Family of U.K. journalist traces his legacy

Descendants of Bethell proud of his crusade against Japanese occupation
HERALD INTERVIEW

The descendants of a British journalist turned Korean independence activist said they had come to understand his reasons for fighting the Japanese annexation of Korea over their weeklong stay here. 

The granddaughter and great granddaughters of Ernest Thomas Bethell, a British journalist who established the Daehan Maeil Shinbo and the Korea Daily News and criticized the Japanese colonization of Korea, arrived in Korea last Thursday after being invited by the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs.

Susan Black and her two daughters were given the chance to pay their respects to their grandfather at the Yanghwajin Foreign Missionary Cemetery. Bethell died in 1909, shortly after serving a prison sentence in Shanghai.

“We’ve been to see his grave for the first time,” said Nicola Black. 

“Which was obviously quite moving for them because they’ve seen photographs of it, but it’s not the same as when you’re actually there,” her mother Susan interjected. “The fact that it is so well tended is also moving. It’s in the middle of Seoul but it’s so peaceful, so green and so nicely kept.”

When Bethell was first laid to rest and a headstone was placed at his grave, the Japanese had not forgotten his critical articles of their annexation of Korea.

“The fact that the Japanese even went to the point of actually defacing some of his headstone, I think, is really disgusting,” said the granddaughter.

Japanese soldiers vandalized some of the headstone that was thought to be critical of the Japanese. In 1964 the original epitaph was restored by the Korean people. 

The Blacks, after touring Korea and learning about the treatment of Koreans by the Japanese, understood why their grandfather had chosen to stay.