Yanghwajin Foreign Missionary Cemetery

The creation of the cemetery was motivated by the death of Presbyterian minister John Heron on July 26, 1890. At the time, foreigners were not permitted to be buried in Seoul proper. The Korean government coordinated with the small foreigner community to find a plot of land suitable for burials. Horace Newton Allen obtained the land rights of the bluff overlooking the Han River. Ownership and maintenance controversy In 1956, the Kyungsung European-American Cemetery Association, an organization linked to Seoul Union Church, was granted management rights to the cemetery by the government. However, ownership of the land was reportedly not officially registered. In 1961, President Park Chung Hee decreed that foreigners in South Korea were not allowed to own land. The grounds technically belonged to no one until the city of Seoul designated it a public park in 1965. In 1985, Horace Grant Underwood III, on behalf of Seoul Union Church, requested that a Korean organization called the Council for the 100th Anniversary of the Korean Church (henceforth "100th Anniversary Church") register the cemetery on behalf of the Seoul Union Church. The two churches reportedly agreed that Seoul Union Church would be the unofficial caretakers of the land. A year later, they built a chapel nearby called the Memorial Chapel: this served as the first permanent home for Seoul Union Church. Concurrently, they denied charges that the expulsion was motivated by nationalism. ==Statistics==

• Homer Hulbert (1863–1949) American missionary and journalist whose headstone proclaims "I would rather be buried in Korea than in Westminster Abbey." • Ernest Bethell (1872–1909) British journalist, Korean independence activist, and founder of The Korea Daily News. • Horace Grant Underwood (1859–1916) founder of the Seoul YMCA, Saemunan Presbyterian Church and what eventually became Yonsei University • Henry Gerhard Appenzeller (1858–1902) (cenotaph) who greatly contributed to the foundation of Pai Chai University • Rosetta Sherwood Hall (1865–1951), medical missionary and founder of the Pyongyang School for the Deaf and Blind, Baldwin Dispensary (Lilian Harris Memorial Hospital). Instrumental in the founding of the Hall Memorial Hospital (Pyongyang). • William James Hall, (1860–1894), medical missionary and namesake of Hall Memorial Hospital (Pyongyang). • Clarence Ridgley Greathouse (1843–1899) supervisor to 1895 trial of the murder of Queen Min • Brevet Brigadier General Charles W. Le Gendre (1830–1899) French-born American general, diplomat and advisor to King Kojong from 1890 to 1899. • Soda Kaichi (1867-1962) and his wife Takiko Kaichi (1878-1950) Japanese missionary husband and wife. He and his wife Takiko were the only Japanese people to be buried in the cemetery in 1962. ==Notes==