How can mere individuals affect human history and world events? And how can the impact be made?
Former President Carter in the DPRK, 1994: An event that was a century in the making
This may sound like a curious way to begin a post on Reverend Billy Graham, the Baptist evangelist, and his impact on North Korea, but this thought came to me as I was idly perusing an article on the topic. Graham’s trip to North Korea in 1992 was a turning point for North Korea and paved the way for other world leaders to visit the country. Piecing together different pieces of the puzzle, I have found some fascinating historical threads that tie individuals together in the maelstrom of history.
When I speak about how individuals can impact history and human events, I’m not referring to Graham, who was probably one of the most influential people of the 20th century, and whose direct impact on human history is obvious. I’m referring instead to Reverend Eugene Bell, a Presbyterian from Kentucky who arrived in Korea in April 1895. Sent by the Southern Presbyterian Church in America to Christianize the Orient, Eugene Bell and his wife served in Korea as missionaries for several decades, along with their five children.
One of Eugene’s children was Nelson Bell, who became a doctor and who went on to serve as a medical missionary in China. His second child was Ruth, who was born at Qingjiang and who spent most of her childhood in China. When Ruth was a teenager, the family moved [back] to Korea, to the original site of the Bell missionary work. Korea was then under Japanese rule, and Ruth studied at a Presbyterian high school in Pyongyang. There she lived and studied for three years before returning to the US to graduate from high school in Montreat, North Carolina.
To what extent life in colonial Korea influenced Ruth is hard to say. After her time in Asia she vowed to never marry and dreamed of working as a missionary in Tibet. That all changed when she went to Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois where she met Billy Graham. The two married in 1943 and Ruth Bell became Ruth Graham. Billy Graham, a Baptist, went on to be one of the most popular evangelists in American history while Ruth, a Presbyterian, never converted. The two lived most of their life in Montreat, North Carolina and raised five children.
Billy Graham developed a reputation as a non-partisan evangelist and an outspoken anti-communism during the Cold War. However, perhaps due to his wife’s personal and family connection to Korea, he developed a soft spot for North Korea even before the Soviet Union fell. He reached out to the DPRK regime several times during the 1980s, but was unable to arrange a visit, despite enlisting the help of several notable individuals. However, according to one online biography of the Grahams at PBS:
After several attempts to discretely plan a trip there, including an unsuccessful attempt by Pope John Paul II to arrange a visit, Billy enlisted the help of Dr. Stephen Linton, a scholar at Columbia University’s Center for Korean Research.
The site makes no further reference to Stephen Linton. But who was he, and how was an American in New York so instrumental where others failed, and how did Graham know him?
Here the story comes full circle. Dr. Linton is the founder of the Eugene Bell Foundation, an NGO that engages in non-profit humanitarian work in North Korea. Linton named the foundation after great-grandfather, Eugene Bell, who was his father’s mother’s father, which makes Stephen Linton and Ruth Graham first cousins one removed. The Linton’s ended up living in Korea permanently, and you can read about Dr. Linton’s current work in North Korea at Marmot here.
Thus it happened that Billy Graham visited North Korea in 1992 as a guest of President Kim Il-Sung, the first non-Communist figure of importance since the Korean War. The visit had a profound effect in encouraging North Korea to recognize foreign visitors, and arguably set the stage for Jimmy Carter’s 1994 trip during the 1994 nuclear weapons development crisis. Carter’s freelance mediating arguably prevented a war from breaking out on the peninsula (whether that was good or bad is a different topic). It was also a positive move for Christians in North Korea, as Graham’s visit preceded President Kim’s invitation of the leaders of the Protestant and Catholic associations to his annual New Year reception, the first time he had ever recognized those associations at all. Years later, Graham praised Kim as a “different kind of communist” and “one of the great fighters for freedom in his country against the Japanese.”
Franklin Graham in North Korea, circa 2000.
Graham has never met current North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il, but his son Franklin Graham has met him on two occasions when he visited North Korea in 2000 and 2008. Billy Graham has exchanged gifts with Kim Jong-il, and given a globe surmounted with doves to the North Korean Friendship Museum.
Today, cultural exchanges and study abroad is a common activity of many young people. It comes in the form of private study, church groups, charity groups, and philanthropic societies such as the Lions Club and the Rotary Club. Ruth Graham’s impact on her husband in his missionary work to North Korea and the impact this has consequently had on the North Korean regime shows, I think, how one individual’s childhood experience can have a lasting impact on the world we live in — and how a Kentuck missionary visiting Korea in the 1890s resulted in a former US president stopping a war on the peninsula in the 1990s.
Great post. Your dispassionate reporting on DPRK is all the more impressive considering that this is a country you’ve advocated dropping nuclear bombs on.
Agreed, very nice. I may have to read up on this story a bit myself.
An idea for your next post.
Reverend Moon’s lone crusade for the resurgence of Japanese right wingers…
There is a pretty good history of Billy Graham’s father-in-law, who was an American missionary in China. [1]
The engagement of the Graham family in East Asia would be a an interesting history to know
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Foreign-Devil-China-Story-Nelson/dp/0890661413
I agree that this is a *GREAT* post as well, though I would not have been as “dispassionate” as Adamu puts it. This fascinating chain of events may have led to the prevention of proper regime change in the DPRK. It prevented untold carnage, as well, but… I think it would have been worth it. If there was ever a regime that _deserved_ a well strategic nuclear weapons, it is theirs: in 1951, 1994, and today.
Whether the cost-benefit works out as tidily today as it did back in those days is another question entirely, sadly. How many millions must perish before the DPRK is wiped away?
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Excellent post… A real example akin to the notion that a butterfly flapping its wings somewhere starts a hurricane. … Admiral – you pose an interesting last question, but surely there is a simple answer? How many millions must perish before the DPRK is wiped away? As many as it takes for the people of North Korea to realize THEY must change their leader.
That was an odd sentence. They’re both Protestant Christians, so neither would need to “convert” the other.
Part of the equation may be that Kim Il-Sung himself might have had a soft spot for Presbyterians and other Protestants. His grandfather was a minister and his family in general was religious. I’m not so sure he ever personally accepted the ideological fervor against religion that European communists did. He certainly seemed to understand how to mold certain aspects of religion into a personality cult.
Kushibo, the practice of Baptist and Presbyterian worship is very different, and “Protestant” has very little meaning in 21st century America — while some Prebyterians may still define themselves as a Protestant denomination to differentiate themselves from Roman Catholicism, most Baptists refer to themselves as “Christian.” You’ll note that fundamentalist Christians reject the entire Catholic-Protestant paradigm. But all that being said, what verb would you prefer instead of convert?
“…reject the entire Catholic-Protestant paradigm…”
In the sense that they believe that Catholics are not “saved” and hence not Christians and going to Hell. I suppose that is “rejecting a paradigm”. It is fun to go to large Catholic events in Chicago. There are often “Christians” protesting there, telling you that you are not a Christian and you are going to Hell. One guy got right in my face and said “have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior or not!” I said, “yes”, and he screamed “liar!” One guy in Indiana was talking to a bunch of people about his faith, and started to say something, he put his hand right in my face and said, “when you get rid of the Pope, you can talk to me about religion.” There is a lot more where that came from.
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Just to clarify that “rejecting the entire Catholic-Protestant paradigm” means less, not more, civility and tolerance from “Christians” toward Catholics. With the recent depraved conduct of some of the Catholic clergy, there is the smell of blood in the water, and these guys are hoping they may finally see the Whore of Babylon breathe its last.
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It will be a long wait.
Kushibo, the practice of Baptist and Presbyterian worship is very different, and “Protestant” has very little meaning in 21st century America—
21st century America? Mr Graham and Miss Bell married nearly six decades before the 21st century began. Protestant was a very clear concept to a lot of Christians (WASP, anyone?) in their early-to-mid-20th century world.
In fact, in the half century of missionary proliferation in Korea in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the various Protestant denominations actively cooperated to divide up Chosŏn/Chōsen into non-competing territories, since they saw all the Protestant denominations as working toward the same ends.
while some Prebyterians may still define themselves as a Protestant denomination to differentiate themselves from Roman Catholicism, most Baptists refer to themselves as “Christian.”
Your experience seems different from mine. Including close relatives with whom I’ve attended church, I know a lot of Presbyterians and a lot of Baptists, and they all refer to themselves as Christians first, and then their sect second.
But I do agree with you that nowadays the prominence and unity of “Protestant” as a singular concept is eroding. The concept of a Protestant/Catholic dichotomy is being replaced by an evangelical/fundamentalist-versus-non-evangelical dichotomy. (If that’s what you’re getting at.)
You’ll note that fundamentalist Christians reject the entire Catholic-Protestant paradigm. But all that being said, what verb would you prefer instead of convert?
That goes along with the dichotomy I mentioned above. But when the Grahams met in the early 1940s, such was not the case.
By the way, I recall talking about Dr Steven Linton in the last half of this post from 2005, in the context of North Korean aid.
But all that being said, what verb would you prefer instead of convert?
Good question. I guess I would have said, “Billy Graham, a Baptist, went on to be one of the most popular evangelists in American history while Ruth, a Presbyterian, never left her church (or denomination).
Among my extended family are a lot of Christians who married Christians of a different denomination (including Protestants marrying Catholics). When it was intra-Protestant marriages, they talk(ed) about changing churches, leaving churches, joining churches, but never “converting.” I’ve heard “converting” only when Protestants became Catholics. Among friends, when Christians (Catholics or Protestants) adopted the Jewish faith of their spouse, they also used the word “convert.”
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Interesting article. I wasn’t aware of all of the details.
By the way, the Westerner in the background of the Franklin Graham picture is Dr. John Linton, brother of Stephen Linton. Dr. John Linton translated for Franklin’s trip. His regular job is runnning the international health care center at Yonsei’s Severance Hospital.
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