Leading Pro-Independence Efforts

As the principal of Yeongmyeong School in Okgu-gun County, Jeollabuk-do Province, he launched the independence movement in Gunsan on March 5, 1919, with his fellow teachers.

This historic record is written on the First March Independence Movement Monument in Gunsan, with the inscription saying, ¡°The first independence movement began in February 1919, led mainly by Christian members and Christian missionary schools founded by the Southern Presbyterian Missionary, including teachers and students of Yeongmyeong School and Melbondin Girls¡¯ School, workers of Gungmeol Jesus Hospital and members of Guam Presbyterian Church. The movement was later expanded as members of Catholic churches and Buddhist temples and other citizens joined.¡±

¡°The movement, which began on March 5 on Guam Hill, which later became Guam Historic Park in Gunsan, persisted on 28 occasions with a combined 30,700 attendees, resulting in 53 deaths, 72 missing and 195 wounded.¡±

While serving as the principal of Shinheung High School in Jeonju in December 1936, Linton closed the school in protest of the Japanese colonial government¡¯s order for the school to participate in Shinto shrine worship, which he rejected.

Other schools in the region, including Speer Girls¡¯ High School and Yeongmyeong School in Gunsan and Soongil School in Gwangju, followed suit to protest continued oppression by Japanese authorities.

In October 1940, the U.S. consul in Seoul ordered American missionaries out of Korea. A month later on Nov. 14, Linton and his family left the country, where he had spent 28 years after first arriving at Mokpo Port on Sept. 20, 1912.

Mr. and Mrs. Linton came back to Korea shortly after Korea¡¯s independence.

Dedication to Youth Education

Linton would return in 1946, a year after the country¡¯s liberation, and dedicated his life to youth education until dying of cancer in 1960 at age 69. He spent 42 years in Korea to help it gain independence and develop schools there.

His descendants have carried on his work in Korea with a similar sense of purpose as Linton¡¯s. His son Hugh (1926-84), who was born in Gunsan and adopted the Korean name In-hyu, fought in the Battle of Incheon during the 1950-53 Korean War.

Linton¡¯s grandson Stephen (1950-), a former associate professor at Hanyang University in Seoul, is the founder and chairman of the Eugene Bell Foundation, which provides medical humanitarian aid to North Korea. His younger brother John (1959-), a physician who is director of the International Health Care Center at Severance Hospital in Seoul, also supports medical humanitarian aid to the North.