Robert Jermain Thomas

Robert Jermain Thomas (1839 – died c. 31 August 1866) was a Welsh Protestant Christian missionary who served with the London Missionary Society in late Qing Dynasty China and Korea. While serving as a missionary to China, Thomas developed a strong desire to work among the people of Korea. At the time, Korea was closed to foreigners because of the government's fear of foreign influence. Many Koreans had been converted by Catholic priests in the late 1700s, but the government killed 8,000 of those converts in 1866.

Thomas made his first visit to the Korean coast in 1865, making him the second known Protestant missionary to Korea (Karl Gutzlaff, a German Protestant missionary, was the first, having visited Korea in 1832 and distributed Chinese Bibles to Koreans). Thomas learned as much as he could about the people and their language during his two and a half months there, distributing tracts and New Testaments in Chinese because they were not available in Korean.

During this first visit, Thomas kept a diary of which the following are the entries for 3 and 4 November 1865.

In 1866, Thomas was asked to join the French Naval force as an interpreter to go to Korea as a part of invading party. However, the French force went to Vietnam instead. So Thomas took a job as an interpreter on an armed American trading ship, the General Sherman. Thomas persuaded the captain to sail to Pyongyang to establish trade between the United States and Korea, even though uninvited trade was forbidden. Thomas's personal motivation was to spread the gospel in Korea.

The General Sherman set sail on 9 August 1866 and was first spotted at the mouth of the Taedong River on 16 August. As the ship sailed up the river loaded with cotton goods, tin and glass, Thomas tossed gospel tracts onto the riverbank. Korean officials repeatedly ordered the American boat to leave immediately. On or around 25 August, the crew kidnapped Hyon-Ik Yi, a Korean government official, who was in charge of communications with the ship. An ex-military officer, Chun-Gwon Park, eventually managed to rescue Yi and reinstated him to his former position. However, Yi's two subordinates, Soon-Won Yoo and Chi-Young Park, who had also been taken hostage, perished during the scuffles. On 31 August, the crew of General Sherman fired cannons and guns at the nearby civilians, resulting 7 deaths and 5 wounded. Both the Korean government and the early Korean Christian community agreed that it was the General Sherman that had initiated hostilities. Governor Gyu-Su Park of Pyong-An Province finally declared the General Sherman as an enemy vessel and ordered his troops to prepare for battle.

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