D R A F T  

An American Boy From Kwangju

Oak Hill, Fairfax, Virginia July 2026

I grew up in Kwangju, South Korea, in the 1950s and 1960s—an American boy with a perspective shaped by life as a missionary kid. Those years prepared me, in ways I could not have imagined at the time, for a career in U.S. intelligence and economics that continues today, active in the national discourse on Asian economic and security issues, especially with respect to North Korea. This book is not so much a memoir as it is an account of living as a guest in a culture as dissimilar from my American one as possible, and of the lessons that both I—and perhaps the reader—can draw from that experience.

But it is not just about me. My parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, cousins, four grandparents and even one great grandparent participated in this Asian adventure over the course of a hundred years. As my mother’s mother liked to say, quoting a Bible verse, Acts 1 v. 8, “we went to the ends of the earth.” From the American South, Mokpo was about as far as one could go.

My story begins as the Korean War was ending and continues as South Korea picked up its pieces and developed into the modern economic and political miracle it is today. Along the way, I introduce a little economics, reflecting a government career focused on economic development and change in Korea and China, and touch on national-security—Cold War—issues, unusually from the perspective of a child and young adult living in the very friendly yet curious, and at times rebellious, city of Kwangju. Two coup d’états, house burnings, currency reforms, church splits, huge populist demonstrations, under-the bed refuge from thrown rocks—none of it far from the kinetic dangers of North Korea, China, and the former Soviet Union.

This is not a particularly politically correct story, at least as such things are understood in the United States today. The emphasis of the Presbyterian missionaries—especially with respect to their children—was not to assimilate and become like Koreans, nor to push Koreans to assimilate as Americans. It was not a “one-world” project. Their mission, as they understood it, was simply to follow what they saw as God’s command to take the Gospel to the ends of the world, and ancient Confucian Korea certainly qualified as such an end. Good works—education, medicine, economic development, and friendship—followed, but they were not the essential purpose of the mission. Evangelism and church growth were, and in this the missionaries were spectacularly successful.

My parents emphasized that their expectations for their children—unlike themselves, second-generation missionaries as they were—were that we would return to the “States” and live normal lives here, as I have done in Northern Virginia. Nonetheless, I have become ever more deeply invested in Korea and China, working in and retiring from what was at times a frustrating career in American intelligence. I was also strongly influenced by my older sister Mary’s career in education and science with respect to China. Readers interested in her perspective may wish to see her recent book, China on My Mind.

Place is central to this story. As guests of Korea—never expected to stay forever, but not global nomads roaming in search of adventure—the fact that three generations of our family lived in the southwestern region of Korea for a hundred years, matters. So do the other branches of the family in nearby Japan and, of course, China. For me, this sense of place is anchored in the historic and distinctive city of Kwangju, where I lived for fifteen years. Even the hill compound—the mission station—in the Yangnim district is important. It remains mostly intact, has been declared an historic and green area by the city government, and is still owned by the former mission institutions. Few Americans remain, but it is welcoming to visitors. Koreans—who love baseball as well—have stepped to the plate and now run successful missionary schools, a seminary, a nursing school, and a large hospital. Today, they send abroad many more missionaries than Americans ever lived there.

I am fortunate to undertake this project with the benefit of rich first-hand materials left by my parents and grandparents: old photographs and hundreds of letters and books. My four siblings have generously allowed me to retain these family records and have advised me on content. Since high school, I have carried a camera and taken pleasure in photographing a rapidly changing country and its people.

A companion photographic collection is available on my website, NAEIA.com, keyed to places described in this book.

I write with five interrelated audiences in mind. First is my extended family, many of whom experienced the same events at different times and with different memories. As an adult, I was fortunate to work at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul with my wife and our two older children, and my youngest son has also traveled there and to Kwangju. Only my daughter has not, and I hope to take her next. 

Second is the close-knit community of American missionary families in Korea who may laugh at some of my conclusions but may also find memories stirred from a rapidly disappearing tribe. 

Third are Korean-Americans—including those in my neighborhood in Oak Hill, Virginia—who may know little about the American-Koreans who came before them. 

I am, after all, by no means the only American boy or girl from Kwangju. Americans of Japanese and Chinese descent may find resonance as well, especially related to the cities of Osaka/Kobe and Xuzhou. 

My fourth audience is church people who faithfully funded this expensive effort for a hundred years and who need encouragement to advance similar good works.

And finally I write for the people of Kwangju, who may have wondered what that little American boy on his bicycle in their midst was up to.