Dr. Philip Jaisohn, Korea's First Modern Voice
Near Wilmington, Pennsylvania
This house in suburban Philadelphia was the home of Philip Jaisohn for more than twenty-five years. Born in Korea, Jaisohn became the first Korean to earn a Western medical degree and the first Korean to become a United States citizen. He used those platforms to fight for his homeland. In eighteen ninety-six he founded the Independent, Korea's first modern newspaper, written in the Korean vernacular script rather than classical Chinese, to reach ordinary readers.
When Japan annexed Korea in nineteen ten, Jaisohn worked tirelessly from the United States for Korean independence. In nineteen forty-seven and forty-eight he returned to serve as chief advisor to the American military government in Seoul. He is remembered in Korea as one of the founding fathers of modern Korean democracy, and in Pennsylvania as a physician who saw medicine and freedom as inseparable causes.
