Robert Jermain Thomas leaned on the rail of the ship to finally catch a glimpse of the land for which he had long labored and prayed. It was August 1866. Through the haze of the summer heat, the young missionary could see the dark coastline. The land was known to the western world as the “Hermit Kingdom.” A hermit kingdom is a term to describe a country or society that deliberately isolates itself from the rest of the world.

Although the ship upon which he sailed was an American trading vessel, Robert J. Thomas was neither an American nor was he a trader. He was a Welshman who had come to give the Good News of the everlasting Gospel to this particular hermit kingdom — the people of Korea.

For many long centuries, the hermit kingdom had resisted any western influence. Korean food, clothing, hair styles, and culture had remained unchanged as long as anyone could remember.

Korean shamanism was the historic animistic religion of the peninsular country. This ethnic religion required the people to worship ancestors as well as the spirits of animals. Buddhist monks arrived in Korea in the A.D. 300s, but Buddhism never gained complete mastery over the ancient ethnic animism. Confucianism and Taoism arrived in later centuries, but shamanism prevailed — no other religion ever dominated in the minds and hearts of the people of Korea.

Isolation, fear of outsiders, and loyalty to their own customs kept Christian missionaries at bay for a long time. In 1832, a German missionary named Karl Gützlaff visited Korea with an armload of Chinese Bibles, hoping that some of the Bibles would land in the hands of someone that could read them.

Government officials demanded that Gützlaff leave the country. The German missionary wrote in his diary, “Can the divine truth, disseminated in Korea be lost? This I believe not; there will be some fruits in the appointed time of our Lord . . . The Scripture teaches us to believe that God can bless even these feeble beginnings. Let us hope that better days will soon dawn for Korea.”

This prayer was answered in a remarkable way. Thirty years later, the young man on the ship and viewing the coastline was Robert J. Thomas. He came and sailed up the Taedong River near what is now Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea. Thomas, a faithful young Welsh missionary, had originally intended to spend his life serving in China.

Prior to his coming to Korea, he and his wife Caroline had served in China under the direction of the London Missionary Society. Several months after arriving in China, Thomas and his wife learned that they were expecting their first child! Joy, however, turned quickly into sorrow when Caroline suffered a miscarriage. The blow was made all the heavier when Thomas’s wife died of complications from the miscarriage.

Far from home and family and now left entirely alone, Thomas resolved that he would not return to Wales. Instead, he committed to stay in the eastern hemisphere and continue to serve the Lord in mission work.

Thomas had heard bits and pieces of news and descriptions of the hermit kingdom of Korea. Roman Catholic priests had gained some converts in Korea in the 1700s, but their work blended Christianity with some of the animistic Korean superstitions.

When news came in 1866 that the Korean government had killed 8,000 of these Catholic converts, Thomas resolved that he would go to Korea and give the pure Gospel to the people there. Despite being warned of the dangers, he boldly sailed to the Korean peninsula to shine the Light of the World into a kingdom of darkness.

The American trading vessel on which he had secured passage was engaged in contraband trade. The Korean government had specifically forbidden foreign vessels to bring foreign goods into the country. But many nations ignored this rule and hoped to slip in undetected to sell cotton, tin, glass, fishhooks, glassware, and other Western trade goods to the Koreans.

Robert Thomas was interested only in the souls of the Koreans. Since he had learned a small bit of the Korean language in preparation for his mission, he was employed by the American captain as a translator. As the ship slipped up the river toward Pyongyang, Thomas distributed Chinese Gospel tracts and Chinese Bibles to anyone who would take them.

After several days of contraband trading, the ship fell under the scrutiny of the Korean government. The officials sent notice to the captain to desist trading and leave the country immediately. When the ship ran aground a hidden mudbank near Pyongyang, Korean government officials launched an attack on the stranded ship. The American crew fought off the attackers with cannons and small arms. They were able to hold out for two days.

Thomas was deeply grieved at this turn of events. He had not come to kill Koreans but to save them. He had not come to take but to give. When the Koreans launched a burning vessel at the stranded American ship, a raging fire began, threatening all aboard.

There are many different versions of the story of exactly how Robert Thomas died. Some say he was beaten to death after swimming to shore. Others say he succumbed to the searing heat of the flames. Still others say he was stabbed to death by a Korean soldier.

But all accounts agree on one point: Robert Thomas gave his life willingly in an effort to give the people of Korea the Word of God. In one widely accepted account of his last moments, Thomas, although severely burned, waded to shore, holding in his hands the few precious Bibles he had left, and offered them to the Korean people on the shore. He shouted, “Jesus! Jesus!” and offered his last Bible to the Korean that killed him. After a few moments of pain and suffering, Robert Jermain Thomas was reunited with his wife and baby in the presence of the Lord Jesus.

The Korean officials, soldiers, and civilians looted the bodies of the slain and carried off all they could. In the providence of God, one Korean official took one of the Bibles. He used the pages to wallpaper the interior walls of his home. Before long, local residents came to this official’s home to read his remarkable wallpaper!

The Word of God did not return void. Other missionaries followed Thomas, and within forty years of his death, more than one hundred churches flourished in the Korean Peninsula. In 1907, a remarkable awakening called “The Korean Pentecost” brought an overwhelming movement of the Holy Spirit that ignited an interest in Christianity that still continues today in South Korea.

When the Korean peninsula was divided into two separate nations, the once strongly Christian northern portion, including the city of Pyongyang, was quickly smothered by anti-Christian communism. North Korea is still closed to the Gospel to this very day, while the country of South Korea is strongly evangelical and promotes missionary work throughout the world, following the example of martyrs such as Robert Jermain Thomas.

North Korea remains a hermit kingdom; praise God for missionaries such as Robert Thomas who endeavored to deliver the life-giving Gospel that has opened the southern part of the Korean peninsula to truth! Even today, we must hope and pray that the Lord will finish in all of Korea the mighty work He has begun.

Sources and Further Reference:

Blair, William N. and Bruce F. Hunt. The Korean Pentecost and the Sufferings Which Followed. Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2015.