American Spreads the Word on Ham Sok-hon
By Chung Hye-jean
Korea Times
April 24, 2001
Tom Coyner stands in his office next to a framed picture of Ham Sok HonNowadays, with the increase of international companies and foreign investment in Seoul, a foreign businessman in the metropolis is no longer a rarity.
Then what about a foreigner who has a cornucopia of articles on Korea on his personal website? Not that uncommon, either. What if he were a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) Seoul Monthly Meeting? Perhaps then, he becomes a bit more distinctive.
However, if one adds to the above information the fact that he is responsible for an extensive website in English on the life and writings of Ham Sok-hon, the Korean revolutionary crusader for democracy and non- violence, then the foreign businessman becomes quite an interesting person.
Self-described as "a Quaker software sales & marketing manager,'' the American businessman by the name of Tom Coyner has lived in Korea for about five years, and is currently working for the e-commerce company ACI Worldwide (Korea) Ltd.
So who exactly is Ham Sok-hon and why is this American businessman so interested in him?
Ham Sok-hon (1901~1989) was a prominent personage of Korean Protestantism, a courageous advocate of peace, and a valiant fighter for democracy and the rights of the people.
Ham had his share of glory and tribulations; a pacifist who admired Gandhi, he was nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize, and as an outspoken activist, he was incarcerated several times during the Japanese colonial period and the Park Chung-hee regime.
As Ham left his imprint on many areas of religion, culture and society, his name and teachings are still revered and remembered by a multitude of devotees over a decade after his passing, which explains why he was chosen as the national cultural figure for the month of April by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
"Although many Koreans today, particularly those 30 years and younger, are not familiar with him, I meet many educated Koreans over 30 who do know him. I always know if I meet someone who has actually read his material because they are always so enthusiastic that a foreigner is showing interest in him, since his books have such a strong impact on people's thinking,'' said Coyner in an interview with The Korea Times.
He added that Ham is highly respected by foreigners who are familiar with him, particularly those who lived in Korea in the '60s and '70s.
"We used to hear all this nonsense about "Hankuk-sik minjujui (Korean- style Democracy),'' which was just nonsense for a fascist form of politics. There was such a lack of intellectual honesty in Koreans trying to defend their situation during those days, yet Ham Sok-hon honestly describes the real situation of Korea, and he says it in very positive, meaningful terms, without apologizing and without making alibis. He says it so clearly and honestly, that you can't help respect the man.''
Another characteristic of Ham's that won Coyner's respect was the truthful depiction of Korean history. Coyner explained that, as a high school history teacher in North Korea, Ham had the challenge of trying to teach Korean history in an accurate yet meaningful way.
Caught between two extreme views - the Japanese, who distorted Korean history in order to make Koreans feel ashamed of it, and the nationalists, who also distorted history by hiding the negative and accentuating only the positive aspects of Korean history - Ham rejected both because he felt both were dishonest.
``But at the same time, Ham wanted his students to have pride in being Korean. So what he did was to put the facts into a proper perspective from a spiritual viewpoint,'' said Coyner.
When asked how Ham's teachings have influenced him, Coyner cited the unique grass-roots ideology of Ham, who was a firm believer in the strong spiritual power of the common people.
``What anyone can learn - whether a Korean or a foreigner - is that if you can maintain a spiritual integrity and an intellectual honesty, as exhibited by Ham's perspective of the world, you can always find hope and strength no matter how terrible your conditions may appear to be. You don't need to look to a minister or a government leader for inspiration. You can find inspiration in a 'kage ajumma' (middle-aged female shopkeeper) or a 'taxi ajossi' (taxi driver) .''
``I think Ham was saying that the strength of Korea was not in the elite but in the common farmer and the common worker. He pointed out that the true Koreans were the common people who maintained their cultural integrity in spite of all the corruption and nonsense of the elite, who were basically poisoning each other and taking advantage of the common Koreans.''
A native of Oregon, Coyner first came to Korea in 1975 as a Peace Corps volunteer. He worked in Korean rural villages for two years, married a Korean high school teacher, and then worked for the Chase Manhattan Bank in Seoul for another two years. He first heard about Ham Sok-hon in Korea.
``Even as a university student, I was interested in dissident poet Kim Ji- ha, because I was involved in the anti-war movement against Vietnam. When I was a university student in Tokyo, I met some Koreans in the democracy movement and they gave me literature about Kim. When you start knowing about one person, you eventually start hearing about other people. So I realized that there was this movement going on.''
However, though Coyner was aware of and sympathized with Ham's teachings as a Peace Corps volunteer, he could not openly support Ham, as it was dangerous for Peace Corps volunteers to have any political role during the Park Chung-hee regime.
But later in Tokyo, in the late '90s, Coyner met a number of Japanese Quakers who knew and supported Ham Sok-hon. The fact that Ham had also been a Quaker abetted Coyner's curiosity. He then started to talk about Ham with them and to do research on Ham's teachings.
During his research, Coyner realized the difficulty of translating Ham's writings into another language, particularly English, because of the many references to Asian philosophy and history as well as puns in them. Coyner also found out that only a small amount of Ham's writings were translated into English, and that only a relatively small number of articles were written in English about Ham when he was alive.
So what induced Coyner to start building a website dedicated to gathering and preserving English translations of writings related to Ham?
"Ham Sok-hon has been dead for over 10 years now. I realized that a lot of this was going to eventually disappear unless someone started archiving it properly and making it readily accessible. So for the past couple years, I have been collecting material. I put out notices in Quaker publications, and from that I have been able to get people to send me photocopies of newsletters and articles about him.''
According to Coyner, although the American and English Quakers have a strong respect for Ham because of his interesting personality, he is relatively unknown to Westerners except among the Quakers and the peace activists. That was another reason Coyner put up the website, which is well linked to other sites related to Korea, Taoism, Christianity and Quakerism.
"People who are surfing the net, not looking for Ham, can now find him by accident. Anyone can access the information and print it out, and I have permission from the authors and publishers to have it up there,'' he said.
Though Coyner has amassed quite a lot of information on his website, his work is not yet done. As he feels that he has found most of the major documents, such as Ham's writings and essays about him, Coyner is now interested in looking for documents that have not been published before, such as letters.
"With some of the things that I am scanning, the paper is starting to get brittle now. This type of paper was not meant to be archived, it was meant to be shown just like newspapers. So it's important to start collecting the material, putting it into digital form and making it readily available.''
His site on Ham Sok-hon can be found at http://www2.gol.com/users/quakers/HSH_index.htm and his personal homepage at http://www2.gol.com/users/coynerhm.
