p. 9 | In Korea by W. R. Smith

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 4, 1909

In Korea

By W. R. Smith

KOREA has a territory of about ninety thousand square miles, with a population of fifteen million. It has a spoken and a written language of its own. About half the men are able to read and write. The women are mostly illiterate, there being no general educational system in Korea.

But the Korean people have sterling qualities which will place them — when they are educated and protected — alongside any people that live in the world.

While the Korean realizes that his nation is perhaps the weakest of all the nations, he regards himself as a man among men. He will tell you that the Korean student, when put with Japanese and Chinese students, excels them. He is proud of his intellect. Agricultural methods are primitive, but the people are anxious to learn.

Our work in Korea began about five years ago, when two Koreans visiting Japan had their attention drawn to our teaching, one of them returning to Korea, and beginning to preach what he had learned from the Word of God. We have at the present time about fourteen companies of believers, numbering upward of five hundred. I would not wish to give the impression that all are fully established, but those who are not intelligent in the faith we are seeking to instruct and lead into the full light of truth. W. R. SMITH.