Robert Jermain Thomas

Life and Ministry

Robert Jermain Thomas was born at Rhayader in Radnorshire, Wales, in AD 1839, the son of a Congregational minister, educated at New College London, ordained at Hanover Congregational Chapel in his father's hometown, and sailed for China in AD 1863 under the London Missionary Society. After the death of his young wife Caroline at Shanghai in AD 1864 he was redirected by the Scottish Bible Society to a survey mission to Korea, where the Hermit Kingdom was closed to foreign Christianity under penalty of death by the Joseon dynasty. He learned Korean from refugee Catholic converts at Chefoo, made a first short reconnaissance to the western coast in AD 1865 distributing Chinese-character Scriptures, and prepared a second expedition in the summer of AD 1866 carrying a large consignment of Chinese New Testaments donated by the Scottish Bible Society.

Circumstances of Death

Thomas sailed up the Taedong River to Pyongyang as the interpreter aboard the American merchant schooner General Sherman in the August of AD 1866. The voyage was unauthorized by the Korean court, the ship grounded on a sandbar opposite the city, and after a standoff of several days the Pyongyang governor Pak Kyu-su ordered fireboats sent against her. The General Sherman was burned to the waterline on 5 September AD 1866 and her crew, attempting to wade ashore, were killed by the Korean troops on the river bank. Witnesses recorded that Thomas knelt at the water's edge offering Chinese Scriptures to his executioners and was beaten to death holding out a New Testament to the soldier who killed him, with the words Yesu, Yesu — Jesus, Jesus — on his lips. Several Pyongyang residents secretly kept the Scriptures he had handed out, and one of them later became a believer when missionaries returned in AD 1884.

Legacy

Thomas is the first Protestant martyr in Korea, his death pre-dating the open Korean mission by eighteen years. A memorial church was erected at the supposed site of his killing in Pyongyang in AD 1933; it was destroyed in the Korean War, but the Korean Protestant churches both north and south honor him as the seed-planter of their evangelization. His witness is that the gospel is sown by the man who hands a book to the man who is killing him. The Chinese New Testaments he distributed on the Taedong became the first printed Scriptures known to have entered Pyongyang, and the city that killed him heard the gospel from the body that fell on its riverbank.