch'i-ho's Alienation," 307.
18 Yun and Kim, 64.
go into a colored school to teach the negroes.”19 Yun thus highlights the contradiction between his colleague’s outward support for emancipation and his refusal to engage in the practical aspects of Black uplift, such as teaching in a segregated school. “Now,” Yun mused in his diary with wonder, “is this prejudice compatible with the boasted civilization, philanthropy, religion of these people?”20 His reaction reflects his disillusionment with the hypocrisy he observed in white Southern attitudes toward African American education. His rhetorical question exposes the contradiction between America’s moral ideals and its racially prejudiced practices, revealing his growing awareness of racial injustice. Ultimately, Yun’s experience in the American South left him questioning the disconnect between the professed values of Christianity and civilization with the deep-seated unwillingness to engage with Black communities on equal terms.
Reform and Revolution in Late Joseon Korea
When Yun returned to Korea in 1895, he found a vastly different political landscape awaiting him. During Yun’s early life, discontented provincial yangban literati abandoned the dogmatic teachings of Confucianism and developed the Silhak reform movement during the late Joseon period.21 This intellectual shift occurred largely in response to the failure of Confucianism to ameliorate the socioeconomic crises resulting from repeated wars with Japanese and Manchu invaders. Translating to “Practical Learning,” the Silhak movement emphasized a pragmatic ideology focused on reforming the rigid Confucian social structure to provide aid to
19 Yun, Diary, December 9, 1889.
20 Yun, Diary, December 9, 1889.
21 Eugene Y. Park, Korea: a History (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2022), 169-171.
Korean peasants. Its leaders advocated for the Joseon government to promote Korea’s own national identity and culture and encouraging the study of technology from foreign countries.22
In this way, Silhak was an expression of Seohak, which translated to “Western Learning” and was a parallel movement which sought to reconcile the teachings of Western missionaries with Korean culture. Seohak developed as a way to support the teachings of Protestant missionaries from the United States and other Western countries who had founded private schools to spread the Christian faith.23 Christian egalitarianism and humanism appealed to the lower class, and thus Western ideas and knowledge attracted a wide spectrum of Koreans who had progressive ideas for Korean modernization.24 Moreover, King Kojong welcomed Western Protestant missionaries for their roles as political advisors and pioneers of modernization, increasing the legitimacy and influence of Christianity as a significant factor shaping Korean ideals of education.25 Several young members of the yangban who were educated at mission schools were even encouraged to study abroad, such as Yun himself.26 These educational exchanges exposed Korean intellectuals to new ideas, leading to a broader acceptance of Western scientific, political, and social concepts that would later play a key role in the modernization of Korea during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
22 Park, 172-173.
23 Park, 174-75.
24 Jeong-Kyu Lee, "Christianity and Korean Education in the Late Choson Period," Christian Higher Education 1, no. 1 (2002): 10, https://doi.org/10.1080/15363750213773.
25 Lee, 9.
26 Urban, "Yun Ch'i-ho's Alienation," 309.
Despite its initial appeal to various segments of Joseon society, the Seohak movement failed to completely overthrow the old social order dominated by yangban literati, and even brought about the Donghak counter-movement. Donghak began as an academic movement among marginalized Koreans who distrusted foreign influence. Gradually, it became a religious effort to achieve democracy, nationalism, and a return to teaching the dogma of Confucianism to address social injustice and inequality.27 Despite facing suppression, the Donghak movement continued to influence Korean society by fostering a sense of nationalism and promoting the idea of a return to traditional values in the face of foreign encroachment. Moreover, it used Confucian ideals to challenge the social hierarchies upheld by the yangban, representing a direct threat to the legitimacy of the aristocracy.
In this milieu, the debate between Seohak and the Confucian school of Donghak grew especially ferocious regarding the recent question of Korea’s place in the imperial order following the dawn of Western imperialism and Sino-Japanese colonial pressure. Tensions were further inflamed by the slogan of “protect orthodoxy and ban heterodoxy” adopted by King Kojong’s regent father, the Taewŏn-gun, in response to Japanese imperialism.28 These debates led to eruptions of violence such as the aforementioned 1884 Gapsin Coup, which forced Yun’s exile from Korea, led by members of a patriotic Enlightenment Movement hoping to reform Korea by removing its social class barriers according to Silhak doctrine. The Gapsin Coup was ultimately unsuccessful in its goal to convert Korea into a modernized nation-state according to Seohak teachings. One decade later, unrest further intensified in the 1894 Donghak Peasant
27 Lee, "Christianity and Korean," 3.
28 Michael Edson Robinson, "Nationalism and the Korean Tradition, 1896 1920: Iconoclasm, Reform, and National Identity," Korean Studies 10 (1986): 37, JSTOR.
Revolution, led by adherents of Donghak who wished to modernize Korea by detaching it from Western influences entirely.29 These revolutions not only exposed the deep sociopolitical divisions within Korean society but also foreshadowed the ongoing struggle between traditional values and foreign influences, a theme that would continue to shape Korea’s development in the face of encroaching imperial influences.
Assimilation through Education in Colonial Korea
When Yun returned to Korea, the Donghak Revolution was underway, and Qing China’s deployment of troops to suppress it was met with a declaration of war by Japan.30 Japan’s victory over Qing China in the ensuing First Sino-Japanese War effectively ended Qing influence over Korea in place of Japanese encroachment, and the conciliatory Gabo Reforms passed by King Kojong from 1894 to 1896, which abolished the yangban aristocracy and attempted land reform were largely passed with Japanese approval.31 Ideologically fragmented, Korea’s subsequent inability to resist its 1905 annexation by Japan would prove disastrous for adherents of both Donghak and Seohak education, who would see centuries of Confucian education upended by an imperial Japanese police state. The Japanese colonial administration sought to suppress Korean culture and traditional education systems, replacing them with a curriculum designed to assimilate Koreans into the Japanese imperial order. Those deeply rooted Confucian ideals that had shaped Korean society for centuries were systematically undermined, leading to a cultural and educational upheaval. As a result, both Donghak and Seohak movements, which had sought
29 Key Ray Chong, "The Tonghak Rebellion: Harbinger of Korean Nationalism," Journal of Korean Studies (1969-1971) 1, no. 1 (1969): 86, JSTOR.
30 Chong, 87.
31 Chong, 87.
to modernize and reform Korean society, were overshadowed and crushed under the weight of Japanese imperialism.
Education during Japanese colonialism focused on incorporating Korea into its empire through a Japanization effort that replaced Korean culture with a modernized Japanese one. The Japanese were emboldened by previous successes and had developed a system of segregation that developed minorities into subaltern ethnic groups under a Japanese hegemon.32 As such, central to Japanese efforts to assimilate Koreans and destroy their cultural heritage was the manipulation of the nation’s education system. While proponents of the patriotic enlightenment movement promoted education to preserve Korean independence, their efforts were ultimately helpless against Japanese policies which completely reformed education to serve as a subjugative tool promoting the empire’s interests.33 After an initial phase of education in the Korean language, lessons were taught in Japanese, which disadvantaged Korean students and worked in tandem with policies that pressured Koreans to adopt Japanese names. Furthermore, as early as the 1910 incorporation of Japan into Korea, colonial authorities devised a segregated education system that discriminated against Korean children and propped up ethnic Japanese settlers as elites.34 This system was further buttressed by a focus on vocational education that educated Koreans for subordinate societal roles. The lower aspirations of Japanese educational planners for Korea thus produced an inferior brand of education. The Japanese reforms of the existing
32 Mark Caprio, Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014), 60-80, Ebook Central.
33 Klaus Dittrich and Dolf-Alexander Neuhaus, "Korea's 'Education Fever' from the Late Nineteenth to the Early Twenty-first Century," History of Education 52, no. 4 (2023): 543, https://doi.org/10.1080/0046760x.2022.2098391.
34 Dittrich and Newhaus, 543.
Korean education system created an institution promoting both indoctrination to imperial ideology and the destruction of Korean identity.
Racialized Education in the American South
Similarly, earnest Reconstruction attempts to create a system of Black schooling ended in an exploitative system of vocational education. After the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, newly freed African Americans in the South placed a high value on education as a means of empowerment and progress. Despite resistance from white society, Black communities established their own schools, often supported by churches, Northern philanthropic organizations, and the Freedmen’s Bureau.35 However, the integration of African Americans into the educational structure of the United States was deeply haphazard, since the Freedmen’s Bureau was forced to reduce its efforts to create an increasingly effective system of schools due to state governments being constitutionally responsible for public education.36 The failure of Reconstruction state governments to follow through on this promise in a timely manner dealt a significant setback to the swift integration of Black Americans into mainstream American society through education. Moreover, as the Black community grew more separate and selfsufficient from the white community, this separation became embedded within institutional structures.
In the Reconstruction-era United States, the push for vocational education started when social scientists and Black intellectuals grew doubtful about the power of formal education to bring freedom or progress. Unsurprisingly, unequal education perpetuated social and economic
35 Joel Williamson, The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South since Emancipation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 51, Ebook Central.
36 Williamson, 51.
inequality by denying disadvantaged groups the same opportunities and resources as others under Jim Crow laws. In one particularly unfortunate example set in a one-teacher school in Macon County, Georgia, sociologist Arthur Raper discovered that a student named Booker T. Washington Williams and even his classmates and teacher did not know who his namesake and contemporary Booker T. Washington was.37 Such disconnection from Black educational heritage highlighted the deeper issue: Northern states shifted their priorities away from higher education and towards industrial education in rebuilding the South.38 This displacement fundamentally stemmed from the prohibitive cost of educational expansion in the South, since formal education required the funds to build specialized infrastructure such as schools, hospitals, and churches for Black educators, doctors, and clergy. The regenerating Southern economy and political willpower often failed to support higher education, as evidenced by the main target of private gifting shifting from higher education to elementary schools.39
Political sentiment therefore shifted towards vocational education as an acceptable way to promote the uplift of African Americans through education. Booker T. Washington in particular strongly advocated for vocational education as the most practical and effective path to socioeconomic and moral progress for African Americans in the post-Reconstruction South.40 Unfortunately, this self-sufficiency also demonstrated a diminished commitment on the part of the white architects of Reconstruction to post-slavery African American uplift. Under Booker T.
37 Adam Fairclough, "'Being in the Field of Education and Also Being a Negro...Seems...Tragic': Black Teachers in the Jim Crow South," The Journal of American History 87, no. 1 (2000): 68, https://doi.org/10.2307/2567916.
38 Williamson, The Crucible of Race, 328-29.
39 Williamson, 330.
40 Williamson, 57.
Washington’s influence and the “Tuskegee Idea” of vocational uplift, Black education became increasingly self-contained, which in turn allowed white society to distance itself from responsibility for Black educational advancement.41 Educational initiatives aimed at Black communities were typically underfunded and designed to maintain a laboring class, rather than promote true educational equity under white supremacist power structures.42 These initiatives were successful insofar as they further reinforced the vocational skills among African Americans that were learned informally through forced labor on plantations. While Progressives in favor of liberal education advocated for modernization and efficiency, their efforts often reinforced racial segregation. Vocational education therefore conveniently suited the goals of both Progressives who sought credit for Black uplift as well as those of conservative Southern politicians who sought to construct a modern, efficient economic region using pliable Black and White laborers.
Yun Chi-ho, in later borrowing the model of vocational education from the American South, did so with the belief that it would serve as a powerful tool for Korean self-strengthening and national uplift under Japanese rule. However, he adopted this model without fully recognizing the ways in which vocational training in the United States had been used to entrench social hierarchies and maintain racialized labor systems. In the American context, vocational education often served the interests of white elites by producing a disciplined, low-cost labor force, while limiting the political and intellectual advancement of African Americans. Similarly, in colonial Korea, the promotion of vocational training risked turning Korean subjects into compliant workers for the Japanese imperial economy rather than independent, self-determined
41 Williamson, 328.
42 Michael Dennis, "Schooling along the Color Line: Progressives and the Education of Blacks in the New South," The Journal of Negro Education 67, no. 2 (1998): 154, https://doi.org/10.2307/2668224.
citizens. Yun’s importation of vocational education, though rooted in aspirations for national improvement, inadvertently aligned with colonial structures that incentivized exploitation.
Vocational Education as Uplift in Colonial Korea
Yun’s intellectual relationship with vocational education and accommodationism was intimately connected to his experiences as a nationalist revolutionary. He initially strove to resist Japanese hegemony over Korea, and through his efforts developed a lifelong belief in the need for Korean racial uplift. In 1896, Yun became one of the founding members of the reformist Tongnip Hyeop-hoe (Independence Club) along with Philip Jaisohn, an organizer of the failed Gapsin Coup, and his former fellow diplomatic student aide Yu Kil-chun.43 Yun managed the printing of the Tongnip Sinmum (The Independent), the first privately managed daily newspaper in Korea and the first to print editions written exclusively in Hangul, and served as the president of the organization after Jaisohn’s exile. The Tongnip Hyeop-hoe, which advocated for political and social reforms to modernize Korea, became a platform for Yun to express his aspirations for a Korean renaissance. He promoted the idea of a strong, self-reliant Korea through modernization, and the club's efforts to engage with Western ideas deeply influenced his thinking.
Upon the Tongnip Hyeop-hoe’s forcible disbanding in 1898, he was called to serve as Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Joseon government in 1903, in which capacity he helplessly signed the Japan-Korea Agreement of August 1904.44 Yun lamented the treaty, which effectively removed Korea’s diplomatic independence by forcing Korea to consult with Japan
43 Kim, "Portrait of a Troubled," 81.
44 Kim, 82.
before signing any treaties, and his inability to act amplified his belief that Koreans needed a chance to prove their fitness as a race.45 Upon resigning his position, he founded the Taehan Chaganghoe (Korean Self-Strengthening Society) and the vocational Anglo-Korean School at Songdo in 1906.46 Yun’s interest in vocational education grew out of his desire for national uplift. Rejecting what he perceived as the impractical education of the yangban aristocracy in the face of Japanese hegemony, Yun declared to American missionaries that “Shakespeare can wait,” elucidating his belief in industrial education and accumulation of capital as a means to maintaining the Korean national identity.47 This shift in focus from his earlier revolutionary activities marked a departure from traditional intellectualism and embodied Yun’s pragmatic response to the immediate challenges of colonial rule.
During a subsequent 1910 tour of the United States, during which he served as a missionary ambassador for Korean Christians, Yun prioritized a visit to the Tuskegee Institute run by Booker T. Washington, where he was given a guided tour by Washington himself.48 By the time of their meeting, Washington had been well-publicized by American Protestant missionaries in East Asia. His 1901 autobiography Up from Slavery was translated into Korean in just five years and available in 1906, the same year Yun established his Anglo-Korean School.49 The translation notably romanticized Washington as a figure who had raised himself up
45 Yun and Kim, Letters in Exile, 49.
46 Suh, The Allure of Empire, 104.
47 Suh, 104-5.
48 Suh, 103.
49 Jang Wook Huh, "The Student's Hand: Industrial Education and Racialized Labor in Early Korean Protestantism," Journal of Korean Studies 25, no. 2 (2020): 356, accessed August 28, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1215/07311613-8552031.
from the unenlightened state of Blackness by pursuing Christian morality. Washington was thus transformed into a symbol of racial uplift for Koreans like Yun, who believed in the potential for Koreans to distinguish themselves.50 This was undoubtedly an intentional choice, as Protestant missionaries in East Asia justified whiteness as an essential pillar of modern civilization and labor as a path towards earning Christianity.51 Such an adoption of Washington as a symbol was not merely a reflection of admiration but a strategic alignment with a broader vision of racial and cultural rejuvenation. For Yun and others, it represented the possibility of achieving dignity and respect for Koreans through disciplined effort, labor, and the pursuit of knowledge, even in the face of colonial oppression. Thus, Washington’s philosophy became a lens through which Koreans could view their struggle for self-improvement and independence in a world dominated by imperial powers.
As a Protestant missionary himself, Yun integrated these teachings into vocational education by having the Anglo-Korean School teach Korean students how to make textiles.52 Strongly influenced by clear proof of his racial uplift ideology at Tuskegee, Yun would continue to quote Washington throughout his life, maintaining in a letter from August 11, 1919 that “As B. Washington insisted that the Negro must attain economic equality before he can claim social equality so the Koreans must reach economic equality before we may claim political equality.”53 Yun Chi-ho thus adopted and adapted Booker T. Washington’s philosophy of racial uplift through economic self-reliance to the Korean context under Japanese colonial rule. By citing
50 Huh, 357.
51 Huh, 355.
52 Huh, 355.
53 Yun and Kim, Letters in Exile, August 11, 1919.
Washington’s belief that economic equality must precede social equality, he drew further parallels between the struggles of African Americans in the post-Reconstruction South and Koreans under imperial domination. Yun argued that political rights and recognition cannot be meaningfully demanded without first proving economic competence and self-sufficiency. This view reflects a gradualist and pragmatic approach, similar to Washington’s, that prioritizes economic development as a foundation for long-term liberation. However, Yun was inherently limited in being forced to accept the existing Japanese power structure rather than challenging it directly. Yun would come to realize that this reliance on uplift through education placed the burden of uplift exclusively on his Korean peers, who would not always agree with his accommodationist perspective on achieving independence.
Yun was not alone in his commitment to education’s potential for independence. Many Koreans drew upon existing traditions of education to resist Japanese assimilation. Christian missionary schools, Korean Confucian schools, and night schools in rural areas each offered alternatives to colonial schools.54 Moreover, these schools reflected the aforementioned precolonial developments in Korean pedagogical philosophy. Christian missionary schools were generally tolerated by Japanese authorities and, as promulgators of Western Christian thought, were direct consequences of the Seohak movement. Surviving Confucian schools, meanwhile, reflected the Donghak belief in Confucianism as a means of modernization, while night schools mirrored the Silhak ideology’s focus on practical education. Although these schools shared a common interest with Japanese colonial schools in modernizing Korea, they were uninterested in
54 Leighanne Yuh, "Contradictions in Korean Colonial Education," International Journal of Korean History 15, no. 1 (2010): 144.
promulgating an imperial ideology unlike colonial schools, which allowed them to harbor sympathizers with Korean nationalism.55
In addition, Japanese oppression directly resulted in the popularity of Korean nationalism in night schools, as Korean workers were not able to go to regular schools due to a lack of time, money, and incentive to become indoctrinated into the Japanese empire.56 Affluent Korean families, whose children had more time for education, escaped Japanization by continuing the Seohak-advocated practice of sending young scholars to study abroad in modernized countries.57 Koreans studying in Japan took advantage of liberal policies during the reign of Emperor Taishō from 1912 to 1926, dubbed Taishō Democracy, to form debate clubs espousing nationalist rhetoric that fed the growing discontent in Korea.
58 In the early stages of Japanese colonization, these alternative sources of education sorely weakened the imperial government’s attempts at indoctrination. By providing Koreans with different perspectives and fostering a sense of national pride, they became crucial spaces of resistance and subversion. Even though these forms of education were marginalized and often suppressed by colonial authorities, they played a significant role in keeping alive the spirit of Korean nationalism and resistance to Japanese control, sowing the seeds for future movements aimed at reclaiming Korea’s independence.
55 Yuh, 144.
56 In-Duck Kim, "The Association between Education and Society: The Educational Struggle for Korean Identity in Japan 1945-1948," Asia Pacific Education Review 9, no. 1 (2008): 336, https://doi.org/10.1007/bf03025828.
57 Dittrich and Newhaus, 544.
58 Kenneth M. Wells, "Background to the March First Movement: Koreans in Japan, 1905 1919," Korean Studies 13 (1989): 8-9, JSTOR.
These alternatives to colonial education could not fully escape damage from Japanese oppression. Missionary schools, which had been a key part of Korea’s educational landscape, were forced to close if they did not comply with Japanese demands, particularly the requirement to perform Shinto rituals as a sign of loyalty to the Japanese emperor.59 Meanwhile, both Korean Confucian schools and night schools, which provided alternative education for those seeking to preserve traditional Korean values and knowledge, were routinely harassed and scrutinized by the Japanese imperial government. The colonial authorities sought to suppress any educational efforts that did not align with their agenda of assimilation, further stifling the intellectual and cultural autonomy of the Korean people during the colonial period.
Cultural Nationalism and Survival in Colonial Korea
As a result, educated nationalists such as Yun began to believe in the effectiveness of not openly resisting Japan, but rather establishing a cultural niche for the survival of a Korean nation through the defense of local autonomy.60 These literati, now calling themselves cultural nationalists, pushed to establish a people’s university and were generally interested in accepting Japanese hegemony in exchange for Korean autonomy in self-government and education.61 Their position differed from more militant independence activists in that they were unwilling to directly confront imperial Japan and instead focused on ensuring a survival of the Korean identity, even if it meant allowing Japanese suzerainty to continue.
59 Park, Korea: A History, 264.
60 Park, 169.
61 Park, 169.
Yun’s turn toward cultural nationalism was further motivated by his arrest in 1911 due to his links with another Korean conspiracy, this time regarding the attempted assassination of Resident-General Terauchi Masatake.62 The arrest was part of a broader crackdown on Korean nationalist movements, and Yun, who had been a prominent intellectual figure advocating for Korean independence, found himself caught in the web of suspicion and repression. The physical and mental torment of his imprisonment for four years on false charges contributed to Yun’s acceptance of Japanese rule and disillusionment with the romanticism of the upcoming Wilsonian moment of self-determination.63 Yun began to question not only his personal struggle but also the broader efficacy of violent resistance against Japanese imperialism. These experiences marked a profound inflection point in Yun’s political outlook, rooted in a belief that cultural preservation within the colonial framework was the most viable path forward. Disillusioned with both violent resistance and the promises of international diplomacy, Yun further aligned himself with a strategy of incremental change, emphasizing the education, moral reform, and cultural development he had learned in Tuskegee. His faith in cultural nationalism reflected a complex negotiation with power shaped by trauma, pragmatism, and a deep desire to safeguard Korean identity in an era of profound uncertainty.
Opposing the cultural nationalists was a group of Korean students who remained dissatisfied with the yoke of colonial education and pursued militant reform. Their protests developed into the March First movement in 1919, which represented a widespread escalation of protests throughout all thirteen provinces of Korea. Although brutally repressed by the Japanese government via mass murders, torture, and executions, the movement forced imperial Japan to
62 Yun and Kim, Letters in Exile, 59.
63 Yun and Kim, 59.
adopt a more conciliatory tone.64 Yun’s continuing adherence to his belief in self-strengthening informed his refusal to participate in the March First movement and its efforts to implore Woodrow Wilson to fulfill his declaration of colonized rights. Yun even condemned the organizers in his diary with the words, “Booker Washington said that freedom is a conquest and not a bequest.”65 His quotation of Washington reveals not only Washington’s continuing influence on Yun, but also his commitment to a moderate relationship with imperial Japan that would not endanger his plans for gradual emancipation through vocational education.
Under Governor General Saitō Makoto, the Japanese imperial government thus officially adopted the policy of bunka seiji. Translating to “cultural rule” in contrast to the earlier policy of “military rule,” the bunka seiji policies selectively accommodated Korean demands in order to maintain legitimacy among a discontented populace.66 Reforms in the education sector, though failing to integrate Japanese and Korean people, included an increase in educational quality after efforts to add classes in the sciences and to upgrade English from an elective to a required class as well as a promise towards extending Korean education to six years, the number of years then required of Japanese children.
67 The high enthusiasm Koreans showed for this education encouraged the government to increase the number of elementary schools from 556 to 870.68
Public education propagated within the limit set by the colonial authorities was received favorably by Koreans, but ultimately public education was intended for the control of the colony,
64 Park, 244.
65 Suh, The Allure of Empire, 108-9.
66 Caprio, Japanese Assimilation, 111.
67 Caprio, 128.
68 Caprio, 128.
not its development.69 It functioned less as a tool for genuine empowerment and more as a mechanism for shaping compliant subjects, reinforcing Japan’s imperial ideology while offering only selective opportunities for advancement within a rigidly hierarchical system.
While Yun believed that gradual reform and cultural preservation within the colonial framework could empower Koreans, his willingness to work with Japanese authorities increasingly positioned him as complicit in the imperial system he once sought to reform. His refusal to support the March First movement alienated him from younger, more radical nationalists who viewed his pragmatism as betrayal. The contradiction at the heart of Yun’s politics reveals the limited and often painful choices available to Korean intellectuals who sought national uplift through cooperation with an oppressive colonial regime. Though his intentions may have been rooted in preserving Korean dignity and autonomy, Yun’s actions and beliefs in vocational education came to symbolize a capitulation to empire rather than resistance to it. Nevertheless, Yun’s legacy is a testament to the painful complexity of resistance, wherein the fight for autonomy and self-determination is distorted by the realities of colonial oppression and the limited avenues available for genuine cultural defiance. It is in this tension that Yun’s life finds its most enduring significance: not as a symbol of submission or defiance alone, but as a figure emblematic of the constrained agency and moral compromises that defined Korea’s colonial modernity.
The Transpacific Legacy of Yun Chi-ho
Yun’s attempt at instituting vocational education in Korea, influenced by the racial uplift ideologies of Booker T. Washington and his experiences in the American South, ultimately
69 Yunshik Chang, "Growth of Education in Korea 1910-1945," Bulletin of the Population and Development Studies Center 4 (1975): 51, JSTOR.
failed to significantly change the reality of Japanese control over education. His emulation of the Tuskegee model, which had failed to overcome racialized narratives of progress, also ignored the fact that Black American leaders from W.E.B. Du Bois to even Washington himself unilaterally exalted Japan as a leader of the non-white races.70 Yun sought to liberate Korea using a strategy that neither succeeded in its own context nor accounted for the complexities of Japan’s role in the global racial imagination. Moreover, the system of vocational education was specifically designed in both Japan and Reconstruction America to produce a class of laborers. In hindsight, it is difficult to imagine how Yun’s plan for Korean self-determination could have succeeded given the rapid rate at which the Japanese colonial government eroded civil liberties. The demonstrated success of the nonviolent March First movement in forcing the Japanese government to adopt kinder policies towards Koreans further discredits Yun’s accommodationist perspective.
Furthermore, through attempting to secure the national identity of Korea, Yun similarly aligned with the idea of a color line led by Japan. On December 8, 1941, Yun commented with pleasure that “[a] new Day has indeed dawned on the Old World! This is a real war of races the Yellow against the White.”71 Yun’s statement reflects not only his full ideological alignment with Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, but also his belief in a racial hierarchy in which Korea’s future was tied to Japan’s leadership in an anti-Western world order. By casting World War II as a racial struggle rather than a colonial one, Yun repositioned Korea’s subjugation as a necessary part of a broader, almost redemptive, pan-Asian cause. He effectively surrendered the possibility of Korean self-determination, choosing instead to place faith in an
70 Suh, The Allure of Empire, 106-7.
71 Caprio, Japanese Assimilation, 184-85.
imperial structure that promised racial solidarity while continuing to deny Korean autonomy. Both this full subscription to Imperial Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and his postwar disdain for “the self-appointed saviors of Korea” who “swagger about everywhere talking big as if they had saved Korea from Japanese militarism” betray a fundamental mistrust in the self-determination of the Korean people.72 Rather than envisioning an independent Korea shaped by the will and agency of its own citizens, Yun placed his faith in external structures as vehicles for progress. His vision for vocational education led by Koreans gradually shifted into pan-Asianism led by benevolent Japanese hegemons. His skepticism toward Korean-led resistance movements reveals a deep disillusionment with nationalist idealism and a retreat into a politics of pragmatism that ultimately failed to imagine a Korea truly free from imperial influence.
Moreover, despite his cogent comparisons of the two groups, Yun subscribed to Social Darwinist rhetoric and believed Koreans to be superior to African Americans, blaming slavery on the racial fitness of African Americans and arguing that Koreans were physically and mentally equal to the Japanese.73 This belief system allowed him to advocate for Korean advancement within a racial hierarchy rather than outside of it, ultimately reinforcing the very structures of inequality he sought to overcome. By distancing Koreans from African Americans and aligning with Japanese racial narratives, Yun undermined the potential for transnational solidarity and exposed the contradictions at the heart of his nationalist vision. Even in a period of cultural rule, Yun’s efforts were limited by imperialist frameworks that bound both Korea’s education system and Yun’s own perspective.
72 Yun and Kim, Letters in Exile, 63.
73 Huh, The Student’s Hand, 359.
Yun deserves a more complex legacy than that of a traitor to Korean independence. His diaries are monumental in documenting the experiences of a cross-cultural communicator attempting to apply anti-oppressive lessons from the American South to Korea. While younger nationalists viewed him as compromising too much with Japan, Yun’s commitment to vocational education and cultural preservation represented his attempt to offer a path forward for Koreans under colonial domination, even if that path was deeply fraught with moral and ideological contradictions. In the context of his experiences with racialized education in the United States, Yun Chi-ho’s compromises and contradictions undeniably reveal the difficulty of navigating resistance and survival under empire, shaping him into a reminder of the human costs associated with uplift, sovereignty, and assimilation.
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