Foulk’s short yet impressive Asia journey

SHIN BOK-RYONG
The author is an emeritus professor of history at Konkuk University.

George Foulk (1856-1893) was a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, where the good-looking cadet with outstanding grades studied the Japanese language. Upon graduating from the academy, he applied to serve in the Asia Fleet Command and was assigned to serve in Nagasaki at the age of 27.

Young officers enjoyed Japanese culture on weekends. They liked to visit a traditional tea house on a hill. The daughter of the tea shop owners, Murase Kane, was beautiful and fluent in English. But the old couple — the tea shop owners — treated their daughter as if they were serving her as a master.

At the tea house, Lieutenant Foulk was a star. The daughter of the tea house and the lieutenant soon fell in love. When Foulk asked about the odd relationship of the family, his girlfriend confessed that she was originally the daughter of a samurai from the Satsuma Domain.

During the rebellion, her parents were killed, but she survived. The current parents, who had been servants of the family, fled and lived in hiding in Nagasaki.

Around this time, U.S. Minister to Korea Lucius Foote (1826-1913) resigned, and Foulk became the acting chargé d’affaires to the Kingdom of Korea in 1885. Foulk wanted to live in Joseon with his wife, but due to the poor pay, he resigned from the post.

King Gojong asked him to stay in Korea, offering to pay his salary instead, but Foulk could not accept it. He returned to Japan in 1887, obtained Japanese nationality, and officially married his wife to settle there.

Foulk became an English professor at Doshisha University and lived happily. But seven years after naturalizing, he was found dead in the street in Nikko, Japan. His body was covered with marks from a Japanese sword, suggesting revenge by his wife’s family. The plot is a bit different, but maybe Puccini’s opera “Madame Butterfly” was inspired by his story.