"The arch agitator:" Dr. Frank W. Schofield and the Korean independence movement.

On March 1st 1919, after nearly a decade of forced assimilation and military rule under Japanese administration, the Korean people demanded their independence. The mass demonstrations that followed became known as the ‘March 1st Movement.’ Despite the peaceful nature of the movement, it was brutally repressed by the Japanese military forces in Korea, and resulted in the arrest and torture of thousands of Koreans by mid-June. Missionaries in Korea protested the appalling tortures and the imprisonment of Korean demonstrators through an international publicity campaign that sought to expose the ‘atrocities’ being committed by the Japanese. This campaign antagonized the Japanese government and provoked a suspicion of Christianity and missionary work in the colony. In December 1919, a story surfaced that the Governor-General of Korea had publicly stated, “that Christian missionaries are behind the disturbances in Korea is an undeniable fact and a man named Schofield, belonging to the Severance Hospital at Seoul, is one of the most pronounced type of these agitators” (1). The missionary singled out by Governor-General Saito was Dr. Frank W. Schofield, a Canadian veterinarian working at Severance Union Medical College and Hospital through the Presbyterian Church of Canada. He and his wife, Alice, had arrived in Korea just 3 years earlier in 1916. His activism and outspoken support for the Korean people later earned him the title of ‘34th Patriot’ among the Koreans and, upon his death, burial in the Patriot’s Section of the Korean National Cemetery (2). Frank W. Schofield is well known in veterinary science for his discovery of the anti-coagulant effect of mouldy sweet clover, which led to the important development of dicoumarol (2). Yet, how this Canadian veterinarian and missionary became such a hated enemy of the Japanese government and why he remains such an important hero to the Korean people demand further investigation. The details surrounding his recall from the mission field in 1920 are often portrayed incorrectly as expulsion by the Japanese, but likely relate to his increasingly radical position towards Japanese colonial policy. Whereas missionaries commonly opposed the brutal mistreatment of Koreans, the fundamental difference that set Schofield apart was that he also supported Korean independence. Schofield’s critique of Japanese colonial policy began to extend to colonialism more generally, as he increasingly pointed to British imperial endeavors in India and Ireland as failures of empire. Although his anti-colonial stance was kept in check by recall to Canada, he remains one of the few Canadian veterinarians to have had important international impact. Together with his scientific ability and his influence on generations of veterinary students, this international contribution makes him an important figure in Canadian history.

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