A stolen country and a vengeful murder — right in front of the Ferry Building. Imperialist politics of the early 1900s played out in this dramatic San Francisco scene.
On March 22, 1908, an American diplomat named Durham White Stevens encountered four young Korean nationalists in the lobby of the Fairmont Hotel, where he was staying. They had come to demand an apology.
Stevens gave interviews to the San Francisco newspapers defending the Japanese takeover of Korea. The Call newspaper reported that “Stevens denies that the Japanese are exploiting Korea for Japanese profit or that the revenues of the land are being used in maintaining an arm of Japanese office holders."
The Koreans who had come to demand an apology from Stevens felt betrayed. This was understandable, for Stevens’ pro-Japanese position contradicted the United States’ official stance. The U.S. and Korea had signed a treaty in 1882 in which Washington pledged to support Korea “if other Powers deal unjustly or oppressively” with it. But in 1905, the Roosevelt administration ratified a secret agreement in which the United States agreed to let Japan take over Korea as long as Japan allowed the U.S.
This was more than Lee and his compatriots could stand. They seized rattan chairs from the lobby and began swinging them at Stevens, knocking him to the marble floor. A big, powerful man, Stevens got up, bleeding from the face, and seized a chair of his own. He was defending himself with his back against the wall when hotel guests grabbed the Koreans and ejected them from the Fairmont.
As Stevens got out of the “gasoline bus” the Fairmont used to transport guests, Chun ran up and fired a revolver at him at point-blank range. But it misfired, and Chun began beating Stevens with the gun’s butt, trying to blind him. Stevens fought back, beating Chun with his fists and chasing him down the street. At this moment, Chang, who had been watching a few yards away, ran forward with a gun concealed in a handkerchief and fired.
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