James Scarth Gale and the Christian Literature Society: His Crusade against “Mongrel Korean” and Search for an Alternative Modern Korean Literary Idiom

Canadian missionary James Scarth Gale (1863–1937) served in Korea from the 1880s until 1927, a time of momentous changes in Korean society and culture, and especially in Korean language, literature, and the development of a new vernacular literary language. During his last five years in Korea, Gale worked full-time for the Christian Literature Society (CLS) vetting and editing Korean-language submissions for publication along with his committee of three Korean Christian “pundits.” This paper introduces for the first time the unpublished working notes of Gale and his committee and through examining their work, finds that they were engaged in a conservative project of “verbal hygiene” designed to 1) save the riches of traditional Korean literary culture from oblivion, 2) mobilize Korean literature and literary translation into Korean under the aegis of the CLS for the Christian salvation of the Korean people, and 3) save “beautiful, idiomatic Korean” from misguided attempts at literal word translation and newfangled trends in Korean literary style based on foreign (especially Japanese) models that threatened to turn the new modern literary idiom into “mongrel Korean.” The work of Gale and his pundits at the CLS provides us with a first-hand account of the changes in and foreign influences on modern Korean, especially modern literary Korean, at a pivotal moment in its development, the early 1920s.