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This book helps explain what Koreans - both North and South - think of the West - and why. Clark offers a rich portrait of how Westerners dealt with the Korean people during the first half of the Twentieth Century. This period was the formative childhood years for many, if not all, of the Korean leaders who set in place the peninsula we see today. - Back cover. Before World War II, Korea was home to many hundreds of Westerners who experienced life there under Japanese colonial rule. These were missionaries who opened Korea as a field for evangelism, education, and medicine; speculators who risked much and reaped riches from mining concessions; and diplomats who tried to keep them neutral, even as the Japanese forced them out of business on the eve of the Pacific War. Donald N. Clark reconstructs the early twentieth century foreign community, highlighting the role of Americans in particular, with vivid portrayals of the lives and suffering and triumphs of the expatriate community in Korea, especially the missionaries. Following the end of World War II, Clark presents the American military occupation and explores the striking consequences of the Americans' assuming the role that had been played earlier by the colonial Japanese. Through the lives and experiences of Westerners, the author highlights the major historical events of modern Korean history. Accounts of foreigners in the Independence Movement and during the period of militarization in the 1930s shed new light on what Japanese colonial rule meant to the Korean people. Similarly, Western experiences in Korea in the 1940s illustrate the way Korea was divided and explore the events that led inexorably to the ordeal of the Korean War as it set the stage for Korea's relations with the world in the late twentieth century. - Back cover.